Video Overview
#6 episode of Helping B2B High Ticket Service Providers Grow – One Lesson at a Time, with Terry McDougall. She is an executive coach and leadership consultant, author and host of the Marketing Mambo Podcast.
Before making the life-changing switch, Terry was a part of the corporate world for 30 years.
She realised that she outgrew her passion for marketing and met someone who inspired her to further explore a coach training program. That resulted in Terry leaving her job and pursuing her dreams.
Dive into her podcast: “Marketing Mambo“.
Find out why her book, “Winning the game of work” is an Amazon best-seller.
STAY TUNED for more incredible lessons, stories and growth tips, straight from the most successful entrepreneurs!
Speakers
Interview Transcript
[00:00:06.970] – Dancho – Hello, everybody. And welcome to another episode of Helping B2B High Ticket Service Providers Grow – One Lesson at a Time. Man, we have that hard title that I’m gonna start forgetting it. But as promised, every podcast we bring a different guest, a different star for the show. Who has a great lesson to share with all of you. We said, well, if you want to be a high ticket service providers, you really need to learn from other high ticket service providers. So for today, I have Terry McDougall, I think Terry? Who is a executive coach, a leadership consultant, a speaker, a best-seller author and host of the Marketing Mumbo Podcast. So Terry, sorry I missed your surname, but welcome to our episode.
[00:00:56.580] – Terry – Is it Dancho or Danco? I just wanna make sure.
[00:00:57.870] – Dancho – I also got used to. Dancho is officially, but it is tough name.
[00:01:03.220] – Terry – Okay, well, Dancho, you got MacDougall, correct. And kudos to you, because often people don’t. It’s great to be here, though. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:18.090] – Dancho – Yeah, well, actually, I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and when I said, oh, a business coach and an executive business coach, I was like, there could be a lot of lessons there. And honestly, then I saw the book that you have published and I was like, you have to come on our show. I’m sure you have so many expertise and so many lessons to share. So people, I didn’t know even where to start. But obviously, Terry, I think that the best way to give us a bit background about yourself. And how did you actually end up being an executive business coach?
[00:01:50.260] – Terry – Sure. Well, I’ve been doing this for about four and a half years, and before I made the switch, I worked in the corporate world for 30 years. I worked in marketing the entire time. The last twelve years I was working for a National Bank here in the US. I had risen to head marketing for several of those businesses over the twelve years I was at that company. And as I had said, in the twelve years I was there, I had four jobs and I was happy for about ten out of the twelve years. The last job that I took was not one that I wanted, quite frankly. I didn’t apply for it. My boss just came and said, I want you to take this job. And I really tried to say no. And she said, I really want you to take this job. And I call that being voluntold, that you’re going to take something on and it never really was a good fit for me. And it got me really thinking, what’s next. I looked around the company, I did not really see any potential career path that seemed like a good fit for me. And I interviewed with companies, other companies. And I started thinking that maybe I’d sort of outgrown my passion for marketing. And I actually had hired career coaches earlier, executive coaches earlier in my career. And I had found the experience to be really beneficial. In fact, I had hired a coach that helped me make a pretty big leap from being, you know, maybe just having a couple of people reporting to me to getting a pretty big promotion where I was leading a department. And so I knew the benefit of it. And just through networking around that time, I met somebody who had gone through a coach training program. She had actually sort of a similar background than I did in her career. And so that just led me to explore the training program that I went through. And I actually decided to leave my job. I was in a position where I was able to do that without having another job. And in some ways, I kind of took a sabbatical. That was my intention at first was that I was just going to sort of, in some ways, sort of detox from being in that position that I didn’t really like, kind of get back to my natural shape and then also do some things that I enjoyed doing. It’s like go through the training program. But my intention at first was to get the coach training certification, get another job, use those skills in my next job and have that, maybe have a couple of clients on the side. And then maybe as I got closer to retirement, do that full time. But as I went through the training program, there were, I was in a cohort of about 40, and many of the people either had their own companies already or they were planning on setting them up. And so as I say, I feel like that entrepreneurial spirit was contagious. And I just realized like it was a six month training program. And in the midst of that, I thought, why not? Why not just try it now? I can always get a job later. And so the rest is history, is four and a half years later. I’m still here, got a book, got a podcast, got a thriving practice. And I’m happy that I made the leap.
[00:05:19.670] – Dancho – Nice. I mean, I’m thinking while I’m listening to you is that, yeah, you are from marketing, and you move to the executive coaching. And I was actually a management consultant that actually moved into the sales. And, of course, it’s not like a career switch, like, where should I go? But you’re kind of being directed based either on the environment or on the feedback. I mean, as you talk with clients, you understand, or you see an opportunity in your case. And I couldn’t wait just to ask you because as you’re in the executive coach, I’m into the consulting. So how are the differences? What are the differences between being actual coach or consultant?
[00:06:00.700] – Terry – I think minor differences. Surprisingly, as a marketing director, I was basically a consultant within my former organizations because I would meet with business heads, understand their problems, work with them to come up with solutions and plans, and then being a marketing in the organization, my team would execute on those. But there was definitely a consulting aspect to what I did, and it actually surprised me a bit that when I became a coach, that when I really step back, I realized I’m just doing the same thing that I always did, which is meeting people where they are understanding their situation. But the difference between consulting and coaching is that it’s not really for me to come into a situation with an individual and say, this is what you’re doing wrong, and this is what you need to do differently. It’s really to help them discover the path that they want to walk, like it’s really to come in, help them get clarity on what their goals are, and then to co-create with them what that roadmap looks like to get there. Because honestly, I can’t get some inside of somebody’s head or heart and know what the right path forward for them is. I mean, I can I might have ideas, but in some ways, it’s not right for me to come in and pose my point of view on them, because, quite frankly, a lot of times people are already trying to recover from that. Maybe it’s, you know, they’re being judged by a boss or their family is telling them that they need to do X, Y or Z. And my job is not to add to that noise. It’s really to help them get clarity and listen to their own inner wisdom and then help them have the courage to take action in that direction. So it’s subtle. There’s a lot of similarities, but it’s not exactly the same.
[00:08:05.210] – Dancho – Nice. Yeah. I’m also thinking out loud is that sometimes you need someone to guide you, to coach you to the destination. But sometimes you actually need someone to solve your problem. I mean, probably there are different usages. So when it’s really with people and how even in coaching, even in careers, you cannot just tell me, where should I go or which career path should I take? I mean, that’s not something from outside to come and tell you. It’s more understanding what do you want. And many times when you have employees, you have to coach them. But sometimes you just need to consult, like, okay, we don’t have the time or we have a timeline just do X, Y and Z. And I find it fascinating that how those two worlds live together. The coaching and the consulting.
[00:08:53.700] – Terry – Yeah. I mean, I do sometimes advise, but not without permission. Sometimes people ask me…
[00:09:01.980] – Dancho – What should I do?
[00:09:03.280] – Terry – What have you seen? What have you seen in this situation? Right, and I really do try to, you know, reflect back to them what I’m seeing, but without providing a solution, at least at first. And then if they persist and they’re like, really, like, I’m not sure what to do or whatever I’ll provide them. My perspective, but I don’t tell them this is exactly what you should do, because that actually is, I think kind of disrespectful in a way because I believe my clients have the solutions to problems within themselves. They can figure it out themselves. And sometimes as a coach, you can, actually, I think commit malpractice by making people dependent on you because my job is to get them to a point where their confidence is there. They’ve got their vision, they’ve got their plan and they can move on without me. It would not be right for me to make them dependent on me so that they had to pay me forever to be in their corner.
[00:10:11.690] – Dancho – No, I completely understand you. And now that I’m talking with you, I have much better differentiation in terms of as a coach or as a consultant. And of course, if you’re also into the leadership aspect, it’s far harder to just be the directive guy. You do that, you do that, you do that. Because when you’re leading a team, it’s never going to work like that. So you really need to guide them through the process, so they would be also motivated to actually follow you as a leader.
[00:10:45.220] – Terry – Yeah, if you think about even a sports coach, I’ve said very often I’ve never seen a sports coach, like throw off their headset and run into the game. When somebody else messes up a play, like one of the players messes up a play, they have to direct from the sidelines, right. It’s not my job to play the game, and it doesn’t matter how good I am at playing the game. I’m not playing the game on their behalf. They have to play it on their own, and my job is to help to make them stronger and more effective in their own game. I guess I’m kind of alluding to my book “Winning the Game of Work”, right. I do think of it as a game, and as there being strategies and really being able to step back and see the playing field so they can see themselves in the context of it.
[00:11:33.160] – Dancho – Yeah, well, actually, that was my next question, because “Winning the Game of Work” is the title of your book. I saw it was published last year already, so I wanted to hear your impression how hard is actually to just write a book and it’s been a year. Have you felt, how is it called, the implications or the benefits from being an Amazon best-seller author?
[00:12:01.110] – Terry – Yes. As you and I were talking before we hit record, I feel like writing a book. I’ve got three children and I feel like writing a book it’s like I have a fourth child. Because the amount of effort that went into it was similar to, you know, just dating a child, a lot of effort, it wasn’t always fun. Sometimes it was painful. And since it came out, I remember when the hard copy, no, it’s a paperback. But when I got my first copy of my paperback, I felt like it was a little baby coming home. And now it’s out in the world. Having a life of its own. In terms of my writing process is probably a little different than some people because I started off writing a blog shortly after I left my corporate job. And it was really my way of processing a lot of the thoughts and maybe even some of the toxic feelings that I had about some of the things that happened. And I really wanted to share lessons and perspectives. And so I wrote for about two years. So it’s probably, I don’t know, 75 blogs over the course of two years. And somewhere along the line, somebody asked me, how many words do you have? And he said, you probably have enough words for a book. And so around that same time, somebody, another friend told me she was going through a book writing program. And so I kind of put two and two together. And I thought, well, I already have kind of the basis for a book. And then here’s a way that I can turn what I’ve got into a book. And so the blogs were the seeds of the book. I definitely put a lot more work. After that, I interviewed a lot of people. And of course, I had to come up with a structure that made sense of…
[00:13:53.390] – Dancho – The framework.
[00:13:53.970] – Terry – …the content. But in terms of what the implications been, it’s been pretty life changing, I would say. It’s given me, the book is a calling card for me now. I’ve been on more than 100 podcasts at this point, sharing my perspectives about, you know, I mean, at the heart of it, people’s worthiness and work doesn’t have to be drudgery. And it doesn’t have to be horrible. I really think that all of us should be valuing ourselves and finding situations where we can bring our strengths and our skills and the things that we like to do to the workplace so that we get compensated for doing things we’re good at and that we like to do rather than feeling like we’ve got to go to work every day. But, yeah, it’s been fun. I’ve met so many great people. It inspired me to start my own podcast. Yeah, it’s really been a great experience.
[00:15:01.800] – Dancho – I see. And your book is also connected to your business. So “Winning the game of Work” is again about executive coaching, about career path. So I mean, if I can compare with us while I was trying to create “Sweet Leads”, the book, I was writing the framework, as you said. And then like, okay, why are we actually doing this like that? And I’ll actually go in the company, try to fix the process in order to come back to the book. Are you actually referencing your book? Like, you have a sales call and you see the sales obstacle just on the line. You’re like, you know what chapter seven or chapter three in the book exactly.
[00:15:41.080] – Terry – I do it a lot, yeah. Chapter nine and ten or two that I direct people to a lot, because very often I’ll work with people that they’re not getting full leverage out of themselves and the resources that they have at their disposal. It’s very common for people to get promoted and not to mentally promote themselves. A lot of times people will keep trying to do the old job and their new job. And then they’re wondering, like, why are they so stressed out? And you know, that those chapters are about finding the leverage points within their business or within their job so that they can have more impact without working as hard. And that’s my mission really is for people to have success, but also to enjoy themselves, to be happy in their lives. We shouldn’t have to trade off our personal happiness for professional success. And there are a lot of people that when I first meet them, they’ll, I mean, I’ll look at their LinkedIn profile and be like, wow, look at them, look at them. They have accomplished a lot. They’ve got this great title. They work for this great company. But when they talk to me, they’re really not very happy. And if I can help them expand that sweet spot between, you know, enjoying their professional success but also having time and energy to enjoy their lives, that’s the win-win.
[00:17:19.120] – Dancho – Nice. No, you have a really nice story, as I’m digesting. So you’re actually wearing a lot of hats. I mean, when we’re talking about experts, you have quite a lot of expertise in marketing, in coaching, in book writing. But if you have to define yourself now, what would be your main expertise?
[00:17:43.740] – Terry – Well, my main expertise is coaching. And what I, it’s funny because I don’t think that you can take the marketer out of me because I just did it for so long. And I love marketing. That’s why I started the Marketing Mambo podcast because I love marketers, and I love talking about marketing. But actually, marketing comes in very handy. Just the marketing mindset comes in very handy in coaching, because a lot of times I’m helping people to think about their personal brand or think about how do they position themselves within the organization to be promoted or to be known for certain things, or if somebody’s in job search, help them. I mean, they’re marketing themselves as a product. They are a product, right. So they have to really…
[00:18:33.161] – Dancho – Personal brand is always a big thing.
[00:18:34.750] – Terry – Yes, yes. So I think that all of my background sort of intersect on what I’m doing right now, which is it’s helping people to be more effective. And that includes not just the value that they’re adding for their company, but what they’re enjoying in their personal lives.
[00:18:56.580] – Dancho – Yeah. When you said marketing interrelates with the coaching, the first thing that popped my head was like, you know, where the person needs to get, you know, that he needs to figure it out and then your value. Well, if you figure it out on your own, you’re gonna get X, Y and Z. The marketing promotion. And I started laughing because I understand that the personal branding is not just for career. It’s even as a business. Even as an individual, you have to continue building your personal brand, even on some of the previous podcasts, when we were reflecting what should have I done differently five years ago. I should have started earlier with personal branding, with connecting with networking, because that stayes forever and not like, just, well, I’m too busy. I have to work. I don’t have time to position myself as an authority.
[00:19:45.340] – Terry – Yes. Well, it’s something that you’re absolutely right. We need to be doing all the time. And I’ve got examples of people that especially when I was first starting my business. My first clients were people that I knew from many years ago. Somebody hired me that I met when I was 22 years old at my first job, and I stayed in touch with her over the years. We live in different cities now, and we’ve rarely seen each other in person over the years. But we’ve exchanged holiday cards. We’ve had calls here and there. We’ve stayed in touch. And she knew me then, and she knew me to be a person of good character, I think. And so when she was having some challenges at work, she decided to hire me. And that goes for a lot of my other early clients. There were people that knew me. And…
[00:20:40.810] – Dancho – That’s actually personal brand on spot.
[00:20:41.560] – Terry – Yes, yeah, exactly.
[00:20:43.010] – Dancho – Then you have the nurturing process of still getting in touch, not push or something because you’re friends, but try not to forget each other.
[00:20:51.520] – Terry – Yeah, exactly. And then I think that personal brands, if people know you, they know who you are as a person. But when we’re trying to amplify this on social media through other marketing channels, I think it really is about showing up authentically and allowing people to know what you’re about, how you operate. This is part of the reason why I like podcasting, is that people can understand who I am because they hear me talking with people. I can share my thoughts and ideas and examples of how it helped other people. And then if it resonates with them, and then they might remember me and reach out.
[00:21:37.400] – Dancho – If they connect, they want to consume more of your content and reach out to the end of the day.
[00:21:43.040] – Terry – Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:44.350] – Dancho – Nice. Well, I usually ask all the guests that come on the show that if you have to have one one single lesson, which is actually the title of the podcast. Like, the one thing that you want your current kids, you have three, to remember you by or the world to remember you by something. What is that one single lesson that you would like to share?
[00:22:08.530] – Terry – Well, what I’m all about is I really believe that every person on Earth has a net worth, and I want everyone to recognize that they have unique gifts that nobody else has and that it really is not helpful for us to compare ourselves to other people that if we can value ourselves and figure out what it is that we enjoy doing and what we’re good at and then just go out in the world and share that with people. I mean, what I want to be remembered for is somebody that’s spreading that message in the world.
[00:22:46.610] – Dancho – Find your unique spots and work to emphasize them rather than trying to hide.
[00:22:52.200] – Terry – Yes.
[00:22:53.780] – Dancho – Okay. That’s actually a well-thought sentence. I’m sure you were preparing that in behind.
[00:23:03.880] – Terry – It’s in my heart, it really is. Because it’s very painful, I think, to find people or to talk to people that I look at and I’m like, wow, like, what an amazing person. And then they feel like there’s something wrong with them because they’re not doing something that somebody else is doing. And I’m like, no, be yourself, you know, be yourself and let people see what’s great about you and stand by yourself as well. You know, because I think sometimes we worry way too much about what other people think, and you know, who cares?
[00:23:35.770] – Dancho – Yeah, that is usually most strongest as a teenager. But as we grow as adults, we still do it, unfortunately.
[00:23:43.540] – Terry – Yeah. We still worry a lot about what other people think. And the reality is that we really don’t know what other people think. We never will know. We can’t get inside their head. And what matters is what we think of ourselves. And if we can stand with ourselves, like we would stand with their friends, we will be much stronger.
[00:24:01.200] – Dancho – Nice. Well, my next part is if some of our audience actually got intrigued by actually leadership consultant. Okay, executive coach, what I’m doing, maybe I actually need some help, how people can actually find you on social media or where?
[00:24:20.180] – Terry – Yeah, people can go to my website, which is terrybmcdougall.com. And if you want to set up a free consultation, you can set it up there through my calendar. And I’m also very active on LinkedIn. And my handle on LinkedIn is Terry McDougall, happy to get connected with any of your listeners. My book is available on Amazon worldwide. It’s called “Winning the Game of Work, Career, Happiness and Success on Your own Terms”. And then finally, for people that are interested in podcasts on the topic of marketing, “Marketing Mambo” is available on all the platforms, and also it has its own website at marketingmambo.net
[00:24:59.380] – Dancho – Nice. Actually, I’ll put all those links that you mentioned after this recording is public, but as you were mentioning, I was like, okay, quite strategically organized. So the website is the business presence. Then you actually have the book as a written content for the authority. You have LinkedIn as a great B2B network for business professionals. And then you have the podcast because yeah audio, other people, there are market segments that are really more into the audio, and they’re not really interested in reading books. So how you structured them, I was like, wow, very nice.
[00:25:35.270] – Terry – I wish that I had thought it through as much as you did. I’m glad that it works.
[00:25:42.490] – Dancho – Yeah. You actually cover different segments. Well, Terry, at the end, I usually want to summarize the lessons that I’ve personally learned from this discussion because I don’t know if you noticed what I’m trying to capture notes from time to time, because as we try to share your lessons, I also try to reflect on your conversation and actually try to pinpoint the lesson that I thought were really insightful. So I actually wrote six lessons, actually, not one. The first one was really clarifying the difference between a coach and a consultant. And I think that even I should start being a bit more toward coaching rather than do that, that and that. So that was really useful. Writing a book is like giving a birth. I haven’t tried giving a birth, but it helps a bit knowing that other authors suffered a lot during this process. But on the other hand, the third part is that the book is a calling card. So although it’s really hard to do it, it gets the value. You are an established author. You have an authority that you can actually use it either during sales calls. But also people can actually consume your content, and if they like it, they can actually reach out to you. The fourth lesson actually wrote down was that you cannot easily balance between the personal happiness and professional success. And that balance is actually critical, because even if you have professional success without the personal happiness is not worth a lot. The fifth one was actually you need to really work on the personal brand because you are unique and you need to be able to sell your brand. And the last thing was that everybody are unique and you need to know that you’re worth it. So actually, in this, like, 20 to 30 minutes, I actually got six different lessons for me. So, wow. Imagine for the listeners. Imagine if you come on a regular hourly call with Terry, she didn’t come as a consultant. Look, do this, this. And over the course of the conversation, I was actually to take them out. So in conclusion Terry, I would really like to thank you for being a guest on this One Lesson at a Time podcast. I truly hope that all the listeners will find it insightful, your journey, and also the lessons that you’ve shared. And I really wanted to thank you for coming here.
[00:28:03.200] – Terry – Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I think that this is the first time that I talked to somebody in Macedonia, so I’m thrilled.
[00:28:11.790] – Dancho – Oh, really? Okay. Well, yeah, I didn’t mention, you are from Chicago and October, I’ll probably come and visit, but that’s a completely different topic, but also, Terry knew where is Macedonia, which is really for hooray. I usually make that ice breaker. Where is Macedonia? And not everybody know where we are. But anyway, Terry thank you very much for coming again. And I wish you a great day. For all the listeners, you know what to do. Take a piece of paper and a pen like me and start capturing these lessons. The only way how you can grow is actually one lesson at a time. Nobody were born as a genius or know everything. It is a painful process, and we have to start learning one lesson at a time.