Coaching to Your Strengths, Not Your Problems

Matt Biggar joins Richard Lowe (The Writing King) on Leaders and Their Stories for a candid conversation about what makes coaching actually work.

An online business coach since 2017, Matt takes a strengths-based, holistic approach. He explains why the best coaching starts with your opportunities rather than your problems, why personality tests can trap you, and how to use AI without falling into its echo chamber.

Matt Biggar is an online business coach who has worked in the online space since 2017. He takes a holistic, strengths-based approach, helping clients find clarity about their best opportunities and build on them.

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Full transcript of the interview follows.

Meet Matt Biggar

Richard: Hello. This is Richard Lowe. And this is the leaders and their stories. Podcast I’m here with Matt, bigger. And we’re going to talk about all kinds of interesting things. Today. it’s going to be a fascinating podcast and come on right, on, in matthew, how are you today?

Matt Biggar: I’m great, Richard. Thanks for having me.

Richard: Yes. And can you briefly introduce yourself?

Matt: Yeah. So I’m an online business coach. I’ve been working in the online space since 2017 and started a Youtube channel burned out on it. I’ve done many pivots over the years. And What I realized through all of these pivots and changes is that what I needed to become was the version of myself that I needed when I first started my business., and that’s what really drives the passion and the heart behind the business.

I’m also excited to share that. My wife joined me in my business earlier this year, and we’ve been figuring out how to, you know, build things and and work together as a couple, and bring both of our strengths to the table, and it’s been far better than I possibly imagined.

Richard: What do you coach people on.

A Holistic, Strengths-Based Approach

Matt: So I have a more of a holistic approach to helping support people. My coaching philosophy is essentially to support someone with their both internal world and their external world. So business initiatives and personal, both of those things come into our conversations and we get really laser focused. I find that Most of the people that I support have more chaos in their life. There’s just a lot going on. It can be very challenging to figure out what’s worth doubling down on. And that’s kind of my superpower is really seeing the big vision for everything that they’re working on.

Matt: Out the ingredients and then showing them, this is your greatest opportunity. Let’s move forward and create traction and momentum in this direction.

Why Most Coaching Fails

Richard: Interesting, interesting. Yeah, I’ve been through several coaches. Most of them are were not useful. Let’s put it that way.

Matt: Yeah, I’ve spent money on those, too.

Richard: Lots of money, lots of time trades, you know, the whole barters. The whole thing. The problem I found with most coaches is, they tell me what’s wrong. and I don’t want a coach to tell me what’s wrong I want. I want to tell me what’s wrong.

Richard: I want to figure it out, and I want them to help me get there. That found that that’s a much better way to learn and make it stick than for them to say, Oh, yeah, you’re not doing this, or you need to do this. It’s like, yeah, that didn’t help anything.

Richard: Ordinarily. Yeah, yeah, coaches comes in and says, Yeah, you know, your your website sucks. It has this problem and this problem. And this problem. But it’s general.

Richard: And also it’s general. Your website sucks. That’s not very helpful.

Clarity for the Right Opportunity

Matt: And we see this a lot in pitches and cold approaches that don’t have any relationship and trust building in their sales process. Right? It’s like, Hey, there’s a couple of things that kind of play out one. People will be like, Oh, I really like this about you. But then you really suck at these other things.

And so that’s what I help you with. I’m like, yeah, thanks, no, thank you. Right, I’m not interested. And then there’s the people that they just go straight for the jugular. And they’re like, Oh, yeah, you suck at this. This doesn’t work, etc.

Matt: I find that very frustrating.

Richard: Some don’t, some don’t. Yeah. I mean, I had this campaign. I worked on and worked on and worked on, and coach friend calls up and says, Yeah, I just saw your stuff and and you know, it’s it’s it’s okay. But and I was just bracing myself for the button. and I just tuned him out, because. you know, listen politely, and then discarded it because.

Matt: Right. You know what gets people excited, though clarity for the right opportunity.

Matt: Right? So there’s balance here. I think this this spills into content marketing. It affects sales process. It’s all communications. Fundamentally, which is my background. I did communications training for 7 years before I quit my job and started my business. But that’s that’s what I see. I think that people they are not sure really about how to show up as themselves.

And so they kind of, you know, they buy these tactics and approaches and the rigid coaching programs that are sort of prescriptive and one size fits all. And I found that frustrating myself over the years about lots of courses and programs and hired coaches. and ultimately ended up just having to carve my own path and create my own way.

Matt: There’s a lot of clarity that was gained from those interactions, and it wasn’t a waste. But I know like it. It just showed me. This is the way that I want to show up and and support other people, and that’s why we believe in custom solutions.

Richard: And and that’s what I found. And I actually used quad, which is similar to Chat Gpt, for that is, it’s very, very good, and chat. Gpt is okay at this, too. At a lot of people sell sell AI as here’s a prompting package, and that’s that’s useful. But it’s not the way to really use AI.

The way to use AI is is an assistant, or somebody to bounce something or somebody to bounce ideas off of. So the other day I actually said, Okay, I’m kind of confused about how to do this, and I’m not sure that’s the right direction for my business, and I don’t know how to blah blah.

So I said, Claude, I want you to create a committee of 12. I want Tony Robbins to be on it. I want this guy to be on it, and this guy and this guy and this girl and this guy and this name 12 people. So put them all on it, and they were just as obnoxious on Claude as they are in real life.

And I said, Okay, here’s my problem. And they immediately just started telling me asking questions and like you’d expect. And then they told me, well, your problem is is you’re you’re being passive. I said. Explain, says your your whole basis for doing things is is you’re just putting content out and expecting them to come back to you.

And that doesn’t work anymore. Right? What do I need to do? You need to get them on the phone? And it was like, Okay, well, I’m an introvert. How do I get around that? And one of them said, Well, just grow up, be a man. And I said, Okay, I want him off the committee, and I want you to put on somebody else.

Feedback That Actually Helps

Matt: Yeah, so I mean one of the things I would share with you is you know, if you if you feel like it’s accurate to an extent at least, that you know passive is maybe not the best approach, and that there are other opportunities for you. then that could be informed by your sales process, your sales system.

and what you build into your business as your process. And and what I think has changed since AI came out is that more trust is required. especially for high ticket. We need more. We need more trust building. We need less pressure tactics. People don’t want to be forced into situations right?

Whether they feel like they’re going to be pitched to. I create sales systems based on how I want to be sold to. And it’s about relationships. First, st right? So there’s always opportunities to create something that helps fill in some of those gaps beyond beyond just social media. That that would be my definition of being more proactive.

Richard: Yeah, I was always taught in the soft approach. And that doesn’t work so well anymore. And now, the hard approach doesn’t work so well, it’s the as you said, the more relationship. But sped up. You know, you’re not trying to form a social club with the person you’re just just trying to get them to know, like and trust you.

That’s that’s a typical, you know. Sales speak or relationship speak, but it’s kind of true. You want them to know. You know who you are. You want them to like you, and then you want them to trust you. You can do that in 5 min, or you can do that in a month, or you can do that in a year, or you never do it at all.

It just depends on your approach. And I have some pages on my website that I threw at Claude. And I said, This is my credibility, and Claude was like, oh, my God, you should be selling that I have. I mean, I’ve written books that made a million dollars.

and I’m not promoting, though I’m not promoting that I did that. And the whole committee was like that. There’s your starting point. Start promoting that. You did that every every time you open a speech, because I do. A lot of speaking should be. I’m the guy who created this, or I did this, or you know, and I could do that for you, too.

It’s like, I never really thought of that. Yeah, it was interesting, interesting, but it was. It was less intimidating than having a human coach come in and say you’re all screwed up.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, hopefully, that hasn’t tainted you on the power of coaching.

Matt: They’re not all like that.

Richard: I know they’re not, but it’s changed me heavily to. I’ve been through probably 2 dozen coaches and and a lot of.

Matt: That you noticed between most of them or all of them, that most of them would just kind of like focus on. You know, what are the problems? Pain points, challenges, and not not enough balance. For here’s an opportunity. This is what you can work on. Let’s move this thing forward.

Stop Focusing on the Negative

Richard: They focus on what is the problem, and that can be useful. But generally, when I hire, if I hire a coach, I want to know. What? How do I use my talents and my strengths to fix other people’s problems? That’s what I want to know.

Richard: I don’t want the negative side. I know what my problems are. I know I’m an introvert. I’m never going to fix that. That’s not fixable. I can. I can paper it over, and I can pretend like I’m not an introvert, but I mean I work in this apartment all day long, you know I like it.

Pandemic came along and they said, You have to stay in your your house. I’m like, Okay. yeah, no problem whatever, you know, and and you’re gonna have to have food brought to you. It’s like, Well, that’s actually pretty cool. And that’s just the way I am. And I’m not going to solve that, but I have strengths.

I can write a killer book. I can write a book that may become a bestseller if it’s marketed right? And I can do 5 or 6 of those at a time. That’s a strength.

Richard: I can write sales, copy. I can do all kinds of stuff, and I’ve got a background going back through tech and going back. I was a geologist and all. I was a photographer and photograph. All these people.

The Personality-Test Trap

Richard: But very creative. So those are all strengths. And one thing I noticed about coaches you can mention, and I’m doing a lot of talking here, even though we’re interviewing you, is a lot of them want to start from a personality test.

Richard: And I hate that. Do you start from personality test.

Matt: I’ve used things like archetypes in the past or the Colby Index. My preference is, Colby, I actually really like it because you, the questions you have to answer require contrast. There is like strongest resonance and least resonance for every question. So I feel like it’s more balanced and it’s biased.

It helped reveal for me personally that, like I thrive in structure systems process organizations. One of my strengths is helping people who are in chaos. you know, bring more clarity and focus into what they’re doing and provide those structures. So that that’s that was helpful in some aspect.

But yeah, I don’t force personalized, like, you know, personality quizzes and things like that on on people or clients. It’s not a part of my onboarding process anymore.

Richard: Yeah, with one coach in particular, did is I took a personality test, and then everything after that was tainted by that. So I’m apparently a maximizer. which means I’m a perfectionist. So every conversation starts with you’re a maximizer. This means that you’re gonna do this and this and this. So don’t do that. It’s like. you know, on the day I.

Richard: Yeah, it’s not very empowering. And on the day I took that test, maybe I was. But maybe tomorrow I’m not. That’s another problem with personality tests. Is this right? Now.

Richard: And I’m not always an introvert. There’s days when I get super extroverted and I’m out going outside and doing things. The personality test. It’s the using the personality test to judge and base everything on it that really bugs me.

Richard: Because I’m not. Yeah. I’m a i’m a bit of a perfectionist, but I’m not. That doesn’t need to taint everything you coach me on.

Humans Are Dynamic

Matt: Right? I think humans are very dynamic.

Matt: I think I would label myself as Ambivert.

Matt: A helpful sort of way of thinking of it. I’m also, you know, probably more on the side of introversion, but I can also, you know, be extroverted, but I know that I need space by myself in isolation for recharging.

Matt: Yep. I also thrive in groups and communities and and connection, and like doing workshops. And you know, working with a group of people, it’s actually one of the most fulfilling things that I get to do in my job.

Matt: Now I would share. You know, one of my stories. When I was an electrician in my early twenties. I was so afraid of my peers, judging me that I climbed a crane right? So this is 300 feet up at a hospital project, and and we had to power the lighting on the.

Matt: Right? So I did it anyways, right? But that’s where I learned. Okay, this is something that’s a part of me, you know. Perfectionism showed up. They’re kind of adjacent for me personally, right? So perfectionism, fear of judgment, they can go hand in hand, and perfectionism can be used as a strength or a weakness.

Right? You can see I’ve got this like background here that’s got colors and and items and structure, and all this stuff. When I was a videographer that was about perfectionism. And now it’s more about creativity and fun. I get to reorganize this and and have fun with this. And it’s an outlet for me.

Matt: Yeah, it’s 1 of the 3 books I would recommend. Everybody reads for sure. Yeah.

Atomic Habits and Small Change

Matt: Yeah, atomic habits is one of the things that it helps you establish better foundations. You know, the Run streak was a good principle for me. I have almost 3,000 days of meditation in a row now, after reading it, I was, and they built that into the headspace app right.

There’s a run streak feature. I think it’s really caught on, because now everything has a run streak, even a lot of games, because they’re trying to be more addictive and encourage you to, you know. Come back and get your dopamine every every day, so it can be empowering, or it can be a fault, but I have found it to be reinforcing.

If there’s something that is important to me, and I want to make it a practice. Then a run streak perspective is something that I find helpful.

Richard: Okay. Okay. yeah, I liked atomic habits. I haven’t read the other book. Atomic habits is very useful. And I actually was using it already in in many ways, because it’s just basically it boils down to just just change a little bit every day.

Matt: Yeah. And you’re gonna that’s why it’s called atomic habits. And you’re gonna.

Richard: You’re going to be. So I’m trying to change my diet instead of trying to change it all at once, and then the fail. Take out this thing, you know. Don’t do that anymore, or add this thing and do that from now on. But that thing was yucky. Take it out and put something else in change a little bit at a time, and within a few weeks diets changed.

Richard: Barely notice. Yeah, but if you try and stop the I don’t eat Mcdonald’s if you try and stop the Mcdonald’s all at once Biden is going to go. No, no, Mcdonald’s give me gimme.

Breaking a Real Addiction

Richard: Now I have worked people off of severe addictions, and I understand that that that it can be difficult to get rid of an addiction. And you think like video games or addictions. and they’re difficult to get over. The more you’re into them the more the mind is going. I like that video game.

Matt: Yeah, yeah. I’m still a gamer. I think my the hardest one that I had to overcome was alcohol.

Richard: That’s a different one. That’s a hard one.

Matt: 3 years I haven’t had a drink. It’s been easier than I anticipated. Initially it was very hard. It was more. I found that the struggle and the challenge for me personally was the leading up to accepting the idea that it was easier for me to not drink at all than to negotiate with myself about how many drinks I would have.

Richard: Right. There are some things you just need to go cold. Turkey.

Richard: Just need to stop, even if you need help with it. And My late wife was on morphine over the from the doctor. and she got addicted to it, of course, because morphine’s highly addictive for pain, and I knew that she didn’t need it anymore. So I started working her off of it and started replacing them with, not morphine pills.

because I I was the one who gave out the medications because I didn’t want, because give if she given her to her own devices she would have taken the whole bottle. and she’d taken enough where that probably wouldn’t have harmed her. We’re talking, you know, hospital strength, morphine here that she was on, and I worked her off of it in a matter of 2 weeks.

She didn’t, wasn’t on morphine anymore. And she was. She said, well, you know, she said, you know, dear, I think it’s time for for me to get off all these medications I’m like. and I made the mistake of saying you’re already off here, and she’s immediately rehooked.

Richard: She went right back to it and became addicted again. I should have just said, Okay, let’s work you off and then gone on from there, but big mouth me had to blow it, and she eventually passed away from that and other things. But yeah, addictions are hard, especially those kind because they’re physical. Also.

How He Uses AI in Coaching

Richard: Alright. So so we’ve talked about coaching. How do you use AI in your coaching at all?

Matt: I think AI is a necessity to use in your business. If you don’t want to fall behind, it’s definitely something that’s really important. I use it in a similar situation that you do. It is for ideation, brainstorming. feedback criticism, refinement, improvement. That’s how I use it. I don’t let it replace my voice.

I like to create content that comes from the heart. It’s still weaved into what I’m creating, and I’ve done work to ensure that it understands our brand voice, tone, essence, everything that we stand for. And and that’s how it’s helpful for critiquing. Because I’ve created a Gpt specifically for the purpose of helping me stay on brand.

Right? So that’s 1 of the most helpful things, I think, is to give specific gpts or whatever platform you use. Give it a job. It needs a job. It needs instructions. Treat it like it’s an employee. That’s 1 of the ways that I find it needs those specific instructions.

Otherwise all you’re doing is pulling out of the general, like everything that’s on the Internet. It’s very generic. And it’s not going to sound like you. And it’s not going to understand your values, your tone, your your everything. So I find that that is all very useful. It’s obviously like a huge time hack things that we were not able to do prior to 2023.

You know, some of that stuff is just so much faster. One of my favorite things to do is deep research. So both Chat Gpt and Google Gemini have these features. I think perplexity is another one that’s very popular. I can give it a mission for something that I’d like to get more facts and data statistics from.

Obviously, I don’t. 100% trust everything that it brings to the table, because it’s just pulling articles off of people’s websites. But you know, fact, finding is a really helpful thing, and and if I do that on a morning. Right? I’ll just if I’m going to write a piece of content.

And I want a statistic or something. I’ll set up this deep research and let it do its thing because it does take time to do it.

Richard: And and it’s just so cool what it comes up with. And and it’s really helpful.

Matt: To be able to make your idea stick better. Right? We need concrete examples. We need analogies. That’s 1 thing I haven’t found to be very useful. Creating creative analogies is something that you know I need to do on my own, and I draw inspiration from my real life. But AI doesn’t seem to be very effective at that. It tends to be very generic.

Richard: AI is just the least common denominator. That’s the thing to remember. It’s the writing is from the least common denominator. Everything is the least common denominator. and when you know, when you know it’s like that, it becomes very obvious why, it’s it’s a terrible writer in general, and why it sometimes gives you stupid decisions.

It’s not the smartest. it’s not the brightest light bulb in the drawer, so to speak. you know it is what it is. I use it for the same thing. I’ve written several books on AI and digital transformation and things like that. And one of the key points. That’s the thread through all of them is AI is a digital assistant, and it’s actually a being.

If you treat it that way. Not a real being, you know, of course, but if you treat it that way, then. like maybe in your office, you have an AI that does the books. but they are the grunt work of the books. Treat that as an employee, and it’s a digital employee.

and you’ll you’ll do fine. and your your regular employees will then interface to it, just like it was an employee. I say, Okay, I need this spreadsheet done. Okay, fine. Thank you. What else do you need? And it’s kind of cool when you do that I have one that I use as a business coach, which actually is a board of 12 coaches.

So when I run into a problem. I say, this is my problem, and they tell they chew me out.

Matt: Yeah, it sounds like the coaches you hired in the past.

Richard: Yeah, I need to fine tune a little bit. I just.

Matt: I don’t know if they’ll ever be very good at like identifying your most critical opportunities. At least I’d like to think they won’t be because that’s what I do.

Richard: They actually were pretty good at it when I did it. Last week they they identified that. I have some serious opportunities that I’m letting just sit there. And they even did that one and that one and that one go talk to those people right now like, but they’re but they’re but they’re powerful. People said, Yeah, stop being intimidated. Grow up. One other thing.

Matt: You also have a really strong opportunity for a referral system.

Richard: Yeah, they mentioned that too. get start getting referrals. And I’m I said, I’m gonna start up this podcast and he said, well, and everyone after the podcast ask them for referrals. Guess what I’m gonna ask you afterwards. And.

Matt: Heard one that was really good. Mark Butler. He has a it’s a podcast for coaches. And he says, you know in the podcast if if this was valuable, the only thing that I ask is that you share it with a friend.

AI as an Echo Chamber

Richard: Right right? And what I found as an example is, I’m super good at creation. and that’s that’s where I always go back to. But I’m also very good at having conversations. and I put in some of my transcripts from some of my sales calls, and I put them in Chat Gpt.

And chat. Gp. Says that was a perfect sales call. Excuse me, Claude, I use Claude, that was a perfect sales call. You did this and this and this and this right, I have absolutely nothing to suggest to you. Wow! Didn’t expect that.

Richard: Well, anything. Anything you want to tell your audience before we sign off.

The Takeaway

Matt: Yeah, I would say the most important thing, like the the principle behind. You know, if you’re building anything sales process. you’re building your business. You’re trying to figure out what initiatives to focus on, what’s going to help you drive revenue the quickest. then I mean the lifelot of your business from my perspective is the relationships and the network you’ve already established, your past clients and the work you’ve already done.

There’s always way more opportunities in there than most of us are seeing. and that’s where I would encourage people to look instead of trying to add on more. If relationships are important to your business. See what you can double down on one of the greatest marketing strategies I’ve heard for relationship.

Driven people is, you know, spend your money on celebrating your clients right, make them the spotlight, celebrate their success, do whatever you can to help them, be more successful. Spend your money there, instead of going and spending money on ads to acquire more clients. That’s not a 1.

Size fits all approach for all businesses just to rehash. It’s what works for me. That’s where I’m going with everything. I want to make sure that because we believe so strongly that relationships are everything to us. that the thing that makes the most amount of sense is to focus there in everything that we’re doing, not just in one aspect or or one particular area of the business.

It’s it’s the heartbeat of everything that we’re doing. And and that’s what we want to encourage people to consider. If you’re tired of sales, tactics, and strategies that don’t fit who you are, then double down on building relationships, and, you know, release the pressure for having to enroll people.

I think that we just need more trust building and and timing needs to be right for others. And this idea of objection handling it from my perspective, I don’t do it. It’s more about alignment, and if the timing is off it’s all good. I’ll follow up. I’ll check in with you.

I’ll see what’s going on. I’m curious to get to know people. And I have a relationship tracker. I want to put a hundred people on there. That’s it. And then I’ll refine the list from there. There’s always so much opportunity right in front of us that we already have. and we don’t need to always just focus on adding more.

Richard: Very true, very true, and thank you for appearing on the leaders in their stories. Podcast. Appreciate having you on this is Richard Lowe. This has been the leaders in their stories. Podcast thank you for watching, and these come out pretty regularly, sometimes every day, sometimes a few times a week.

It just kind of depends on who I can get to come on. So stay tuned. Get on the mailing list. There’ll be links down below, and thank you very much.

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