Ep 159 Michael Counts Gr8 Q's - "Your fear is Masquerading as your best thinking"!

1. Best Coaching Advice Ever Received

• Don’t give advice—facilitate the client’s best thinking.
• Tempting as it is, offering solutions disempowers clients.
• Coaching should affirm that the answers are within the client.
• Advice-giving is ego’s playground; humility is the path.
• A coach’s real job is to create space, not control the outcome.

2. Advice for Being a Good Client

• Treat coaching like your life depends on it—because it kinda does.
• Investing your own money increases commitment and transformation.
• Coaching is about what you want, not what you need.
• Full engagement includes prep, reflection, and accountability.
• If you’re not ready to lean in, coaching won’t work.

3. What He’s Still Working to Improve in Coaching

• Cultivating deeper humility.
• Avoiding ego-driven behaviors (like showing off credentials or jargon).
• Letting silence do the heavy lifting—“holding space” is a superpower.
• Resisting the urge to offer answers disguised as help.
• Constantly choosing presence over performance.

4. Most Outrageous Thing in a Coaching Session

• Uses wild brainstorming to stretch clients’ imagination.
• Embraces ideas like hang gliding from San Francisco to San Mateo to break linear thinking.
• Believes in shaking people out of limiting assumptions.
• Coaching is about thinking new thoughts, feeling new feelings.
• Asks “What impact do you want to have in 500 years?”

5. What Still Makes Him Uncomfortable in Coaching

• Seeing someone who has a great life but can’t see it themselves.
• Feeling the pain of their unconsciousness or negative lens.
• Encourages gratitude as a mindset-retraining tool.
• Uses practices to shift attention from lack to abundance.
• Believes coaching’s core purpose is to raise consciousness.

6. Advice for Aspiring Coaches

• First, become a great client—receive coaching deeply.
• Pay for coaching so you’ll truly value it.
• Go all-in with prep, reflection, and documentation.
• The more seriously you take it, the more transformative it is.
• Price your coaching to match the seriousness you want your clients to bring.

7. Something He’s Had to Conquer

• ADHD: a gift and a challenge.
• Commitment to one path—avoiding shiny object syndrome.
• Balancing persistence with knowing when to pivot.
• Recognizing fear when it masquerades as logic.
• “Your fear is not your best thinking.”

8. How He’s Using AI in Coaching

• Sees AI as a major unlock for coaching accessibility.
• Focused on using tech to enhance—not replace—human connection.
• AI can extend great coaches’ reach but can’t replicate empathy.
• Built apps and tools to embed coaching into daily life.
• Believes the coaching-AI combo will reshape personal development.

Bonus: What He’s Learned Through Coaching

• Learned how to consciously create the life he wants.
• Coaching helped him uncover his evolving desires.
• Sees life as an ongoing process of creating the best version of himself.
• Wants to be “in creation mode” until he’s 120.
• Lives with curiosity, optimism, and awe for what’s coming next.