Coaching Demo with Todd Roache: Navigating Inner Journeys and Energy Work

I noticed with a lot of coaches, when I was training coaches, that if somebody mentioned therapy, even just therapy, they'd be like, oh my God.

Danger, danger, danger. And they would tense up, and obviously the other person in the room can feel that. And then it just wobbles the boat of the space, I think.

There's a small demo of that on last week's episode. Today we turn more from the spiritual to the practical side and explore: how did Todd actually come from being a musician to a coach?

How was he able to train new coaches only two years after his own formal coach training, and how does he today design and price his offers?

These kinds of practical aspects are what you get today. So let's not lose any more time and hop right into our conversation.

in the UK, right?

They have to have a certain amount of hours of mentoring so that they can get their ICF PCC credential, and have somebody who's already a PCC look them over in action and give feedback against the ICF core competencies, so they can get some learning around where they're at, where they aren't, and so on.

60 percent everything else, which is increasingly quite a few things. When you said role, the first thing that came up for me is sanity. I really like diversity more than I realized early on. The idea of just doing my private practice clients, I love it, but I need the oxygen over here.

The idea of just doing corporate clients, I would suffocate, I would need the oxygen over there. So to me that diversity is something I just seem to thrive on. It feeds different parts of me. I don't want to stay in the deep, intense, psychological, spiritual, trauma, dark night of the soul waters all of the time.

I would go crazy. Nor do I want to stay just in the light side of things all of the time, I would also go crazy. So it's about the light and the shade, different colors, intensity and ease, just allowing the whole thing to breathe. And it seems that all of these different roles allow those different elements of light and dark and shade and intensity and easefulness. Even down to practical things like, I have to find these clients,

I don't have to find those clients. Different systems of finding the work. It's like an ebb and a flow that seems to be an ecology that keeps me thriving.

I was like, yes. That was very quick delivery, thanks, universe. So I said yes to that, and I remember my first lesson, with the headmaster watching me. This was a school within a very intense mental health environment. Not mental health in terms of institutionalized mental health. People could sometimes be in straitjackets, that kind of level.

Extreme stuff. And I effing loved it. It was just glorious. It was such an eyeopener for me to see what else music could do. Because I had got so locked into this paradigm. Even though I had a beautiful, innocent relationship with music when I was younger, my ego had distorted it along the way.

It had become this stallion for success and fame and God knows what else. And there was something else it had to offer, that I could see as I was teaching and being with these young people. They weren't on a quest to be famous. They weren't on any other quest. There was just something about music they wanted to be around, and something about playing their favorite songs.

And it wasn't any old song, it was the songs that really mattered to them. So I really made an effort. If they said, I want to write a song, or I want to learn this particular song, and I didn't know that song, I'd always make the effort to learn it. Because it felt like, no, that's the song. That's the key to what they're feeling, for some reason.

And it became this very intimate space, where the more I did the work, the more the institution then put me in their neighboring institution, which was even more hardcore. It covered a lot of other types of mental health, some of them very violent. So I had to have a little buzzer. I had to carry an alarm in case I got attacked.

I never did. And lots of people would always say to me, you've got to be careful of these young people, they could attack you at any moment. After about two years, and I was there for 10 years, I realized, wait a second, I don't need to carry this fear. This is not happening to me. And if it's suddenly about to happen, I'll be afraid then.

But I don't need to be afraid all of the time. Anyway, some very intense spaces, where someone might have tried to kill themselves that morning, and instead of sending in the psychologist, because I wasn't an official music therapist or whoever, they thought, just send Todd in, because he's a sort of non-threatening person.

I'm not trying to fix them. I'm just teaching them the song, or writing a song with them that they're asking for. So oftentimes they would ask for me to come in, because I would be with them in this very intimate way where I'd be on their side, helping them with what they wanted, not trying to change them or anything like that.

But also, and I didn't realize it at the time, holding them in this beautiful, unconditional positive regard, as coaches would say, and this deep presence and this deep kind of love and connection, that I think was really healing and transformational for them. And after being in that for about 10 years, by which time I was around 40, I started to get curious around, well, what's the help

that helps people who aren't hospitalized, who aren't institutionalized? What about the people walking down the street? What about me? I'm working in here and I don't need therapy or anything intense, but I need some kind of help. I'm feeling a bit lost. And that kind of brought me into the world of coaching.

And I had my first coaching through the website Coach Me Free, with a coach who happened to be training at Animas. And that's the rough transition from that intense work. By the way, everything I was talking about, the darkness and the shadow work, that was happening throughout my thirties as I was working in those environments.

So all of that was going on in the background, and then I appeared in coaching around the age of my early forties, 40 or so. Started my training with Animas, having had a coach and thought, oh wow, I think this is actually kind of cool. This might be that thing I'm looking for, that isn't therapy, isn't super intense. It just felt like the next stepping stone.

And then from there discovering that there's actually also something that provides mental health for everyday people. And that could be, for me, this Animas coaching school. And that's what brought you there.

coaches, that if somebody mentioned therapy, even just therapy, they'd be like, oh my God.

Danger, danger, danger. And they would tense up, and obviously the other person in the room can feel that. And then it just wobbles the boat of the space, I think.

I went to an Introduction to Transformational Coaching day with Animas and just thought, I feel drawn to this. It was more money than I'd ever spent on myself, to do that course. And at the time I wasn't even convinced that I would definitely be a coach. I thought, I just feel like this is going to be good for me, whether it's for self-development or not.

So let me just head in this direction. I was just pulled, and I went with that. I remember sitting in the training room thinking, this is a bit like the music industry, where you train a load of coaches and hardly anyone in this room is going to end up working as a coach.

It's just not possible, because some people might not be interested enough, they just want it for themselves, or they don't figure out how to make it a full-time position and so on. And I think that awareness put me in good stead, because it made me think differently about how to build my structure as a coach in terms of my business.

The reason I'm saying this is that my development as a coach and my business development as a coach went more hand in hand than maybe I've even realized until this exact moment. Which is where I started to think, oh, okay, this could go terribly wrong and lead nowhere. And I also was really enjoying the training.

I'd been a guitar teacher for a lot of years in certain ways. And I'd also been on a lot of those intense workshops I mentioned. So there's something about being the trainer, or the space holder, that I really liked. So I remember, in the presence module, thinking, wow, I'd love to train this module.

And then I thought, I bet that would be quite a nice way to be earning some money as my private practice is building. So I developed my skills as a coach. Not really sure what else to add on that, other than that, like everyone, I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. But, maybe not like everyone,

I'd already done quite a lot of inner work, so there were some things that didn't shock me as much as they shocked others. Shocked is the wrong word, maybe rocked. Like when people first do transactional analysis, or the drama triangle, or parent, adult, child states, they're like, oh my God, I can't believe this.

But I'd been doing a lot of that work also in tantra, and by that I mean the art of communication, that side of tantra. It was all quite familiar material in many ways.

And I qualified in early 2018. I finished my course in early 2018. I had a friend from the course and she was like, let's just agree to do our stuff together. We'll hand in our modules at the same time, hand in our coursework. So we met up every week in Camden.

We wrote our essays and so on. And then when it came time to hand in our recording, she was like, oh, I'm just going to record something and just hand it in, I'm not even going to listen to it and it'll be fine. And meanwhile I dillied and dallied for another six months, and just finally thought, I'm just going to do what she did six months ago, and just record something, not even listen back to it.

So sometimes I laugh and say to students, sometimes it's better just to jump, record it. Maybe you'll fail, maybe you won't. So then I qualified, and clients just started to come from word of mouth, if you want me to go into the client acquisition side of things.

So when they realized I was a coach, they were like, oh, finally, that guy can hold space for me. Because they knew he had something about him, this willingness to be with all of these energies, that was so there when they met me at workshops. But they hadn't been held in a space by me. So a lot of those people just naturally came out of the woodwork.

Oh, I hear you're doing coaching now. Can you hold space for me? Can you coach me?

And then the energy work started to grow its own little branch. So people would come towards me, and depending on what kind of modality suited them it would be either coaching, or I would say, actually maybe it's not coaching for you, having talked about what coaching is with them and them getting a sense of it.

Maybe it's more this. So in hindsight, again, you're helping me figure all this out in the moment, Tobi, I'm actually quite grateful. It's interesting, I haven't really thought about it this way. In hindsight, the work was always the sort of self, slash spiritual, slash existential, slash shadow exploration.

Either coaching is the modality that can hold it, or it's more the energy work or the mentoring that can. But it was always that kind of mission.

And I very quickly found that boring and thought, this is not my jam at all, I have no interest in just this surface stuff. So it didn't take me many sessions to realize that I was much more in the transformational realm of things. But what I realized from a business perspective is what I now think of as low hanging fruit. You can have all of those people who know you, but eventually they've worked with you and they can't fill your business forever.

You see what I mean? So there was an initial rush of clients, and then that initial rush dried up, and then there was a whole new era that went ahead. And I'll pause there.

you are training as a coach and you're a musician. I'd love you to come into Middlesex University Business School and run some workshops that combine coaching and music, that develop leadership, under the term arts-based leadership development. So I thought to myself, wow, I've never done that before. There were so many amazing opportunities I missed in the music industry that I didn't say yes to. Ridiculous opportunities I didn't say yes to.

So I thought, well, I'm definitely not going to say no to this. So there's a little bridge of fear I had to go over, which is, I've never done this before, but I feel like I can do it because I've got the ingredients. It's like I've scrambled eggs, I've done this in the kitchen, I've done that, but I've never put all the things together at the same time to make the recipe she's asking for. But theoretically I can do it.

So with a bit of self-belief and a bit of willingness to be in fear and in uncertainty, I said yes, and then went into Middlesex University and delivered a couple of workshops, and I thought, wow, so many parts of my competencies and personality are at play in here, in a useful way.

So, I don't know how long later, not that long later, I got an email from Animas, just to all of the students of Animas, saying, we're looking for new trainers, who would like to be a trainer? I was like, okay, well, it hasn't been long. It had maybe been a year or a bit more.

I think I started training at Animas in 2020, and I qualified halfway through 2018, so two years or so. And I filled in the application form, being able to put training, because I'd trained at Middlesex. I didn't lie on it. I just said what I'd done. And then I got through to the interview round, which was so insanely thorough.

They invited like 40 of us to two days where we had to do all kinds of things. And all the other training people there were like, oh, I've been a trainer for 20 years and I've been training corporations. And I'm like, oh my God, I've just done this little bit of training. What the hell am I doing here?

But there's clearly something in me that they saw, through extremely thorough watching me talk to other people, watching me do a little training demonstration. They narrowed it down to a couple of people, but actually I wasn't one of the first people to go through.

I think two people went before me, and they put me on to do the ITC, which is the Introduction to Transformational Coaching. So I did that for a while before I then went on to become a trainer. But through doing that, and then seeing me in action, they thought, okay, this guy is now ready to move on to being a trainer.

So I trained the presence module and the paradigms module. But even then it was scary. It's not like I went into it thinking,

But something in my being was very able to do it. So I got a reputation, which I cringe at saying, but perhaps it's relevant to the story, of being very good at the presence module.

One of the people who used to speak to the students said, we've got a nickname for you, it's Todd the God.

And there's this legend of the way you deliver the presence module. Which turned out not to be a great thing, because people would then go into the presence module with loads of expectation, and I had to manage that. And the more people blew smoke up my ass, it created a new challenge to get over, which was, if you start to believe your own hype it becomes another kind of challenge.

But yes, it took enduring quite a lot of stress and fear and discomfort, but also self-belief and certainty that, despite what it looked like on paper, I had the essence of something that could do it. And to be fair, the belief of the other people around me saying, you can do this.

So I was just very real and raw, which gave them permission to be very real and raw as well. I wouldn't swear, at least. I called it authentic conformity. I was playing as much of me within the bounds of what I was allowed to do, which was basically me with no swearing. I would just say F this and F that, instead of the actual word.

But the music part came in in terms of the performance, exactly, the comfort in being in front of people.

Because, for example, you could be very present, but you could be very shy, and therefore you put yourself in a room with people and it's like, okay, this isn't working for me. So it definitely came in in that kind of way.

And the joy of learning. Again, teaching people guitar and just loving seeing people light up, the joy of learning also came in. I really liked it. I'm just starting to get back into training now, having not been doing it for a couple of years. So it's a reigniting in me. ## [i=124]

The coaching I do is associate work, wellbeing coaching, and also at the minute I've got coaching for startup founders, and those are my two main coaching gigs, and those clients are provided to me by external providers, as it were.

So I don't even know why coaching is on my website at the minute. I can speak to the energy work side of stuff if you want.

And I made the decision, okay, I think I'm going to start charging like 20 pounds an hour. That's not much, 20 pounds an hour is okay. And somebody came up to me and said, oh Todd, we need practice clients, can you be my coach?

And I said, I can, but I've just decided that I'm now 20 pounds an hour, is that all right? It was funny that I literally thought it five minutes before I was willing to say it. So I remember my first coaching client was 20 pounds an hour. My first paying energy work client, I think, was 30 pounds an hour.

So the pricing with coaching, the reason I put it lower on the website, and it's kind of irrelevant because I don't get clients through that at the minute, is, as you said, I can do more coaching clients in a day than I can energy work. It's just more exhausting doing the energy work, because sometimes I'm literally crying that person's feelings, those tears. If they haven't been willing to cry them, I'll cry them.

And it's such a powerful reflection to see your words said back to you, and it blows people's minds. That often happens, especially in chemistry calls, actually, I've noticed. But that's quite exhausting for me, because I'm being me and I'm being them simultaneously. So it just takes more effort. And as I said, I need the space around it as well.

So, energy work sessions. I remember when they were 120, I remember when they were 150, I remember when they were 175, 185. And the way I do it at the minute is that, for better or worse, I don't know, it's just the way I do it, a lot of my old clients are still on the same prices.

A lot of my clients are amazing at referring other clients.

So in the energy work, I would say almost all of my clients come from referral, because I don't really speak about it publicly. You might imagine why. It's one of those things that's best experienced. Otherwise it'd be like, what are you talking about, he just tuned into you and knew this stuff, how?

It's the kind of stuff that's best experienced. So I had someone come for a chemistry call recently who said, I've been referred to you by three different people, and I've been looking at your website for ages. She finally came to this chemistry call, which was amazing. It was such a beautiful chemistry call, and we then went on to do a retreat, a couple of sessions and so on.

So the people who refer a lot of clients to me, I haven't put their prices up. It just feels right to leave it as it is. And really I just go on feeling. To be honest, I'm getting a nudge that I might have to put my price up again, because I feel like I need more space and I don't need the clients.

Now sometimes I think, 250 quid, Todd. And actually I haven't really charged 250 quid at the minute, it's 225 for a package and most people do that. But I came across somebody who's doing, what was it, Internal Family Systems, and it was 250 quid for 50 minutes. I was like, wow, that seems quite a lot. Also with coaching, I remember seeing some document that said the average price for coaching in the UK is 220 pounds an hour. So this is me again, just finding my bearings. But equally, I've had clients with me, especially in the energy work stuff, who are like, why are you only charging this? I remember doing a business energy session for somebody and I tuned into their business, and I was talking about the different businesses, and it just absolutely blew his mind.

And he was taking so many notes. He goes, this is so helpful, why aren't you famous? I didn't know this was even possible. And why are you only charging this? So there are plenty of people charging way more for way less, I would say. But for some reason, for me it's just a journey of following my intuition. I always say I don't really set my prices.

The prices set themselves. The prices say, it's time to change me. So sometimes I think my prices are too high. You're saying 250, and I'm almost cringing. I'm like, God, that seems quite a lot. Is that what it is now? But equally, I put them up when it feels like I have no choice but to put them up, whether I want to or not.

It might be different tomorrow.

How about the retreats? How does that look commercially?

and the husband overhearing it. It allows them to be held straight away in a container, which somehow works. Even if I'm not coaching them overnight, somehow they're just held in this bubble. Some people even talk about this house, this beautiful big house, these beautiful grounds, even that feels holding to them.

So by the time we start the work in the morning, they've already had loads of realizations. They're already kind of soft and pliable and open and ready to go to the deeper level. So, 850 includes the overnight. And I've started realizing that for some people they want two overnights, so currently that's 950.

And I also run them with my partner at times, and we're doing that for 1500, whether it's with one or two overnights.

That's where it is at the minute.

I'm not sure if Scotland is even 800 miles away. Because they just knew that I was the right person for them and this was the right place and they just wanted to be here. So retreats always seem to attract people who need something immersive, something expansive and holding. They maybe want to get away from their lives and they want to go deep.

And they also need some holding that's just longer than 90 minutes. They want to just fall into the arms of presence and the house and me and so on, rather than suddenly be straight back into work. I feel like I said a load of stuff you didn't ask for there.

And as a last question to conclude that. Because I think what I also heard was, there's the energy work, there's the retreat, which is basically an extended format. All of this is your private practice.

And then you also do corporate coaching, in partnership with coaching providers.

And also the mentoring that you do at the Animas coaching academy.

And also I run my own soulful supervision circle. That's for people who would listen to this podcast and be able to get to the end with everything that we've talked about, about shadow and awareness and energy and attunement. It's like, yes, that's their language, that's their interest.

Those are the kinds of people who join the soulful supervision circle, because they're practitioners, but they want this freedom to be able to talk about the things we're talking about, and they're on that kind of journey themselves. So that's how the supervision fits in. And there's some new supervision coming up with a new venture I've got as well.

I mentioned to you the soulful systems project, which has already got some clients coming in. So that's seeds in the soil, buds coming through the soil. But at the minute it's supervision for the wellbeing charity. I also supervise as a volunteer for the ICF. I'm on the coaching in organizations team as part of the UK ICF board.

I do supervise organizations there, but I don't get paid for it. It's been great experience, and it's getting me more and more interested in supervising within an organizational context.

And they go, ah, this doesn't feel right for me. I really like a lot of diversity. Some people might be like, no, I really don't want that. But I'll sprinkle a couple of offerings, and then obviously just take or leave as to what feels resonant.

I've noticed a lot of coaches over time make assumptions, that they'll finish their training and they'll put a post out on LinkedIn and suddenly they'll have a thousand clients. And I mentioned to a couple of them before they did that, that when they do it, it might not be the, what's the word,

stampede that they expect. Not because they don't necessarily have a lot of potential clients in their network, but because not everyone necessarily needs coaching at that time. So you might have a hundred possible people in your network who will all one day be coached by you, but not necessarily that day.

One might be in 10 years time, five years time, six months time. There has to be a readiness, or an interest, in being coached. And I don't think people always think about that. They just say, hey everyone, I'm a coach.

It's like, well, maybe no one's ready to be coached today, but that doesn't mean they won't be.

So for me anyway, it's about, how do you build in the time it takes to get enough income to keep the whole boat afloat? Some people like to stay in their corporate gig, or whatever their job is, shave off a couple of days, create more room, and then transition. Some people like to just quit the job, build the plane on the way down, as it is, you know, that old saying, jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down.

They just create enough fear and panic that they have to pull it off. I haven't seen that go well for a lot of people, but I'm guessing it has gone well for some. For me, I think of that word I used earlier, authentic conformity. I think of it in musicianship terms. I can play in a covers band, but I can play the song in a way that feels like me.

So it's got my feel to it, but it is their notes. I work within a realm of taking on gigs that feel like they're teaching me, they're growing me, I'm learning. It's enough within my realm, it feels relevant to me, I can be me in that space to enough of a degree.

And I allow those external gigs to create breathing room for my private practice. That's been my approach. I knew from the beginning, the last thing I want to do is be thinking, I have to find clients. I remember reading in Rich Litvin's book The Prosperous Coach, if you find yourself thinking, I need clients,

you don't need clients, you need a job. I'd hate to be thinking, please, somebody refer me for energy work, or having a discovery call with somebody and really just hoping that magically they'll want to work with me. I don't want my need in it. I don't want the literal, if you don't come on as a client I don't know how I'm going to be paying the bills this month.

That just feels, for me, like the wrong kind of energy to be coming into chemistry calls with. So I've intentionally created freedom in my private practice by building enough external income streams that allow that private practice to be free. And, in a way, all the things we've spoken about, unattached.

I can have these beautiful meetings with people and they become clients or they don't, or they become a client a year later, and everything's okay. It can find its own rhythm. So, I appreciate I peppered quite a lot of points in there in a haphazard order. That's a little sprinkling of thoughts. And the wellbeing piece as well.

I think I mentioned to you via email at some point, you're not going to be able to sustain a practice if you burn yourself out. And I think when you're starting your business, a lot of people, myself included, can just go, go, go, go. It's exciting times, scary times. And oftentimes we might put the pedal to the metal in a way that depletes us, and then suddenly we find ourselves thinking, wow, I need some time off.

Oh my God, now I can't build my business, my business is dying because I'm not watering it. So I would also invite the consideration of sustainability early on. Not just, how can I build it, because we talk about building the business. But, how can you sustain it,

and be happy and present and well and live your life and all of those things.

I would like to ask one closing question, and that actually has been passed on to us from one of my previous guests, Kristen Harcourt. And that is: who were your role models in your journey as a coach?

It's funny, the things we don't realize, isn't it? It's an amazing thing about just questions.

I'm not sure if I would say role model, but I would say somebody who definitely saw something in me and helped, but also perhaps modeled a way of being that I resonated with, that showed me that it wasn't about me becoming like them. It was like, oh, you are a bit like me, therefore there's a place for me in this industry because of that.

And do you want a specific name?

and precision and humility, and this almost gentle chuckle of, wow, I can't believe people are paying me to do this, I get to do this. It's not a given. None of this coaching gig, or having a coaching career, is a given.

It doesn't get handed to you and it might not happen, but if it is happening, how beautiful. And not taking that for granted. This is what I felt in that person, and they were into all of that spiritual stuff as well. So there was that spiritual component. They were the person who trained me on the presence module for Animas, without going into more specific details than that.

But all of those qualities really inspired me. And also they really believed in me. They were the person who said, I think you could be a great trainer. And whenever I see this person, which isn't very often, I feel like

our hugs are like giant teddy bear hearts just snuggling up to each other. We just have that in common, even though in many ways we're quite different.

But in that way I think there's a commonality that's quite beautiful. And they're older than me, and I think there's something maybe there as well.

They just gently said, hey, you can do this, and gently did that. So, all of those things.

quite intimate and quite powerful for me. If you're curious to meet Todd, for example for mentoring in your coaching journey, you can find his profile and also his website in the show notes. If you want to connect with other coaches and facilitators, you can simply go to metafox.eu/community. This is where we gather people development practitioners to help each other out with all the questions

we also explore on this podcast. So, facilitation methods, developing as a practitioner and coach, and building a profession, a business, from all of that. If you want to hear how Todd's closing question lands with our next guest, stay tuned. The next episode is only a week away. This has been the Making of a Coach.

I am Tobi from metaFox. All the best and bye bye.