Episode 47: The Coach's Coach Tells All: Zander Fryer On The Value Of Mentorship And Having A Coach
The life of your dreams is possible and an absolute certainty as long as you have the right mindset and mentorship. In this podcast, we learn the inside scoop of how Zander Fryer went from a successful yet unfulfilling corporate career to quitting cold turkey to start his dream business. People often think that mentorship comes second. But how will you equip yourself with the necessary skills to build a successful life without a coach to guide you through? Today, we hear about the one conversation with his mentor that ignited this transformation and how he committed 100% to his new reality to make it happen in less than two years. Get the inspiration and motivation to start pursuing a limitless life today!
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The Coach's Coach Tells All: Zander Fryer On The Value Of Mentorship And Having A Coach
Keys To Deepening Spirituality, Developing A Growth Mindset & Scaling To A 10-Figure Income Business
A few years ago, Zander Fryer was stuck in a 9:00 to 5:00, single, lonely, bored and lost. He was unfulfilled, unhappy, and getting paid $250,000 a year to stay that way. After losing his best friend to suicide and struggling with depression for months, he knew something had to change. He quit his corporate job in his late twenties with no idea what he was going to do and only three months of living expenses in the bank. Fighting for his life and time, and in honor of his fallen brother, he embarked on a new journey.
Despite the harsh criticism of those around him, he replaced his former six-figure salary within a few months, and in a year, he built a seven-figure business from the ground up. He is now a best-selling author, internationally renowned speaker, and host of the iTunes top podcast, Shit You Don't Learn in College, and is happily married to the woman of his dreams.
He has been featured in Time, Forbes, Inc., and TEDx, and his company, High Impact Coaching, serves over 50,000 people in 27 different countries and at more than 700 organizations. He is praised as the next-generation leader by Chicken Soup for the Soul author, Jack Canfield, and regarded as the coach of coaches by many top industry leaders like Craig Ballantine and Bedros Keuilian.
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Welcome to the show, Zander. I'm so excited to have you on.
Thanks for having me.
I had the pleasure and honor of meeting you when we were at the Dr. Joe Dispenza Meditation Event, where we got to spend 5 to 7 hours meditating and stepping outside of our comfort zones. What possesses an entrepreneur to get out of their rhythm and go to a place where you are going to be completely out of your comfort zone and meditate for 5 to 7 hours?
I have been in the entrepreneurial world for several years now and had the luck and gratitude, or whatever you want to call it, of building a very successful business in a short amount of time and having a lot of fun doing it and living a great life. I look back to when I first quit my job and the life that I'm living right now.
I'm like, "There is no way that I could have predicted the life that I get to live right now." I look back at that and so much of it is because of my meditation practice and spiritual journey that led to this point. A lot of people want to build businesses because they think it will make them happier, freer, more connected and fulfilled in that stuff.
“If it’s not going to kill you, why not try?”
The reality is if you work on being happier, freer and more fulfilled then all of these things start to come afterward. Doing stuff like the Dispenza retreat is almost a precursor to all the other material things that come in life. For me, it is not necessarily taking a step away from everything. It is the foundation for everything else.
The most fulfilled people that I know have a practice where they do step outside of the 3D reality, and they try to go to a place that is calm and centered, whether it is hiking, meditating, or prayer. There are so many different ways and avenues to do it, but that is a trade of very successful and especially very fulfilled people. What does living a limitless life mean to you?
It is about being curious to see what is out there and what is possible. When we talk about a limitless life, there are so many aspects of your life that can be limitless from a health, business, or financial standpoint. Throughout the first 27 years of my life, until I became an entrepreneur, I had all these preconceived notions and ideas of what could happen for me and what I could achieve in all those different areas.
Shortly after starting to realize that none of that stuff was true, you start to wonder, "What is possible? What could actually happen?" You start to get curious and you start to see how far down the rabbit hole you can go. When I first quit my job, I was like, "It would be amazing to build a multi six-figure business and make $20,000 or $30,000 a month.”
Here we are sitting at $400,000 a month, shooting for eight figures in the next year or two. The limitations that we put on ourselves are amazing to see what we can think is the limit of what we do. For me, it is all about curiosity. It is like, "What if this wasn't true? What if I could do more, do better, be happier, be healthier, or whatever it is?" It is being curious about what's possible.
How did you get to that place of opening up the blinders of that limitation?
First steps first, start with the baby steps. I always explain it like playing a game of poker. In the beginning, you play with the $1 chips, either blackjack, poker, or whatever you want to call it, because you are testing the waters to see what is possible. You start to do a couple of things here and there that you are like, "I didn't know I could do that." Every time you do that, you play around a poker with a $1 chip and you win that $1 back.
When you start to go do that enough, every one of these $1 chips is like programming in your brain. You are going to lose some of it, it is poker, but you are also going to win a bunch more. Unlike Vegas, in the end, the universe is in your favor. I'm going to win more than I lose. The more that you play, you start to get comfortable with like, "I'm winning more than I lose. Instead of $1 chips, what if I played $2 or $5 chips?" You start to grow your pot of chips.
When I was 27 years old, I was working at Cisco Systems. I was making somewhere around $240,000 a year. I had a great job. I drove a BMW, flew around the country, and had meetings with Disney, Sony, Verizon, and NBC executives. It was an amazing job. I quit cold turkey to do this entrepreneurial thing and everybody was like, "That is the biggest risk in the world." I was like, "Not really."
Throughout my life, I played so much of this game of "life poker." I took risks and tested the waters so much, I was like, "I was getting pretty clear that every time I played, I had a better chance of winning than losing." At that point, I'm quitting my job. People think you are going all-in. I was like, "That is not going all in. It is not like my life is at stake or I'm going to die by quitting my job." I'm not going all in. I'm playing with $100 chips now instead of $1 chips in the beginning.
Just like anything else, start small, build your way up, get comfortable with the game of poker, and get comfortable betting your $1 chips, then $2, $5, $10, $25 up to $100. You start to build that mentality and it is like, "I will go invest $100,000 into something thinking about it for a total of 5 minutes, because that based on my past track record and what I have seen, there is a higher probability chance of me making this thing successful than not.”
One of the cool things about that is it is an attitude of not feeling the fear of not being successful. It is almost like gamification of life, where you are excited each time. Sometimes, it does not work out the way you want it to, but you take it as a learning lesson, move forward, and win more than you are losing.
Mentorship: A limitless life is just about being curious to seeing what’s out there and what’s really possible.
You touched on something there. It is not like I'm not afraid to lose. Of course, I'm afraid to lose. I'm still a human. Until you and I are meditating next to each other and we levitate off the ground, we are human. We have egos and fears. They still come up. You talked about gamification. If you go fight the big boss, you are going to lose every now and then, but you keep doing it because you want to win. For me, it is the same thing. If it is not going to kill me, why not try?
You are teaching more people how to do that. Let's get into your background. Tell us a little bit about where you came from and how you got to this place of becoming a very successful entrepreneur.
As I mentioned, I used to work for Cisco Systems. I was a systems architect there, designing networks for Disney, NBC, Verizon, Sony, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all these big companies. I came to my mid-twenties making way too much money. I had a standing meeting with the Disney CIO. It was a good life. I ran my own schedule. For a lot of people, that is the goal. Up to that point, I had everybody tell me what would make you feel successful? I had all the things that everybody said should make me feel successful, the job, title, car, and I lived in Venice beach. I had everything, but I did not feel successful. I felt empty.
Every time I got a raise or a promotion, I was excited and the next week, it was like, "I'm back to the same feeling of I got to keep pushing and grinding for something I don't believe in." I had a conversation with one of my mentors. He asked me the question and it is the title of the TED Talk that I gave. "What would you do if you couldn't fail?" That completely opened me up. What would you do if you couldn't fail?
I used to be an Air Force ROTC, so I was going to be an Air Force Fighter Pilot. In my senior year, I got a DUI. I got kicked out of the Air Force. I have the Top Gun Award at field training. I had my pilot slot. I played the game of life and lost and won a lot of different times and realized it didn't kill me. I told him, "Ever since I ever got kicked out of the Air Force, I have wanted to lead, mentor, and help people more."
At Cisco, I don't get to do that. I lead the early in career network. I'm mentoring people in Cisco, but it's like 5% of my time. He said, "Why don't you figure out how to do that full-time? Lead, mentor, and coach people," and I was like, "What do you mean, like Tony Robbins or something?" He was like, "I don't know. I have never done it, but why don't you go figure it out?" I was like, "I have got this amazing job at Cisco. I'm making great money. I'm on a fast track to becoming one of the youngest directors in recent history."
He's like, "Just because there is a path laid out in front of you, does that mean you should follow it? Just because you are good at something, does that mean you should do it?" My mentor at the time was a seven-figure health and wellness entrepreneur and he said, "Do you know the difference between you and me?" and I said, "You make a shit ton more money than I do.
He said, "No, the difference between you and me is I'm living my dream and ever since you got kicked out of the Air Force, you've been dreaming one, and you are too scared to admit it." I was this 27-year-old kid making amazing money, driving a BMW, and he saw right through the bullshit and called me out. After that, he told me two things. He was like, "Number one, when you get to my age, you will realize the one source, one resource, you can never get back as your time. Number two, every moment is either on purpose or off purpose. Every moment off purpose, it is a moment wasted."
That was the moment for me when I realized it didn't matter what I did. I needed to make sure that every decision I made from that moment forward was a purposeful decision. It was with intention. It was not from a place of fear and not because somebody else told me to do it. It was very thought through. Most of the time, in the face of fear, it was the thing that went counter to the thing that I was doing.
“Every moment is either on purpose or off purpose, and every moment off purpose is a moment wasted.”
That was a Saturday night lubricated by a little bit of tequila conversation, which certainly helped. That Sunday, I didn't talk to anyone. I couldn't think about anything but that conversation and that Monday morning, I went back to work and I remember my 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM calls for Sony. I remember thinking I'm never going to get this hour back, my 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM calls. I'm thinking I'm never going to get this hour back, and then 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, 11:00 AM to 12:00 NN.
By lunchtime, I'm thinking I'm never going to get that morning back. I called up my manager and I was like, "Frank, I quit. I'm done." I quit pretty much on the spot. I had no idea what I was doing and what direction I was going. I had no past history as an entrepreneur, no network, no nothing. I decided I needed to figure out how to become a coach and be paid to be a coach.
The first thing that I did at that point was hire a shit ton of mentorship because I have always been big on mentorship. That was the big leg up that I had from the Air Force. The Air Force always taught you to never be without a mentor. Even after I got out of the Air Force, I had mentorship in different areas and I would pick people that I wanted to be like or who had lives that I wanted to be similar to. I would have them mentor me either informally or formally.
As soon as I quit Cisco, I invested about $35,000 into different mentorship, coaching programs, masterminds, online trainings, and everything that I possibly could. Everybody was always like, "You made so much in Cisco, so you probably had this stockpile of cash sitting around. You could throw it out and whatever." I'm like, "I'm a Millennial. Do you think I saved any money while I was working at Cisco?" That is the stupidest shit I have ever heard.
I had about three months' worth of living expenses saved up and I spent every dime of it in the first 30 days. I started to rack up credit card debt over the next couple of months. I maxed out two credit cards, put myself in about $25,000 worth of debt, but having worked with a half dozen different mentors, programs, and all of these things, I learned enough to open up the combination lock of what it took to build a coaching business from the ground up.
That fourth month I ended up making about $13,000 and clients, and then the next month was like $17,000 and it was $24,000, $32,000, $40,000, and it went up from there. As a life coach, a generic kid quits a corporate job to build a life coaching business, the only difference was I figured out how to make money doing it. We had our first six-figure month within twelve months and had a lot of coaches out there, life, health, fitness, career, relationship coaches, and every type of coach that I had been networking with and they were like, "You did it in six months what I have been trying to do for six years. What the hell did you do?"
I was an engineer, so that engineering mind goes, "Let me see if I can put together the system of what I did and see if it works for you." I put together the system and I started giving it to a handful of people, and they got amazing results. They told more people and that's how High Impact Coaching was born. To this point, several years after that, we have helped over 800 coaches build multiple 6-figure and 7-figure coaching businesses.
It is about replicating the result that I got because every coach I get to help go full-time, do what I did, break away from the 9:00 to 5:00, come from a place of service, and help other people. Every coach that I get to help do that, they are going to go help 1,000 or 10,000 people. If I helped 1,000 coaches and they go help another 1,000 people, that's a million people that I get to impact by having that workload.
Applause and props to your mentor for having a difficult conversation. It is not easy to do, but you are paying him for a reason. Coaches and mentors, if they're not willing to call their mentees out and do it with compassion and love because they care and are invested in their success, that conversation changed your life. You then had to go through all the hard work that you did.
Secondly, the ROI. A lot of people are like, "That course seems like a lot of money. I don't know if I could put out a $1,000 or $2,000." Whenever I go to a self-development course, everyone is like, "I can't believe you are spending $15,000 on this." I'm telling you that the return on investment, from a fulfillment perspective, relationship perspective, communication perspective, or business perspective, pays itself over multiple times. These are skillsets you continue with for the rest of your life. For people reading this, it's not a good thing to think short-term like, "I don't have the money." It's like, "How can I generate this money to invest in myself, so this way I have a long-term tool in my tool kit?"
Mentorship: When it comes to investing in personal development or masterminds, get started sooner than you think and do more than you think is comfortable because you’re going to see the return bigger and faster.
My book and my podcast is Shit You Don't Learn In College. Part of this thinking comes from so many people who have invested tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into their formal education of university degree or whatever it might be. A lot of them don't see the fulfillment or the financial return that they're expecting. I know so many people who rack up college debts and then go work in a job that they hate to barely make enough to make ends meet and then pay off that college debt over the next 5 to 10 years.
In their mind, they're like, "If I go invest in something, it's a sunk cost, and it's going to take me to an unhappy place." It's so terrible because it scares so many people away from investing in something that would take them in the right direction. I remember when I first quit my job, I thought about this. I was like, "I just finished off paying my college debts. Am I ready to go into debt again?" I thought about it. I was like, "That's the stupidest idea I have ever had," because I paid $100,000 to get a degree from UCLA to work for Cisco, and make money but not be fulfilled. Now, that I'm clear on what I want to do, why would I hesitate to spend more money and get the education that's going to take me in the right direction?
For me, it was a no-brainer, but for so many people, they think of it as a sunk cost or they're not going to see the return. They're very short-sighted. This $1,000, $2,000, or $5,000 or whatever might it be, every single program, self-development course, or mastermind that I have been a part of has yielded an amazing ROI. It's not always the ROI that I thought. It doesn't always come back to you the way that you think. If I were to go back, every single program I have ever invested in, I would invest in again, including during the time I was like, "This is a shit program and it didn't work for me."
I remember it was the first mastermind that put me into debt. It was the first one that I had to put on a credit card. It was $12,000 and at this point, I'm making $0 income and I don't know how I'm going to be making money. I have got 30 to 40-day runway before I'm out of cash to pay rent. I invest $12,000 into this program. I still remember it.
I'm starting to learn these marketing systems and stuff like that, and they're super outdated. They're from 2012. All the systems were outdated. All the mentorship, coaching, or support was horrendous, but it taught me a couple of things and it gave me something from that mastermind that I'll never forget because it probably made me millions of dollars in the future.
The first thing that happened was I learned who I didn't want to be as a coach. The second thing I learned was that it gave me the opportunity to face my fears and keep going because that was the first time I put myself into debt and it was a terrible experience. I could have stopped there. I could have let my fears take over my programming and go, "This isn't going to work. I should go back to a 9:00 to 5:00. Instead, I said, "No, I'm not going back. I have to face this and I have to move forward."
I always tell people, "When God, Mother Earth, the universe, or whatever you believe in. When you ask for courage, does it give you courage or does it give you the opportunity to be courageous?" I was given the opportunity to be courageous, face my fears, and keep moving forward. I would have never had that opportunity had I not done this. The next two programs that I invested in busted the door wide open. Had I not done that, I would have never had the opportunity to overcome my biggest fears to get to the success point.
“If more people in the world acted from a place of purpose or love or growth and less from fear, we would actually solve all of this world’s problems.”
The third thing that I didn't realize until about a year later, through that mastermind, I got connected to a friend who then connected me to another friend, who connected me to my future mentor, and one of my best friends, Craig Ballantine, who has to this point probably made me $2 million to $3 million. Had I not gone through that crappy mastermind, I would have had that connection that introduced me to somebody else who got me to Craig and made me $3 million. I would have never seen that in the program, but I see it now.
I'm like, "I'm glad that I made that investment." When it comes to investing in personal development, masterminds, or anything like that, the one thing that I have for anybody reading this is to get started now or sooner than you think. Do more than you think is comfortable because you are going to see the return bigger and faster the bigger you go.
We invested in a meditation course, it was worth every penny plus more, but the amount of access to people that were sitting at lunch with, we got to meet each other. I'm sure we're going to be friends in the future, hang out, and do all these kinds of cool things. I met hundreds of people that way. It's one of the added benefits, but a lot of people don't realize it because it's not immediate. It's a long-term relationship that you build. It's a beautiful thing.
People forget how important your environments are to dictating everything in your life. One of my friends says, "Your environments dictate your destiny." Putting yourself around other people that are doing what you want to do or accomplishing the things you want to accomplish is the fast track to success. If you put yourself around them, you are going to start to think, act, and behave like them, and you are going to become that person.
Let's get back to your business, High Impact Coaching. A lot of people come to you. They are coaches, maybe part-time, and they want to transition into making it a full-time career. Let’s talk about the challenge because a lot of people want to do this, but they are having a hard time pulling that trigger. Tell us a little bit about how you work with people like that.
I don't necessarily suggest doing what I did. It's not for everybody. When we work with a coach, we do a whole personality and behavioral assessment so we can tell who are the people like Zander. If you throw them off the cliff, they will build their wings on the way down, and then there are other people that if you throw them off the cliff, they're going to fall to their death. We don't want that.
The first thing is to know who you are as a person. I always suggest to people, "Take accountability for who you are as a person. When you get put under pressure, do you freeze or do you take action? Do you push forward or do you lock up?" These are all habits that are changeable. One thing that I tell every single one of our clients is, "You need to understand the growth mindset."
Mentorship: There’s no argument for not getting mentorship. The reason you don’t have clarity is because you don’t have mentorship. You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.
We have people that come in and start working with us. They're like, "I'm terrible with systems and focus. Six months later, they're the most organized and focused person that you've ever met." They're teaching the focus in organization training for other people. Know who you are and if you are somebody who tends to freeze up, don't quit your job and do what I did. Make sure you build out a plan and you get working with someone who has the recipe to do it.
Tony Robbins says, "Success leaves clues." If you want to bake a cake, are you going to go try and bake a cake on your own or are you going to go get a recipe and learn how to bake the cake properly? Do you get it right the first time? Building a business is not as simple as baking a cake, so you are going to make mistakes along the way and you are going to have to fix them. If someone wants to go full-time, the first thing that I suggest is, "Take a note for yourself and get to know who you are. Depending on that, you can build your runway."
We have a lot of our clients, when they first start working with us, they'll quit their jobs and start making a full-time income within 30 to 60 days. There are other clients of ours where we help them start making money part-time on the side because they want to generate a little bit of savings. We tell people like, "If you were to cut down your expenses and live off of your savings for six months, how much would you need per month to make it by? You have a six months safety net before you quit your job and go full time."
That's helpful for people that tend to freeze a little bit more. We call it a money trampoline, not a safety net. I like people jumping forward with it. We have some people that are like, "Put me under fire. Let's go. I have got one month of living expenses saved up." That whole terminology of burn the boats. They get on the island, burn the boats, and take off.
There are other people that do it part-time. Maybe they build up to $5,000, $8,000, $10,000, or $15,000 a month. By the time someone hits $10,000 a month, if you are not quitting your job and that's on the side, you are an idiot. At that point, if you quit your 9:00 to 5:00, what are you going to make once you are fully in the business? It comes down to knowing who you are, whether or not you want to build a part-time and then quit your job once you get to a certain point, or if you want to jump ship, go for full-time right away, which you are going to get there faster. There is no way around it doing it.
Doing it part-time, you have to understand that building a business on the side of something else is always going to be more difficult than building the business itself. There is a Russian proverb that says, "If you chase two rabbits, you will catch neither one." You can only do that for so long. The next piece of advice I give anybody that they're building it part-time on the side is you have to give yourself a timeline to quit.
If you are serious about going full time, it can never be, "Once I get to X, Y, Z, I will quit." It will be, "Nine months from now, I'm quitting." That's the timeline. "I have nine months to build as much of a runway and savings or six months to build as much of a runway and savings as possible and then I'm quitting." It's this mental switch. Dr. Joe talks about it, "When you make a decision in a very powerfully, emotional way, it echoes in the quantum field, spiritual realm, or whatever you want to refer to it as, and that decision is what starts to bring to you that next reality."
“There’s a difference between having an offer and having an offer that people will actually buy and can impact the world.”
Most people never fully make the decision that they're going to do it at 100%. You have to make the decision that it's happening at some point and set that date. The next piece is very simple. Get mentorship or get help, as I mentioned. I'll mention it over and over again. Everybody is like, "You are a coach. Of course, you are going to say that because you want people to come work with you." I'm like, "I don't care if you work with us or other people. I don't give a shit. I have way too much money. I help a lot of people. I love what I do, but I don't care if you work with us or somebody else. You have to get mentorship."
There's no argument for not getting mentorship. I hear way too many people saying, "I'll figure it out on my own. Once I get clarity around where I need to go, then I'll get mentorship." I'm like, "The reason you don't have clarity is because you don't have mentorship. You can't read the label from inside the bottle." "Once I am making X, Y, Z amount of dollars, then I'll get mentorship because I can afford it." You are not going to get there because you need the mentorship to learn how to get there.
People have this idea that mentorship comes second and mentorship comes first. You have to get the mentorship because the truth is, if you were already the person that you needed to be to be successful, you'd have it. You'd be there, but you are not. You have to start to ask yourself, "Why not?" There are things that you know you don't know and there is a lot of shit that you don't even know that you don't know. You are never going to learn what that stuff is unless you get somebody else looking at you and telling you what you are doing wrong.
I have had mentorship for the last five years. I will always have multiple coaches and masterminds that I'm a part of. I'm getting multiple people's eyes on my blind spots because I have spent over $500,000 over several years on my own mentorship, to give you guys an idea of how important I view this $500,000 on coaching, personal development, and mentorship to keep me moving forward. People wonder why my business keeps doubling every single year. I will tell you why because I invest in mentorship every single year.
Success takes commitment. I have never met a trapeze artist that was successful by standing on the platform. You got to jump and let go as well. It's taking that first step and then trusting in the uncertainty and knowing that you are going to catch the other bar and land on the other side. It's a little bit rocky, but you are going to get there, but you have to let go.
Using this trapeze analogy is a good point. If you have got a net below you on a trapeze, you are not going to die or you have got that zip line on you. You are not going to die, but it's still scary. Your heart is still pounding and your physiology still thinks you are about to be eaten by a saber tooth tiger. It is freaking out. You are in complete fight or flight mode.
It is still scary, but the truth is you are not going to die. At some point, you have to develop the strength of will and consciousness to say, "Thank you for all the fears that are going on right now, but I'm not going to dictate my life based on fear. I'm going to dictate my life consciously, knowing that if I jump right now, I'm not going to die even if I miss this bar. I'm going to jump because what is the upside."
Mentorship: People have the idea that mentorship comes second. You have to get mentorship because the truth is, if you were already the person that you needed to be to be successful, you’d have it and you’d be there.
If I jump and I catch that bar, what if I start to live the life that I truly want to live, have the impact I want to have, save the lives I want to save, get to donate to all the causes that I want to donate to, finally have that house that I want to live in with the husband or wife that is an amazing person? At some point, you have to decide if you are going to jump to grab that bar or not. If you never jumped because you are too afraid of dying, you are never going to get it.
You talk a lot about you are in the business of saving the world. Tell us what that means to you.
If more people in the world acted from a place of purpose, love, or growth and less from fear, we would solve all of this world's problems. I truly believe that. For me, it is about helping people, what their programming are, where their fears are coming from, and why they are happening that is preventing them from doing the things that lead to a more purposeful, fulfilling life. Most people don't realize this, but 90% of your decisions come from a place of fear.
Back when we were evolutionary men, it makes sense. We have shit to be afraid of saber tooth tigers, short nose bears, not getting enough food, and dying. When you are first born, you have two innate fears. It is loud noises and heights, which makes sense because you don't want your baby walking off the edge of a cliff as for a baby. You hear a loud noise as evolutionary man, it's probably a tiger, bear, or something, "You should probably go the other direction. Don't walk towards the short nose bear."
Every other fear that we have as humans is self-created or socially created. Those fears create subconscious programming. Ninety-five percent of our brain is our subconscious. That 95% of our brain dictates the majority of our thoughts, actions, and habits throughout our life. Most people run their lives based on fears created earlier in their lives that don't mean anything. Their future ends up becoming more of the same as the past, unfulfilled, unhappy, without the money they want, without the impact they want.
A lot of people think that purpose is an end game. It is not. It is a decision that you make every moment of every day. "Are you choosing purposefully or are you choosing from a place of fear?" It's a pretty simple question to ask yourself. In my opinion, if more people started to choose purpose and less people would choose fear, we have a shot at solving some of these world's problems. That's what High Impact Coaching and our mission are all about.
Every coach wants to serve others, whether they're health coaches, life coaches, or career coaches, but what's the biggest thing that stops them from being successful in business? It's their own fears, fear of judgment, and fear of criticism. They sit around fumbling about their logo's color or website rather than doing the one thing that matters. Getting yourself out there and going and helping people.
You are worried about how you look to the world rather than letting that go and getting out there and serving the others that need you. There are hundreds of people out there who are crying themselves to sleep with the problem you solved, and you are worried about getting on a sales call and appearing salesy. Whose fault is that? That is you. That is your own limiting beliefs and fears.
Many of these coaches have all these limiting beliefs and fears that prevent them from getting out there and serving others. In my opinion, if we could help 1,000 or 10,000 coaches go full-time, overcome themselves, learn how to market properly, how to sell properly, how to develop their niche and their offers, so they have clients coming to them and then learn how to get out of their own way.
Every single one of those coaches goes and helps 10,000 more people. That is 100 million people that we can help. That's more than 1% of the population that is now living more purposefully, more from a place of love, growth, and intention, and less from a place of fear. If you get 1% of the world to shift their consciousness, you have an exponential evolutionary consciousness growth within the population as a whole. That's my goal.
Are you talking about the Maharishi effect?
I don't know if it's the Maharishi effect. There was a study that was done on it, though.
The coaches that come to you, do you specify any specific niches or do coaches come to you from day one, they have no clients and then you help them build?
We have people that are in specific niches. I'm doing now what I wish I had when I first started. I knew I wanted to be a coach and serve others. I needed some help in the direction and the recipe to make it happen. At that point, nobody had had the recipe. Everybody told me, "It's going to take you 1 or 2 years to build a full-time business." I refuse to believe that was the truth.
I went and learned all the different marketing, online tactics, and sales strategies. I picked and prodded what I thought would work best. I then took from my experience at Cisco and I combined it all together to help me get a six-figure business up and running in less than four months. We're teaching that to any coach, whether you are a life coach, health coach, or whatever because pretty much 98% of people we work with think they have a niche and offer, and they don't.
The thing that I tell people is, "There's a difference between having an offer and having an offer that people will buy from you and you can impact the world with." The majority of coaches think, "I have a lead generation problem or I have a sales problem." The truth is they have a shitty offer and they haven't gotten clear on an offer that works.
They have to learn lead generation and sales on top of that, but the offer is the starting point. I honestly think 98% of people we work with, even the ones that have a part-time business. They're earning $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 per month. Most people don't have a solid niche and offer people are hiring them because that person inspires them, but they don't have anything scalable.
On the other side of it, people with amazing content are charging such little money for it. It is almost because of the subconscious beliefs of having that imposter syndrome like, "I'm not good enough. People will figure me out. Maybe I'll only charge $50 for my $1,000 program."
We see that all the time. This is a very controversial opinion, but I have been in this space now for several years and I have never seen anything disprove this. People who pay, pay attention. End of statement. When we work with clients, we teach them how to charge what we call high ticket or premium prices, so anything from $3,000 to $25,000 for your programs.
What we found is anybody charging less than $50, a couple of hundred dollars, whatever it might be, ended up with a lot of tire kickers. A lot of people have to chase down to come to sessions. People don't do homework. They don't get results. We get so many people that have big audiences and they're charging peanuts. They might sell a bunch of them if they have a big audience, but how many people complete that program?
“People who pay, pay attention.”
On average, if you are doing something like that, it's something 91% won't complete the program, not to mention of the 9% who complete it, how many get results? How many online programs have you bought that you didn't go through? It's the ones that I pay a bunch of money for that I show up, I give the energy, and I get the results from.
We tell this to everybody because a lot of people think, "If I charge less, I will get to more people," and they quickly find out it's as hard to sell a $100 program as it is to sell a $3,000 program. I'm not kidding you. We had one of our clients who were in the health and wellness space. She had a $97 course. She had been trying to sell for six months. She sold five of them.
We took that same exact course and we shifted the delivery a little bit to include some coaching and make sure she was getting great results, and then we taught her how to sell that same program for $5,000. Over the next two months, she sold five of the same program for $5,000 instead of $100. She sold the same number.
People don't realize it's as hard to sell something for $100 as it is to sell it for $5,000 if you know how to sell. Why would you not go for $5,000 so that you now have extra money? Let's say you start making a bunch of extra money. Everybody is like, "That's greedy." Yes, if you are buying Rolexes, diamond necklaces, Ferraris, and shit.
For the majority of coaches, we take that money and put it back into the business so that we can get to more people. If you had the extra cash and you could then go afford to hire a VA or an extra coach to support you, or somebody to help you with social media, or start paying for advertising. It's going to get you to more people. That extra cash you get furthers your impact.
Think about the amount of time, effort, energy, or life force that you put into something, the difference between making $2,500 a month and $25,000 a month. Imagine how it feels when you work that hard to only make 2,500, it doesn't put good energy into the business. You start regretting and having resentment for the business.
They start to resent what was once their passion because it turns into a grind, so most people end up quitting.
How does the coach of coaches like you get coached?
I have a nutrition and workout coach, like a PT, that does my nutrition and workouts. I have a coach that has helped Maddie and me in our relationships. I have three different coaches that helped me in my business. One from the pure leadership and running a team, and another one that helps me with sales and marketing. Another one that helps me personally as a person.
How do I get coached? The answer is every way in every angle possible because I have seen the return on my life, relationships, and business, come back ten-fold in every different area. If there's ever anything that I have, I'm not where I want to be. I go find coaching. Every time I show up, I make sure that I show up as a ten-year-old kid, curious, ready to learn, and ready for more.
You mentioned your lovely wife, Maddie. Tell us this story about how you guys met because I got to know it at lunch and I want the audience to know this.
This came from coaching. I had a business mentor, Craig, who I mentioned earlier. I went to one of his workshops back in 2017. This was when my business was starting to take off and we set some goals for 2017 for where I wanted the business to go, and he had me set some personal goals too. One of my personal goals was to meet an amazing woman.
I had been single for about five years at that point. The end of the year is coming up and I'm doing some accountability with Craig. I have been to three weddings in three weeks and a couple of bachelor parties. It was so cool to see my friends getting married and falling in love. Craig sends me an email back. He says, "You are supposed to meet the woman of your dreams by the end of this year. What are you doing for that?" I said, "Nothing, I haven't been going on any dates, I have been doing anything." He sent me two words back. He said, "Public accountability."
I took that and I went into my Facebook group of, at the time was 2,500 or 3,000 people in it. This is a business coaching group. I go into this business coaching group and I do a Facebook Live titled, "Help me find love." I do this whole thing about how I said I was going to meet an amazing woman by the end of 2017 and it's now November. I have 60 days to meet the woman of my dreams or I'll do whatever weird shit everybody in here can come up with and I got droves of comments like, "Shave your head, donate your car, dance on Third Street, promenade naked, fly me to Mexico and all this stuff."
This is a group of coaches. I also had a bunch of coaches that were like, "You can't force love. You got to work on yourself." I'm like, "Don't reflect your bullshit on me. I have been working on myself for five years. I need to do something about it." After that, I ended up having a lot of people reach out to me like, "I want to introduce you to my cousin, my best friend, my sister, or my daughter, and stuff like that." I went on a few dates. Nothing came from it.
This amazing beautiful Australian reached out to me and said, "I don't know what could come from this because I live in Brisbane. We live halfway across the world from each other, but I find you and your energy attractive, and I love to connect." We did a Zoom call and I fell in love with her accent instantly. I was still a little bit confused about how we could make the long-distance thing work, but we set up a second date. The way Maddie tells it, she says that I stood her up. I don't remember it going that way, but I'm sure she's right.
Something broke in the business and I completely lapsed. It was entirely my fault and I missed our second date. She reached back out to me and she said, "Whatever it was, it is not a big deal, but I don't think anything is going to come from this unless we meet in person. I'm flying out to my dad's in Dubai over the holiday. If I stopped by San Diego on the way, would you want to meet?” Dubai and San Diego are right next to each other. Being a guy, I'm like, "That sounds great. Come on over to San Diego." She ends up flying out to San Diego on December 29th, 2017, two days before the end of the year, and we ended up falling in love. I don't know how else to explain it.
She was supposed to stay for three days. She ended up staying for a week. After that, we dated long distance for the next ten months. We went back and forth between Australia, the US, maybe twelve times during those ten months before we finally moved out to the US and got married a few years ago, and we've been happily married ever since. We're going to start working on our first child this year, but it all came back to coaching. It came back to a coach pointing out something that I was doing. I was going against my goals and getting me to do that uncomfortable thing that changed my life.
That is how the universe works. You put yourself out there and watch the miracles fucking flow into your life. Thank you so much for coming on. Final question, why do you think you came here to planet Earth, this beautiful place, as Zander Freyr? What did you want to experience?
I came to Earth to empower and inspire others to live that true version of themselves. To live purposefully, that's why I came to Earth. It's not about me. I would say I wanted to experience probably the true depth of love that you can experience here on Earth. I have had a lot of losses. My best friend took his own life. I have had relatives lose their lives.
I have experienced a lot of loss in my life and because of that, I have also experienced more love than I could've ever imagined. We are talking love with my partner, Maddie, love for my clients, love for myself, and our mission. I have never experienced so much love and joy. That's what I wanted to experience this time around, or in this life at least.
Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate you. You inspire me and I'm humbled that you could join us.
Thanks for having me.
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About Zander Fryer
Five years ago Zander Fryer was stuck in a 9-5, single, lonely, bored, and lost. He was unfulfilled and unhappy and getting paid a quarter-million dollars a year to stay that way. But, after losing his best friend to suicide and struggling with depression for months he knew something had to change.
He quit his corporate job in his late twenties, with no idea what he was going to do and only 3 months of living expenses in the bank. Fighting for life, for time and in honor of his fallen brother, he embarked on a new journey. Despite the harsh criticism of those around him, within 3 months, he replaced his former 6 figure salary, and in 1 year he built a 7 figure business from the ground up.
Zander is now a best-selling author, internationally renowned speaker, and host of the iTunes top podcast – Sh*t You Don’t Learn In College and is happily married to the women of his dreams.
