Erik Kruger — High Performance Coaching, Mental Toughness

my special guest in studio somebody else I've been looking forward to chatting to you because I got the chance to read the book it's Eric Kruger hello Eric how are you hey thank you for having me an absolute pleasure so let's start off we're gonna get on to because the book is brilliant thank I can't say I've read it because you can't actually just you're not allowed to it's not a book that you can just read from as you could but I've found and then it's yeah we'll get on to that okay because it's brilliant I love it but let's talk a little bit about who is Eric Kruger and how did you get to doing the stuff that you're doing today hmm how far back do I need to go right yes like me started life at a very young age that you know where do you come from what is your screw things like that let me tell you I graduated from bits in 2007 maybe that's a good place to start yeah I graduated from bits in 2007 finishing my physio degree so immediately like after finishing physio I actually realized I don't think I want to do physio I don't think this is a thing that's really meant for me and so I went on this journey to to figure out what like what do I want to do with my life and one of the things that happen when you're at med school is they they teach you everything you need to know about bones and ligaments and tendons and disease and diagnosing and treating but they never teach you how to run a business and so a friend of mine and myself we started our own practice mm-hmm and we just couldn't get clients through the door patients through the door and we went knocking on doors to hospitals doctors you name it and eventually a friend said to me why don't you guys have a website and this is so this is like 2010 or 2011 yeah and yeah I think by then you should have had websites up and running yeah and and I said you will like this makes sense let's try it and we literally walked me through the process setting my website up through Skype so like he was on in Joburg I was sitting in Springs at the time I remembered very vividly I was sitting on my mom's in my mom's lounge on the floor on skype press here click here type this in he went on to become one of the sharks and shark tank madness brother a guy he was he was the guy he took me through that that process and we got the website set up but then in the process I just fell in love with the idea of having a website and so he got me completely hooked on essentially building websites oh I so need to talk to you because enough and people have heard me whine about this but I mean I used to have developers and graphic designers everything working for me and that all went belly up at the last year so now I'm doing my own website development mm-hmm it is a long and scary process it is but I keep the vision okay what are you working WordPress WordPress for sure yeah it has to be WordPress I'm doing the WordPress thing but a wow I think it's not a work at my advanced stage of life I perhaps shouldn't really be learning WordPress baby we're having a lot of fun doing it so you fell in love with websites yes and you're going from a physiotherapist literally working with people you you decided to get all techie hmm and I was still I was still seeing patients obviously but I started and Martin's now we're actually doing other things together at that time we were trying different websites you know so we wanted to like back then he was even into entrepreneurship and like one sort of website for entrepreneurs and I can't even remember I registered more than 45 domains and yeah and I thought each of those would turn into a website that would be extremely successful and millions of people would come to it and never turned out like that mm-hmm but then in this process of like trying to find this thing which is going to be an online thing I stumbled onto a website called better man and I mean if I stumbled on I mean I created it and it was it was in a time my life where I said well let me let me focus on me like on the things that I really enjoy and it's always been self-development so I said well let me just do that like let's forget for moments about all the money that should come from the websites and all the passive income and let's just focus on doing what I love and so I thought well let me create a website that inspires men to be better men and the idea being that you go to night you go to sleep at night a better man than when you woke up that morning and if you can just do that every day then you know we on the way if we like that's how you become a better man yeah and so that's all in 2015 I think it was the end of 2014 begin 2015 I interviewed initially guys like mops Mopanyane Tim Nokes I wanted to share successful men on my platform and so it was podcasting it was videos so you also were a podcaster yeah more and more podcasters are coming out of the way oh jeez and it's gonna become huge I believe it is look I mean I've seen how massive it is overseas and I don't see any reason why we should be listening to all the overseas guys because I believe in this country we have massive talent more than enough talent so that's great news okay so you interviewed these people you had a podcast mm-hmm and but how do we go from there into the mental performance lab which is kind of where you are now yeah so that's exactly what I'm doing now so what happened is as so initially it's a typical story like I thought I was gonna build this little website for me and all of a sudden then the people started coming so we had a Facebook community of about 18,000 men I started sending out a daily email because I thought well how do I share my message and one of the things I tried was a short daily email that went out Monday to Friday and I ended up with about 18,000 subscribers on that as well is that that is actually brilliant and I mean if I'd known that I would have subscribed I mean I get I get notes from the universe yes which is a big fan of old Mike Dooley and now I see you've been doing a similar thing yeah so I stopped I stopped now but at that stage was like it was like the main thing and it drove the entire business because better man then ultimately became in business because brands were saying well you have this big reach very niche audience we want to work with you and so we did events and and guys were also saying like listen we want to meet in person so we started doing events and the guy started saying well I want to do coaching or I want to do mentoring with you so I said well I'll give it a try like you know I'm an entrepreneur we try whatever and I tried coaching a few times didn't really click for me and then I can't pinpoint the day or the moment but at some point it did click for me and I thought well this is what I want to do and then I thought well I don't want to be one of those guys who go do a like a weekend course and call myself a coach so I ended up doing my master's degree through Wits business school in business and executive coaching so you went back and studied more yeah after your physio mmm yeah I wanted something really robust and rigid and empirical to kind of back up this coaching because coaching is it's a very open space you know you can wake up tomorrow morning call yourself a coach and you're good to go and I think a big push is that we we introduce more rigidity around or not rigidity is maybe not the right word but higher standards around the profession and I think a master's degree is what is a great way of doing that fantastic we're gonna talk about a little bit about about the business and then I want to get on to the book as well we'll do that in just a bit it is what's involved mix 93.8 some legendary radio my special guest in studio author business owner Eric Kruger back with you in just a bit David Watts on mix 93.8 my special guest in studio with me tonight is author hi can I call you a high-performance coach perfect is that it's perfect business owner author Eric Kruger it's fascinating going from studying to be a physiotherapist do you ever still use that just by the way do you know my girlfriend tries to get massages out of me doesn't work you're like I'm a physiotherapist no I'm done with that like not a massage therapist exactly okay so you started you started doing this and you then moved into the the mental performance lab but you had this email list and you were you were getting up every morning and you were writing like a thought for the day an inspirational motivational message so when did you start and when did you decide to hang on maybe I should put this into a book hmm when did that happen so I think the thought crossed my mind a few times because a lot of guys would email me and so they have an entire folder in their inbox dedicated to my best emails you know because obviously like I ended up writing like I said like I stopped writing it towards the beginning of this year and I wrote 806 emails altogether and every day yeah so Monday to Friday without break and you know it was such an incredible process but a lot of the guys would say like I have all my favorite emails stacked away and I go back to them I reference them and personally I also had a folder with all my favorite emails and so I guess they were always like I always had this thought that you know my it might become a compilation at some point and then Martinez published a book like we've been great friends ever since that that website set up and he published his book and I just thought well now's a good time to do mine as well and we we went back and thought well what would the book be and like it was just so obvious the book has already been written it was all the emails so the task for me was really going back and looking through all the different emails that I wrote deciding which ones were the best and we decided on 165 emails and then to compile them into a book and and that's it and it's it's a fantastic book I mean thank you as I said I got I got hold of it and it's it's literally called actor non verba which is Latin very highbrow but it means basically actions not words exactly and and I think it says here it's the playbook for creating achieving and performing at your highest level it's and it's an incredibly motivating book as I said to you I'm a great reader so it's a frustrating book because I want to just like go through the whole thing and then but you actually can't and you shouldn't and it's there's just so much stuff in it give me an example of some of the things that somebody could find in him so I think what you're saying is spot-on it's not a storyline book where you know one chapter or flows into the next chapter because we have 165 chapters chapters so the one chapter might be around leadership or self leadership and then the very next chapter might be just around ownership and and taking responsibility for your life and the actor non verba was actually my sign off for the email you know I signed off every email actor non verba Eric and it was always meant to be something short that you can take action on that you can go and do for the day because I think we we have so much content that we consume and we don't do much with it you know it kind of gets fragmented and we randomly consume information and it's a podcast here in a book there and like what do you do with it like that's what counts what do you do with it and and we do we suffered particularly in this digital age we suffer from this this overwhelm and overload yeah and so I just wanted let's cut off the clutter like let's just focus and say here are 300 words it's enough for like you to consume quickly in a world that's very busy and then to go do something with it I gotta tell you the way I did because I'm one of these very strange people I'm wired a bit differently so my day starts anywhere between 2 and 3 a.m. but I'll get up I'll make myself a cup of coffee go into my office sit down and over my cup of coffee I will read my daily giddy out of this book and it's been brilliant because you just have a little bit of that quiet time just to think and reflect on what it says and I mean forgive me for saying this but I mean this book is filled with wisdom which I would guess would be beyond your ears because it just it really is some of the stuff is profound how the heck did you come up with it you know I guess when you write 806 emails in between there has to be some good stuff in between the very average stuff so when it was actually funny when I was going through it I was like why did I write this and then you know like especially the early early emails even my writing style has changed so much over the years but also I'm in a very fortunate position where I get to work with people every day and I get to I get to see how they operate and the challenges they face and the way they approach those challenges and even better is I get to be a part of solution I get to help them think through it you know as a coach that's what I spend most of my time doing is how do I help people to succeed how do I help them go from where they are to where they want to be and so a lot of that pulls through into my writing and into my speaking okay we're gonna get into the speaking as well but just in terms of in terms of the coaching and in terms of the mental performance lab the name implies lot to do with mindset is that something that's important to you is that the only thing yeah I think you know ultimately we have to align our actions with us with our thinking and you can start from either you can start by improving your thinking and from that get your actions to align with that or you can start acting yourself into a new way and get your your thinking to come along in a bit in luck a bit later but I think it all starts with a mind for me that's like whenever I work with clients obviously that's the main thing that we start and it has to pull through to the actions afterwards we're gonna talk a bit more about that in just a little bit with Eric because I want to find out about that and find out about you know the kind of people you talk to who you talk to just normal people everyday people we'll talk about that in just a bit it is what's involved on mix 93 point eight David Watts on mix 93 point eight makes 93 point eight it is what's involved this Monday night my guest in studio author and owner of the mental performance lab Eric Kruger so you went from better man into mental performance lab as you said you studied what sort of people do you do individuals do you only work with companies how are you set up there so all the all the clients that I work with in a in my personal capacity are are just individuals they typically high level executives entrepreneurs but how I like to just to find it is as ambitious people because what I've realized is that no one comes to me with a problem and says listen I need you to help me fix this you know they all doing really well and they all in a position where they say I need to be challenged I need to be supported people are looking at me from the outside and they think oh man he has everything but really like internally they know that they could be doing more they could be doing better and so what they come to me for is how do I go to the next level and what does that look like and will you challenge me to do it okay by the way if you'd like to you also have a chat to Eric somebody's sent a message in that goes nice well done somebody else says hi Eric well done you rock Dave Stewart hell Dave yes and you were mentioning he was he was one of the subscribers to the email yeah we've David I've come a long way yeah nice to have him listening so you can SMS us on four one three four eight SMS is charged at 150 otherwise whatsapp us oh eight four eight double two oh nine three eight Eric also has very kindly agreed a little later on we're gonna be giving away two books hmm we'll tell you a bit about that later on it is a brilliant book I mean this is my morning coffee read book it's called acting on verba this is available most bookstores yeah take a lot of exclusive books they can get it from you there's a digital version as well is there is Amazon yeah little version okay I love my Kindle but there's something about a book hmm I've got to tell you anyway so there we go we're gonna be doing that but we're talking about this and the kind of people that come to you for coaching I've always had a problem and it's weird because I've actually studied coaching as well it took me a bit longer than a weekend but for me to go to a coach I've always gone I don't know if I want to tell somebody what you know it's it almost feels like you're admitting vulnerability you're admitting that you don't know everything and it's also it's kind of an intimate thing to have a coach because you know I mean since since I was young I always used to get accused of not being able to play very well in the sandpit with the other children so to have somebody going and my in my vision even though I've now studied it you know and I've got all the qualifications that I need at this moment there's still that very very young part of me that sees the coach as the person with the whistle that shouts and screams at you all the time do a lot of people have this I mean you know these I noticed a lot of people that are in high-powered positions internally or sometimes a mess and and they don't have that confidence and they don't go home and sleep like babies so how how do you find that look so I think that I think the perception is changing right because more and more organizations are coming aboard saying we recognize that leaders need coaches to help them analyze to help them think to help them digest and so you have Google Microsoft LinkedIn they're all leading the charge 40% of the fortune 500 companies all have either internal external coaches so it's becoming a big thing and it's not becoming like I said I don't think it's a thing where you come to a coach and you are broken and you are you in a position where you're saying fix me you know I think most of what coaching is and what coaching should be is is really two questions where are you and where do you want to be that's really what coaching is and how do we then take things out of the way to make sure you get from point A to point B so none of my clients come to me and say listen like you know I need to reveal my deepest darkest secrets to you they all just saying listen I'm doing really well like I'm very happy with my life but I need some outside perceptions of what's going on for me and in many ways I think a coach is really a thinking partner that's that's actually my preferred term when I speak to clients is that I'm your thinking partner what what I do is I study how we think and I go from conversation to conversation with different leaders with people in different industries I see the challenges they face I help them think through that I bring that same experience to the next conversation I have I take that with me to the next conversation and so ultimately it's my job to help you think at your best okay that's it's probably one of the better explanations I've heard because that makes a lot of sense but you know when you when we started this conversation you said to me are you a life coach yeah and I think I think that's the important thing to understand is that we we kind of live in a world now where we have so many different coaches oh yeah do you love coaches business coaches the other day somebody approached me they're a relationship coach yeah yeah there's a coach for everything I'm like for everything Lord just now I'm gonna have to get a pet coach yeah they exist yeah no there's a coach for everything and I think it's becoming more and more important for for clients for people to be able to discern where do you find a good coach and what is a good coach look like and what do they speak like and what do they charge because the markets just flooded you know and it kind of comes back to what we were saying earlier is how do we regulate an industry like this and how do you create a certain standard like a certain operating excellence within the industry we don't go to a coach you have a bad experience and you think well this is what coaching is supposed to be yeah yeah you see and then that's I mean you know we made light of it but but there are places on the internet even based here in South Africa where you can literally pay a couple hundred bucks and get a coaching certificate but not all coaches are created equally and and how how do you know I mean you know if somebody's looking for a coach they want to come to Eric Krieger do I come to you as a potential client and interview you and find out if we're a good fit I think you have to you have to like obviously most coaches have a sort of an informal introduction call so that's always a good thing to to take advantage of but you you have to interview them from your side to understand what's the experience like and I wrote an article actually last week about this exact topic and one of the most important things was who do they work with and what do they work with because again this is the problem for a life coach is what do you work with it just it seems so broad you know whereas specifically who I work with are high-level executives and entrepreneurs and what do I work with is how do we take them from where they are to the next level and typically that is around creating more boundaries in their lives typically that is around the leadership that they have and and very often it has to do with their work ethic and and what they bring to the table in terms of their attachment to to work it's almost identity so in a conversation I can point out to about seven or eight things that I specifically work with that are occurring themes in my coaching practice and I think that's important for like you don't want to work with anyone who just does everything okay yeah now you do individuals and you do corporates yes but what do you do with the corporates I mean would they do you do because you're a speaker as well so you you obviously do keynote addresses yes yeah so speaking is the main thing I speak on specifically mental toughness on high performance on how do we move from knowing to doing but then part of that's also the training in development you know so a lot of the stuff that comes from coaching I then work into workshops or seminars because that's and I like that you say that because that's one of the problems that I had in the old days with keynote speakers is they would come in for 45 minutes an hour give you some great content and then say just have a nice day and then afterwards you as the company the delegate are going okay yeah so there's that follow-up so I think it's changing in the industry out there is you know you you now we talk interventions where you would actually go in you would do your address and then you would offer sort of some support some support in some way shape or form I mean I've noticed when we do the sales-based training the communication based training at two corporates one of the things that that is you know they they're asking us for now at the moment is this coaching and is the support and it's always I mean it's one of my favorite sayings is you know how do you make change stick because you know you get them into an artificial environment and it's like yeah everybody's happy and then they go home they've sat in traffic for three hours you know the the roast is burnt by the time they get home the dog bites them when they walk in you know and they fall over a pot plant everything that you've done their day is just wasted have you found that that is that that's the way for sure but I mean this happens in our personal lives all the time is that we have great aspirations and intentions that never come to fruition and one of the things I often speak about is that we have to retarget ourselves a friend of mine's I spoke about it a bit earlier Richard Mulholland he he sent out his email and in one of his emails he had a backpack and he's a avid traveler so like when he recommends backpacks I go and look at them and you recommend this one backpack went to go check it out loved it super expensive I thought no I'll leave it I won't buy it's too expensive and then like I move from that website to the next website and immediately I start seeing ads for this backpack and those ads start following me around everywhere like I see them on Facebook on LinkedIn I see them on every website that I go to and like I've been retargeted like that before by companies but this just seemed like next level so they follow me around for like two weeks and the third week arrives and I go and buy the backpack and it made me realize that companies understand the value of retargeting people with the products they've they've wanted to buy the importance of keeping your attention on the thing and we don't do that with ourselves we don't retarget ourselves with the things are important with us to us so I have a white big whiteboard in my office and on it I write everything that I that's important to me from the goals that I have but also to the point of like who do I want to be and what are the values that I'm trying to install and what are the character traits that I'm trying to develop and I keep those things in front of me and we have to retarget ourselves and that's I think how we get through change and you know what I like I like that because what it says to me now that you've shared that is you're going I'm not a coach looking at people going well I'm better than you allow me to bestow upon you the gift of my ways you work on yourself all the time yes you know it's one of the one of the best things about being a coach is that as much as it's a learning environment coaching is a learning environment for that's what I feel your clients you know but it's also for you a like if you're you as coach if you're receptive enough it's a hugely valuable learning environment for you as well yeah and you can get many aha moments working with other people and for me that's always been the most humbling thing is is I get the privilege of working with people and when they have our home moments without them even knowing it I get some of them as well and it could be totally unrelated to what we're doing it's just sometimes there's just that thing if you're in an in the training environment like that and you know I'm not at the moment I'm not running a company that's doing a billion rand and turnover yeah but my clients do and I get to learn from what they're going through and then the next day I speak to someone who is in a completely different sector who is not even close to a billion but I get to bring insights that I've gained from an executive who's running a billion rand company I get to bring that to someone who's somewhere in the middle or somebody who's who's a solo entrepreneur as we call and I get insights into the way their minds work and to me that's really valuable as well so you do work with you know and I'm a big proponent of I can't call them little guy but I mean the small businesses the guys who are solo printiers the guys who starting businesses who've had a business for a couple of years and wanting to take it to the next level you work with those people as well I'm typically not okay not usually the my clients are guys who have established businesses okay and either looking to make a change or they want to just like I said kind of ramp it up and see what's next for them I have many coaches that I recommend for guys who are starting up but I'm typically not the coach for that okay so so you would do that I mean if you weren't a good fit if I found and I said listen I'm just starting David's hotdogs and I need a coach you'd say listen mate don't think I'm the person for you but yes somebody I can read definitely definitely wonderful stuff my guest in studio Eric Kruger author of a fantastic book called actor non verbo when we come back I will tell you how you can stand a chance of winning one of those my guest in studio author of the fantastic book actor non verba is Eric Kruger also the owner of the mental performance lab you're a coach you're a speaker we're gonna give away two copies you see of the book very kindly now we're gonna make this you see tonight I'm in a good mood so we're not asking you difficult questions or anything if you want to win the book okay all you have got to do is email just mix FM okay email mix FM not us you must email the word mix FM to coach at eric Kruger calm and it's spelt er ik so it's coach at Eric with a k Kruger calm and just say they mix 93.8 love to win a book be nice say hello Eric something like that okay don't just go give me the book and Eric's thing gonna randomly choose two people and you'll get the book perfect yeah I'll get it sent out ASAP it's a brilliant book I thoroughly enjoy reading it and as I said you talk about you know making people aware of things and everything this is this is my exercise in self-restraint in the morning yeah just do one one and leave it at that and then reflect on it during the course of the day and everything and any thoughts to go back to the previous the previous incarnation when when you were doing you know the the whole your first lot of websites etc etc sure not even remotely I love what I'm doing like absolutely love what I'm doing and I just said this there's so much happening in my life at the moment and you know we were actually discussing over here but like a lot of where I've gotten to at this stage has been a push meaning that the better man subscribers and the better man community pushed me into doing events and I loved it and it made me a better speaker and they pushed me into coaching by requesting it they pushed me into it and so a lot of what I've done has been this sort of push from people external to me I think that's amazing it's awesome because you know a lot of people who speak to us like oh yes I've always had the vision and that's always what I wanted to do and you speak about this push that yeah that's happened and it's almost as though you went yeah okay I didn't really think about that but I'll go with where it kind of takes me and and now I'm in a position where for for the very first time in a long time I have a big vision and I know exactly the kind of people that I want to work with in terms of coaching I know the stages that I want to speak on I know the workshops that I want to create I have a good understanding of the impact that I want to make so I feel now there's a big vision that's pulling and it's not as much a push anymore but I think you've been very fortunate that you've had the push now you've got sure now you've got the pulling though what is when you talk about this because one of the things I'm fascinated with is the mind as well and you know there's there's so much literature out there at the moment about and neuroscience and neuroplasticity and neurons that fire together wire together you know this whole sort of and sometimes it gets a bit free-free they're creating your reality thing but do you think having a compelling vision is is one of the one of the attributes to becoming a high achiever yeah you know I don't think there's anything wrong with push or pull you know they'll both get you to your destination yeah so I think if you have a good compelling vision awesome if you don't you don't need it you know like just show up yeah there's a there's a word I've been looking for the whole year now I finally found it like a little bit ago it's a German world word and it's something like finger sure I can't pronounce it but it but it means finger to peel and and what that means is that we have to get better understanding the nuance of life because everything is a duality like there's no right or wrong you know so is it is it the big vision or is it the push doesn't matter it's like it's what's relevant to your life at the moment have the finger to feel to to know where to go everyone has a morning routine everyone wakes up at 5 a.m. should I do the same no it's a finger to feel it is perhaps this is right for you perhaps this isn't perhaps it's right for you now perhaps it isn't perhaps it's right for you later perhaps it isn't but you have to understand that context and apply it to your life and yet so often we don't I mean sometimes it's called gut feel yeah you know but I like your that that kind of yeah it's a it's a fine touch yeah I had to develop yeah and it's becoming more present and yeah paying more attention yeah as soon as you do that things do become easier and a little clearer and listen to all the interviews and like take away all the success tricks and in tips and habits and techniques from all the successful people but do what works for you I think that's the very important thing because you know when I did it that was when I started out that was one of the things you know follow this one follow that one look at this and you kind of then go out and you want to be a little clone of Tony Robbins for example and eventually you know fortunately for me as I got old I thought hang on no no no no no no this is not what modeling actually is all about and it's taking what works and integrating that because that's a big thing it's the same with the book you can take the the sort of paragraphs call it that the teachings and integrate that one day at a time because after a while those days all add up they think you agree with that yeah yeah and the book the very first chapter is about accretion and accretion was like the first article I wrote that got quite a bit of traction and accretion is just the idea that we go through life accumulating things we accumulate our decisions we accumulate the actions that we take and ultimately if you want to change your life just change what you accumulate it's pretty much as easy and as difficult as that you are exactly a result of all the decisions that you've taken all the decisions that you've made and all the actions you've taken and so it's just so easy to understand that if I want to change that moving forward let me accumulate better things fantastic stuff you can't believe it we're out of time again thank you so much no thank you for your time I don't even get to ask you about the body guarding thing oh did you you've obviously done your homework Wow okay we haven't mentioned that on a yet really hmm maybe maybe I meant it's for the next time maybe we need to do that anyway my guest insulator Eric Krogerts and I thank you so much thank you if you'd like to stand a chance to win one of those two books all you got to do is send your email and say something nice to coach at eric with a k-e-r-i-k Krogert.com until next Monday you have yourselves a great one some great music lined up for you