Building Bridges: Fostering Connection and Collaboration in the Coaching Community

Hi and welcome to theYou World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us a special guest. Her name is Rebecca Nesbitt. Rebecca is a master connector and founder of the CEO crowd, which is all about connecting a community of driven women who are building their businesses one step at a time together.

Welcome to the show, Rebecca. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you.

Oh my gosh, Jill, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for the invite.

So tell us your story. How did you become a connector of people? Because that's something that's near and dear to my heart. I love this.

Oh, that's so fun. It's so I think that it's something that when when you look back on your life quite often I find that a lot of people do this. And I say at my grand old age of 30, when I look back on my life.

But I think it's something I've always I've always done. I've always been really good at including people and making people feel seen and heard and valued as well as.

Connecting them with other people that might be a vibe, like forever connecting friend groups. When I was younger and I think that that's something that I did probably out of necessity. I moved a lot when I was younger, so I kind of had to chameleon and fit in and then I would start to realize that people that weren't maybe in the same circles actually would have been really great connections.

We're on another, so I think it kind of started back then. But when it comes to business.

And.

Really, it kind of started in April of last year, so it would actually be pretty much bang on a year. Now we went to an event myself and my husband, I was super excited to go to a personal development event with my husband for the first time and we went to this event and I started to realize that.

Quite a lot of coaching is based on a very hierarchical structure. It is, you know, there's one person on stage or one person is the coach and telling everyone else this is this is what I believe and this is how you could believe too, should you want the results I have for example.

And I was at this event and I was noticing that the main thing that everyone wanted out of the event was community and connection and the parts that everyone loved were those parts where they were connecting with one another. So I started to think, first of all, I think there's a dismantling of the hierarchical structures that could happen that could really help us out in the world.

That could create potentially a more collaborative.

Humanity, I suppose, which is a way deeper topic than the question that you asked, but I started to think that then. But I also started to recognize that there were people that maybe weren't in the room.

That really needed to know people outside of the room, so we would get to the point where you broken out into little groups you'd be connecting with people and you'd get, you know, 5 minutes to speak. And I'd always be saying to people, oh, I have someone that you really need to meet.

So in that then I started to just connect people from that event and I started to realize, OK, I could actually just do this for all my friends that are entrepreneurs, that are all around the world, cause everyone's online. Why don't I just bring them together? And why don't we do this all together? So I started these networking events in April of last year and.

They started to book out really quickly. I sold a couple of ice. I sold. I sent. Excuse me, a couple of messages and the whole thing booked out in a second and I thought, OK, there's probably something in this. We started to book out 2-3 months in advance and I thought, OK.

We really need to double down on this because this is something that's working and at the time I was in one to one high ticket coaching and I really enjoyed that. I love my clients. It's been very profitable for me. It let me leave my job but let me move to America. Let me do many things.

But then I got to the point where I was like where where do you go next? Because you're gonna scale your time. That's all you're going to do, or you're gonna scale how much you get people to pay you.

And.

I just thought this is something that is right in my face that is saying like people need to be connected. So that's how that level of connection then came into my business. It's been something that innately I had always done, but then it really filtered into business because we got those events up and running and people were saying.

What's next? What's more? And that's where my membership was really born, and that's now literally what I do day and day out is I'm connecting entrepreneurs with the people that they need to talk to, for them, to really further their business. So connecting the right people with the right people.

That is such an amazing it's a skill, but it's also kind of a gift because yeah, you could learn it. But some people are just like they remember people, and they'll meet another person. It's kind of like playing that that card game where you put all the cards.

Down and then you match two and you turn them over and then you have to remember where.

That other one was.

And when you when you're matching people together, the collaborative things that come out of matching people so special and so spectacular, I I'm just like, as you could tell, I'm super excited. So how do your network?

Events go are they online? Are they in person? Are they both?

So we do online networking events. We actually launched our first in person this year, which was really exciting and we'll have another meet up in a few months and we're trying to kind of take them all over the world because we have a global audience. So I would really like to be able to serve our audience where they are. I think that's really important as a founder and as a leader that we don't always expect that people come to us, that we also go to them.

And I think.

Like.

That comes from that nature of being a connector like. I feel like I want to include everyone as much as possible, so they are definitely coming, but typically we would do these online so every Monday then we are on a call 2:00 PM central time and what we do is we invite all of.

Our women into the room.

We go through what to expect because I think that networking events, everyone runs them differently and also they can be really nerve wracking and I think that people that run networking events kind of forget that. I remember going to an online networking event and you had 45 seconds to say you're.

Pitch. I was just so nervous and it went so fast and I was shaking the whole time and I just thought I want a space.

Where people can.

Come. They can understand what's expected of them and they can just be supported and cared for along the way so that people that are just starting out, we quite often get people that are saying, you know, this is my first networking event and they do amazing.

And I think how is this your first networking event? But I do believe it's because.

We do a lot of kind of pre work. We send out a video before the event to say hey, this is what to expect. Then women come in, we lay that out again. We give people 2 minutes to talk. We don't interrupt people at the two-minute mark. We like to just snap an emoji in the corner of my screen just say like hey, let let's wrap it up and then.

We like to add if we can, and this is just dependent on how many people are in the room, we add a little connection question at the end where women will share this.

Was like the last conversation that we had was what is a failure that you're really grateful for now in hindsight. So we like to give people the the opportunity to actually really connect people on a soul level because I think that that is what not only business is about. But I think that's what life is about. It's like finding your tribe. You really need to know a lot of part of their soul.

So we like to infuse that as much as possible.

And that's how we run our network events. After our events, we then send a list of opportunities to our entire list. So we send the replay of the event because we obviously have to cap the numbers that come along to our events because you know there's only so many people you can have in a zoom room and facilitate well at one time and give everyone you know.

Equal attention and time and space.

So after the events we send out our replay with a bunch of opportunities for people to get support or get supported. So people come on and look for podcast guests or summit speakers, or they're looking for referrals or people to become affiliates with. And you know, it goes so far beyond just.

Getting clients and I think that's a that's a wonderful gift that we also have. We just had one of our most.

Recent.

Pieces of market research I was going through it and then at the end it just said by the way I have two expect income and I just thought well, that's really cool just from like being a part of what we do. And while that is really important, I think what is more important to me is that people are getting the support where they need it.

And that it goes so far beyond one person. And that's, I think, the blessing of community and again, the blessing of being a connector.

I I already believe that everyone is connected already. We are all connected just by virtue of the fact that we're in existence at this time.

Our molecules interchange, I mean everything about us is connected and when we can.

And help people remember, and I think it's more a case of remembering than recognizing that they are connected to others and and together we are so much more powerful and we create so much more amazing things we don't have. We've reached a point in.

In life where we don't have to be the best at everything.

But if we know people.

That are really good at at.

It sure enough our shortcomings and we help them in something else and then connect them somewhere else and it just makes the whole experience so much richer.

So.

I I did want to ask you how long your networking events are and and how many people that you have in them.

So our events are an hour long and we can host up to 25 women at a time.

That's that's kind of actually a lot. It's a lot more than I thought maybe you would have. So, uh, how do how do people join your your networking event? How do how does it, how does it all work?

Yeah.

Well, we really do a lot of organic sourcing at the moment. We are branching out into different streams of bringing people in and essentially they're they'll come across us whether it is through a podcast, whether it is through our website or Instagram or our Facebook channels. And essentially we have a link and it's the CEO.

Dot com you can check it out if you're looking for the event. Specifically it's forward slash. This is going to get long, but CEO, hyphen, crowd, hyphen, virtual hyphen events. So it's a little bit long, but if you go to theceocrowd.com you'll find what you're looking for.

And essentially, women come in that way, come to our events, and then I think that as well.

We get a lot of referral business, so when we have our events, we always like to tag everyone on Instagram that's come along and we find that we get a lot of followers that way that then see what we're doing and are interested in promoting their businesses too because.

It's a room of women that are.

Caring for each other, they're supporting one another and I think that that's really important and I think that's what a lot of us are missing. And in society, I think that we're really missing our tribes. Like, I think if it goes back.

To.

Primarily, you know, we were in community and I think that especially when you run an online business.

Then you can actually be very disconnected despite the amount of time you spend connected to social media. I think that it can actually, really.

Start to breed within you. Those elements of comparison and of judgement. So I think that when you see women together in a room smiling, having a good time, then I think a lot of people naturally want to be a part of that. And I mean, wouldn't we all? That's why I literally do what I do. I just think it's really cool.

Being surrounded by people that are proactive and actually want to turn up to an event and spend their time with people and share their energy I think is really powerful. So that's how that's how people usually find us.

So when when people do come to your networking events, do they generally come a few times? Is it like a one off deal? Do you charge for it? How does all that look?

So our networking events are free and your first intimate networking event. So that's kind of our Mondays is completely free. So you can see one and then you can see if it feels like the right fit for you. Obviously we have our membership and our Members can come to unlimited event.

But I also feel really called to share because I think everything is behind a pay wall now and that can be really frustrating. I think for entrepreneurs, but also with the understanding that that other person is running a business. So something that we've developed is we also run quarterly events where we bring.

Everyone from our network and we invite everyone. We invite them personally as well as we put it out on our social media channels, and we invite them to just a more curated room for them, which means that they'll come to one of our what would be usually our typically weekly weekly training.

And everyone comes to the room, they get a snippet of training and I say snippet because again, it comes back to, I think there are a lot of those hierarchical structures out there. I don't claim to have all of the right answers because if you're not doing 1 to one, I think it's very hard to actually give people the support that they need.

So we do a short training at the beginning and then we curate the rooms that people are broken out into so that they can.

Have facilitated discussions. Yes, out of what we've spoken about, but they actually have time to connect with one another. So that's something that we also do for free, because I think it's really important that.

We can't just have paid community because especially when it comes to our community, our Community number. So I think that everyone's looking for, you know, we want infinite scalability and so many people, whereas we don't play that game in the CEO crowd. We're looking for, you know, our membership will cap at 200 people and it's still relatively new.

We've only been running since September and we're on the way to that 200, that's for sure. So.

Week.

We can't just do things that are paid. I think that it's really important that we have a few free avenues that people have touch points throughout the year because sometimes it's not the right time to invest. Sometimes you want a little bit more information, sometimes you're in something and you're transitioning out of it and you're not sure where the.

Holding pattern is so I think that it's really important that we continue to offer a few of those free opportunities. So essentially if you want to come to us for free, then you can join one of our intimate networking events once per year and then all four quarterly events within the year and.

We keep people up to date via e-mail, obviously with everything that's going on. Should we do anything wild and crazy, which I've been known to do? That's extra. That's fun. So that's how people can can take you to.

Connect with us and so it sounds like that just being in your in your circle helps people connect even if they're not.

Actually going to the networking events like.

Just I I hate to say it this way, but just getting on your list or being in your communities would help people because they're seeing people come by them that they can connect with and figuring out what they're doing and you know, that's really key for finding people to collaborate with and.

You know, maybe you just reach out to them directly without having met them on the, UM, the networking event.

Is that?

And there's common. There's absolutely there's common ground, too, because you've both been to the same thing. So you you understand a little bit more about that particular person because you've been a part of a shared experience. So absolutely like, I think that it is completely invaluable what we do for free. Obviously, I'm going to think that.

And biased about business. But I do think it's invaluable because to get a list of people every single week that are completely new fresh leads to you.

That are potentially looking for your services is.

So insanely valuable, there's it's not quantifiable.

And I think that as well, should that person be the right fit for you, you can go back. You can watch the replay, you can really understand what.

They're.

About you can really design your pitch for that particular person.

In a very intricate way that is not available from other communities to my knowledge, and I feel really proud of that. I feel really proud of what we've created because essentially.

It's taking collaboration over competition very literally and I have said this so many times and my clients all laughing. My husband laughs too, but.

The people that will make the most money out of the CEO crowd are the people that are just coming to the event. And I mean like they're showing up to the network, they're showing up to the membership. They're keeping an eye on the emails because those are the people that are going to be able to get all of the quick wins.

Because they're just being really thoughtful. It is genuinely a business strategy in itself, and it's a gift to provide that because I think something that I feel very passionate about is that we have lost.

A level of service.

Within the coaching industry, since I've been a part of it, so I've been in coaching for 10 years.

Because.

Yeah, I I was just restarting, yeah.

Do you want me to keep?

Going from there.

Keep going. You're coaching for seven years.

So.

I coached for seven years for a government organization and in that time I really saw coaching shift and then we went online. So the pandemic then came around and then the insane boom of online coaching came around.

And and it wasn't all grounded within theory and within what coaching had originally been taught as which was really interesting to me. And I think that just in that transition, because it was an industry that just blew up essentially overnight.

There was something that was lost because it then became who's the best marketer in the room.

And.

I think that that is something that really grates on people.

So it's something that I want to be very cognizant of that when I invite people into an experience, I want it to be insanely beneficial. I want them to get as much out of it as possible, and I want them to get the results and I want them to have a good time. And I think that.

Especially I work with female entry.

Miners.

Especially female entrepreneurs just have the weight of the world on their shoulders all the time and they don't have someone flying in with, you know, a superhuman cake saying. Let me just like, take the load off.

For a second.

Like, here's actually a room of leads that you don't have to spend 10 hours on social media trying to source.

Because you're at the beginning and that's really hard. I think that that's hugely beneficial and.

I think that it's really important that we support people on this journey.

Because it is really hard and it's really lonely and sometimes you don't know where to turn.

So that's why I'm so passionate about the way that we do things. I think that we do things with the absolute most value for the consumer, paid or unpaid in mind.

I love this trend that's happening now in the coaching industry. I've been in sales my whole adult life, which is like 40 years started way back when and I know.

I know there was a period of time just before the pandemic hit where, you know, I was selling high ticket coaching for other people online and it.

The coaches that I was working with, I I really liked what they were doing and that's kind of what inspired me to to start the podcast to begin.

With but it it shifted a lot. Instead of trying to like almost prey on these people that didn't have, I mean they got into coaching because just wanted to help people and then they're they're stuck with this word selling and.

Their eyes, just like, get really big and they glaze over and they're like, oh, God, I don't want to be selling anybody anything. I just want to help them. And the idea that selling is helping. We've just had this awful bro.

Selling mentality that's been like pushed on on the community for so long that we're just like, you know, those guys, those guys are really good at manipulating you. They're they're almost politicians. They're some of them are that good.

But they.

The coaching the women in coaching, particularly, I feel like we're we're moving into a kind of sales slash serving slash helping.

UM.

Way of of interacting with each other. And yes, there's money involved and we're getting a little more comfortable with asking for money, but we're asking for money in, in terms of an energy exchange, not a I just want your money and I'll see you later. Good luck with whatever it is that I've slept together for you. Which?

It never feels good. It doesn't. As an entrepreneur, it doesn't feel good to me to do that to clients and as a client they're just like, hey, wait a minute.

I thought you were going.

To help me, you know.

And it's it's just to me really refreshing to see the the shift that I see happening and you know, things like what you're doing are really lending to that flavor of of entrepreneurship and and interaction with.

Each other.

Yeah, I think that you have really important topic when we're looking at kind of broad hustle culture. It's can you hit five figures, can you hit six, can you hit seven? Can you hit eight? Can you hit nine? OK, well, you could actually work less and you could just charge more. And while I think that all of the things that they say.

There's actually a time place in the season for them for sure. Like they're said, because they work. It's not because they don't work, but I think what we are really stepping into and this is the shift that I see and I'd love your thoughts on this joke cause I could nerd out about this all the time.

I think the shift that we're seeing is alignment and I've been a part of coaching programs that have been, you know, $10,000 for like price programs and.

Being a part of it as like the team delivering it and I've just thought this is not $10,000.

Like this is a house deposit and people are putting it into this program and not getting the results in 12 weeks and then they're left with nothing apart from $10,000 to pay back and.

I just.

I'm just so sad for the people that have been a part of things like that. I have a friend.

Carly, she's actually come into our membership to deliver a social media training, and she was $70,000 in debt just in courses. And for me and my husband, we took on a $25,000 payment over the last year of a community.

And I mean lessons learned. But just like the value is not the.

There and I, I'm so grateful for that experience because it showed me that you can create something.

Absolutely incredible. And literally wow people for doing actually what seems like very little to me. It seems like very little for me to care about how people feel, how people think, how to anticipate their needs before they have them and craft something that's going to be really helpful.

Because.

As you don't have to do that when you know you've been in the online coaching space for 15 years, you were part of the boom. You had the marketing skills, and now you're millions of followers and you're just working on sales statistics of you're going to get 1% conversion of your emails. And I think that.

There's a place for numbers in every business like I live and die by my numbers for sure.

But when you use the numbers as.

Is.

A way to not actually care about people. Then I think it can be supremely hurtful. So I feel like the shift that we're coming into is alignment and my alignment is.

Essentially another reason why we transitioned into the membership apart from it being.

Something that, just like in my business, nothing had ever taken off the same way.

Our alignment and I say our because this is a, this is a partnership decision too for myself and my husband is that I work less hours. So to do that then we need more people.

In the one hour, could I create a group program? Yes, but then that's not recurring.

Our option for us now there are also downfalls of recurring revenue that no one talks about things like.

Things like you never get a week off.

Because you've promised a weekly call, so when it's Christmas and Christmas is on your call day, you're changing that call day and you're still delivering an extra call Christmas time. So I think that you have to think about alignment and alignment for.

Us is for me to work blessed so that we can start a family that truly is my alignment, and that's where I'm going in my life and that's what I want. So I have to think about my business in that decision and then we have to think about, OK, well, financially, what does that look like for us and what really is the number that we're looking for now we're supremely blessed. And I always say I always preference this with, like, so much privilege myself and my husband are very financially privileged.

But we also had to take into consideration that we still have to generate more money and what do we want that to look like and we can build for that now.

And I think that this is the shift that everyone's going through. It's it's alignment for you and your life and your business as like a three pronged thing like does it give you fulfillment and joy? Does it align with your life and where it's going?

And is it the right offer?

I think that that is where we will find alignment and that's where we'll start to kind of untangle this web that we've gotten into of like, work, less charge more. You actually don't have to really care about the value. You can just repeat the program.

Because that doesn't. That doesn't change the world. That does not help people versus same period of time. People will eventually leave those programs and something new has to be created because we're also very aware now as a buying market to come back to sales.

We're aware when the video that gets sent to us is that person from 7 years ago where they had the old haircut, or maybe they had more hair. They're dude, you know, we're very aware that that's not recent and that that's not specifically for me.

And I think that.

The markets changing and I think that's really exciting and I feel really excited to be a part of what I believe is.

A better market for everyone. I think that it truly is where we can connect, where we can collaborate more, where we can help each other, where we can stop having this like battle of like.

Taking each other's business like that's not. It's a cool world now.

Competition.

Instead of a coopetition and I'm all about coopetition where everybody gets to be appreciated for their uniqueness and and valued for their uniqueness, and doesn't have to be competing with anybody else because they are unique.

Like it's.

And.

They have something special to bring.

Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

So, Rebecca, how do people get in touch with you? And what would you like them to do now that they know about this amazing community that you've got going on?

We'd love to support them. We'd love to hear about their businesses come along to a networking event. You'll find us everywhere at the CEO crowd. We're mainly on Instagram. We're also over on Facebook.

You could check us out at our website, www.theceocare.com, and we'd love to invite you to an event so that we can get your business out to our community so that we can share what you need and your opportunities that you maybe have for other people so that we can support everyone to grow. So we would absolutely.

Of that, and that would be the next steps. And also if you're someone who feels a little bit nervous, has some questions, then you'll find me in the DMS at the CEO crowd. Feel free to forever just send us a message. Pop us a question. No question is silly and know that it will be just met with so much joy. Because imagine someone sending you a message about your business.

You would, you'd find Supreme joy in that. So it's always welcomed and also.

If you're someone that knows online entrepreneurs in this space, women that really could use a space to go to be supported and uplifted, then we would love to connect with them too. So please feel free to connect us if it feels like a good fit.

Awesome. So what's the one thing you hope the audience takes away from this conversation today?

My gosh, what? We went in so many directions that I was not anticipating Jill in the best way. So I think that.

To keep it really simple, it's actually to just.

Be kind to other people. I think everyone in the world of business.

Is struggling with something or has struggled with something and could always use a kind word. A podcast review. I think that just the concept of being kind and if we can inspire you to connect some people that you think would be really great fits for one another, whether it's in your personal life, in your business.

Life then I think that that's how we could keep this.

Conversation. Really alive.

I love it.

Thanks for joining me today. Thanks Jill.

Still.