Math, Momentum, and Mastery: Building the Coaching Practice You Love
Building a Life You Love: The Simple Math of Success
When it comes to crafting a coaching business or any entrepreneurial endeavor, the journey can feel overwhelming. However, as Mark Reynolds shared on the Amanda Kaufman Show, success is often simpler than we make it. With a few mindset shifts and actionable strategies, you can build a life and business that you truly love.
The Decision to Build Your Own Path
Entrepreneurship starts with a pivotal decision: Are you going to work for someone else, or will you take the leap and build something of your own? For Mark, the decision to choose the entrepreneurial track was fueled by a deep desire to create a business aligned with his values and vision.
Mark recalls advice from a highly successful coach: “This business is very simple. It’s offers minus nos equals client yeses.” The math is clear: the more offers you make, the more “no’s” you’ll receive—but those “no’s” are the path to the “yeses” that build your success. This clarity reframes rejection not as failure, but as an essential part of the process.
Redefining Your Calendar
One of the most impactful ideas Mark shared was the transformation of your calendar from a prison to a wish list. Many people view their schedules as restrictive and burdensome, filled with obligations they’d rather avoid. But what if your calendar could be a reflection of your dreams?
Mark encourages clients to schedule their lives intentionally, creating moments that feel like unwrapping gifts under a Christmas tree. Imagine looking at your schedule and thinking, “I can’t believe I get to do this today!” That level of intentionality brings joy and fulfillment to everyday life.
This shift isn’t just about productivity—it’s about reclaiming your time and aligning it with your deepest values. Your calendar can be a tool for joy and achievement if you plan it with purpose.
Success Is Just Math
The fear of rejection often holds people back, but Mark frames it differently: every “no” is simply a step toward a “yes.” If one client says “yes” for every hundred offers you make, then your job is to keep making offers until you hit that magic number. It’s not personal—it’s just math.
Mark illustrates this principle with a powerful analogy: imagine you’re the Coast Guard, and your clients are lost at sea. It’s your job to find and rescue them, not to wait for them to show up at your door. This proactive mindset is essential for building momentum and finding your ideal clients.
Permission to Be Yourself
Authenticity is a cornerstone of success in coaching and beyond. Mark emphasizes the importance of giving yourself permission to show up as your true self. Early in his coaching journey, he noticed how many people delayed their success by trying to mimic others. Clients can sense when you’re not being genuine, and that makes it harder to build trust and connection.
Amanda echoed this sentiment, sharing that much of her own success came from embracing her unique strengths and quirks. Confidence is infectious, and it starts with loving and accepting who you are. When you give yourself permission to be unapologetically you, it opens doors to deeper client relationships and a stronger sense of purpose.
The Role of Iteration
Success rarely comes from a single, perfect plan. Instead, it’s built through constant iteration. Amanda and Mark discussed how treating business as a series of experiments allows you to learn and adapt. Each “failure” is simply a lesson that brings you closer to your goals.
Mark noted, “Reps are the key.” Whether it’s improving your marketing, honing your offer, or adjusting your approach, consistent effort is what drives growth. This approach takes the pressure off and encourages you to embrace the process.
Finding Joy in the Process
Both Amanda and Mark highlighted the importance of joy in building a business. When your work aligns with your values and brings you happiness, it doesn’t feel like a grind. Mark shared how he reframed his work by helping clients turn their schedules into wish lists, and Amanda reflected on how her love for connecting with others keeps her energized through her podcast and coaching.
Joy isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a critical component of sustainable success. When you enjoy what you do, it becomes easier to stay consistent, embrace challenges, and show up authentically.
Three Keys to Building a Life You Love
Mark distilled his philosophy into three actionable principles:
Design a Life You Want: Don’t build a business or life based on someone else’s definition of success. Create something that aligns with your values and brings you joy.
Give It Enough Energy: Success doesn’t happen overnight. Put consistent effort into your goals, and don’t expect instant results. Momentum builds over time.
Reframe Stress as a Math Problem: If you feel overwhelmed, zoom out. Look at the bigger picture—whether it’s a week, a month, or a year—and adjust your timeline accordingly. Stress often comes from imposing artificial constraints on yourself.
Taking the First Step
If there’s one takeaway from Mark’s insights, it’s that the path to success begins with action. Start by giving yourself permission to try, fail, and iterate. Replace self-doubt with curiosity and treat each “no” as a stepping stone toward your next “yes.”
Look at your calendar today. Does it excite you? If not, what’s one small change you can make to align it with your dreams? Remember, success isn’t about getting everything perfect—it’s about making progress, one intentional step at a time.
As Amanda and Mark remind us, success is just math—but it’s also about joy, intention, and the courage to forge your own path. So, take that first step. Your future self will thank you.
Chapter:
00:00 Introduction to Mark Reynolds
02:25 Creating a Life of Joy and Purpose
04:18 The Power of Iteration in Business
06:54 Understanding Business as an Experiment
10:50 The Role of Luck and Preparation in Success
13:49 Embracing Change and Seizing Opportunities
18:03 The Importance of Authenticity in Coaching
22:30 Key Strategies for Coaches to Succeed
Full Transcript
Mark Reynolds (00:00)
One in a hundred wants what I need. Great. Now it's just math. Three people a day times 30 days in a month is 90 people. You probably have a client at end of the month.
Amanda Kaufman (00:28)
Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. We are continuing our series on the coaches that don't suck. And I had to, had to find room on Mark's dance card because he is definitely a coach that doesn't suck. Mark Reynolds, welcome to the show.
Mark Reynolds (00:43)
Yeah, well, thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Savannah. I'm loving it. I can't wait. I'm so glad that we finally were able to put this together. let's rock and roll. Let's rock and roll.
Amanda Kaufman (00:50)
Yes, so good. Let's rock and roll. Well, for the benefit of
dear listener, would you just take 30 seconds and catch us up on what you're working on these days and what your background is?
Mark Reynolds (01:02)
Yeah, so I'm a life coach, share certified high performance with you, Amanda, and I run in lot of the same circles and I am a proud Texan and barbecue affectionado. And primarily in my business, I'm coaching one-on-one clients. For this group, I also am the owner and founder of Success Auditors, which is a group community that I'm launching 2025 that's exclusively for internal auditors and financials.
that's going to help them meet their certified CPEs, continued professional education credits in the upcoming year while also having a growth curriculum. So that's kind of like what's happening on the background. So that's a little sneak peek into my world. But ideally for most people, am creating this thing. We're cutting into the holidays, but I've been working on this idea of what would life be like if every day was going to bed
Amanda Kaufman (01:42)
Tune!
Mark Reynolds (01:57)
waking up like it would be Christmas morning. So that's how I want life. Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (01:59)
I love that. That's
Mark Reynolds (02:02)
So yeah, today it's, just about trying to get people to start scheduling and thinking about their lives, especially around their calendars as something they would like to have in versus something that's happening to them. And I don't understand what happened where, like where we gave up our dreams and our calendars became like these prisons instead of a wish list. So I'm helping my clients create.
Amanda Kaufman (02:02)
good.
Mark Reynolds (02:25)
days and weeks and months where something pops up in your calendar and you're like, holy crap, I can't believe that's on my calendar, just like the gift under the Christmas tree. You asked Santa and it delivered. So that's what we're doing in my coaching practice. That's what I'm trying to help folks do. that's, thought, you know, for us, Amanda, when we talked, like, we just thought like, hey, how do you make these things happen? Like how do coaches make their dreams come true? Like how do you get your wish list? How does Christmas sound wonderful? Yeah. So that's me.
Amanda Kaufman (02:37)
I love that.
I love that. It's so it's
so good. It's so good. you know, Mark, I I I've loved, you know, full disclosure, dear listener, Mark and I have worked together. But I think one of the things that I really appreciate about you, Mark, is that you have so much joy and you have so much clarity about how your your past role was like not.
Mark Reynolds (02:58)
Hahaha
Amanda Kaufman (03:20)
necessarily a culture of activating joy. And I'm just so delighted to hear that you're continuing to serve that community with your new community that you're releasing in 2025. That is amazing. That's so cool. So, so, Mark, I am really curious, like, when we sat down to chat, you started talking right away about some observations you've seen in our marketing. You know, you've been in our community for a few years now.
Yeah, a few years now and you've been to like some of the live events. Yes, yes. So one of the things we were actually talking about with the power of iteration, because you've seen you've seen me iterate from, you know, Amanda Kaufman, coach the the crush method to the coaches plaza. You saw me yet grow the the the group that is now called the coaches that don't suck, but it's iterated a few times. So I'm curious, like what role has iteration played in your business?
Mark Reynolds (03:50)
a few years since I was a pup.
Coach Plaza.
Yeah, we alluded to, you and I talk about this all the time, reps are the key. So if I remember right, you had like an engineering background in school? Yeah, yeah, so I was a physics major and a psych major. And one of the things that I love about discovering the universe is scientific experiments. I've loved it since a kid and that's how I think business is.
Amanda Kaufman (04:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, chemical engineer.
Mark Reynolds (04:41)
Right. And one of the things I said that I really respect about you, Amanda, and the people that come into your program and into your community is this idea of like, we don't know what the answer is. I treat everything like a business experiment. And I go like, Hey, does this work? Let's test a variable, see if we get the result we want. And it's never me. Like so many coaches get hung up on like, if something doesn't go wrong, that that's like, I'm wrong. You're not wrong. You just did a rep. You just ran an experiment.
Amanda Kaufman (04:59)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Reynolds (05:09)
You know, you got a null hypothesis to nerd out a little bit, right? So, you know, somebody told me, I don't know who said it, but I just, to my core, believe it, 100%, you either get the result that you want or the lesson.
Amanda Kaufman (05:23)
It's so true. It's so true. I think especially in our coachy space, know something that definitely got into my head that I had to unlearn was this idea that like a coach, a coach is the business, a coach is the personal brand. And to like learn, no, no, no, you're the architect of...
Mark Reynolds (05:23)
So.
Amanda Kaufman (05:43)
that and there are so many ways to approach that because a personal brand is really a personal connection in like the way that you connect with people and there's lots of cool amazing ways to connect with people and what I was like running into is I had like body dysmorphia kind of things going on I was like I don't I'm I can't be six feet tall and blonde I did try the blonde thing I did do the blonde thing for a while but like there was there were certain physiological things that I was like gosh I'm never gonna be
Mark Reynolds (06:09)
Yup.
Amanda Kaufman (06:13)
able
to move that mountain is how I felt and then I just felt stuck and it wasn't until I got into that attitude of like well test it like try this other way try this other way try this other way it turns out there's a bunch of different ways to climb a mountain
Mark Reynolds (06:28)
Yeah, I remember one of my coming out of my coaching certification and after after certification they did the entrepreneurial components. You had to make a decision like, hey, are you going to go work for somebody else or do you want to build your business?
And I went the entrepreneurial track and I remember the coach and she's 10 figures at the time, 10 figures, seven, eight figure coach at the time. And she said, look, this business is very simple.
Amanda Kaufman (06:41)
Mm.
Mark Reynolds (06:54)
It is offers minus nos equals client yeses.
And so it yeah, right. It's it and she's like you think I'm successful because thousands of people log in on my Instagram or come to me and she says no I'm successful because 295,000 people told me no this month to the offer I made. And so when you start to go through a lot of business, business is just math.
Amanda Kaufman (07:00)
So good. I love that. It's so true. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Reynolds (07:24)
It's just math, right? nerd, right? Engineering, is true. If you're not getting the results you want, it's not like, yes, as we get caught up. Like, I was so proud for so long on I had 100 % consult rate for meets, get somebody on the phone, close him, right? But then you go like, well, so what? What is one out of one, two out of two, right? If you need a full practice, better figure out like,
Amanda Kaufman (07:38)
Right? my God.
Mark Reynolds (07:51)
One in a hundred wants what I need. Great. Now it's just math. Three people a day times 30 days in a month is 90 people. You probably have a client at end of the month.
Like people are so worried about them, but it's like, I use another analogy. It is, it's like, I imagine my clients are lost at sea and I'm like the coast guard. Like I got to go find them. I'm just like, I got to go out there and get them. And I always imagined.
Amanda Kaufman (08:12)
Okay.
my God, can
you imagine if the Coast Guard was all like, well, if the ship doesn't run aground in this little area that's like super convenient for me, like it just happens to be in my backyard, then I'm not going to rescue them. Can you imagine?
Mark Reynolds (08:30)
No. But also, can you imagine you're at sea, and the Coast Guard pulls up, and they're going to go, are you the right Coast Guard? Are you the right rescue ship? You could be a fisherman, right? It could be a Dunkirk situation. And they're going to be like, no, are you certified to rescue me? No, hell no. I'm here. Do you want to go? That's how coaches are.
Amanda Kaufman (08:51)
Yeah, which other options would you like to take? Yeah.
Mark Reynolds (08:54)
Like what? Like you want to wait for the next fisherman? Like clients don't care. So it's like, we think like they're going to come to us like Mecca, like, come, right?
Amanda Kaufman (09:03)
my gosh, I am so
guilty of that one. was like, I was completely convinced that my website was going to be like the thing. then and then I stayed up all night because I'm like, the website's too ugly because I didn't have any skills as a web developer. Hello. I didn't know anything about graphic design. I knew nothing about copy. And I'm like, why can't I just get this thing out of the box to look like that guy's right? Like I was so stressed about it. And it turned out that my website played him.
very minor role in the whole thing, right? It's amazing what our minds can do to us. You you bring up such a great point about precision and certainty, you know? And I think like what I've noticed in the coaching space is there are people who are hyper attached to certainty. they have to know, it's kind of like your experience when you have the 100 % close rate where it's like, I have to know in advance this is probably gonna close.
Right. Because if I don't know in advance that it's probably going to close, then I wasted my time. Right. Is the narrative that we tell ourselves. So that's an example of like hyper precision and hyper hyper certainty or desire for certainty. The other thing that I see is on like the complete other side where people are like, it's all luck. It's completely random. And, you know, it's it's this this ethereal thing that is completely out of your control.
And my experience so far is I'm like, is somewhere in the middle. It's somewhere in that middle zone, you know, where there's certainly a roll of luck. You've probably know you mentioned that you noticed the the brand was changing. We're doing these podcasts now, which, by the way, are my joy. I just love getting to reconnect with you. Like so cool. And like other people can watch it so voyeuristic. It's great. You know, so like.
But when I look at some of the success in my business, and I've even had like million dollars go through a Facebook group, for example, there were elements of luck in that. There were for sure things that I did with precision to make that happen, but there was a huge amount of luck. So some of the luck was, I mean, this sounds terrible, but there was something that happened in the winter of 2020. And it drove a lot of people online who might not have been otherwise comfortable being online.
And then there's changes in social media and the different platforms that I was like there and doing it like right then and ready for it that someone else who didn't have quite the same skill level that I did to be able to take advantage of the opportunity wouldn't and couldn't have taken advantage of the opportunity. So, you what I've noticed in business is there's certainly like a role of luck where there's things that you can't predict or it's way bigger than you or there's like factors beyond your control. But I also think that there is a good amount of
preparation and precision that you can create by continuing to work on your excellence. So I just like went off there, but you got me thinking about precision, you know, versus like magnitude, you know, magnitude of your impact.
Mark Reynolds (12:03)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I think a couple things just to kind of close your loop on there. One, I believe luck, but we're all lucky in some areas, right? Some people are like really pretty. Some people have like amazing hair. I don't have that. Right? You know, like, like.
Amanda Kaufman (12:15)
Totally.
Thank you.
Mark Reynolds (12:23)
Come on, some people can dance. I'm not on TikTok. That's not my thing, right? So we all have our luck. But the one thing, Amanda, that I hope you don't take away is 2020, everyone saw the opportunity. I saw it. I didn't go online every day. I huddled in and waited. You didn't. You were like, hey, this is the skill. This is the opportunity. And you went for it.
Amanda Kaufman (12:27)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Reynolds (12:53)
Right? And
so a large portion is people creating their own luck. And you and I have kind of talked pre-call and some other areas too around this is about knowing who you are and seeing all the steps that led you up to that. And so one of the things I tell folks, I tell my son this all the time, he's just starting his career, is I look back on my career and I couldn't have planned it that way. Because I tell folks, I got almost nothing I ever asked for.
Amanda Kaufman (12:57)
Hmm.
Mark Reynolds (13:21)
I always got something better and I didn't even know about it. I didn't know a mentor would show up that would create an opportunity for me. when I made my first million, I didn't know that that opportunity existed financially. I didn't grow up in that background and then somebody shows up. So for coaches that sit there and try to plan everything before they get going on how they're going to to the finish line, like it's not going to turn out that way. And you can tell that. I mean, you've got
Amanda Kaufman (13:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark Reynolds (13:49)
You're farther up the road than I am too, right? And you go like, but I have done this, what I've done. No, not when you started, not when you first thought about hanging out your shingle. You grow. And as you
Amanda Kaufman (13:58)
a thousand percent.
I had no idea. I had no idea. Like, and I would I love biasing towards action, as you know, and I learned so much being basically ignorance on fire.
Mark Reynolds (14:07)
Yes, yes.
Amanda Kaufman (14:13)
Like I just I was figuring out so many things as I did it. And, you know, that was actually a bit of a identity conflict, to be honest with you, because I did grow up in a in a very intellectualized kind of a household. And, you know, we got it. We got to get the high score on our grades. You know, we got to do really well. You know, we got to know what's up intellectually. Like that's a big part of my family identity. And so for me to kind of.
Mark Reynolds (14:32)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Kaufman (14:41)
embrace the entrepreneur who is perhaps a bit more of a risk taker, you know, was a really big change. I'm curious, like for you, you've had like quite a bit of progress over the past few years, you know, developing your private practice and, you know, now you're getting ready to do this group thing. And you kind of alluded that like there was a time where you weren't quite ready, even as you saw opportunities, you were kind of letting them go by. But something obviously changed.
Mark Reynolds (14:47)
Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (15:11)
I'm really curious what that was. What activated you? What switched the switch so that you were taking those clients on and you were starting to really seize that opportunity?
Mark Reynolds (15:21)
super vulnerable. Yeah. So a couple of things have happened.
So we talk about these dreams, right? So I had this 2020 vision I've shared with some folks that are closer to me. And I had this vision of, I was gonna hit some milestones. I had hit some financial milestones. My son was graduating. And so I had this idea of moving to Tuscany and I had rented a villa.
And I was just going to check out for a couple of years and write and pursue some other passions. You know, I coach, but there's a part of me that's very much still the student, the professor. I'm very much into the why, you know, it was, I chose coaching over a PhD. So there's these two pieces of me. And I know you share that as well, like a deep interest in the art of coaching and the science behind why stuff works as well as just the client delivery.
And COVID kind of disrupted that. And so when you say, I saw this opportunity, my focus was like, I was holding on to this dream that I didn't want to let go, even though I knew the facts were saying it was unrealistic. I wasn't moving to Italy in May when COVID hit in Italy in March. But I was like,
Amanda Kaufman (16:15)
Hmm.
Yeah, sometimes it
just happens like that. It's kind like you were saying earlier, I've asked for so many things and it didn't work out, but then I wound up with something else.
Mark Reynolds (16:39)
Yeah. And then, you know, there's other areas that you talk to around this. There's like some weird dynamics. know like you shared, like, I know you grew up in a male dominated industry. One of the things that's different about me is I'm a man that's grown up working for women my whole career. I worked in women started foundations, right? So there, a lot of times it's really strange for me, but it's also a superpower that I have in coaching, like my executive women. It's because I was the one man in the room.
Amanda Kaufman (16:55)
Right, yes.
Mark Reynolds (17:08)
with women talking about business and how things go and like just listening to them behind the doors. And I'm like, but also knowing like, wait, hold on. that's not like, how did you guys get that? Like the patriarchy is not here. It's just matriarchy running the business here. You know, it's not, unless it's me, I'd always ask them like, wait, did I do that? And they'd say, no, you know. And so it's just this super interesting concept when you get around different things. I know I
diverts off the 2020, but just this idea about you get ideas in your head. And if you haven't explored them, which is why I think coaching is like the ultimate superpower. So I say, if you don't have a coach going into 2024 and 2025, you are at a serious disadvantage. So if you're a coach, you are selling superpower, like Pac-Man pellets to your clients. Because you, you like,
Amanda Kaufman (18:00)
I love that. Yeah, it's so true.
Mark Reynolds (18:03)
I couldn't do that until I had my own coach and I was like, hey, all this. And I think you remember we were at the mastermind and I finally asked Brendan a question that I've been holding onto for a couple of years about, hey, how do you go into this commercial space? But someone had said a while back, hey, Mark, like, we're going to ask you, like, as a, it's just a man to step back and create space for people. Right. And so that's why I felt a lot of 2020 was like, Hey, you had your turn.
Amanda Kaufman (18:14)
wow.
Mark Reynolds (18:32)
step back, let other voices have a moment. So I was like, sure. But it flipped in me in 2024, right? For a lot of folks. I'm like, because I started noticing in the mastermind and in my clients, they're like, and even Brendan said, he said, hey, I could listen to you talk on anything all day. And I said, that's like for me, I thought I got permission again to come back.
Amanda Kaufman (18:41)
Huh?
Mark Reynolds (18:58)
And it was interesting because a lot of folks are saying, I've never seen you so confident. Mark, I've never seen this leadership side of you. And I said, well, it's interesting because that's the default me. That's how most of my peers know me from years back, but not the coaching community because I've been quiet. And so that's what's driving this for me. Yeah, is I was like,
Amanda Kaufman (19:14)
Yeah, you were ready. I love this.
I love this so much. know, one of the new mandaisms in 2024 is your progress is found in permission. So it's like when you're not experiencing that progress, it's like, well, where are you withholding permission, whether it's like permission to speak, permission to act, permission to change, permission to pursue, like, what is it that you're not feeling a base level of permission? And then like,
Mark Reynolds (19:43)
Yes.
Amanda Kaufman (19:44)
what needs to happen for you to grant yourself that permission because so often we think it's like other people's opinions or other people's, you know, perspectives. And the truth is like, really, no one's going to grant you permission, right? Like they're they they might grant you encouragement sometimes, but never really the permission until you give that to yourself. Right. You're going to stay in this proverbial cage. And I'm so glad to hear that you granted yourself some permission to speak up because you are
Mark Reynolds (19:58)
Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (20:14)
Brilliant and you do want the best thing for people and you know, the world is better because you gave yourself permission. That's awesome.
Mark Reynolds (20:14)
Ha
Well, yeah, and I would say to the audience, right? What was that, the fourth wall or the third wall? like to you, dear listener, you, hey, yeah, right, exactly. It's like, hold on, like come back to us, whatever you've been doing, get off email, come back and listen. You have permission to do you and to be you and to run the business in the way that you instinctually know to do. That was my breakthrough.
Amanda Kaufman (20:27)
Dear listener, I gotta take a Bridgerton.
Mark Reynolds (20:51)
And that's the thing that when I've said other folks, said, what was your success? I said, I did it my way. And I had the most untraditional military career. I had the most untraditional consulting career. I told you, I didn't grow up in the normal business. And I always felt like that was a disadvantage. I said that to people. was like, I always feel different. I'm a lefty, just like you. I wasn't gifted and talented.
Amanda Kaufman (20:51)
I love it.
Mark Reynolds (21:14)
And then like I was the nerd among nerds. Like I was even kind of nerdy for them. They were like, whoa, you know? And then you go like, but that's my superpower.
Amanda Kaufman (21:19)
Whoa, dude.
That's it. That's it. And you know what people find to be very I have found to be very infectious is confidence. And lot of confidence does come from permission to love yourself and permission to like be cool with who you are. And it kind of teaches other people how to treat you because you're already treating yourself that way. So good. So Mark, what are. sorry.
Mark Reynolds (21:43)
And it's also...
I was
just gonna say one last thing on this. then the other key, think, especially for coaches in your community is the more you yourself, the more authentic and clients understand that. So one of the ways that clients, early coaches delay their success is in trying to mimic somebody else. And people feel that which makes enrollment harder, which makes marketing harder. Everything about it is harder because you're playing this method actor. You're trying to be the coach.
Amanda Kaufman (22:07)
So good.
Mark Reynolds (22:16)
rather than just be you as a coach and let the clients come find you.
Amanda Kaufman (22:21)
So good.
Yeah, be you as the coach. I love that. So Mark, what are three ways that a coach cannot suck?
Mark Reynolds (22:30)
Yeah, I think we kind of tried to hit a handful of them right here. So the first one is, is not being you. You know, I think it's so I'll call it failure. How do you fail as a coach? Right? It's you. But it's the first thing you do is you build a practice that, you don't want by being a coach that you don't want, because that's what you were told success is. And that's, that's whether or not you're a coach or an executive or an entrepreneur, the worst thing you can do is build a life. Right. That you don't want. that's success as a failure.
Amanda Kaufman (22:40)
Yeah.
Mark Reynolds (22:58)
That's the one. The other error...
Amanda Kaufman (22:59)
Right? It's like building
your own cage.
Mark Reynolds (23:02)
Right. And then being resentful that you have this, it's like, well, who gave people permission to control your calendar or to tell you to build your practice? And we go like, I build my practice different than almost everyone I know. And everyone tells me I'm doing it wrong. My bank account tells me something different.
Amanda Kaufman (23:20)
Boom. There it is.
Mark Reynolds (23:21)
Right?
So does my joy. I go like, no, this is, I'm building the way I want to do it on my time.
Amanda Kaufman (23:24)
Mm-hmm.
Well, you're
the only one that really has full 360 degree context. You know, so I think whenever somebody looks from the outside, I always try to remind myself of that. I'm like, they see a sliver, right? And maybe they see a bigger piece of the pie. Like, for example, you've been you've been in connection with me for a long time. You've seen like a much bigger piece of the pie as compared to someone who just met me today. You know, but it's still like just.
Mark Reynolds (23:34)
Yeah.
It's still a small piece.
Amanda Kaufman (23:56)
sliver we're the only ones that get to see the 360.
Mark Reynolds (23:59)
Yeah, I think the other big area that we shared on and I said one of things I really respect about you is coaches don't put enough energy into their business, into their life. So there's this whole conversation. I don't know who started it, but I love it. Talk about momentum. And it's like, well, I post it every day for a week. And I did this thing for this month. And I'm losing weight. I ate right today.
Amanda Kaufman (24:18)
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Mark Reynolds (24:27)
Right, well that's the starting gate. And people think like, I did all this so I deserve a client. No, no, no, no, no. You just leveled up to the amount of activity that gets the ball rolling. And now it's like, that's, you just like, that's my growth. Like, I should be able to do that. Like, I should just be able to write an email every day. I should be able to market. And I should have client calls and do consults. And I shouldn't be like, my god, I just ran a marathon. No, of course not. Like, that's the level up. And like,
one of the things I know like, I could just see with you and that's like 2020 and other areas. It's like, as you did the reps, like you were like, I can do this and I can do that. And that's what made you like a pro as an entrepreneur. Like the skills come there. So I think those are the two big things, like building the life that you want and given, given enough energy. And the third component, since you said we have to have three, it's still the same thing is any drama that's in your mind. I call it's just a math problem.
Amanda Kaufman (25:12)
I love it.
Mark Reynolds (25:23)
You just took the timeline for completion and you brought it too close. Just push it out a little bit. Overwhelmed today? Look at the week. Too much in the week? Look at the month. Give yourself a year, like the whole decade thing. like stress is just a math problem. You've just mentally created some constraint that doesn't exist. It's all made up. So have fun. Yeah, we just made.
Amanda Kaufman (25:27)
That's it. That's it. That's it.
I love it. I love it. You're making it up. I love it. I love it so much.
Mark, how can people follow you? What's the best way?
Mark Reynolds (25:51)
Yeah, well,
easiest way is I'm an old school guy. I'm a Gen X. at ReynoldsCoaching.com. If that's too bold, that's too bold. You can always lurk and leap and just kind of spy on me. Either I like LinkedIn or on Instagram at success auditor. So that's my handles.
Amanda Kaufman (25:58)
Perfect.
I love it.
I'm going to include all those links below to your listener. Thank you so much, Mark. This was outstanding.
Mark Reynolds (26:15)
You're so welcome. It was super fun.
Amanda Kaufman (26:19)
I love it. And listener, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss another episode and go ahead and share this with like three of your friends. I know I've got at least three friends that need to hear that your success is really a math problem. So let's get out of the drama and into the math. Like what do need to do? And just go ahead and share this with them. Share it by a link. Share it via DM. Do it how you share things. And then the last thing is Mark worked really hard to get here to do this thing. He's bringing his best. I think he deserves
five stars, don't you? And when you leave a five-star review, it actually helps people decide whether they're going to spend their precious listening time on this episode. We really appreciate every review that we get. Thank you so much. We'll see you soon.
Mark Reynolds (26:55)
No.
So welcome.
