Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Brace yourselves because striding onto the heart-led business show staged straight from the serene South Devon is the heroic procrastination slayer Robin J. Emdon. This mirth filled maestro of momentum is not just constructing castles in the creative cosmos, but also battling business barricades with his bodacious brand GetResultsology. Get set for an engaging exploration of his experience exhibiting empathy in entrepreneurship. Robin, welcome to the show.

I am delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me. It's a great honor.

I am really excited to dive into this conversation with you, especially after I was just on your podcast as well and we did that rapid fire seven minute questioning, which was, uh, super fun. And uh, then we got to discussing your book and everything you do. And I was like, ah. be a perfect guest on the show, so I'm really delighted to get into this. But of course, first I always like to ask, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Yeah. I'm wondering if by the end of the podcast you might rescind that comment about being the perfect guest, but I'll do my best. So, alright, let's get straight into heart-led business. Um, yeah, I, that is, a very interesting way of, of describing something that I think I've always instinctively understood. I guess, I suppose my definition of it is, is when you put your humanity in front of the strategies by which you live your life, it's always foremost in your mind. And I'm somebody that has always instinctively done that. If I may, I can tell you my background is I, I grew up in a retail business. From a little boy right through to my adulthood. So I was always, doing this retail business in, it was a gift shop business in a, in a tourist trap in South Devon in England. A beautiful place. Still, still a place I'm connected with, but I don't have the business anymore. And that was because, although I, I'm a great I love watching box sets on tv, but one of the things I don't watch is soaps, but I was flicking channels one day and one of the Australian soaps briefly come up and this, this couple were talking and they were, they were running a little corner shop and, and, and, and they were saying, you know, well, the wife was saying, well, don't you love me anymore? Why? Why, why do you wanna get on a yacht and sail around the world? And he said, oh gee, Marlene, of course I love you. I absolutely adore you, but I just can't see you. See myself dying, getting to the pearly gates and saying to myself, oh gee, Gabriel, I just need one more day in the shop. And then I flicked away. And, but I was like, whoa, that was me. I hated getting up to work. I love, it was a family business and I love my family. I absolutely could not engage with my with, I guess my passion, my heart with my day-to-day stuff. I was selling tourist souvenirs with the saying. I used to say in Devon, we have a word for tourist. It's actually a term of endearment, but it does sound quite rude. We call them GROCOL'S. And the other phrase, which you may or or may not have heard of is when you're selling trash or rubbish souvenirs, things that are meaningless and worthless, really, they're called grot. And so I used to talk about, I'm in, I sell the Grot to GROCOL'S business. My heart was not in that, absolutely not in that. And so in 2001, we sold up and I retrained as a life coach in California and then came back to England to use my skills here. So for me, that's a real statement about how I instinctively went, no, I've gotta live my passion. I've gotta live from here, not just for the day-to-day income.

Well that's quite a transition going from gift shop to life coach. What was that? What was the thought process? One behind wanting to go into life coaching, especially after spending, you know, years in, in the retail industry.

Yeah, well that, that again came down to, it was heart-centered again, and it was about people. So when I was working with people in the shop and they were coming in and they were saying, you know. Can you tell me all about this beautiful ornament that, that I can see there and, and, and I'd pick it up and I'd wax lyrical about how it was made and how it was hand painted. It was all bullshit. I didn't care about any of it. I didn't, I couldn't understand why they even liked it. I hated it. I didn't have any of this stuff in my own home. Good grief. No. Wouldn't dream of having it in my house. But I, so I didn't feel like I was connecting with people in a way that I wanted to connect. and of course I didn't know them from Adam, so all I knew was, was that they had bad taste. I couldn't help that, and they couldn't help that. But then by the time I got to the late 1990s, early two thousands. The challenge that I had was my late father had always explained to me, you know, well it doesn't matter what you do for a living, you know, you've just gotta make a living. And that was how I ended up in retail and that, because that was his, that was his, what he handed down to me. But my father before I was born, had a nine year career as a tenor in the Royal Opera Co Opera House in Covent Garden in London. That was his passion until, until the day he left before I was born because the family got. Too big. They were, there was a, my, my older brother was born and I had a sister, and they couldn't afford the wages of rubbish and they couldn't afford a family, so he had to give up his passion. And he ended up by a long story, which is completely irrelevant, but he ended up in the retail business and that's what he was handing on down to me. But he didn't like it either. He would sing all the time. He never stopped singing. He every spare minute he was singing. While he was working, he was singing, uh, with choirs, amateur choirs. He would get himself into amateur productions. He never gave up on that, so he kind of taught me by example. Follow your passion. He was also very unhappy because he wasn't able to, and so was I. Although my passion wasn't singing, I couldn't sing to save my, save my life. I just can't. It's not a gift that was, didn't get, didn't hand that gift down to me. But I really, really understood that. Yeah, follow your passion and, and retail, wasn't it? And so in the early two thousands I needed help and I was into personal growth and I was reading all sorts of books and I read Tony Robbins stuff and that blew me away a lot of the technology. I don't agree with everything Tony says and does, but I found a lot of it really resonated with me. And, um. Then when I started, I actually started working as a volunteer on his crew, and then I got involved in his leadership team and, and, and, which is a fantastic thing to do, and I just loved it. I thought, oh gosh, I really do like people. I love working with people, I love helping people, and I found I had a gift for it. I found I was naturally good at it. I just, I'm telling you, the feedback I got when I was working with people was, you are really good at this. And I was like, am I really? I can sell you Grot, but actually they said, no, no. When you talk to us, you really help. You really make a difference. And I'm like, oh, wow. And so of course then I thought, okay, that's what I'm gonna do, then I'm gonna be a coach.

Wow. So, what was the transition like going from after, after selling the business to then going into life coaching? What, was there preparation before you sold? Like what, what was that transition like for you?

That was very much an example of strategy over heart. It was just, it was not smooth. I was going through a, a difficult family time. Um, I was, I had not long lost my father, and then my, I had young children and my marriage was imploding, which is difficult when you're trying to be a coach and you're trying to be, Hey, I'm a coach. Hoo. And you're not really happy in your private life. So I, I put the coaching down to concentrate on raising my family, to be perfectly blunt. And that's what I did. And so the transition was, was challenging and, but the gifts that I got from my father, which was always working for myself, was something that I just instinctively understood. I'm a rubbish employee in that. I mean, I'm very good. I'm very, you know, if someone asks me to do a job for them, I'm very diligent. But I will also tell them when they're telling me something that's absolute nonsense, I'll tell'em, that's absolute nonsense. You know? What do, what do you mean? I'm 20 seconds too. I'm clocking in 20 seconds early and I've gotta wait until it's actually, I actually had that conversation when I worked at a call center briefly. Yeah. I got told off for clocking in 20 seconds early or 20 seconds late, and it's like, I like, that's just insane. So it was a, it was a difficult transition. The transition really, I've got to say, took 20 years because I got to, that was early two thousands. I trained as a coach. I did that for a couple of years, and then I, I focused. Solely on raising my children. By 2019, I'm sat in a coffee shop bragging to my brother that I've, I've just got my degree'cause that's what I decided to do. I kept myself busy. I did, I worked from home, I did marketing from home. I did tried my hand network marketing, did all of the gamut of stuff that you do from when you're working from home. And, um, but I also decided I'm gonna finish my education and get my, get a degree. And I said, mind you. And he wasn't very impressed. That's what brothers are like. And I said, mind you take trust me to take 10 years to do something I should have done in six. And he said, yeah, why was that? And I said, oh, you know, procrastination, change the subject. So, and then afterwards I was driving home and I was thinking, I asked myself two coaching questions, which had just wired into me very, the training from Tony was awesome and very hardwired into me. It was like, okay, three questions actually. One, where else in my life does procrastination appear? Everywhere, two. What does it cost you? Oh my God, far too much. And I got really quite angry about that. And three, you are a coach. You can't procrastinate. That's not congruent. So I thought, oh, I really need to sort this out. So and so, and that's what I did. And then, so then I, you know, I was telling you when we met on the other podcast, I was explaining to you that I then sat down and started through COVID. Researching. The research discovered there's a, in one 10 year period, there was over 900 research papers into procrastination. There's also an awful lot of nonsense spoken about it online. The, the noise of the internet is huge, obviously for every topic. And I decided, right, I'm gonna turn this into a book. And that led me back into, do you know what? I can really add value. I can get back to doing what I'm passionate about, which is working with people by becoming an accountability coach, which is why I realized is where most of the benefit that people get from coaching comes from, is that accountability element that's regular. Oh, I have to, oh, I've got to check in with Robin and he's not gonna be happy if I haven't done this, that thing. And I discovered that the research that I, that only happened because the research said. Accountability is one of the most effective ways of driving momentum. And, but I want to just go back to one thing I said earlier, which is really I sped through it, but it's really in critical procrastination just means you're not passionate enough about what you need to be doing

Yeah.

and follow your passion. And that brings us back, I think nicely to, to the theme of this, which is about being heartland.

Yeah, exactly. And if you don't have the passion, you know, you don't put everything that you can into the business either,

Yeah.

and then your customers suffer and, and the business suffers.

Yes.

I mean, it has to be congruent. Uh, at least that's, that's what I've found anyway. It has to be congruent throughout the whole journey. So let's shift gears a little bit and let's talk about, uh, everybody's favorite, money and business and especially heart-led business owners tend to struggle with the whole concept of charging what you're worth,and you know, being okay with making a profit in their business. How have you been able to kind of structure your business so that you are able to make a profit and feel good about that you're, you're charging a fair rate and you're getting a fair, fair fee for what your services are.

Yeah, because it's about value. This is valuing yourself and about valuing your client. And if your client is paying you by the hour, irrespective of whether or not you get a re, they get the result that they need. Then you're not valuing your client, and if the client is not paying you well enough so that you can make a, a reasonable return on your investment in the time and the money you've put into running your business, then they're not valuing you. So it comes down to, uh, well look, let me go back to basics. As a coach, people will know if they've ever had a coach that coaches talk about goal setting all the time. Heck, I do. I talk about milestone goals, but I hate goals and I but in, in isolation because with the research has shown, go back to the research has shown that goals can set up a feeling of obligation. And when you feel, when you have that obligation, you feel stressed. And when you feel stressed. Guess what kicks in procrastination. So it becomes that the goal itself is the actual thing that you are aiming for, and it's the firewall between you getting between where you are now and where you want to get to. And the, and so the real critical point is that in order to. Achieve your goals. And that's why I just call them milestone goals. They're just stepping stones towards, well, what's your ultimate why? Where are you actually going, as I call it in my book, what is your personal life vision? Or as I could call it, what is it that you are really passionate about? So. I don't wanna lose sight of the question that you've asked. So what I'm saying is, is that I always go in with the client and say, so what is your passion? What is your purpose? What is your personal life vision? Where are we going with all this? And what is that worth to you? Both spiritually and materially in dollars or pound shillings and pens, as we say here in, in Britain. Although we don't use shillings anymore, but it's an old phrase. Okay. Because if. If it's worth, if you achieving your life purpose, whatever that achievement is, whether it's something you need to get done in, in a month, in a year, in 10 years, in 15, 20 years, what is that worth to you? And it isn't my, it isn't because I'm saying, okay, so I want to cut, gimme a cut, gimme my royalty. It's because I'm saying don't undervalue. My contribution in, and equally, I won't undervalue what you are doing, so charging you by the hour, irrespective of whether or not you get a result. That's just me being paranoid about the fact I'm scared I won't get paid. Whereas what I actually say to the client is, look, this is my fee. And you don't have to pay that fee, and you will find other accountability coaches that will charge a lot less, and you're very, very welcome to go to them. I don't mind because I live in a, I live in a universe of great abundance. There's always more is my belief, and so I don't mind if they do that. But equally, if they come to me, then I will work flat out. With them to get them the result that they need. And if it turns out that the pound, shillings, and pence, bottom line is, is that they'll be earning, a hundred pounds a week, that's their goal, then I probably won't be able to help them because I value my services at a higher level than that. That doesn't mean I don't value their outcome. I don't res it, doesn't mean I don't respect that. But it also means that I always, when I work with clients, I always tailor the package. Based on how are we gonna get the result? Not how am I gonna get paid or how are you gonna make money, but how are we gonna, I mean, maybe the making money is what they want, but even then, I always point out nobody wants to make money. No one wants to make money. What people want is what the money will do for them. They want the freedom it gives them, they want the lifestyle it gives them, that's what, not the money, but of course we have to talk about money because it's easy to quantify.

Yeah. And, and why do you think a lot of small business owners and heart-led business owners specifically struggle with that concept of valuing their services? I. and not charging what they're worth.

Oh, I think it, it comes back to life conditioning, parenting, schooling. I mean, I always remember when I was training to with, to be a coach and probably even before I was training to be a coach when I was just reading books. I'm a spiritual person, but I don't. I'm not espousing any particular religion here, but I don't do know that in the Bible somewhere it says the root of all evil is money. And if you've had any kind, and that's conditioned very much into society, but also when you watch social media and it's, I dunno, it might even be in the Bible as well, I don't know. But when you watch social media, it always makes the point that, um, you can't be happy unless you've got money.

Right.

So you've got, so now you've got, hang on a minute. The root of all evil is money. And you can't be happy unless you've got money. And so of course I've heard people say that. I've heard myself say both of those things and never pick up on the fact that they cannot both be true. And so, and, but if you, and so you're in conflict. I mean, this is one of the skills that a coach or uh, will go in on is, okay, we need to resolve these conflicts. Because uh, there's a certain amount of therapy there, which coaches don't do. I should stress, coaches don't do therapy. It's a very different skillset. But nevertheless, I will point that out to cus to, to clients that you can't have one and not without the other what you need, You need to reconcile that. And so I think we live in a society where we are massively conditioned to be very suspicious about money. We look at happy people, people that are, we look at rich people that aren't rich. Go, there you go. They're not happy, even though they've got all that money. And then we look at poor people that are very happy. There you go. All these poor people, they're happy. And we tell ourselves that therefore I need to be poor. But of course, what you focus on is what you will become. And you know, and I know lots of poor people that are incredibly miserable because they're poor, as well as poor people that are happy. And you know, and I know people that are very, very rich and are buy the poor or happy. It's nothing to do with money. It nothing to do with money. It certainly helps if you don't have to worry about how am I gonna pay the rent this month? But I gotta tell you that, I don't dunno if you like me, but every now and then you wake up one morning you think, oh, that big problem that I had, that's actually been solved. Wow. It's gone. I'm free. And then there's a moment of. Okay, so I need something else to worry about now. Ah, I remember. That's really worrying. You know, and maybe not everybody does that. I certainly do that. That's why I describe myself as a chronic procrastinator. And not everybody is.

Yeah.

Right. You know, everybody's different.

Yeah, exactly. And I'd, I'd heard, I don't know if this is true or not, but somebody was doing just a little perfunctory study, I guess on wealthy people and their happiness and what they found is, while You don't have to, you're not worrying about where the next rent is or how you're gonna get food on the table and provide for your family and get to work. And those normal stressors typically take you away from really looking at the deeper issues that are within you. To now with the ultra wealthy, they're not having to worry about that stuff. Now they're going deeper into. What's my purpose? I'm not living my purpose. I'm not happy because I'm not living. And it's so, it's a deeper problem that comes from having the money that takes away or, all the needs that we have. And so they,

Yes.

find that depression, uh, usually, seeps into their life.

Because happiness is an inside job. It doesn't come from outside.

Yeah.

I remember I met a lady when I was actually at, it was actually at a Robins event, and she was, she was training the same way as I was as a participant. And at that time and her background story, I, I, I, I can't remember the whole story, but this woman had the most horrendous life. Absolutely appalling. There was death, there was abuse. There was murder, there was criminal activity. Not by her, but by people around her. There was drugs, there was alcohol, there was addictions. There was all sorts of stuff going on. And yet, this was a lady in her seventies, I think, and every day when I saw her, she was just happy and smiling and I, I don't think I've ever met anyone happier than this person. And this lovely lady and, but I knew this life story. I knew little snippets of it and how ghastly I'd been. I said, how do you function? How do you get on with it? How, you know, how have you survived? And she said, I don't know. She says, I've just always been this way. No matter what happens to me when I go to bed in the evening, when I go to bed at night, I always wake, I always go to sleep smiling, thinking about what great things might happen tomorrow. And if they don't, they don't. I'll deal with it. That's life. But I've always, but then more often than not, actually they do. So I'm always just, for me, every night is Christmas Eve and I'm eight, you know, or I'm five. I'm just like, tomorrow, yay. What will tomorrow bring? And of course, you know, and why not? I mean, one of the big lessons that I learned when I was doing all that and still understand is, what's happened to you in the past? It's in the past. It's only with you now if you keep reminding yourself and want and stay there in your mind and live there. But actually, you know, you and I, we are sat where we are in different parts of the world, different time zones. But if you think about it, what's gonna happen when we hang up from this? I'm really excited about it. Genuinely then I might start thinking, oh, what are the things I'm gonna worry about? But for a moment there, just for a moment, I'm like, actually, it's gonna be exciting because I don't know what's gonna happen next.

Yeah, I like that philosophy a lot. And that should be a practice I think every business owner, everybody does is, is think about what's gonna be the greatest thing that happens tomorrow and just, and go to go to bed thinking about that.'cause that, that, even writing the, the gratitude journals, that, that puts you in a completely different frame of reference and, and frame of mind. And putting that positivity in your brain before you go to sleep. Only great things can happen from that.

Yes, and if they don't. You'll deal with it, you'll just deal with it. It's just Alright. That was that sucks, next.

Next because we have another day. That could be wonderful And who knows what's. I love that. That's really great. Thanks for sharing that story. Robin, how can people find out more about you, your book and the coaching that you do and potentially work with you?

Okay, thanks for asking. Very nicely set up there. So, uh, I think the simplest way is look. I am, I'm not pretending that I've been coaching since I trained in 2000 all the way up to 2025. I took a long break, so I'm starting again, and I'm only starting again because although the training is still there and I still have the skillsets, I'm not very well known in the world of, of coaching right now. So I sat down to write the book, and at the time when I sat down to write the book I didn't. Have any thought about doing the coaching and as Isaac said, I discovered that crikey, accountability is something where I can really add value. Coming back to my being my heart center coming, I'm passionate about helping people or working with people. I don't think people need help. Sometimes they need support, a, a hand to just guide them. And so I wrote this book and then I thought, well, how do I get it into people's hands? Well, the first thing is I discovered it's quite easy to publish on Amazon. So I've done that. If you can buy it on Amazon if you want to, and you can get yourself, you know, a nice physical copy of the book. And it's genuinely a book. It's not, it's not like only three pages thick. It's a long book. I, but what I'm doing right now is I'm giving it away as a PDF unabridged to anybody that wants it. The whole book, not just just a summary of it. And so if you go to my link, reallyusefultips.com, that's really, as in, it's a really lovely day today. That's useful, as in, that's a useful umbrella. And tips as in horse tips, and none of those things go together and I can't think of a better way of describing it. I'll have to come up with a better one. It's really useful tips.com and, and that will take you to my website, which is getresultsology.com. But it'll take you straight to the page where you can download the book with my absolute compliments and email me, send me a message if you want to. I always read them and I always reply.

Awesome. Well, that, that sounds like a really great gift. So thank you so much for, uh, providing that to the audience as well. And thank you so much, Robin, for spending that time with us today and sharing insights into your heart-led business and how you balance making a profit and still being heart-led. I really appreciate you and your time.

You are extremely welcome and thank you for having me on the show. It's been a pleasure.

Awesome. And thank you listeners and those watching on YouTube. We really do appreciate you dropping by and listening to the show. Make sure that you're checking out everything that Robin is doing and we're gonna provide all of the links into the show notes so you can click and get the copy of his book or send him a message on his website just. Very easily write down there in the show notes, and then while you're down there, there might be a little review button somewhere down there. If you could go ahead and just click that review button, give the show a rating and review. I would really appreciate that. It just spreads the word about the heart-led business show and helping more heart-led business owners find that profit within them. And until next time, lead with your heart.

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.