Jeff Hunter:

Hi, I'm Jeff Hunter, the founder and CEO of Talentism. Today, I'm speaking with Dave Fano, the

founder and CEO of Teal. Dave is an architect by training and a serial entrepreneur by

compulsion. He founded the successful building information and technology consultancy Case.

He then sold Case to WeWork and took on the role of chief growth officer there, where he was a

key driver of their meteoric growth. I met Dave when he started his latest venture, Teal. I

remember when Dave was first talking about his career experiences and how he wanted to

make things better for the people who actually build companies, the employees, he told me that

it struck him that the way people think about their careers and their jobs was broken, and he felt

that the need to create a company to fix that. That compulsion led Dave to create Teal, an

incredible group of people dedicated to providing the education, community and tools to help

professionals build successful and fulfilling careers. I'm especially grateful to be talking to Dave

today because Teal is one of Talentisms, first IP partners, and is using our big four framework

and methodology to help people create their own unique path of professional excellence. I

encourage you to learn more about this amazing company at Tealhq.com. That's Tealhq.com.

Dave, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the conversation.

Dave Fano:

Thanks Jeff, I'm super honored to be a part of this as you know, someone who I look to as a

mentor and someone that's really paved the path for some really incredible things. And so I'm

really appreciative to have the time to talk to you and to do this with you.

Jeff Hunter:

So, Dave the way I understand it, at Teal you provide career coaching. You've worked with me,

you've partnered with Talentism. So, you know, our approach and thinking, and of course I know

you've done a lot of coaching over time as a successful executive. How do you think about the

value and importance of coaching?

Dave Fano:

So I think coaching is critical and I think that for anyone to push beyond their understanding of

their limits, some kind of external force is incredibly valuable, right? I think you know, for the

short time that I had a personal trainer, I was able to push myself, they were able to push me

further than I was able to push myself, just because I think we kind of you know, we like to play

it safe. We don't want to hurt ourselves. We don't like to fail. And so there's something about

having someone who you know, has your best interest in mind and helps you push to what they

think your potential is. And also that they've seen it done before, right? I mean, a lot of, I think

life is quite lonely in the sense that we're doing these things and we're experiencing them for the

first time and having that broader perspective, because even though that thing we’re

experiencing for the first time, there's a high likelihood someone else has experienced it. And so

I think that that is a lot of the value that, that coaches bring. I do think there's an important

distinction between coaching and advice and you want both, but I think that distinction is

important. Now all that said, that's not really what we do at Teal. I think that coaching is a

component of what we do and we're trying to be quite cautious about how we engage with the

theme of coaching. I think one of the things that's inherent in coaching is this one-on-one

relationship with an individual. And I think one of the things that you guys have done great at

Talentism is that you're establishing it as more of a platform. But you're still obviously have your

association to your coach that is using the platform. We're hoping to take that a step further,

mainly because we want to make it accessible to more people. There is an inherent cost

structure that comes with, you know, the livelihood of a person being based on, you know,

advising and this one-on-one high touch way, that I think is great for those that can afford it. And

a lot of times it's funded by companies, but we really want the consumer or the person that

works at companies to be able to do this and have agency with their career. And so that puts

the pressure on us to figure out ways to make this cost accessible and really leverage

technology and develop a platform and a methodology and framework that allow people to do it

on their own without the need of the high touch one-on-one coaching. So then that pushes us to

invest in tooling, content and frameworks that people can do in a self-guided way with the ability

to level up into a coach as necessary, but even that we're trying to figure out ways where that

can happen through chat or other low cost models and mainly so we can make it accessible to

more people, because that was kind of one of my contentions that you brought up earlier on in

the introduction is that these kinds of resources that I've been incredibly lucky to have. I got later

in my career, once I was sort of fiscally eligible. I have very few regrets, but I just think that if I

would have had access to these kinds of things earlier, I might've made better or different

decisions, and I really want to help people get access to those things sooner. So that's kind of,

so I think there are aspects and essences of coaching in what we do, but in terms of like a

delivery model and methodology, we're trying to break some new ground.

Jeff Hunter:

Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about something that you said at the beginning of what you

were talking about. So I've shared with you that, you know, seven years ago, when I started

Talentism, I really didn't intend to start a coaching organization. I had these theories about the

human mindand how things work and a way to unleash potential. And it turned out that what I

thought was going to be a consultancy ended up being very much a coaching organization,

because as I worked with leaders and brought these frameworks and this way of thinking to

those leaders, they said; Hey, would you coach me? And so then I went out and started trying to

figure out the world of coaching, cause I had never done it before. And I know there's a lot of

incredible coaches out there and I wanted to sort of respect the craft as also learn about my

blind spots and ended up really differentiating or at least trying to differentiate what I was trying

to do from what I experienced most coaches trying to do. And I think you brought up a little bit of

what I experienced most coaches trying to do, which is be almost like a change agent or an

accountability agent in a person's life. Like there's a, I'm gonna push you or I've got a better way

of doing something. And what we've been trying to do is figure out how to be a good detective in

your life to help you make sense of the evidence that you're producing as you try to achieve

your goals. So it's really not an attempt to provide a place of security or safety. It's not an

attempt to say; Hey, listen, you said you were going to go out there and, you know, apologize to

people and he didn't apologize or whatever the thing is that the pushing of the, towards a

person's limits, but more to help them gain a level of se...