Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
Georges El Masri [00:00:00] Thank you for tuning in. I’m your host, Georges El Masri, and you’re listening to the Wealth podcast, where today I interviewed Mary-Anne Gillespie, who is the CEO of Red Apple Coaching and Consulting. She’s been on stage with Grant Cardone and many other big speakers. She’s a woman of many talents. She completed several Ironman competitions, and she’s gone from being homeless to being the CEO of her own business. So on this episode, we talked about where her passion for coaching comes from, how she’s able to see potential in others, the power of holding people accountable and then also having the courage to fire her clients. And then finally, we talked about the most important quality for growth that she sees in some of the people that she works with. I shouldn’t have said finally, because there’s a lot more that we covered on this episode, and I know you guys are going to love hearing her as she speaks with so much energy. She’s a great woman, so hopefully you’ll enjoy the episode. And if you do, I ask you to please share it with the family or friend, a family member or friend that might benefit from hearing the content. It would be great for the growth of this to share the message and to continue to inspire other people. And also, if you could leave us a review on the Apple podcast platform that would be greatly appreciated. I appreciate all your support. Thank you so much. And here you go. Welcome to the Life podcast, where the goal is to motivate, inspire and share success principles. I am here with Mary-Anne Gillespie, Mary-Anne, thank you so much. I know you said you had a bunch of calls prior to this podcast, so thank you for joining me today.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:01:27] Thank you for having me. Yeah, and warmed up. So hopefully your listeners brought their half asleep. Right now, they’re going to be very awake.
Georges El Masri [00:01:36] Very often you always bring the energy. So I like to start off by asking you a bit about your childhood. Tell me about where you grew up and maybe a couple of things you remember.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:01:46] So let’s see. I grew up in Montreal, so my family immigrated from Poland, and so we grew up in Montreal, predominantly my entire childhood, basically. And just some things to remember is that I was a tomboy so hard to believe right now because now I’m like all about, you know, pretty dresses and lipstick and nails and everything. So I grew up as a tomboy, almost my entire childhood, and in truth, be told, I went to a school that was run by nuns and it was a total school bonanza. And the funny thing is we got a massive trouble if we ever swore in massive trouble. I’ll tell you, like, really, really was not condoned. And the ironic part is that the minute I grew up old enough to swear on my own as an adult, I’d probably have the worst mouth anybody you’ll ever meet. So I strongly recommend if you have children and you’re listening to this. Let them swear because it all comes out later. If you go,
Georges El Masri [00:02:41] Yeah, that’s I saw that in your bio that your team sent. There is a curse word in there, so I know you like it. I do.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:02:51] I do. I do. It’s terrible, but I blame it all on my parents who sent me to a school with nuns in it.
Georges El Masri [00:02:58] Yeah, for sure. I can understand how if you’re not allowed to do something, you’re going to want to do it later on. So, so tell me a little bit about what your life looks like today.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:03:08] Yeah, my life looks like today. So I’m one of the top business coaches in Canada, United States and predominately. We focus a lot with realtors, investors, business owners. So which is awesome. So I have a great coaching team, amazing group of people. I focus predominantly on the elite, so the top 10 percent of CEOs, business owners, whatnot. We are incredibly passionate with that. So my goal is to really change the coaching industry. So we’re doing things that you know. What I like to do personally is trailblazers, so we usually build. I would say, anywhere from about 200 to 300 new millionaires every year, which is kind of exciting. So I love that it gives me a big rush. But most of our clients have a bigger, bigger vision. It’s not just about money. We try to really be selective of who we take on board, and we try to work with people who have who want to make a difference in the world, who either have passion projects or things that they’re more not consumed so much about the income as a as a greed factor. They’re interested in the income to make a difference, either in what they give out to the world or they’re changing the world or the concepts. And I think that that’s a passionate thing that we love. We’re also equally opening up girl abundance in 2022, which is our it’s already open, but we’re actually doing the launch in 2022, where we’re going to be building entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs in one of our newest programs, which is great, led by females incorporating females and predominantly focusing on young women who come from maybe communities and areas where they just generally don’t have a lot of support or advice or mentorship. But they have brilliant ideas. And I learned that when I went to Egypt about right before COVID, I was in Egypt and I went by myself to, you know, just experience the culture and speaking to so many. Women and young girls there who had these brilliant dreams, I mean, incredible, incredible ideas, and then they just don’t have support, so we’re going to be doing that in 2020, which is exciting. And then personally speaking, as my bio says, I am an Ironman athlete. So I mean, off season right now. However, I just finished my second Ironman in six months and I love it. It’s amazing. And that’s I do it for fun. I actually because it’s such a challenge. I love it.
Georges El Masri [00:05:27] Yeah. Well, you just touched on a couple of things. The first thing you mentioned. Well, one of the things you mentioned was going to Egypt. It reminded me; I’ve got a friend that actually is kind of doing something similar. She is helping women that are living in refugee camps in Lebanon. She’s helping them by providing them with materials from here so that they can net certain clothing or scarves or purses, stuff like that. And then she sells them on their behalf and provides them with the income so that they can support their family. So it’s pretty cool, which is amazing.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:06:04] When we’re done, you should connect me with her because that’s just, you know, to see things like that. I mean, those are there like entrepreneurs, you know, they’re making things there. Their income is coming from things that they’re actually putting the effort into doing. So it’s very it’s amazing what we’re capable. You know, you can live this world. And you know, I’ve experienced a lot of things in my life. And one of the things that I learned the most is that very few things, you know, money is beautiful. It’s a great, great thing to have. But it’s also we’re capable of doing so much, you know? And Warren Buffett, I think, said it best as he said, you know, wealth is, you know, people always say what is what is wealthy and wealth is really when you have enough income to support your family and your own passion and desires and you take whatever’s left over and you use it to make other people better off, that’s true wealth.
Georges El Masri [00:06:53] Yeah, 100 percent. And I know you’re very passionate about what you do. You’ve got. So I had a call with you actually yesterday with my business partner, Mary. That’s right. My wife is also she’s also on our team. So one of the things I told Mary after her call was, I feel like you’re truly passionate about helping people grow. You’re not just, you know, like we’ve had coaches where it’s kind of like just a job for them. You know, they’re good at what they do, but they’re not passionate. And where does that passion come from for you? Why? Why is it that you want to help people?
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:07:28] I think I want to help people because it’s when you see somebody. There is a purpose. A I was explaining this to a coaching client tonight is, they said the same thing. They said, Mary, and they’re like, You bring so much passion. They’re like, you know, is their first year coaching with me and excuse me, they said, we just have never felt somebody and they’ve had multiple coaches too. And they said, We’ve just never like your energy, gives us energy. They’re like, It’s just crazy. And they said, Where does all that come from? Is the same thing as you? And I said, it’s the same thing as reverse when you see something and you see potential in somebody. And, you know, because I’ve lived it and I know when somebody believes in you, it can be really lonely in the business world and we can have this inner desire and be like, I know I should be this successful or I know I should be at this level, or I should be at a different level. And you don’t have anybody supporting you or believing in you or doing anything. And it’s like all you need. All you need is a coach, you know, to say, let’s get you to that point where you can actually say, OK, you know what? You see the potential of one person. So to answer that question is when you see the potential in somebody. It’s it is almost there’s no better feeling as a coach to know that people who are given an opportunity to have massive support and have somebody on their side and have something that pushes them outside of their comfort zone. I’m a very tough coach. Everybody says that about me. I’m very tough. But I’m also tough because when this is my favorite time of the year, when I when I look at all of our clients, our company has and we have a 98 percent success rate, that’s insane. So it’s like when I look at people and I go 98 percent of them and the two percent is usually, you know, just a fluke. Like, you know, maybe they set a goal that was insanely high and we missed it by this much, but 98 percent of our clients hit their targets. It’s there’s no better feeling there. They’re having the time of their lives and they’re changing the world and they’re just happy and like, you know, we’re part of their families and I’m part of their business. And you know, and I see what they’ve always I’m bringing out what they always knew, what they had in them. I’ve brought it out of them. And now they’re standing there and they’re a different person. And when you see one of my clients call them this morning, you know, he said to me, he sent me an email and it was just a gratitude email after our call this morning, and he started with me at. And he I take on smaller clients once a quarter, I’ll take one person who’s a smaller client on just to see. If I can get them really to get you started with me at one hundred and sixty thousand is the most he ever made in real estate and nobody believed in him, nobody believed in him. And we worked together for one year and he’s at five hundred thousand. And he is. He’s just it’s just life changing. How can you not like, how can that not, you know, I know that I know what we do works, and I just love bringing it out. I love bringing out the best
Georges El Masri [00:10:25] I could tell that it obviously drives you to bring out the best in others. So if we were to talk about what you would do, you mentioned you see potential in people. But how do you draw that potential out as a coach? What is it that you do to achieve it, to achieve that?
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:10:42] Yeah, that’s great. So I have over nineteen thousand billable coaching hours and in the coaching field, that’s really what you want to look for when you’re making a decision, whether it’s our company or any company or myself or anybody you always want to ask. Like how many billable coaching hours do you have? The more billable coaching hours a coach has, the easier it is for them to have, you know, put the dots together where we can see where we need to go faster. So it’s actually like the more hours, the faster you can get to where you need to get to. I have a system where I think I’ve mentioned to you guys, you have to establish your goals before you even start coaching with our company. So we work with you on a business plan. When that business plan, we don’t tell you where you want to go. You have to bring it out of yourself. You tell us where you want to go. My role is to identify what? Why is that important for you? We really pull that out of our clients before they even enter onto the journey with us. And then what happens is, is that I am relentless, as is any my coach. We are relentless with holding accountability. We’re just we never give up on you and we will be willing. We are one of the only coaching companies I know that is OK with firing our clients and we will let you go if we feel that you started off on a journey with us and you weren’t, you know, transparent about it or willing to dig deep and become that person that you always wanted to be. And then we will continue coaching you. We’re OK with losing you as a coaching client and welcome you back when you’re ready. But for us, it’s really just a matter of you will never have anybody, anybody push harder than we pushed. And we’re confident enough, especially myself. After nineteen thousand coaching hours and a track record like mine. There’s no I’m very confident that I know how to get people any nor how big you think we can get you there.
Georges El Masri [00:12:27] Awesome. And what to what qualities do you think makes someone an ideal coaching client?
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:12:33] Oh, that’s a great question. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable. You know, if you’re willing to be uncomfortable and willing to be, you know, you’re willing to be very uncomfortable and you’re willing to go down that uncomfortable path. Coaching should never. You should never jump on a coaching call and be like, Yippee, this is going to be easy or I can’t wait to talk to my buddy or my friend or whatever the case is, you should be at a point where you’re actually your coach is when you know your coach will let you go. You know what? And they’re not attached to the income that you’re paying. It’s like when they’re attached to your growth and your progression, there’s a relationship that gets established and that is a growth relationship. It’s a relationship where somebody has said, I know I’m going to feel uncomfortable, but I’m willing to go there. I’m willing to be uncomfortable every single week and watch and know that we’re on a journey to get me to where I need to get to because I have a family or I have this or I have that or a bigger dreams. So realistically, when people say, am I coachable, I usually just ask them and say, number one quality we’re looking for is, do you think big and are you willing to get uncomfortable because it is not an easy journey to get to the top, you have to break barriers and barriers require you to push through and comfort.
Georges El Masri [00:13:40] Oh yeah. And you kind of touched on it. I think a big part of that is having an open mind because if you’re just constantly resisting what your coach is telling you, because you’re used to doing things a certain way, you’re never going to get ahead. You’re never going to improve. So being open minded, pushing yourself, getting uncomfortable, like you said, that’s what really helped lead to results. Absolutely. Yeah. So you’re you deal with I know you deal with like real estate agents, you deal with real estate investors. How do you help investors? Are you like, are you helping them by creating systems for them to expand their portfolio? Or what would be the way that you would approach an investor client?
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:14:22] Yeah, so we work with a lot. Last night, I was actually doing a I was the guest speaker. I do a lot of speaking engagements to investors as well, so I was speaking to a bunch of investors last night. And one of the things that we do is with investors specifically is we work on what their portfolio should look like. Like, you really have to look at why you want to invest in real estate or why you want to become an investor in general. What’s your ultimate goal? Is your goal cash flow? Is it not cash flow? Like, where do you want to be and what’s the purpose? You know, a lot of clients that come to us, they don’t have pensions, you know, they’re willing or they want to get out of their job. You know, a majority of people who come to us for coaching are like. Look, you know, I want my investment income to be so substantial that eventually I’m actually becoming my own, I’m my own bank to other people, I’m lending money and so we work with them on different levels. We work with investors who are huge in in venture capital. And they absolutely they want to open up and they want to go bigger. You know, one of our clients is like five hundred doors right now, so he’s got five hundred doors. So, so, so a client with 500 doors, you know? Now the conversation with that investor is really, you know, do we take their all their property management and create a company under them because they are paying a lot in property management, right? So, so those are the things that happen. It depends on the level of investment that we pretty much go, but we run the numbers, we run the portfolio, we come up with a plan and we hold them accountable to it. And then also equally, with my experience last night, I was brought in to talk about where the market was going, where we saw things going, and the investors wanted to know where the hottest pockets are. And typically because we’re a little bit lucky in the sense that we have so many of the top producing clients in real estate that we give some really good insights to where the markets are going, where the hottest pockets are. So we can give some really good tips. I guess you can call it right. So we give that. It’s awesome.
Georges El Masri [00:16:16] Cool. And so as somebody who owns and runs a business coaching company, what do you do to make sure that you stay on top of your game to? I don’t know if you get coached yourself, if you if you have a coach yourself, but maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:16:31] Yeah, that’s such an amazing question. Every coach should have a coach. I have five coaches, just in one area. I have three coaches for my athletic area, so like my wellness. So I have wellness coaches and trainers and things like that. But in the business aspect, I actually have five coaches and I diversified them into different areas. So like my leadership coaching with John Maxwell and things like that, so. So for me, you know, I even have a yogi who is a coach to me. And, you know, because I’m such a passionate hire person, a yogi actually is one of the smartest people. I brought my circle because that yogi brings me down. He’s like, You know what? Just take that energy, funnel it out. And so because otherwise, you know, I mean, I love what I do. So it’s kind of one of those things where he just brings my balance down. So I invest over a hundred thousand dollars a year into personal coaching for myself. And that’s the best investment. I don’t look at it as an expense. I look at it as an investment, and that’s one of the ways that I stay really up to date. But I’m also I practice everything I preach. So we were trying a new door knocking script for our coaching clients. And I went out doorknocking this weekend and tested it out. And I have a rule where I don’t, I don’t introduce anything to our coaching clients that I haven’t tested at least two hundred times and with success. So at the end of the day, we work, work, work on things, and I’m always doing that. So it’s not unusual to find me doorknocking for six hours on a Saturday testing out some of the hottest doorknocking scripts which are, you know, this time of the year would be CMS. And seeing what’s working, what do consumers want? And we’re constantly testing myself personally. I read a book every week. I literally, literally am. I’m jonesing on education. I’m probably the most growth oriented person I ever think is Brandon Bouchard. I have right now. He did a three day summit and I’ve got it uploaded and it’s ready to go and I’m like, Done, so I’m always, you are. You are never, never, never seeing me not investing in growth.
Georges El Masri [00:18:27] I’m bigger now, and as you say, all that I was actually going to ask you, what does a typical day look like for you?
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:18:35] So I can tell you what a typical day looks like. So when I’m in Iron Man training, which, which was actually quite a bit so we’re an off season now in Ironman training, you’re looking at 16 hours of personal exercise per week, so that’s 16 hours and in off season, which is now you’re looking at about 11 hours of it. So we get about five extra hours. So I try to do my workouts at about 4:30 in the morning. So I’m up and ready to go around 4:30 5am would be late for me, but 4:30 is typically where I’m at and then on weekends I’m up at about, I would say, like maybe six o’clock in the morning to do my work as they’re usually longer workouts on Saturday and Sunday so that I’m done around 10 11 o’clock in the morning because I’m swimming, biking or running. So there’s lots of sports with that this morning, for example, to be on this podcast. I was up doing. I did a draft on race, so I was literally freezing outside at five o’clock in the morning running as fast as I could, but I loved it. So my work, as are my health and wellness, are huge for me. I always meal prep on Sundays, so I’m very diligent. So my meal prep is ready to go and I’m very, very diligent with that. And then what I do is during the daytime, I run three companies. So on certain days, like today, I have all my elite clients that I coach today, so I’m back to back and coaching. And then I’ve got my administration team, so I’ve got you as well. So I usually do either a podcast or something in my schedule at the very end of my day and then grab my dinner. And then depending on, I divide my time. If you’ve ever heard me talk about it, it’s called the entrepreneur time system. So I segment my days into three segments. So on a day that is very I have four what we call focus days a week, and that’s moneymaking activities all day and the days are longer, but they’re really about building the business in the in the sales aspect. And then I have a couple two buffer days, which are where I’m just the CEO and they’re usually shorter days, but I’m working on the projects and the environment and the administration team and really coaching and developing everybody in-house. And then I always give myself one free day a week where I’m nobody. I’m literally just everything’s on auto reply and it’s called a free day. And it’s where I get a life and I play. And I’m not anybody. I’m not. I’m not Maryann. I’m nobody. I’m just me doing activities that I love, and I don’t check my phone. I don’t check my email and the world doesn’t fall apart.
Georges El Masri [00:21:00] That’s so awesome. You know, I never, ever thought of that. But just putting your phone, putting your email on an auto reply and one day a week, and that’s it.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:21:09] That’s I go and check. It’s amazing. You know, I put myself on text messaging and everything like, you can put an auto reply on your cell phone doesn’t matter what brand you have, you can put an auto reply on there. And you know, there’s always it’s you know, if you’re if you’re a single agent or if you’re single person, like you can always forward your stuff to people. But it’s amazing when you set a boundary around your time and you tell people in your world and you say, Hey, like, you know, doesn’t even matter if you run a big team or whatever and you’re sitting there just going, Oh, I can’t take off for a full 21st. Yes, you can. You just have to. You have to get a life. And so the brain, one of my backgrounds is neurosciences. The brain needs to rest. It just it needs to. It needs a chance to just if you don’t give the brain, you’ve got to treat it like a muscle, almost. And if it’s working every single day and you’re never giving it a break to play, then what it does is it starts to think that you’re killing it. Like, it’s like, when are you ever going to give me a break? And the brain just goes, Come on, man, like, I need a rest. And so that’s when people get fatigue or they get irritable or they get sick easier or they do what you call, I need a vacation or a burnout. Every week you got to give yourself twenty four hours to play, go back and have some fun and have no responsibility. And nothing falls apart. Nothing falls apart.
Georges El Masri [00:22:26] Oh, 100 percent. And I know this is not exactly what you’re saying, but I play chess regularly. So on the days like we just like I was telling you earlier, we had a baby recently, so I haven’t been sleeping well. And on the days where I don’t sleep well, I can’t play chess like I’m terrible and my brain does not function. So I totally understand what you’re saying. Nailed it. Yeah, so I know. Yeah, we touched on a bunch of stuff here and you’re full of life like, you’re an awesome person. I love. I love the energy that you bring. Is there anything you feel like we should still cover, or should we or should we just move on to the next section,
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:23:03] move on to the next section. You know what you want? And then at the end, we’ll just kind of, you know, brainstorm around. Absolutely.
Georges El Masri [00:23:09] OK, well, the next section is pretty simple what services you provide and how do people reach you?
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:23:16] Amazing. So I’m personally a business coach, so I coach people who have really big dishes and people can reach me by coming to read Apple coaching anywhere you can find me like, I am literally the easiest person to search. You just go read Apple coaching, or you can find us everywhere or on Instagram all the time. I do. If people are kind of like, you know what? I want to see what she’s about. Easiest thing to do is just come every Monday. I do a Facebook Live at 12:30, and it’s pretty casual. I just kind of give you tips and advice. I think we’re talking about. There’s a tool that I use with a lot of the teams that I coach called the one year planner, and I’m going to be talking about it next week. It’s the most important tool that you can use if you own a business or it doesn’t matter what. Business you own. But it’s the most important tool that I think would shock people. How important is it? And I’m going to teach everybody on Monday at 12:30 on our Facebook Live how to use it, how to implement it. So every Facebook Live at 12:30 on Mondays is like loaded with awesome info. So if you really want to kind of, get a good scoop and be like, All right, I want to get a little bit of coaching advice and see what she’s all about. You can really find me there, and I think I think that would probably be the easiest way to get a look, see the energy, kind of hear some of the tips and tricks, and they’re brilliant. I, if I was looking, I’d be like, I’d be there every week. I really would.
Georges El Masri [00:24:37] Yeah, so I’ll be sure to include your information in the show notes. You were awesome. Thank you so much for doing this, and I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Mary-Anne Gillespie [00:24:46] I hope so. Thank you so much for having me. I love it and I hope we speak soon. Take care. It’s awesome. Awesome.
Georges El Masri [00:24:54] Thanks for listening to this episode of the Well Off podcast. If you enjoy the show, then I’d really appreciate if you left us a review on iTunes and let us know your thoughts in order for us to get a larger audience, it’s really important to have reviews so your sport is extremely appreciated. And also, don’t forget to share the podcast with your friends and family. Until next time, I’m George El-Masry. Have a great day.