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Real Coaching. Real Results — Leading with Clarity in a Chaotic World

• Alex Romanovich

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What separates successful leaders from fulfilled ones? According to recovering Wall Street executive Marla Bace, it’s not another mindset hack—it’s getting real about what coaching is (and isn't) in a world addicted to “high-ticket offers” and quick-fix transformations.

In this sharp, refreshingly unfiltered conversation, Marla gets brutally honest about how coaching has evolved since 2020—and why so many high-achievers are still quietly miserable. With a career spanning finance, media, and marketing, she’s been in the boardrooms, survived the buzzwords, and now helps leaders stop performing and start transforming.

She shares the quiet strategies behind powerful leaders—like how to read a room before anyone speaks, or what to do when ego floods the table (hint: don’t match the energy—redirect it).

This isn’t your HR lunch-n-learn. It’s a thoughtful dive into the leadership skills that don’t show up in annual reviews.

From decoding generational tension to integrating AI without turning into a chatbot in heels, this episode is packed with real strategies for leaders who’ve outgrown superficial advice.

If your job looks impressive on LinkedIn but leaves you empty by Friday, this one’s for you. As Marla puts it: sometimes the real power move isn't “how do I get there?”—it's “who the hell can help me figure this out?”

About Marla Bace:

Marla Bace is a certified business and leadership coach with over 30 years of experience driving real results. A former award-winning CMO and CXO, she offers real-world coaching and proven growth strategies for accomplished professionals and business owners who don’t have time to waste.

Her career proves that emotional intelligence and executive strategy aren’t just buzzwords but the foundation of lasting success. Marla knows what it takes to grow influence, drive measurable results, and make confident, values-aligned decisions. She cuts through the noise with clarity, accountability, and a deep commitment to putting humanity at the heart of business success.

Known for her bold authenticity and no-fluff approach, Marla combines emotional intelligence with strategic execution to help clients elevate their presence, align their actions, and lead with impact. Whether guiding a mid-career professional toward a promotion or helping a business owner build a scalable path forward, Marla delivers practical insights that create lasting change.

At the core of her coaching is this belief: Authentic leadership isn’t a buzzword—it’s the competitive edge. Marla helps leaders lead with truth, integrity, and purpose.

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Alex Romanovich:

Hi, this is Alex Romanovich and welcome to Global Edge Talk. Today, may 13th 2025, we have Marla Bace, one of our favorites guests, in our studio. Welcome, Marla.

Marla Bace:

Thank you, Alex. It's always great to be here.

Alex Romanovich:

Always a pleasure to have you. I've known you for gosh. You know probably what 20 years or so, 15, 20 years, something like that. We lost count I said we met more the kindergarten right.

Marla Bace:

Yeah, I like that, I definitely like that.

Alex Romanovich:

Well, I think we have a very important discussion right now, especially with what's going on in the industry, in the marketplace, with all of the kind of a chaotic environment in terms of economy, in terms of uncertainty and so forth, and the topic is coaching. The topic is coaching because we also want to demystify this entire coaching thing, because there's so many coaches out there. First and foremost, right. But let me introduce you properly in the beginning. You not only combine coaching experience because you're an ICF certified coach and you have other certifications. You also have a very, very successful career as a marketer, as a digital marketer, as a chief revenue officer in the financial industry, in the media industry, with working with small, medium-sized businesses and very large companies like.

Marla Bace:

UBS, for example.

Alex Romanovich:

And you had a very, very interesting and you continue to have a very interesting background in the career where you combine your emotional intelligence, your industry knowledge, your subject matter knowledge with advice, with guidance right, and it's been a very long path in terms of really understanding who you are, number one and number two also a path to understanding of how you can help others. So we'd love to talk more about that, because a lot of people are being coached. A lot of people are coaching and this is a very interesting discussion because not only domestically, but also globally, absolutely. Let's start with a couple of questions involved with what coaching is and why it's gained so much visibility in the past few years and from your perspective.

Alex Romanovich:

Why are there so many leaders?

Alex Romanovich:

out there right now that need coaching and they're seeking coaching.

Marla Bace:

Sure. So I'm going to start with your question about why are there so many people out there? But I actually want to take a step back, and you said something in the introduction about my own journey, and I want to thank you because it was in our joint effort of working in the world of digital and marketing strategy where you said to me you're really good at what you do, but you really excel when you're coaching some of our clients at the time, and it was with that that I decided to go back and get the certifications, and what that gave me was some of the insight into what you're asking me. So first, thank you for helping me on this journey to realize that in 30 years as a head of marketing and professional services in organizations that didn't have the benefit of a learning and development department, and that falling under marketing, that that's really where my passion was. So, while I'm a relatively new full-time coach, I've been doing this for over 20 years and even if I go back to when you started public accounting, you're two, you're a supervisor. So what I see is, through those coaching programs, people sort of woke up in 2020 and they didn't want to go into an office anymore and they went into a coaching program and then they barter, coached and they got a couple of hours and they went out got their coaching degrees.

Marla Bace:

People who were really innovative and really entrepreneurial saw that if I do a ton of content, I'm going to get coaching clients, and so I spent last year subcontracting for an organization that was one of those that really became big from 2020 to 2023. And what I saw with them and their competitors is the CEOs or the person who had the idea to do it came up with a concept and they went out and they built content around it. They put it on a platform. They're teaching people how to make a high ticket coaching offer and they're selling their coaching offers, and what they're doing is they're asking people for 20 or $30,000 to come into a program. That is basically content on a platform. In some cases, it's three to five years old and you and I know as digital marketers, after six months you better redefine what you're doing. And they're still selling that.

Marla Bace:

And now what's happening in the evolution is people have gotten smarter because they're no longer stuck at home. Some people are back in and meeting people in person and are having these conversations, and so now what's happened, or what I'm seeing happen, is I'm stepping into this world is coaching almost has a little bit of a bad name because people have presented smoke in years. They put high ticket offers and basically what they're getting is here's how you drive organic growth to your business, which you and I know is not something that, I'm sorry, is a formula that's worth $30,000. If you're going to pay an agency and they're going to do it for you, that's a different story. But for you and I to just tell people how to organically generate leads, to me that's not coaching experience, and so I don't have content. I don't have a mastermind. I might recommend a book to read to augment what I'm having people do but the why,

Marla Bace:

people need it now more than ever is here we are five years after everyone went on Zoom or behind a one inch by one inch screen, and people have forgotten how to interact, how to build real relationships, how to get past surface level, how to bring emotional intelligence into your team and to be better leaders or even better law firm partners.

Marla Bace:

They are investing in their organizations, in themselves and in their staffs, versus the people who feel that just continuing to bark orders or tell a group of people what they want and have the expectation that they can read their mind or use AI to do things that you and I spent decades learning how to do isn't the right answer. In my networking now and when people get to meet me, and especially those recruiters or those HR people, the one thing that I am hearing is leaders who have coaches definitively present themselves differently and so, at least from the recruiter or the HR perspective, they are saying they are, by definition, the more successful or sought after leaders. So that is what I hope continues, and that those leaders seek real coaches, not these overnight I'm going to scale your business or I'm going to teach you how to market, or I'm going to give you, you know a course on what leadership presence is, because it doesn't happen overnight.

Alex Romanovich:

Great, great. Now I'll ask another question that's kind of begging in this conversation.

Alex Romanovich:

You work with a lot of successful people, people who are influencers, people who make a lot of tough decisions on a daily basis, people who kind of know what they're doing, right, so why? Do they?

Alex Romanovich:

still need coaching.

Marla Bace:

It's funny. I just got off a phone call with this conversation and the person asked me they're like you know, do you get a lawyer or an accountant or a law firm partner raising their hand? And the answer is yes, because usually they're self-aware enough to know I'm successful, but I'm not fulfilled and something is missing. And I want someone who's going to be like my personal chief of staff to come in and help me define what that is. And because we are in a well, I want it yesterday environment. I work in a 90 day goal or a hundred day plan type of cycle and it's okay. What is it? What mindset shift do we need to change? I always start my sessions, or my, my contracts, with a free session about what mask are you wearing? What negative speaker are you used to handling? Like, let's get all of that out so that I can call you on that as we move forward and we can change it. But it's about saying, ok, I know by this time next quarter I'm going to be in a better space professionally and personally.

Alex Romanovich:

Very interesting, Very thought provoking, actually. And how does that change the dynamic, though? Because, again, you coach people who are not in the survival mode or not, you know oh my God, I don't know what to do next, and so forth. I mean, you get those as well, but typically they're successful. So how does that change your dynamic? In other words, how do you define your value, if you will, to them?

Marla Bace:

I just got a new client we met for the first time yesterday. 78 years old, has his own business, has actually two businesses and he knows he wants to sell it. And he said to me he goes. I have a really good staff and I'm probably the problem. I don't know. But I'd like you to come in and help me position the right people in the right, the good to great, you know, right seats on the bus, right people in the bus and et cetera, et cetera, but to be able to have more multiples or more value for when he's ready to sell the business.

Marla Bace:

And when he came to me, the first words out of my mouth were I have no experience in your industry. And he said that's fine. I don't want someone who has experience in my industry. I want someone who has experience with people, who has strong emotional intelligence, who has extremely sharp intuition, which I've already seen in how you handle the sales call with my right-hand person. And quite frankly, he told me I interviewed several other people and everybody's attitude was you have one bad person.

Marla Bace:

That person needs to go. That's not my attitude. My attitude is this is something you've built. You're very proud of it. You need a subtle shift again, getting from successful to fulfilled. What does that look like? And what is plan A and plan B? And we had a very hard conversation about that. One individual. I said I don't think he needs to go, but you need to be prepared. Should that individual not like the outcome of what we're proposing and what could that look like for you? And so what that person got from me was a fresh set of eyes, a different way of thinking and an empathic, intuitive conversation around what they probably already knew, but didn't necessarily and don't necessarily know how to achieve on their own, but having somebody else from the outside come in gives them validity in making the changes they want to make for their organization.

Marla Bace:

That makes sense.

Alex Romanovich:

Absolutely. And you know it's wonderful that you found the way to actually channel that and impress upon them that it's not just about success, it's not just about success at work, it's also about other traits. Right, everybody's using it, but there is a reason for emotional intelligence to be present in the workplace, in the professional environment and so forth. So you know there are two trains of thought. You know some leaders would say no, you cannot, you can never show emotion. Business is hard, it's black and white, it's. You know you have to drive the results and if there are no results, forget it. Right, something is not working. You know it doesn't work for me, it doesn't work for people who work for me, and so forth.

Alex Romanovich:

And there's another component that says no, no, you have to really get in touch with yourself and with your team and with your partners and so forth, and there is a gap, I guess, and how do you work with that? How do you work with those gaps, or that gap between the hard drive and the really understanding of the success factors, understanding of people who are around you and so forth? Tell us more about that and also tell us why those two things need to be present.

Marla Bace:

Sure. So as we started our conversation around, you know, you and I started in kindergarten and so back in kindergarten, I couldn't agree more these conversations probably wouldn't have been able to be had. With 2020, there has been a shift and I know you like to tease me about this, but as part of the will I bring to my practice astrologically, there has been a shift. The conversation around intuition, consciousness and those things play into emotional intelligence. Six months ago probably not so much, and I'll be honest with you, when we talked about me doing this, I had several people tell me I was going to be the person to bridge the old world and time is money with this new mindset way, and I'd look at them and say what are you talking about? I've taken my little spiritual journey and that's over here, but I'm still a recovering Wall Street executive, and what I found in the last four or five months? These people were right, alex. So what I say is, yes, emotional intelligence is a buzzword, but if you could break it down and I forget who did this originally, so I'm not going to take credit, but there's, there's really four pieces of it. One is self-awareness, and so when I was getting my certification and before AI, created a self-awareness assessment and that really tells you how aware are you of yourself and what you do and the impacts it has on the people around you and even on yourself and your everyday activities. So I talk a lot when I start with this, when you're like, how do you make it tactical? What is your purpose? And I was just talking about this with somebody else what is all the things that you want to get achieved? Create a stream of consciousness, then list them out into 10 items and we as human beings can really only focus on three. So now prioritize them and focus on those top three and they should be aligned with your purpose. And anytime you make a conscious decision to address any one of those others, you need to know it's going to move something else down and that's sort of phase one of self-aware.

Marla Bace:

So, whether it's your activities, how you present in a group, I am in a volunteer organization with someone who pontificates a lot and doesn't have the self-awareness that he's turning the other volunteers off and you know, try to work with him. So, to answer your question, it doesn't always work. You're either going to be open to coaching or you're not, but self-awareness is step number one for emotional intelligence. Step number two is self-management. How many times and you and I have been in some of these meetings where someone just says something so stupid or they're not willing to listen and you are gonna shoot back, you're gonna react. Self-management is being able to respond and not react or temper what it is that you want to say.

Marla Bace:

So once you've got self-awareness, you can get self-management, and that's through working with identification of emotion in the moment and then, once you get past that, it's social awareness. So when you're in that conference room, it's not just about you, but this is where intuition and consciousness really plays a part. It's reading the room, what's going on around you, getting outside of yourself and paying attention to the other people and their motives. I know I'm going to go into a meeting this afternoon that I'm not looking forward to, because I got a whole lot of fellow board members who have no self-awareness, let alone social awareness, and no self-management, which gets to the fourth step. The relationships are starting to fail in this board. But if you have self-awareness, self-management and social awareness, that's when you get to build real, resonant and long time relationships that pay off for you in business and in life. So, yes, emotional intelligence is a buzzword, but there are sub aspects of it that easily can be worked through and it's like anything else If you want to train yourself or change yourself. It's creating awareness around it.

Alex Romanovich:

And I've always known you as a corporate strategist, corporate psychiatrist, if you will, corporate intuition person. And speaking of intuition, a lot of leaders lean into intuition, right, they even admit it. They say you know, sometimes I make a decision based on the gut feel. How do you work with somebody who is, you know, half intuition, half facts or half statistics? And then how do you, you know, how do you coach them in the sense of self-awareness and the emotional intelligence and so forth?

Marla Bace:

So I've said this a lot in my YouTube shorts, et cetera, lately Intuition is an edge, it's not a flaw. And the smart leaders today are balancing fact and analytics with that gut feeling. The leaders who keep pushing that gut feeling down, that gut isn't your imagination, it's actually your super consciousness.

Marla Bace:

It's your intelligence trying to get your intuition or your attention and it's basically saying that analytics might be standing up now but you really don't have the full picture. And what else is it that I need to know? So I do find and it's a lot of what I've been blogging on lately is that intuition is probably the most overlooked skill in business, especially leaders that have been around the block that have your staff members come in. I used to say this is going back decades.

Marla Bace:

I have someone come in and tell me something and I'm like there's three sides to every truth there's yours and somebody else's. What is it that's not in plain sight? What is it that we need to dig down and get to know? And that's where you become a super leader, because the facts that are presented it's like anything else you and I tease all the time. I don't care if you get into politics or religion. Everyone has their own narrative and they can back it up with their own set of facts. But there's something that's missing, and the leader that can dig in and figure out that they need to go deeper to make the right decision is going to be the better leader.

Alex Romanovich:

So they have to dig a little bit more to get to the truth, if you will, and become a better leader.

Marla Bace:

They have to have an open mind, they have to be able to be willing to ask open-ended questions, and you alluded to this in your question about my superpower being able to be willing to ask open-ended questions. And you alluded to this in your question about my superpower being able to read a room. I used to kid around about that because I'd be the only female walking into mostly male conference room and I'd be like, okay, which two individuals are going to have the pissing contest today and how am I going to diffuse this? So I've had years of practicing this but interestingly enough, there's a new assessment tool out there and I was networking with a person and they're like can you just take this before we meet? I'm like, sure, I've taken a ton of assessments and I believe in them. So he comes to the meeting and goes do you want to know what your superpower is? I said, sure, I'd love to know. And he goes you can read a room. So I've even been tested that that's the case.

Marla Bace:

But that goes back to those components of emotional intelligence and, interestingly enough, you can be too self-aware. I had a coaching and I'm the first one to say if I'm asking people to invest in me. I should be investing in myself. So I had some coaches and I had a mindful coach and we were chatting about a situation and she was you know what your problem is? I go what. She was too self-aware. So sometimes being too self-aware you compensate by I lean into the social awareness. I try and say, okay, what's going on around me, so that I am not being either too quick on my decision because I'm reading all of the other stuff, or not being fast enough because I'm hesitant. I want to know what more of those stats are and ask some more of those questions that answer your question.

Alex Romanovich:

Now, I know you can have the intuition, you can even measure your own success and you can even measure your own steps and so forth. But how do you measure your clients or your constituents' success? Is there a reporting mechanism? Is there an aha moment that they share with you? Is there a way for them to integrate a lot of these skills, the new skills that they're gaining by being coached by you, and then they come back and say you know what I did?

Alex Romanovich:

this, this and this and this is a result. How do you measure that success?

Marla Bace:

It's usually the client that brings it to me and it's usually something like that person they were complaining about or wasn't quite doing what it was they wanted to do on the team will suddenly take the initiative that the leader had been wanting them to take and they'll come back and they'll say to me oh my God, joe Smith just did this unprompted. And so I'll lean in and say, okay, what happened in a team meeting? What did you do differently? How did you approach their question differently? And there's the aha moment. And then I say, okay, how do you replicate that and how do you make sure that you continue to do more of that and measure that with other people's reactions or responses?

Marla Bace:

So, as people invest time and effort in themselves and do the work, they will see the small changes in their teams or in themselves. And then suddenly something happens unexpectedly and the light bulb is like wow, it's working. And it's like anything else. You know, a habit takes 21 days. You don't drop 20 pounds in. You know two days it's work. But when they're putting any effort, they get surprised by the other people's reactions or what's happening automatically.

Marla Bace:

And that's why, when I said earlier, I work with successful people who need to be fulfilled. Oftentimes it's a senior leader who will be identifying. I just wish you know I have this right-hand person. They're phenomenal. I just wish they would do this better and I get asked to come in and work with that person to do whatever is better. But I can also figure out if there's a high performer, it's also the leader may not be communicating the way they need to be communicated to, or oftentimes I'll uncover they think they're giving direction but they're really trying to telepathy what they want and so it's facilitating the subordinates, questions and interactions with the boss. It will change the boss and then they'll come to me and say, oh my God. And so it's a dance and there's no hard measurement. Like I said, I have the assessment tool and I can do that. You know before and after. But to me the best results are the testimonials that these people come to me with, with their teams, their staff themselves.

Alex Romanovich:

Very cool.

Marla Bace:

I'd love to.

Alex Romanovich:

I have so many questions, my goodness this is so fascinating.

Alex Romanovich:

But I have. I want to bring some context into place here, and I want to. I want you to demystify a few myths that have been sort of developing in the industry, in the workplace, but I want to ground them in two specific areas. One is multi-generational environment right, how do you work with somebody who's from a different generation? And some of the myths that are related to that. And also new tech AI right, the AI, you know that's hanging over all of us, threatening or maybe helping. How does that integrate into coaching your you know that's hanging over all of us, threatening or maybe helping. How does that integrate into coaching your you know your coaching environment? And also maybe demystifying some of the myths that you know, and I don't need any coaches.

Marla Bace:

I have Chad.

Alex Romanovich:

GPT and that's going to be my great coach right and that's going to answer all the questions. So those two things when you work with a different generation of people, not necessarily younger, but let's say younger or you know Gen Zs or millennials or on the flip side right, maybe older, but also you know not necessarily age wise, but also thinking wise.

Marla Bace:

Yeah, no. And then AI.

Alex Romanovich:

How does AI get into all of this?

Marla Bace:

So this whole generational question, I laugh about it, you and I talk about it all the time. I'm trying to think back when I was at JH Home that was 20 years ago we were putting together a workshop for our clients around how to have multi-generations come into the workplace. And back then it was how are traditionalists and boomers going to handle Gen Y? So, being Gen X the shortest generation, you know, the shortest timeframe, the least amount of people out there you and I have had to always be the amoeba right, Like we have to go with, whether it's the cradle to grave mentality and you're going to work 80 hour weeks and what is work-life balance all the way down to, you know, the kids today that people say want to be remote, they don't want to work hard, and by today again, whether it was 20 years ago or today, I think this is why for 30 years, my soapbox has been communication and it's understanding how you communicate and how the other generation receives, hears and communicates, and it's bridging that gap.

Marla Bace:

It's also probably why I am as transparent as I am, and I over say I've done it in this podcast. Am I answering your question? Am I making sense? Because if the other person feels heard, there's a way to be in the middle. So to me that's sort of the very short answer on cross generational working.

Marla Bace:

I think this is always going to be an issue People are used to dealing. Think about it. You go through school, you go through your early twenties, you're mostly with your contemporaries, you might have a boss, and then suddenly you're in your thirties and your fifties and it's like, oh my God, how do I deal with this new generation? Well, guess what? The old generation asked themselves that same question, and so I really find it's understanding communication. And I've gone one further with my current clients when I'm doing teamwork and I've implemented the assessment I mentioned earlier about myself. I found it so spot on. It's about your personality. It's who you are by the time you're 16 and then how you're operating because of where you're working, and it will help you identify what position you really belong in in an organization. So back in the day we used disk If you were a driver, you could be in sales. If you were a C, you wouldn't be in sales. But there are a lot of Cs who have been really successful building up accounting firms or law practices by rainmaking, because they bent and they had to learn self awareness, emotional intelligence on how to bend, and most of that bending was through communication. So I think I've answered that question. And then your question on AI is funny. I was in this conversation too recently. I will help augment productivity, but in my opinion it's sort of like why I think coaching is necessary in 2025.

Marla Bace:

Relationships and people are not going to get replaced by AI, and I've seen it. I have a client who's out there job interviewing right now. She's really good at what she does and I asked her. I have a client who's out there job interviewing right now. She's really good at what she does and I asked her how did the interview go? And she goes. It was chief revenue officer. She goes. The RevOps team came to the meeting and they clearly don't know what RevOps is supposed to be doing. They put all their questions through chat. I'm being asked questions, I'm answering them and there there's no follow up question. So where people think AI is a replacement, I think that's going to be very short lived and it's there's going to be fallout from that.

Marla Bace:

But there is a way to create AI. There's a definitive use for AI. And the way I explain it to people, they're like how do you get so much content out? I said because where I used to spend hours in front of the PC outlining what I wanted to do write, rewrite, et cetera. I now use it, but everyone's like. But it doesn't seem like you're using AI to write. I'm like because I use it to clean up, I don't use it to write. So I now can talk into a microphone, I can provide programming, I have my brand voice documents, I have my brand guidelines. I have all of that.

Marla Bace:

I put it into AI and I'll say, okay, please clean this up and make it sound like me, put it in the same format that I've usually had blah, blah, blah. It kicks it out, but then I'm editing it, I'm re-editing it, I'm making sure it's me and then I'm putting it out there. So it's made me more productive. Where I used to only get a blog a leak out, now I can get multiple posts out of that blog and clean things up. I can say you tease me all the time.

Marla Bace:

I speak too much corporate. I'll say to AI I'll say, okay, can you make this more impactful, or so? Somebody will want to communicate because I'm not flowery. And I'll say, okay, can you make this more impactful, or so? Somebody will want to you know, communicate because I'm not flowery and I'll get that, so I get the benefit of AI, but I'm still putting out what's mine and that's what people are resonating with. Again, people are using it to put together interview questions, but if they don't know what the follow-up is or they don't know what their department's supposed to be doing, they could lose the most ideal person coming in because they didn't take the time to say do these questions make sense? Do they get at what I need to know? So do you have any follow-up questions on AI.

Alex Romanovich:

Not really, I mean, I think I wanted your opinion on this, obviously because there's a lot of buzz about almost every part of the business where AI is. I mean, I'm working with a lot of AI as well, but not necessarily in the same way in the same format that you are.

Marla Bace:

Yeah, and I have one client who coaches technology professionals and she has a lot of people who are very worried about AI replacing them. But when she and I really talk about the professionals that are being let go and we pull back the onion, ai is sort of the excuse it's. They're really not the right level leader, they're not innovative, they're not strategic, they're myopic, they're technical and so they're not viewed as adding value to the broader equation and they're afraid their jobs are being replaced. But yeah, they're the repetitive cause and that's something that AI can do, whereas if you're actually leaning in again emotional intelligence and communication and you're adding value to an organization outside of a repetitive task, then AI isn't as much of a threat to them.

Alex Romanovich:

And at least that's you know from my perspective, from you know the people that I work with and I think you're totally right about this, because one thing, especially when you're interviewing and you know the question may be well, could your job be replaced by AI or something along those lines, when they're trying to really test you and so forth? And I think the way to do it is to actually face it head on and say, look, I use the AI tools, but that's not a replacement, right, it's definitely not a replacement.

Alex Romanovich:

And I always say to the programmers I work with a lot of tech community and yeah, there is a little bit of an anxiety in terms of look, you know, yes, this job can be replaced, that job can be replaced by AI and so forth, and what I say is create an environment, create a value add for yourself in such a way that you can face it and say, look, I use it.

Marla Bace:

It doesn't mean that it's going to replace it, it's going to replace me or anybody else, which just underscores the whole conversation we've had. If you invest in yourself and you bring value, you bring more value than the person sitting next to you to the table, whether it's through motivation, because you are an engaging leader, if it's through better communication, if it's through optimization of your division, whatever it might be. You said it if you're adding value, your chances of being redundant are so much less than if you're just showing up punching a clock and wanting to get paid.

Marla Bace:

It doesn't matter if it's technology or a leader.

Alex Romanovich:

Yeah, it's been a fascinating conversation, Marla. And I guess, some of the final questions what do you say to people who are kind of stuck and they tried a lot of different things but they still have anxieties related to their work environment or about themselves and they're kind of feeling that, hey, maybe now's the time for me to do something different?

Marla Bace:

Well, I really encourage people and I know people are used to doing, but we are human beings. Take the time to be and to look inside yourself and say what is my real purpose, what is it that I really want to be doing? And then, instead of how do I get there? Who can help me get there? Who is the right person? And that's actually why I don't do sales calls.

Marla Bace:

I do a free coaching session. I say to someone give me 45 minutes of your time and if I'm going to be able to help you see something differently and add value, then I'm the right person for you to work with. If you go to another coach and they say here, consume all of this stuff and you know, join my mastermind once a month and you feel that that's right, then that's what fits you. But understand, when you go to a mastermind, what you're getting is other people who are probably stuck too, as opposed to that personal person who's going to sit down and say okay, where do you want to go? How do you change your mindset? What are the strategies and then the underlying tactics that we can put in place to help you get from point A to point B?

Alex Romanovich:

One final question, if I can.

Marla Bace:

You had a very successful marketing career.

Alex Romanovich:

You had a very successful operational career and you're having a very successful coaching career. So you've been sort of an entrepreneur into trying to actually repurposing or trying to repurpose your skills, your traits, your experience into something else maybe related, maybe unrelated. Now, what's next for you? What's what were your thoughts as to where your?

Marla Bace:

coaching practice can take you, or maybe something else you're thinking about? Yeah, so I do say that to people. I reinvented myself successfully four times. I started as an accountant, which you don't ever let me forget. I'd like to marketer, customer experience, GM, etc. I think this might be the last chapter. As I said, I've been successful enough that I'm okay for retirement. I want purpose for the next 10 years and for me, purpose is helping other people realize their true success and fulfillment. So I see myself doing this for quite a while.

Alex Romanovich:

Retirement. You know there's so many people that could definitely use your help. I don't think we should be even pronouncing that word.

Marla Bace:

Like I said, a decade. I still see a decade ahead of me. So on average, each chapter has been again starting in kindergarten, you know, five to 15 years.

Alex Romanovich:

Exactly.

Marla Bace:

We're going to let this one be at least another decade, and hopefully I will be able to help a decade full of entrepreneurs, business owners and corporate cogs become the leaders that they want to be.

Alex Romanovich:

Marla, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure.

Marla Bace:

Wonderful conversation, as always.

Alex Romanovich:

And now we can share it with the global wide audience that is listening to us. Thank you so much.

Marla Bace:

Thanks, Alex.