Craig Fortune has had four careers. Butcher, secondary school teacher, then twelve years running a multi-million-dollar out-of-school care business in New Zealand with around 140 staff. COVID gutted that business and he put it into voluntary liquidation. Somewhere in the middle of the success, the good money and the overseas holidays, he was diagnosed with depression and burned out hard. That experience is what pushed him into his fourth career: coaching cognitive professionals out of the productivity trap.

In this conversation Craig is blunt about the thing most new coaches get backwards. You are a business person first and a coach second. If you do not do the accounts, the marketing, and the work of filling the funnel, you will not have anyone to coach in the first place.

“You have to consider yourself a business person first, not a coach first. If you don’t do those other things that are as important as the actual coaching, then you won’t have those clients to coach in the first place.”

We get into the burnout numbers leaders are ignoring, why “here’s your laptop, go figure it out” broke remote work and is now breaking AI, and a set of very practical time and energy tools. Then I reframe the part Craig hates most, marketing, and you can watch it land in real time.

Chapters

  • 00:00 — Cold open & intro
  • 00:37 — Welcome: Craig joins
  • 02:51 — Four careers: butcher, teacher, business owner, coach
  • 03:45 — The business that went into liquidation, and burning out at the peak
  • 06:36 — Half of Australasia burned out: the numbers
  • 08:13 — “Here’s your laptop, go figure it out” (and why AI is repeating it)
  • 10:15 — Eat the frog vs. your chronotype
  • 16:38 — Business person first, coach second
  • 19:17 — The Eisenhower Matrix and finishing it “yesterday”
  • 20:54 — Use your calendar for more than meetings
  • 22:55 — Accountability partners
  • 23:44 — Eating elephants: breaking a year-long goal into bites
  • 36:09 — What surprised him: being the product
  • 38:42 — Train people in your system, not just you
  • 40:28 — Solo now, open later: the five-year question
  • 43:57 — The marketing and sales struggle
  • 45:28 — Trust over DMs
  • 47:17 — The reframe: marketing is just visibility
  • 51:06 — What he learned: you can’t manage time
  • 53:33 — One piece of advice: business person first
  • 54:33 — Close

What we cover

  • Four careers, butcher to teacher to business owner to coach, and the burnout that connects them
  • The success trap: good money, overseas holidays, and a depression diagnosis at the same time
  • Why over 50% of people in Australasia reported burning out in the last 12 months
  • “Here’s your laptop, go figure it out”: how remote work rolled out with zero training, and why AI is repeating the mistake
  • Eat the frog vs. chronotypes: why doing the hardest thing first is bad advice for half the people who hear it
  • Business person first, coach second, and why ignoring it leaves you with no one to coach
  • The Eisenhower Matrix, and where it actually came from
  • Why we overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do over a year
  • Finishing tasks “yesterday” so there’s slack in the system when life happens
  • Using your calendar for your priorities, not just your meetings
  • Being the product: the discomfort of marketing yourself when you used to market a brand
  • The reframe that lands the whole episode: stop “marketing,” start creating visibility and connecting with real people
  • Closing lessons: you can’t manage time, only what you do with it, and there’s no such thing as work-life balance

Connect with Craig Fortune