IAM1303 – Coach Helps Students Reach their Full Potential

Reginald is the Founder of Thriving Life Coaching, their motto is “Every student needs a little TLC!” TLC is an academic readiness and life coaching service for middle school, high school, and college students to maximize their full potential. The coaching helps students utilize time management, organization, and study skills to do their best work. Ryder has 30 years of experience in working with secondary and post-secondary organizations as well as students from orientation to graduation via Zoom in California, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. He is a professor at Northern Virginia Community College teaching College Student Success and authored a book Passing the Baton A Guide and Memoir of College Success.

• CEO Story: As a student in school, Reginald really worked hard through trial and error to get things right, so he learned the hard way but progressively figured it out. Prior to graduating, he was invited on a missions trip and there his gift of motivating students was really appreciated. And so he was offered the job in the institution. Fueled by his passion for helping students, he made a coaching program that helped students reach their full potential. And again, he was noticed and was asked to write a book. And so he wrote the book Passing the Baton.
• Business Service: Meet the student and the parent asking what they need. Assess the student – ask about their goals, actions/tasks to meet that goal. Set time management. Then Reginald is the accountability partner.
• Secret Sauce: The ability to empower people. The level of authenticity/transparency. Pragmatism – motivating students with a basis on their practicality.
• CEO Hack: Listening for cues from a student – body language, tone of voice, etc. Unpack it and work on it.
• CEO Nugget: Don’t be afraid. Conquer your fear. Most of the worst you expect to happen will not happen.
• CEO Defined: Being the captain of your ship, surrounded by great navigators. There is always wisdom you can get from everybody.

Website: reginaldryder.com

Instagram: @rryder4tlc

Linkedin: Reginald Ryder, M. Ed.

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Transcription

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00:17 – Intro 

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, start-ups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:44 – Gresham Harkless 

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Reginald Ryder of Thriving Life Coach. And Reginald, it's great to have you on the show.

00:54 – Reginald Ryder 

Thank you, Gresh. Great to be here, and thanks for the opportunity, man. Appreciate it.

00:57 – Gresham Harkless 

Yes. Definitely appreciate you for taking time out, obviously, and, of course, all the awesome things that you're doing. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Reginald so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Reginald is the Founder of Thriving Life Coaching. Their motto is every student needs a little TLC. TLC is an academic readiness and life coaching service for middle school, high school, and college students to maximize their full potential. The coaching helps students utilize time management, organization, and study skills to do their best work.

Reginald has 30 years of experience in working with secondary and post-secondary organizations as well as students from orientation to graduation via Zoom in California, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. He's a professor at Northern Virginia Community College, teaching College Student Success, and authored a book, Passing the Baton, A Guide and Memoir of College Success. Reginald, appreciate you so much again for jumping on the show. You're a wealth of knowledge and and resource for so many people. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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01:59 – Reginald Ryder 

Let's do it. I'm ready. Thank you.

02:00 – Gresham Harkless 

Let's make it happen then. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hit a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:09 – Reginald Ryder 

Sure. So, as a maybe first and foremost, I'm a first generation, student and college. My parents didn't go to college. I'm sure there's we probably need to make a club or organization out there for all of us, in that pool. But, I didn't know what I didn't know about going to college. And so, pretty quickly after buying the t-shirt and sweatshirt at the at the bookstore at the school that I was at with Ball State University in Indiana. I figured out or began to realize what I didn't know at that point how to really study, how to be able to apply myself. I wasn't a bad student in high school so I'm not giving anybody a hard luck story, but at the same time, to say that I was in my fullness in that respect, like, I wasn't.

So in the first couple of semesters, I kind of wandered and kind of found my way and did some things right and a lot of things wrong and everything else in between. I never had anything rather on, like academic probation and that thing. But again, just not at my fullness. So I started to put some things into practice that people had told me and things that I kind of figured out for myself and my own kind of learning style. And got my GPA up a little bit from where it was at the beginning of my freshman year to the end of my freshman year for fall, summer, and spring with three terms.

But came back my sophomore year and came back with a lot more, diligence in getting myself together in ways that I needed to. Started getting three O's and started doing my best work and things worked out. And then at around the time I was getting ready to graduate, I went on an admissions trip. And someone asked me, to go as a volunteer. So I was talking to students and had the gift of gab and the whole thing. And, before I knew it someone was tapping me on the shoulder and said, hey. This would be a great opportunity or career if you're thinking about doing something in higher ed. And I hadn't really thought about it, and that way I've seen it by being a lawyer or doing something else.

So I took it for what it was worth, but then I would just brush it off. I went back for another trip because they asked me to come back and do it again, and so I did. So someone just really yanked me this time. It's like, hey. Listen. You're really good at this. You understand the school. You understand the institution. We have a position coming open. Go from there.

So, fast forward, I did that. From that point on, when I got into the admissions office, I was, as a Practitioner now, what I had been doing for three or four years before, I wanted to make sure that first-generation students and any students that I came in contact with did not create or repeat some of the same mistakes I did. So I gave them a lot of the tips and strategies that I've used. And so I've kind of done that throughout my career and other capacities and other roles. But it's always been with retention in mind. And it's especially retention in mind for students of color in general, as well, as a really kind of a passion project.

Fast forward, to about 2018, I had this idea and been doing this. Like, well, maybe there's a way I can brand this and make it my own. And so I opened up Thriving Life Coaching, started a website, and the whole nine, and then started coaching students as well. In late 2018, or early 2019, someone had asked me about the potential of writing a book, and I didn't really think that much about it because it's one of those things I'd never done before.

First generation in that respect too. And, so, what I write about. And I kind of had a workbook in my head of some kind of a situation like we were talking about with just kind of helping students transition. But ultimately, ended up writing a book and, just happened to have a copy, called Passing the Baton, a Guide Memoir of College Success.

So basically, I wrote it from the perspective of a first-generation student, as a practitioner teaching students how to do this, and finally, as a professor teaching students how to do that as well. So, kind of the pragmatic, the academic, but the on-the-ground, experience. And so now I coach students across the country and offer insight and perspective to, secondary schools or post-secondary schools as well as organizations looking to prep students for their next venture in life.

06:12 – Gresham Harkless 

Nice. Yeah. I definitely love that. And definitely, how you're playing helping, I guess, people to plan and cultivate those seeds that they have in their lives and even hearing your story and how that was done for you. And someone said, hey. You have a really great talent for this. And next thing you know, like, those years and years and years of experience and probably helping out students has culminated in all the awesome things that you're, able to do with your business. So, I know we touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to, of course, drill down a little bit more here, exactly how you're working with your clients, and how that process works.

06:42 – Reginald Ryder 

Once the student has been identified well, my website is reginaldryder.com. So that's you can go on the website and you can see and get a sense of what happened in the likely a parent, but sometimes a student as well, and just giving them a sense of who I am, what I do, and everything else. And before we can get to, what it costs and all those other things, I wanna be able to establish, a relationship and some trust and some credibility all at the same time in the context of that conversation.

In doing so, then I typically will meet with the student and the parent as a part of the process, just so that everybody gets an understanding of what's going to happen, what needs to happen, and what their needs are. And, somewhere within that context, I typically will always kind of focus my attention on the student and not really even though the parents are in the room, really focus my attention on the students. And, hey. No question. What is it that you really want out of this experience?

Because I don't wanna do it in a way that's gonna waste your time. I don't wanna do it in a way that's gonna waste my time. I wanna do it in a way that's gonna be productive for both of us. When I do so, I do an initial assessment. Then we get to the good part where I ask them, what goals they have, which is always, obviously, a good question to ask. But the next layer of that is, what are the tasks that you are gonna do in order to make sure that these goals get met? Once we identify that, then that's where the work begins.

So if you wanna be a better time manager or you wanna get all As, okay, you then you gotta be a better time manager. If you wanna, be able to speak up for yourself when it comes time to do so, then I've gotta put you in positions where you've gotta advocate for yourself with your teachers or your guidance counselor or your parents or anybody else that you're working with. If I feel like this. If a coach is really doing their job well, they're answering questions.

But if you're doing it to the point where you're really getting the person to kind of maximize their own level of achievement, you're really questioning their answers and putting them in the position to say, how would I go about this, or how should I go about this? Now if you're on the right track, then, my job as coach is just to kind of push and steer you in the right direction and then just do the check-ins as necessary. But if not, then we're gonna go to the drawing board. What do you think, student, would work or has worked in this particular situation?

09:05 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah. I appreciate you given the totality and the holistic perspective of that. Would you consider this to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And it could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But is it, what do you I guess, is what the thing you feel, like, sets you apart and makes you unique, but is it that ability to be able to, I think, have an understanding of the process because of your experience and your knowledge, but also that ability to empower people, which I think is definitely a gift. Do you feel like that's part of your secret sauce?

09:31 – Reginald Ryder 

I think it is. I think it's interesting. I've had this conversation with myself, and people will say to me, I was not able to do X Y Z with said person, but when they talk to you, it is something different. I think it comes down to just a level of authenticity. I think it's just being transparent because, again, I don't have all the answers, but I can at least give you some of the answers or perspectives that I have in that regard.

And I feel like there are more answers out there. Collectively, between the two of us, in a one-on-one situation, I think we can figure it out. And if we can't, then we're gonna sit there till we do. So that's maybe part of it. But I think the other part is that I think, having walked those shoes and walked through those halls and walked through those gauntlets, and I've been, trust me, I feel as, competent and sometimes competent as I feel like I sound right now. That wasn't who I was when I was seventeen when I went off to college for the first time.

I guess my secret sauce is pragmatism, if I had to really kind of put it into one man's shell. It's on the ground. It's easy to apply. If you can apply it and make it a habit, then excellence and other things are gonna come from it. Someone's gonna notice that, and someone's gonna try and scoop you up because you're a known quantity, a known entity, and, you're about your business. And who doesn't want that?

10:54 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:06 – Reginald Ryder 

That's a good question. I think I'm really attuned to people's non-cognitive factors and body language. That's why I love being on dudes over Zoom. So if you're telling me, I'm okay, but you're like, I'm okay. I'm like, what does that mean? Or I hear the tone of your voice to say, you know, I didn't sound very confident. It's like what happened? Well and then the floodgate opens. This happened, and this happened, and this happened, and this happened.

So, yeah, you may be in a funk in that particular moment, but you're instinctually, and hearing that, makes me draw me out to be able to ask another question. And sometimes in asking that question, maybe what may feel like a door for me is really a vault for somebody else. But once it's open, then we can go there. I listen for those cues. Sometimes it's just over the phone when I'm talking to students, but sometimes it's in person or via Zoom like this as well. Being able to pick up on those things and then being able to help the student unpack it so that we can see it and be able to work with it and work through it.

12:06 – Gresham Harkless 

Nice. So, I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:19 – Reginald Ryder 

Don't be afraid. Gresham, this idea for me sat in my head for probably years. I won't tell you too how many years because at the CEOs of the world would probably smack me on top of the head or at least on the hand, at least a couple of times. But I had this idea in my head, but I didn't have it fully formulated. And I was of the mindset because I wasn't an entrepreneur in spirit and, kind of in my initial my innate spirit, I guess, is what I would say. Did I sit on it? So I would start and stop, start and stop, start and stop.

And, someone told me a long time ago the acronym for fear is false expectations appearing real. And when I heard that, at first, I thought, that sounds nice, but what does that really mean? And basically, if you're expecting the worst, that's what will happen. But 9 times out of 10, what you're expecting to happen, not you know, doesn't ever happen. I remember giving speeches, and I'm sure you're giving speeches at one point in your life or a different point for you, even if it was in high school or college or whatever the case may be. Nervous, sweaty palms, like, I forget my words. I got the index card and it's just shaking in your hand the whole night. Right?

But you get up and you get comfortable, and you get in the zone. Before you know it, you're having just a conversation. So I talked myself out of things sooner than I gave myself credit for being able to do it. Had I done this maybe 10 or 15 years ago, yeah, maybe this would be a different conversation, but I'm glad that it's happened the way that it has because it also reminds me that aspect of life is something that we all deal with in one respect or another as well.

13:58 – Gresham Harkless 

So, I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definite definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Reginald, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:08 – Reginald Ryder 

That's a good question. I think for me, means being the captain of your ship, but being surrounded by good or great navigators. I don't know how to do everything that know to do or need to do. So when I don't, who can I call on that's gonna be able to drop a nugget and some knowledge? Yourself, I mean, we obviously, we've had conversations. I think there's wisdom and not nuggets that you can always get from everybody in every situation, anything that can or would help me in that regard. So, I think a leader is being a leader, they are able to lead, they're able to follow, but they are also able to take direction as well, and you just gotta be able to do that.

14:55 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Reginald, truly appreciate that definition, and I, of course, appreciate your time even more. What I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best people get a hold of you, get a copy of your book, and find about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:12 – Reginald Ryder 

The name of the business is Thriving Life Coaching. Our motto is every student, needs a little TLC, and I think and, hopefully, in a little bit of time that we've had today, you've had a chance and opportunity to hear how I'm able to spread that love to students for and be able to work within my passion project. And I consider it a joy, but also a responsibility to try and give back in all the ways that I possibly can. My website is reginaldryder.com, reginaldryder.com.

I do offer a 15-minute free consultation for parents, students, or organizations that learn and hear a little bit more about what it is that I do. Name of the book, again, Passing the Baton, A Guide and Memoir of College Success. You can get it on the book on Amazon. I didn't say that. You can get the book on Amazon if you'd like, but you can get it from me on my website. I'm happy to sign it.

16:02 – Gresham Harkless 

Yes, absolutely. Definitely appreciate you. And we will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you, get a copy of your book, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on. And, I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:13 – Reginald Ryder 

Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.

16:15 – Outro 

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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