Life & Work with Brian McCarthy of Cheesman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian McCarthy.

Hi Brian, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I got really into personal growth around 25 years old, did a ton of workshops and worked with a bunch of coaches. I also started doing marketing for personal growth companies then. After about 8 years of that, I had a client who was the one who made Life Coaching a known thing through her tv show on NBC in the 90’s. She had a course teaching people how to coach. I joined during covid because it seemed like a good skill to learn, and because in the back of my mind I had always had the idea of becoming a coach or therapist. Once I started coaching I absolutely loved it and realized that’s what I wanted to do with my life, so I’ve been growing that business ever since.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Plenty of struggles. Several were due to my own mindset. One is the coaching industry is flooded, and most coaches don’t have much training, they just get a certificaiton in a weekend. So in my mind I was already lumped in with people like that even though my training and education was far more rigorous and my skills more developed. That kept me from even wanting to call myself a coach to people.

There was also a phenomenon of clients showing up to sales calls, agreeing to work together, then ghosting. That had never happened in marketing but began happening frequently with coaching. So I had to learn how to deal with that. And also had to change the process of my sales calls because what worked for marketing didn’t work for this.

Then there was the transition with the marketing. I was known for marketing so to go from that to being known for coaching took a while. The business still isn’t as consistent as my marketing business was after 8 years, though it’s incredibly enjoyable and fulfilling. And the resuls I see clients get has been awesome.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I coach women entrepreneurs and professionals who are overwhelmed, burned out, and no longer love their work as a result. I help them win back their time, energy, joy, and be more themselves in the process.

I go deep into their thoughts, feelings, and belief system to find blocks that cause certain patterns to continue repeating in their life. I help them identify and remove those blogs so they’re lighter, freer, and those repeating problems that have been there for year are now gone. Whether that’s chronic overwhelm, never having enough time for themselves, always feeling like they don’t measure up, beating themselves up for not being perfect, etc. Then they’re able to grow their business and have more success while enjoying the process.

My work helps them get to the core fear blocking them as well as tertiary beliefs that keep them from emobodying the steps and ways of being they know to do but can never seem to integrate. They go from an intellectual understanding of what to do and how they want to be to having that flow through them naturally.

I also run improv comedy workshops to help people with business skills like public speaking confidence and running engaging meetings. Improv is a chance to step into and embody a lot of the concepts I help people with in my coaching. It’s a fun way to help people break free from old patterns, overcome fears, and show up more fully themselves in a safe environment so they can then go do it out and in the world more easily. Doing this work, combined with the deeper work to unravel people’s limiting fears and beliefs, can be super powerful.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
The difference between inspired action vs. fear-based action. Acting from a place of expansiveness instead of a place of worry, fear, and avoidance. It can be incredibly subtle but leads to a very different experience and results. That’s part of the shift I help clients with.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mccarthymindsetcoaching.com
• Instagram: @mccarthymindsetcoaching
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brian.mccarthy.3363/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-mccarthy-bb142035/?skipRedirect=true

Image Credits
Photomaki for the dancing one outside