Summary
Joe tells the origin story of the four qualities — view — that underlie life-changing conversations. He first saw it watching a Dutch coach named Case Debron, a coffee-fueled, chaos-creating business consultant who sat in Joe’s living room one evening and transformed one person after another. Joe assumed it was magic, the same way people assume his own coaching is magic, but he became determined to figure out what Case was actually doing. Case eventually moved in with Joe while seeking cancer treatment, and Joe got months of close study before Case passed away at his first meditation retreat — from a heart attack, not the cancer.
Driven to understand it, Joe traveled the world and found four or five people who could create significant change in someone’s life in a very short time. They worked in wildly different ways — some mean, some gentle, some like a scalpel, some like a hatchet — but every one of them shared four characteristics: vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder. Vulnerability means saying the slightly scary thing and taking the risk yourself. Impartiality means trusting the other person’s wisdom and not trying to get them anywhere. Empathy means being with the person without buying their story or collapsing into toxic empathy. Wonder means staying in awe rather than in a knowing state or even in curiosity that’s hunting for an answer.
Joe realized this wasn’t a technique but a mindset — the way they held the person mattered more than what they said. He made vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder a whole lifestyle experiment for months and found it changed his life more than any coaching session: people wanted to do business with him, his relationships improved, sitting with himself got easier. That became his mission — teaching view — which became the basis of the connection course, refined over years of live workshops and then moved online during COVID, where it now has a roughly 95–96% completion rate.
Key Concepts
- Great coaching is not magic but a state of mind
- Every great coach shares four qualities: vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder
- View is a mindset, not a technique
- Impartiality means trusting the other person’s wisdom
Key Quotes
“I thought it was magic, just like a lot of people who watch me coach think that it’s magic. But it wasn’t magic.”
“They all had very different ways of working… some was like watching somebody with a scalpel and some it was like watching them with a hatchet. But the thing that was true about all of them is that they all had these four characteristics.”
“Vulnerability in our definition of the word doesn’t mean weakness. It means that you say the thing that’s a little bit scary to say.”
“They’re listening to the wisdom across from them and they’re not partial… ‘Oh, I know that you’re going to get to where you need to go.‘”
“It’s just like, ‘Oh, I can be with you in whatever you’re feeling, and I don’t need it to change.‘”
“They were in awe. It was just that wonder of curiosity without needing to know the answer.”
“This wasn’t a technique, it was a mindset… the way that they held the person was far more important than what they said.”
Transcript
I remember the very first time my mind was completely blown watching somebody coach where somebody could sit down with another person consistently see a significant change in their life and then sit down with the next person then a significant change in their life and I was like how is this possible? I didn’t even think that something like that was possible. My idea of therapy or coaching was you [snorts] sit down and maybe over weeks and years something small changes and then you’re maybe a little bit happier. But I was watching this person, his name was Case Debron, as a matter of fact, and he was a character. He was he drank a ton of coffee. He was Dutch. I found him because he was supposed to be a business consultant for uh one of the companies that I invested in as a VC. And he came in and he just created holy hell. Yeah. Like it was he just created chaos. He came in and just really poked at all the executives in this business. and that one of them really hated him and one of them really liked him and but what he was pointing to was really true. And then one evening he came to our house and we had some friends over and he just coached people like one right after the other and mind blown mind blown mind blown one person right after the other was just having their whole world seen through and their life was changing and it was a remarkable thing and I thought it was magic just like a lot of people who watch me coach think that it’s magic but it it wasn’t magic and I was pretty determined to figure out like what what what was this guy doing? What was Casease doing? And so what happened was that he got cancer and he had this slow form of cancer and uh he couldn’t get the treatment that he wanted uh where he was in the Netherlands. And so he came and lived with us. So I got to be with him for like six months in one stint and then three months in another stint. and he would sit on our couch and he would coach people who came in and our kids would listen from the rooms and and we would just watch this coaching that was happening. Now I had already started coaching people but I was definitely not in any kind of category like case was at the time and and I like sat with him I learned I got coached by him I learned I deeply explored myself I learned but then case passed away as a matter of fact he was uh he was at his first meditation retreat ever when he passed away and instead of passing away from cancer he passed away from a heart attack. his best friend called me up at the time and said, “See, I told you the silence was going to kill him.” Because he was a very opinionated man. And so, um, so I I just got really dedicated to like what what was it the case was doing? What what was going on there? And and so I just went around the world looking for other people who could do anything similar to that. and um I found like four or five people and that they could they could coach people and have a significant change in the person’s lives in a very short period of time. Now a couple things that happened. One is that I realized all these people had done a significant amount of work on themselves for like many many years. But the other thing that I noticed is that they all had the same characteristics in the way that they worked with them. I I saw the pattern and they all had very different ways of working. Um very different ways. Some were just far more mean or some were far more kind. Some were, you know, uh like very gentle, some were very pointed, some was like watching somebody with a scalpel and some it was like watching them with a hatchet. But the thing that was true about all of them is that they all had these four characteristics. And so I became really dedicated into learning what these characteristics were and how to actually embody them. And those are view. Um it’s vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder. So vulnerability in our definition of the word doesn’t mean weakness. It means that you say the thing that’s a little bit scary to say. You’re always being a little bit vulnerable. You’re always opening up that envelope of intimacy a little bit more. mostly by taking a risk yourself, not demanding somebody else takes a risk, right? And so that’s the first thing that they all did. The second thing that they all do is that they’re very impartial. They’re not trying to get anybody anywhere. They’re listening to the wisdom across from them and they’re not partial. They’re not trying to say, “You should be there. You should be here.” They’re not giving advice. They’re saying, “Oh, I know that you’re going to get to where you need to go.” And I have that faith. It’s that level of impartiality that they have. They all have empathy, which means that they’re really with the person. It doesn’t mean that they’re in the person, right? It means that they can feel the person, but they’re not buying the story. They’re not saying, “Yeah, wo is you. It’s horrible being you.” It’s not that kind of toxic empathy. It’s just like, “Oh, I can be with you in whatever you’re feeling, and I don’t need it to change.” It’s that level of empathy. It’s actually like a very heart heared, a very heartopening kind of empathy. And the last thing that they were in is just constant wonder. They weren’t in a knowing state. They weren’t even in curiosity because curiosity seems like you’re looking for the answer, but they were in awe. It was just that wonder of curiosity without needing to know the answer. And they would just sit there. Even though they they probably knew what was going to go down because they’d been doing it for so long, they still held this place of wonder with everybody that they sat across from. And so I got really deeply into embodying it. And what I realized, this wasn’t a technique, it was a mindset. It was the way that they approached the person, the way that they held the person was far more important than what they said. And so I started to really investigate what it was for me to be vulnerable, for me to be impartial, for me to be empathetic, for me to be in wonder. And I wasn’t going to do it just during coaching. I was going to do it just as a lifestyle. And so that was my experiment for many many many months as just like how do I deepen into vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder. And what I started to realize was that was a bigger change agent than any of the coaching sessions that I had been in. That was actually the thing that started to make a significant difference in my life. Whether I was meditating because before that when I was meditating it was trying to get somewhere. But then impartiality what like well if I’m not trying to get anywhere what happens when I’m meditating and the enjoyment increased or if I’m in wonder when I’m meditating it’s a very different experience than if I’m trying to get somewhere or if I’m like not being empathetic with myself in meditation. So it didn’t matter if it was meditating or if I was just having a conversation with another person. Oh, can I be in wonder here? Or if I was coaching somebody. I realized that this state of mind came from the practicing of the state of mind. But it also came because there was a consciousness that had been developed in these people that they realized that this way of being this vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder was just really comfortable. It felt really good. It was heart opening and it was really effective as far as getting, you know, a life that you wanted. It was just like, holy goodness. Like all of a sudden people want to be hanging out with me. All of a sudden people want to do business with me. All of a sudden my relationships are better. All of a sudden I can like figure out with a customer what the product they really want is easier. All of a sudden my management conversations with people who work for me just get nicer. All of a sudden sitting with myself is just easier. And that’s when I realized that that was my mission. My mission was to teach view to other people. that that was the thing that I really wanted to do in the world. And so we do a lot of work at AOA, but the basis of everything we do is being in view and it’s what makes up our connection course. And so we created this connection course. At the time we called it tide turners and it was gosh way back maybe 2015 or something like that. And we were hustling to get like 10 people in a room to to do the course. And for years, we just did weekend things around the country where we said two-day tide turners workshop and we just worked out all the little lumps and bumps and we did all these experiences for people. We saw what worked the best, what didn’t work so well. We saw what kept people engaged. We saw what created the transformation. And I think out of the, you know, lots and lots of hours of exercises, we only kept 25% of them. We only kept the very best exercises. The ones that weren’t boring, the ones that immediately turned somebody’s lights on so they could see something that they couldn’t have seen before, so they could really feel viscerally get the sematic experience of what it was to be in view. And so over those years, I think until like 2020, we were just doing them live and they were getting a little more famous and a little more popular, more people came and then COVID hit and I remember thinking to myself, well that there goes that, you know, like and this guy named Thiago Forte, who runs uh Building a Second Brain, great human being, um deeply indebted to him, um said, “Why don’t you do this online?” I’ve had a lot of positive things online. You can’t do this work online. I thought to myself like, “There’s no way you can do this work online.” And um I was dead wrong. But when COVID came and I got bored because I was doing a whole bunch of stuff to doing very little stuff, I I was like, “Well, let’s try it. Let’s see if we can do it.” And so, the way that we work in our business is just everything is an iteration. we just try and try and try and so we took all the exercises that we knew were going to be the best and we had people get on Zoom and do the exercises together and we modified them and tweaked them and took some out and put some new ones in. But I remember just sitting watching people do the exercises over and over to find out what would work online and then we put it together in a course. Um and that’s how the connection course came to be. And the intention obviously is you know greater relationships it because it isn’t just about the relationship with others which makes life amazing and your business relationships which makes life great and and profitable but it’s also about your relationship with yourself. And so what we’re not doing is teaching a communication technique though you definitely learn how to communicate better. And we’re not teaching like how to handle, you know, difficult conversations, though you definitely learn how to handle difficult conversations better. What we’re teaching is a state of mind. What we’re teaching is how do you be with yourself and others in such a way that’s highly effective and yet creates a tremendous amount of ease and enjoyment in your system. And uh so that’s that’s the how the whole thing came to be. That’s why we created the connection course. And I’m grateful that we created something that has been so beautiful. I mean, we’ve now had thousands of people go through it and we have like a crazy completion rate. I think we’re at like 95 96% completion rate. But most of all, it’s just been um on a personal level incredibly meaningful to have this as my mission. It’s um to watch people’s lives change on a daily basis, to get the notes, get the DMs about how their lives are different because of the course. That’s really what’s made it worthwhile.