Ep.2 Ken Altenbach | Executive & Leadership Coach | Pennsylvania

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdkSwxofU4

Episode 2

Nodirkhon: [00:00:00] Welcome to Irreplaceable by AI, where we spotlight work that technology can't replace. Today's guest is Ken Altenbach, an executive and leadership coach who helps high-performing leaders cut through the noise, reconnect with their purpose, and live with clarity and confidence.

Ken is a former United States Air Force Staff Sergeant turned senior corporate leader with over 40 years of experience in military and business leadership. He now runs his own coaching practice, supporting CEOs, founders, and executives through high-pressure decisions and major transitions. For 19 years, Ken managed a plant at Dempsey Uniform and Linen in Pennsylvania.

He holds an associate of applied science in business management and completed executive management training through the TRSA Executive Management Institute. He is triple certified as a [00:01:00] professional coach, including credentials from the Institute of Insight Coaching and Heroic Public Benefit Corporation.

Beyond his coaching practice, Ken has delivered hundreds of gifted coaching sessions, led leadership and team-building programs across corporate, educational, and community settings, and has been active with organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters and regional leadership initiatives. Please welcome Ken Altenbach.

Ken: Hey Nodir, how are you? Thanks for having me on your podcast today. I'm really excited to be sharing our insights with one another. I'm ready to go for it.

Nodirkhon: I'm excited to have you as a guest on this podcast. We've known each other for quite some time, and I'm sure the wider audience—the people listening to our podcast—will have a lot to learn from your knowledge and your vast experience. [00:02:00] The first thing I'd like to start with is what we call the trend debrief.

Let's deep dive into the current trends and cases: what's happening with coaching, with leadership coaching. Nowadays the US business coaching market is estimated at around 20 billion, and most professional coaches sit somewhere in the business leadership bucket. From your perspective inside the industry, does it feel like opportunity or overcrowding? And how do you actually stand out in that noise?

Ken: That's a beautiful question. When I'm talking to high-level executives, they have a similar question: what makes you different? I explain what I do. If you're searching for any kind of coach—executive, life, career, [00:03:00] nutritional, holistic, anything like that—the first thing you're gonna do is jump on the internet and start shopping around. When you shop around, you'll come up with all these coaches in the same category that you're searching for. So you have to determine: how do I know who the best one's gonna be for me?

You can't just base it on price alone. If you're basing your coaching needs on price alone, then you're not really doing your homework. If you're looking at price alone, then coaching really isn't for you—it doesn't matter to you. So what I do and what sets me apart: I don't want to be in that red-herring category where I'm just "an executive and leadership coach." There are multitudes of us out there.

What sets me apart is this. If you go on my website, or do any research on me, or even get on a call with me and [00:04:00] ask me how much I charge, I'm not gonna give you an answer—because every person who shows up with me is different. They have different concerns. Even though they might be in the same career—CEO, COO, CFO, whatever—they have different concerns. Every single one of them. This is not a cookie-cutter industry. So you won't find pricing on my website, on Facebook, or on LinkedIn.

What I do to set myself apart is I don't sell my coaching to you. I give you the experience of my coaching. I offer you a few coaching sessions with me so you get to see my coaching, experience my coaching, and then you make a decision. You don't have to worry about me trying to charge you. If [00:05:00] we do the coaching—after two, three, or four coaching sessions that I provide—I'll ask if this is something you want to continue forward. If I have you on for three or four calls, I know right then and there that it's been worth it to you.

I have not come across anybody who decided after three, four, or maybe even five coaching sessions with me: "Thank you very much, I feel better, I know what I'm doing, I'm moving on." I always wind up having clients from that. So that's what sets me apart. I'm not gonna sell it to you. I'm going to give you the experience. That's the only way you're gonna make a decision and see if it's right for you.

Nodirkhon: This is a really great approach. From the latest International Coaching Federation data, they say most companies that measure return on investment on coaching [00:06:00] see a positive return. But a lot of leaders still think of coaching as soft, and I think in the beginning there's a kind of challenge—without trying it, it's hard to prove the hard return on this investment to many of those leaders. So the question is: how do you think you could prove the impact beyond client testimonials? Do you have other metrics, or have any of your clients given you feedback like, "Because of your coaching I managed to increase my sales"—that kind of hard evidence?

Ken: That's another great question. With me, or if you even inquire with me about what this is all about, Nodir, I just want to explain—and this is the reason when people are [00:07:00] interested and I make that offer, I offer for them to come on a connect call with me first to talk about it: what this looks like, what is this gonna wind up being?

I am different from a business coach. Business coaches are sort of like consultants. They go out there, they evaluate your business, your sales team, your marketing, where you're at and where you might be struggling, and make recommendations—"Your marketing needs to change," or "You need to hire so many salespeople," or "You need to charge this amount." That's not what I do.

So that's why I do a connect call—for people to understand that I'm coaching you, I'm not coaching your business. And if I'm coaching you, if what you're coming to the coaching call with me is something I can help with, you are going to [00:08:00] take it back to your business. Let's say you have problems—personally you don't know how to get to the next level. You're a president and want to become a CEO, or hire a director, and you're not sure how to do that. You don't know what's holding you back. That's where we deep dive.

If you're a business owner, you might come to me and say your business isn't working correctly, and we'll deep dive and find out what it is about you as the leader that is holding you back. It could be your leadership skills; it could be that you belong somewhere else and don't belong where you're at, and you need help with that. I show up as that kind of coach. Technically speaking, I'm helping that leader personally. I'm not here to tell them they're doing it right or wrong, or "This is what you need to do." I don't even show up and tell them I'm the expert. I sit and I listen. I hear what their concerns are, we deep dive, and I have a way of going way, way down. [00:09:00]

Once they use that—like you said, beyond the reviews I get—well, that's a key indicator. Go to those reviews. These are leaders coming and saying, "I need help. This is how Ken helped me." It could be something personal: "I don't know how to listen correctly," or "My team doesn't respect me," or "I don't want to be around these people. I don't feel..." All these things show up. So as far as—

Nodirkhon: Yeah, enough.

Ken: Yeah, okay.

Nodirkhon: From what I heard when you were explaining the different cases—they're so [00:10:00] different; one is more towards career, the other is related to business owners—I'm wondering: what's your take? The industry is full of ultra-specific niches now: burnout coaching, women in leadership, inclusive leadership, founder coaching. Do you believe the future belongs to hyper-specialists or to broad leadership generalists who can work across various teams?

Ken: I'm a generalist, although I am titled an executive and leadership coach. That's just a title. I will get on a call with you and ask you certain questions to see where you want to go. Basically, coaching is about what you want to create in your life as a leader. What do you want to create? And we'll go diving deep and I'll ask you: why is that important? What have you tried? What have you not tried? What is your resistance? Everything like that.

If you're looking for a [00:11:00] specialist—what immediately comes up is a health coach. "I'm not exercising. I need to lose a hundred pounds. I don't know how." Technically speaking they can give you that information, but maybe there's something mentally stopping you from wanting to go out and do these things, and I could help in that aspect as well. But as far as specialized—"I can set you up on this training program, we're gonna do this weight stuff together, we're gonna learn how to eat properly, sleep properly"—that's not what I do. That industry is very valuable and it's something I do not do. There are people who go to school for that, get training for that, and have their own businesses. So to answer: both categories exist and have value.

Nodirkhon: When we also speak about the line between therapy and coaching—for instance, the International Coaching Federation is now pushing hard on diversity, inclusion, and ethics as priorities in their next strategy—we know that lots of people conflate coaching with burnout, anxiety, or deeper personal issues. So where do you personally draw the line between leadership coaching and therapy?

Ken: Great question. I have this on my website in a few words. Therapy dives into your past; there might be issues that need to be explored there. I do not do that. I don't hold any kind of medical degree.

If we get into a coaching session and someone says to me, "I feel burned out, I can't take it anymore, my life's over," or something along those lines—[00:13:00] I've never had this happen, just so you know—I would stop that coaching and tell them, "Listen, I'm not the person. You need to reach out to the right people. You might need to deal with therapy." Or: "I can't progress in my career because I'm still worried about what happened to me in my childhood." Let me explain: therapy dives into your past. Coaching takes you from where you're at to where you want to go. That's what coaching is about: creation. I never claim to be a therapist. If people want therapy, I'm not the right person.

I will tell you this, Nodir: do I have some clients that are in therapy? Absolutely. I never intermingle. I never question, "What are they telling you to do? Could you go back and share what I'm telling you?" They are there for a reason and I respect that. I respect [00:14:00] that world. I'm not there to take them and dive into their childhood or what happened while they were growing up. I'm here to say: this is where you're at. What's stopping you from getting there? Let's take a look at that.

Nodirkhon: That's super clear. Thanks for clarifying. When we speak about using AI tools in coaching—transcripts, sentiment analysis, those dashboards—they suddenly handle a lot of sensitive data. How do you address client concerns about your stack, and how transparent are you with clients about what's being recorded and analyzed?

Ken: I am very transparent. The only AI tool I have is a notetaker—a recording notetaker. Most people have heard of it; it's one of the top companies. It's Fathom. You've got Otter and others. I use Fathom just for the purpose of going back and reviewing my recordings to see if there's something I could have said differently, if I should have asked a different question. When that coaching session is done and over with, it's stored in my files. It doesn't get shared with anybody. That recording and the summary notes are also given to the person I coach.

Before anybody comes on and starts a coaching session with me, [00:15:00] the message says: "You're going to be recorded. Are you okay with that?" 99.9% of people have no problem with it—that's today's world. If someone has a concern, they let me know and I immediately stop the recording. For two and a half years [00:16:00] I coached without any kind of recordings; I just took mental notes and wrote things down. As far as ethics: it's never getting shared with anybody other than the person I'm coaching and myself.

Nodirkhon: Let's deep dive further into the impact on coaching. There are emerging platforms that claim to be AI coaching platforms—they can analyze conversations, track goals, and send personalized prompts. What specifically do you believe only a human leadership coach can do that AI will struggle to replicate in the next five to 10 years?

Ken: That's a big issue that's been coming up in the last year, year and a half. It's interesting because now everybody's getting onto that ship—"Let's use an AI coach." In fact, when I'm reaching out to executives, some of them come back: "No thanks, Ken. I have AI to coach. I coach myself." Here's the difference.

AI can analyze. Give you an example: "I am a president of this company. I want to move up as a CEO. What can I do?" AI will tell you all the steps—you might need more education, more training, etc. The difference with human coaching is that AI cannot detect what is really holding that person back. When I coach, I'm listening to you so deeply that I can hear the emotions behind the words you're saying, and there's something deeper there that I will go after: "This is what you're saying, but this is what I'm hearing." AI cannot do that. AI is basically giving you instructions. "You want to grow, you want to learn how to delegate—here are the steps." When I ask, "Why aren't you delegating? What's holding you back from delegating?"—AI will not ask you that. AI won't ask, "Where's your difficulty in that?" unless you tell AI that's your difficulty. There might be deeper things. So that's the difference between human and AI.

People are gonna rely on AI. AI is a great tool—I use it in my marketing to give me ideas—but as far as human interaction, I am absolutely telling you: AI does not know how to [00:19:00] hear what's truly going on and then give recommendations from that. Does that make sense, Nodir?

Nodirkhon: Absolutely. I can concur with that because I've experienced it firsthand in your sessions and I understand what you're talking about. Let's go back to the beginning—when you started picking direction in your life, who you wanted to be, and how you came to leadership coaching. How did you get to this point?

Ken: When I graduated from high school I only had two careers. My first was the Air Force for 10 years. I got out of the Air Force, was unemployed for six [00:20:00] months, then found a job locally about 10 miles from where I live now. I was at that company for years until I retired from that position in 2021. In the Air Force and in that position I grew exponentially in leadership. I loved it. I loved the opportunity to grow with the company. They recognized me as a leader. Was I perfect? Absolutely not. I had to learn a lot about what it meant to be a leader, especially the difference between the military and the corporate world. I made my mistakes and learned a lot. My company and the Air Force gave me tools, programs, trainings—but I always [00:21:00] still needed more. So I started developing myself, reading books, going to my own workshops. Still learning. But as I grew in each position, the higher up the ladder I went, the lonelier I felt.

What I mean is: you're expected as a leader to know a lot. Especially in the corporate world, you're not supposed to let anybody see you sweat. If they put you in a high leadership position, you better perform and you can't let anybody know you might be struggling. They pay you the high money to be that person. You have to have that facade. If you don't know, you don't let anybody else know. I didn't like that. I didn't have anybody really above me—the next level was my supervisor, then the owners. They had their own worries. [00:22:00] So there was nobody really there.

Towards the end of my corporate career, about three years before I retired, I started coming into the coaching world. I started inquiring what it was. I even hired a coach for myself—a life coach—to see what it was like, because I was struggling where I was at and thought maybe I needed to go outside my organization to figure this out. It didn't work out; I actually got totally turned off. Not the fault of the coach—it was something different than what I expected. Thank God the light at the end of that tunnel still stayed lit, because as I got closer to retirement I was diving more and more into coaching—what it was, what it could be, how it could help leaders.

I remember getting into trainings with people who coach all over the world—well-known names. I'll never forget one person: Rich Lipman. He and another person wrote a book called The Prosperous Coach. They talked about how to not worry about getting a website, posting on LinkedIn or Facebook every single day—just go out there and connect and coach, coach, coach. He gave a live demonstration once and brought a leader up on stage. He asked her, "What do you do?" She said, "I am a professional coach." "For how long?" "Two and a half years." "What did you do before that?" "I was a corporate leader for 20 years." He said to her—and I'll never forget it, like I just heard it today—[00:24:00] "You were a coach for 22 years. I want you to understand: coaching is leadership. Leadership is coaching." That insight blew me away. When I was in leadership I always thought I had to train somebody, counsel somebody, mentor somebody, guide somebody—because I was the leader. I had that concept. When I retired I knew I wanted to get into the coaching world.

How did I get my start? Four years ago, life-coaching training came into my world. I joined it and found out how to coach the proper way through life coaching, based on what I already knew or didn't know. I went through that training and absolutely fell in love with it. Why leadership and executive coaching? Because through the training they say you're not supposed to choose a niche—just coach, coach, coach, practice. I did that. But I knew in the back of my mind I wanted to be in the executive and leadership world because I was there and I knew I had needed help and was too afraid or too egotistical to ask. I know there are leaders in the same boat. I talked to my coach—I have a coach now, I've had him for two years—and let him know I want to be in this world. What do I need to do? He told me I was ready to get myself out there. That's how you came into my life, Nodir—you're a business owner, you're a leader. I put myself out there and you said yes.

So I'll go back to what I said in the beginning. I just have a title. I'm called an executive leadership coach because that's who I want to be—that's my avatar. But if a person off the street wanted some coaching, [00:26:00] I would coach them the same way. Might be slightly different based on their business desires, but there's still a person. I'm in the executive and leadership world because of what I went through for 40 years and what I know leaders are going through right now.

Nodirkhon: This is so true about loneliness—I can relate to that.

Ken: Yeah.

Nodirkhon: I remember when I was in my previous position, I was head of department in a large factory in a relatively small town. I felt this pressure not just at work—that I had to be exemplary, everyone's watching me—but I carried this pressure all the way in the city because I felt someone might see me, observe me, and then it could all spread through rumors. That didn't let me breathe freely. I do relate to that. I want to ask you: when you say that—and I especially liked your comment about the woman who was in the executive position and it turned out she was coaching as well—I think it's especially true when you ask a leader to do those one-on-ones with every employee or direct report. But when you're coaching, don't you feel loneliness at some point too? I mean, listening to a lot of people about their problems, obviously giving back and helping—it puts you in a position where in many senses you need to hold yourself back. It's a kind of service. Do you understand what I mean?

Ken: I'm gonna ask the way I hear you say it. I'm a coach now. Am I lonely being in this world because I have experience in leadership and I cannot share it with the person sitting on the other side of me—because I don't want to tell them what to do, I want them to have their own insights? Is that where you're going? That it might be creating loneliness in me?

Nodirkhon: Yeah. A leader is kind of lonely—there are lots of direct reports, you just listen to them, try to help them out, try to keep yourself within certain norms and frames. Does that continue in this practice as well?

Ken: No. I absolutely love what I do. I have no loneliness. I work for myself; I'm a one-person show. I don't work for a coaching organization. I don't have to report to anybody. I don't have to do what my boss tells me or how I have to show up. That's what most leaders have to face—CEOs have the board of directors they have to report to. Even though they're the CEO, they still have to report to somebody. Here I don't have to do that.

Back to the question you're asking. I have a lot of experience in leadership. My job is not to sit there and say, "Keep quiet and listen to how I handle it, and it's gonna work out for you"—because the way you think about it and the way I think about it are two different ways. The only way you're gonna grow as a business owner and leader is by understanding: "I need to do this my way. This is how I'm going to do it, and I think it might work." I will tell you this: although I have a plethora of leadership skills—delegation, problem-solving, communication—if something comes up in a coaching conversation that you're stuck on, I will ask permission. "Hey, I have something similar that happened to me. Would you like me to share that with you?" If you say yes, I share it. I'm not there to tell you "This is the way you need to do it." I'm here to share what I did. You can take that information and do it the way you want. [00:31:00] So no—it is not lonely. This is the world I want to be in. I am so at home with what I'm doing right now, because I know that even at the CEO level, not every leader knows everything. They may think they do, but they don't. If they took the time and stopped looking like they have to know all the answers, and wanted to get into their leadership and have their team respect and follow them, they'd have to figure out how to do that. And that's what I'm here to do. And that is so awesome to me.

Nodirkhon: Thank you, Ken. I want to speak more and deep dive into your current challenges. We started with how you started and what was in the past, but today—running this [00:32:00] leadership coaching business—what kind of challenges do you face?

Ken: Great question. Maybe about a year and a half, two years ago, before I hired my own coach, the challenge was: how do I get clients? Going back to Rich Lipman and Chandler's book The Prosperous Coach—they teach you right off the bat you're not out trying to get clients. You have to create clients. How do you create clients? You bring people to you, you show them what you're made of and how you coach, and let them accept that.

You asked me what my challenges are right now. I can't really say I have challenges. I have the mindset: I'm going to reach out to whoever I want to reach out to, the way I do that. If you accept and want to get on a call with me, then what I'm doing is working. I am not expected to reach out to 200 people per day—I don't do that. I reach out, and if five or 10 leaders get back to me and say they're interested, I've done my job. A year or two years ago it was: "Why can't I get these clients? Why can't I create these clients? I want to be a multimillionaire. Why can't I do that?" That stopped me in my business. It stopped my growth. Back then the challenge was: is this even worth it, because I can't get clients? But being coached myself and understanding the process—I had to slow down and do the steps. I continued to do the same steps over and over again. Is it a slow process? Absolutely. But not only are the people getting on these calls with me to find out who I am and how I coach—I'm also getting on the calls with them to see if they're coachable and if I want to coach them or not. We're both vetting each other. That's the process. If you rush it, if you go too deep too fast, you might bring people on that you don't even want, or people who aren't coachable down the road, and you're wasting all that time. And that in itself is a challenge.

Nodirkhon: I can imagine. In this kind of business it's a lot about trust. When you talk about not rushing and keeping patience with this process, I think it's especially tricky where trust is the ultimate decider in the beginning.

Ken: Right. Can I ask you a question? Based on what we're talking about—why did you say yes to me? Why did you say yes to doing some coaching sessions with me? [00:35:00]

Nodirkhon: At that point I didn't understand that I needed some kind of coaching. To be honest, I didn't understand why I would need coaching. But on the other side I'm building a startup, I'm an innovator. I'm quite often questioning the status quo—why is it like this, why not? So I saw the opportunity: why not try and see what happens? That's my character—I'm experimenting. So I decided to try and experiment and see what happens. That was my initial motivation. Of course once we started working together I saw other things I hadn't seen—but in the beginning it wasn't really coming out of desperation or a kind of need.

Ken: What about me made you say yes—that you're still with me?

Nodirkhon: I think from the first coaching session—it's maybe not very unique to say, but it's working when it comes to building trust. You try, you see, you have a better understanding of how things look, and then when there's a decision about whether we should continue, whether we should go on, it's so much easier to make because you already have another level of trust. So the first and main reason I'm continuing with you is that I felt I can trust you. And secondly, obviously you're doing a brilliant job with the coaching—quite often I'm not good at communicating, I might not be so clear in what I want and what's actually happening. I don't know if it's unique to me or common across people in leadership positions. When you're in a leadership position you have to put on a mask that everything is cool; you have to be kind of stoic.

Ken: That felt like a coaching question—and the point is you keep bringing back to it. You didn't think you needed it. You didn't know what it was. You didn't really understand it. And that's what most leaders do. They don't think they need it until they find out they need it. My favorite saying is: no one needs coaching. When people ask me why they should get coaching, I don't tell them they need coaching. I tell them: do you want to experience it and see if it's for you or not?

The reason you're still with me is exactly why I do what I do—because you trust that I could do that. So let's bring it back to AI. Let me ask you this, Nodir: [00:39:00] You just explained why you're still with me. Do you think if you asked AI those questions, you'd still be working with AI as a coach? Would it recognize what you were going through with me? Would it recognize it on that platform? What do you think?

Nodirkhon: No way. It's not just about the capabilities of detecting emotional variations and understanding the root cause of the problem. It's sometimes simply human-to-human connection. There are a lot of nonverbal things—and no matter how smart AI is, these nonverbal things cannot be replaced. Even when we speak right now we've minimized other dimensions of communication—we have audio only—but there's still a lot that's nonverbal in the way we speak, the tonality, and so many other things. We know the numbers vary, but something like 92% of communication between people is nonverbal. I think that's the key—and it impacts not only leadership coaching but many other traits and professions. That's also why it motivated me to start this podcast series: to bring up and highlight the human side of many traits, especially those which require a human touch. We're not against AI—it's a kind of collaboration—but it's never a full replacement. Ken, I really like how you switched to asking questions to me on this podcast.

Ken: Right.

Nodirkhon: That's absolutely fine—this is natural conversation and how it's meant to be. But we're approaching the time limit for this podcast, and you'll have to go soon. So let's move to our final part: rapid-fire questions. I'll ask you a couple of questions—whatever is on top of your mind.

Ken: Okay.

Nodirkhon: [00:42:00] What is one business book, podcast, or online course that has had the most significant impact on how you run your business?

Ken: Heroic LLC, otherwise known as Heroic Coach. Another one is The Ultimate Coach—if you haven't read the book, I highly suggest it. Who you are being as a person, your state of being—that was very impactful for me. I still read the book, I still practice it, I still share it with other people. So: Heroic LLC, or Heroic Coach, and The Ultimate Coach.

Nodirkhon: Next question: if you could recommend one piece of software or physical tool that you simply can't run your business without today?

Ken: An AI notetaker. It's very valuable for me. Any conversation—you get the chance to go back and see what you could have done better. You get to evaluate yourself. So that's great. [00:43:00]

Nodirkhon: Thinking about all the lessons you've learned throughout your life, what's the single most valuable piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in leadership coaching today?

Ken: There's something called stimulus and response. I've heard it in multiple leadership and self-development books. Between the stimulus—the event—and the response, there is a gap. The most valuable thing I could tell anybody, and I do this with myself and practice it every day: whatever event is showing up to you, take five, 10 seconds. Don't say anything. Walk away. Pause before you overreact and cause serious damage in relationships moving forward. Stimulus and response. If you feel that whatever's being said to you is gonna make you mad or upset—before you say or act on anything, recognize those emotions. I share that all the time with my clients and I practice it on a daily basis. [00:44:00]

Nodirkhon: Finally, where can our listeners find you and learn more about your work?

Ken: Thank you for asking. They can go to my website kenaltenbach.com. My phone number is (570) 912-5140—you can call or leave a message. You can also reach me on WhatsApp at the same number. My email is ken@kenaltenbach.com.

I want to let all your listeners know, Nodir: if they're listening to this and have ever thought about coaching and want to learn more about how I can coach, they can go to my website—but there's nothing comparable to actually being in front of somebody and asking questions. I would love to connect with anybody who's thinking about it—leaders, executives. Get on a call with me, ask your questions. If it's for you, great—we can set up some calls. I always offer two or three pro bono calls without the pressure of being sold to or that you have to continue with me. No obligation whatsoever. If you're thinking about it, get on a call with me, experience it, and we'll go from there. [00:46:00]

Nodirkhon: Thank you. Today our guest was Ken Altenbach on this episode of Irreplaceable by AI. Thank you for listening.

Ken: Thank you for having me today, Nodir. This was awesome. Great conversation.