Buddy Burge, Ph.D.

The CEO Coach
Every CEO Needs a “Buddy”

For all too many leaders, even the best and brightest of us, the twin components of a great life, an extraordinary career and an equally wonderful home-life, can be a stubbornly elusive goal.

There are, of course, many outstanding coaches who can help you work wonders in business, the one side. And there are plenty of qualified psychologists and counsellors who can help you resolve personal or marital issues, the other side.

Suppose for a moment that you would like to “have your cake and eat it too”; to be the complete, powerful, successful business leader you need to be and to have the harmonious, fulfilling family life you want as well.

In other words, not just an extraordinary professional life (which coaching promises), or an extraordinary personal life (which a counsellor can proffer), but both, an extraordinary “life”?

Helping Leaders be Extraordinary is What I do

Having personally advised 527 executives and CEOs over the course of the last 30 years, I will help you be the most successful leader you can be.

Recently, I helped a start-up client increase their sales by 300% in six months and 1,000% (ten-fold) in two years.

I also helped another client, the CEO of one of the largest homebuilders in the entire country, an extremely mature industry, increase his company’s market share by 38% in the space of one month.

So, that, helping leaders be truly successful in their business, is what I do.

It is the only thing I do.

I Also Specialize in Helping “Executive” Marriages

On the other hand, the dirty little secret that no one talks about; the one thing that often holds leaders back from the next level of business success, is the other side of their life, their marriage.

In my 30-year career as a confidant to CEOs, 80% of the 450 leaders I have personally worked with have at some level needed help with the “marriage” issue.

The sad irony of course is that being a good father and husband, is the primary reason leaders want to do so well in their business. Why else would they (or you) be working their you-know-what off, if not for that.

For twenty years, I worked at a major Toronto hospital with 120 physicians who referred patients with troubled marriages to me. 93% of those marriages, often in only four to six weeks, were restored completely.

I have spent close to 15,000 hours over the course of the last 30 years helping leaders with the unique and special challenges embedded in the “executive” marriage.

While helping you take your business to the next level, I can, if need be, also help you with the one thing, the distractions of a difficult marriage, that, like so many other CEOs, impedes, even sabotages their efforts to have a “truly successful life”.

So yes, helping executives be successful in their marriages, is also what I do.

By the way, what I do is NOT “life coaching” that purports to help you find “work-life balance” which simply does not exist since balance implies measuring off two inanimate weights against each other. A more apt analogy is the art form of a juggler keeping several balls in the air at one time, elegantly, adroitly and deftly. One of those balls, family, of course being crystal which if dropped is forever shattered.

The Two Are One
They Both Create, Cause, Determine and Affect the Other

Like two intertwining strands of a rope, the two sides of our life, the professional and the personal, are one.

The truth is, that it is very difficult to find a high-level, strategic partner/trusted advisor who offers leaders what they really need; the expertise to help you excel at both sides of your life, as one.

In fact, if you google “executive coach and marriage counsellor as one service”, only one name appears. You get one guess as to whose name that might be.

Apparently, the consulting, coaching, and people-helping industry in creating these two separate categories, coaching and counselling, has essentially said “You can’t have both”.

Really?

I Help Leaders Change their Entire Life – Both Sides

What if, as is often the case, the “problem” with your business is your marriage and the “problem” with your marriage is your business?

Or what if you have come to the point that you need someone who can help you not only drive your business to the next level but while or if or as the need arises help you heal your marriage as well. In other words, help you change, not just half of your life, but indeed the whole of it.

What do you do and who do you turn to, then?

Helping executives get the “best of both worlds”, helping them change the whole of their lives (the business side and then the personal side), is what I do; in fact, it is the only thing I do.

And if you believe Google, there are precious few, if any coaches – with the qualifications, experience and expertise – who do the singular thing that leaders really want and need; to holistically redress the two often discordant halves of life that impede the other, and thereby sabotage their entire life.

A thriving coaching practice averaging 45 clients a week (yes, 45 clients, and often over 50 one-to-one weekly hour-long sessions with business leaders), the author of 23 books on organizational leadership, a PhD in Organizational Psychology, with 47 years, as a psychotherapist and marriage counsellor, I have not only helped countless executives professionally but hundreds more restore their marriages at one and the same time.

I know how to help you get your spouse to be 100% behind you in your business and you them. I have done it hundreds of times.

Two Services/One Process: Less Hassle, Less Time, Less Cost

Most of my clients, initially, want to focus on business development, but sometimes unforeseen or ongoing personal or family concerns become a major obstruction to their professional success and of course, vice versa.

When this happens, the “two birds with one stone” approach (addressing two sides of your life as one) from a practical perspective means not careening back and forth between two different professionals and then paying them – a coach and counsellor – to do half a job.

No having to work with an “expert” who knows almost nothing about the difficulties embedded in the other side of your life.

In other words, don’t you want a better, more fulsome solution for your entire life, with less hassle, less time, and less cost.

Of course, your personal life may be fine but just in case things do out of hand, it is good to know you have a one-stop-marital advisor, who intimately knows your business challenges, at the ready.

 Even CEOs Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

Over 525 senior leaders have entrusted to me the resolution of their most complex business challenges and they got the result they needed, faster, better and safer than they expected to. And they – my clients – were also pleasantly surprised to find that were able to resolve the seemingly intractable personal or marital concerns that were undermining their focus as a business leader as well.

These clients simply did not know how to weave the two dissonant halves of their not entirely uncomplicated life into one a truly fulfilling and successful life.

Now they do.

They reached out to me with a simple phone call. Maybe you should too.

And when you do call, be sure to ask why I don’t charge clients for what I do.