We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ken Blackman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ken below.

Ken, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

The focus of my business has evolved over two-plus decades—from how to make things great in the bedroom to how to co-create a great life together… from traditional man-woman dynamics to much more inclusive and individualized… from helping men grow and mature to helping couples thrive as life partners.

I often feel like the niche chooses me, rather than me choosing the niche. The less I try to “appeal” to a specific audience and instead write what I authentically believe and am passionate about, the more my writing attracts the right people to work with. But the underlying theme of all the work I do is the hunger we all have for the nutrient of human connection, and how to have more of it.

My wife Ana helps women cultivate their inner sense of unshakable rightness and step into their power in their lives and relationships. We often work together—I’ll bring her in to work with my clients in her area of expertise, or vice versa. We work fantastically well together, it’s synergistic.

We have our own brands, but all of our work and income falls under the umbrella of a single business entity. We felt deeply into the through line of all the work we do and landed on “Sovereignty In Connection” as the name of our business. It really describes my work well, and her work well, and our work well.

Ken, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

In the last few years, most of my coaching has been about really getting the difference between a “promising” relationship and a thriving, fulfilling life partnership.

I’ve been working with a lot of couples who love each other but for one reason or another they have ambivalence or hesitation that keeps them from really being all-in with each other, and it has them at this strange crossroads of either getting married or breaking up completely. Maybe they wonder if this is “the one,” or they’re afraid the spark will fade or the relationship will go downhill, or they can’t tell if their issues are resolvable problems, or red flags.

To my mind, the very best parts of a relationship can really only be experienced over a number of years with the same person. That’s where the promise of a relationship really starts to come to fruition. (Or not!) There’s this statistic for the happiest couples, that in the long run, they attribute about twelve percent of their success to finding the right partner, and the rest to what they built together. You’re either super-grateful to be doing life with this person—best decision ever!—or resentful.

So couples come to me because they haven’t experienced long-term love, or even seen it modeled well, so they don’t even know what they don’t know. This feels good, but how do you gauge? What are the skills? What’s possible? Or worse—they had a years-long relationship end badly in the past, so they’re doubly skeptical.

So I help them understand what their relationship can look like at its best. And what would be required of each of them to start to co-create that. And then support them in crafting a thriving, generative, growing, deeply gratifying life partnership.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I would say my brand loyalty has nothing to do with marketing or outreach.

In the work I do, I can’t promise a specific outcome. My real product is clarity. But I don’t “sell” clarity. It’s something my customers don’t understand until much later.

Here’s what I mean. Since 2016, the majority of unmarried couples I’ve worked with have ended up getting married, either during or after our work together. They’re all still happily married today, and my highest source of referrals.

But a handful of clients end up breaking up. Even a few married couples end up separating. They are my second highest source of referrals. Typically, they understand each other better, regain their high regard for each other, mutually agree they aren’t right for each other, break up amicably, and leave with renewed optimism, a better understanding of their needs, and vastly upgraded relationship skills to bring to their next relationship.

Very different outcomes, but both types of clients feel the coaching was valuable and successful, and recommend me to other couples. Why? They gained clarity.

As a result, eighty to ninety percent my new business comes from referrals, and many clients re-up, or circle back one to thee years later for another round of coaching when they’re feeling ready for their next uplevel as a couple.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I want to share a book that’s blowing my mind right now. “10X Is Easier Than 2X” by Benjamin Hardy. It’s completely rewiring everything I thought I knew about business growth. The title isn’t clickbait—aiming for incremental growth really is doing it the hard way. This book is showing me how to aim big while paring down.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kenblackman.com
• Instagram: kenblackmancoach
• Facebook: kenblackmanpersonal
• Other: My blog: https://medium.com/straight-talkers

Image Credits
Chris Eckert