Business RadioX ®

Doug Ramsthel With Burnham Benefits

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BurnhamDougRamsthel-scaled
High Velocity Radio
Doug Ramsthel With Burnham Benefits
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BurnhamDougRamsthel-scaledDoug Ramsthel is a Partner at Burnham Benefits, a Baldwin Risk Partners Company, one of the top 50 employee benefit consulting firms in the United States. He consults employers across the US on their benefits plan strategy, design, funding, and communication.

With health insurance being the major cost for most employers, he has been successful in helping employers creatively reduce costs while not compromising the quality of benefits offered to employees. He is a recognized specialist in self-funding, consumer-driven healthcare, underwriting, and financial analysis.

Within Burnham, Doug not only helps provide firm leadership, but he is also the industry lead for Hospitality and Healthcare and is also a co-founder of 360 Rx Solutions a company dedicated to providing PBM transparency and value for self-funded employers.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The impact of pandemic on employee benefits
  • The most important thing companies should be doing this year in terms of their employee benefit packages

John Jennings With Inspired Business Concepts

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JohnJennings
Coach The Coach
John Jennings With Inspired Business Concepts
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InspiredBusinessConcepts

JohnJenningsJohn Jennings, the President of Inspired Business Concepts, has a passion for helping entrepreneurs, business owners, and executives unlock their full potential and experience the joy and personal fulfillment of leading exceptional organizations.

He has a proven track record of driving positive change in both large and small organizations. He is seen as a “turn-around guy”, who credits his success to a strategic mindset and a positive attitude.

John has over two decades of IT leadership in Fortune 500 organizations such as LG&E Energy Corp. and Yum! Brands. He has also served in a variety of leadership roles for companies and non-profits of all sizes, to include building several organizations from the ground up.

Connect with John on LinkedIn, and Twitter and follow Inspired Business Concepts on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Putting together a plan to solve challenges

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com to learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today we have with us John Jennings with inspired business concepts. Welcome, John.

John Jennings: [00:00:44] Hey, lady, how are you?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I am doing great, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about inspired business concepts. How are you serving, folks?

John Jennings: [00:00:53] Well, you know, I’ve been I’ve formed this company three and a half years ago after doing coaching inside corporations for for many years. And you know, I work with just a whole variety of folks, from executives to an executive coaching to small and medium sized business owners, mostly in the tech sector and health care sectors, but also do a little bit of everything else as well. Like most folks. So I’m just, you know, right now I’d say what I’m doing is helping people navigate this, this new normal that we’re in and figure out how to scale their business, restart their business, get over some of the hurdles they were facing. And, you know, working on mindset. I’ve got a lot of a lot of burnout, people who who are kind of frustrated. And so I always say I try to help business owners experience the joy and satisfaction that they should be experiencing as business owners.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:52] Now let’s talk a little bit about your corporate background. Was coaching something that was part of the culture at the organization that you were part of? Was that something that only like the high level executives got to experience? Or was it something that kind of trickled throughout the organization?

John Jennings: [00:02:11] You know, at two of the organizations I was at, which both Fortune 500 companies coaching was it, you know, we didn’t necessarily use the term coaching, but called it mentoring or or whatever. We’re very much part of. In fact, I 20 20 years ago dating myself here, but 20 years ago or so I was at a company that that really felt like, you know, we weren’t doing a great job of bringing those high, high performing high potential individual contributors into leadership and management roles very effectively. And so I actually created a a coaching and mentoring program targeted at that group. So that was kind of one of my first, you know, adventures into this kind of concept.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:59] So now are you seeing more and more organizations kind of take advantage of this modality and helping more people using this kind of whether it’s like kind of that mentoring, as you mentioned or a more formal coaching program, are you seeing that is more accepted and more prevalent?

John Jennings: [00:03:18] You know, I think it is. You know, I’ve just recently signed on a client that’s with a, you know, a major medical national medical company. And you know, she was she just found me locally and is, you know? You know, funding this through her, you know, her company is going to pay, reimburse her for it, that she’s at an exec, at an executive level, so that is maybe easier to do. But yeah, I’m certainly seeing that in some cases.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:48] Now, when you left the corporate world and decided to go kind of into your own practice like this, was that a difficult transition?

John Jennings: [00:03:56] Well, it wasn’t a one step. So I left Big Corporate in 2010, you know, during the kind of I survived the first couple of years of the economic downturn there, but finally got caught in that went in, went in in January 2010, went in for my performance review for what I thought was an outstanding year and it really was. And Salt found an HR sitting in the room instead of my boss and went, Hmmm, I know what this is about. I found myself unemployed for the first time since since college and actually went home. I tell people I went home and slept like a baby because that that those handcuffs that, you know, the corporate opportunities tend to kind of put on. You were gone. And so I went into small business and worked and served in small businesses for the next seven or eight years. It helped build build some new business units, and one case helped a startup get off the ground and another created some new product. It’s a product development, just different things, all kind of along my line of of being a turnaround business builder kind of guy. And so did that for several entrepreneurial kind of endeavors over seven or eight years and then finally decided it was time to to launch out on my own. And did that in, you know, I guess it was twenty eighteen.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:28] Now, any advice for the folks coming from corporate that are kind of exploring a coaching, transitioning into being a coach, is there kind of some dos and don’ts that you would recommend?

John Jennings: [00:05:40] Well, you know, so it’s a personal decision, and I think everybody has to make their own their own mind up. I would do a lot of due diligence and talk to people who are doing the type of work you want to do. That’s that’s kind of critical. And also, you know, don’t believe the hype. This isn’t an easy. This isn’t necessarily the easy way of making a buck. I’d say the first 18 months was extraordinarily stressful, getting getting things off the ground and then just as everything was clicking and humming along. We had a global pandemic that’s that set things back for for several months. So, you know, it was a it was. Pretty challenging start, but you know, I look back now. Man, I’m so, so grateful that I did it and glad I did it when I did before the pandemic. One thing I would say is when I was thinking of doing this, I went out and and part of my due diligence was to talk to a number of people from my past people that felt respected me and knew me. And some of those people were from corporate world, and some of them were more entrepreneurial, and I got frustrated by several of the people in the corporate world I talked to who would say, You know, you’re nuts, why are you going to do that? You know, they were just they were just really shooting, shooting the whole idea down, just telling me I was crazy to even think about doing something like this.

John Jennings: [00:07:08] And it really, you know, kind of caused me to take a little pause. And I was talking to a friend of mine who was in a similar kind of business and and just mentioned this to me. And he said, John, let me tell you something. You know, somebody told me years ago when when I was facing this decision, he said, Don’t ever ask for directions from someone who from someone who hasn’t been where you’re going. And I thought that was brilliant. You know, don’t ever ask for directions from someone who hasn’t been where you’re going. You know, you wouldn’t do that around anything else in life. So why do you do that about striking off on an entrepreneurial endeavor? If a person has spent their life in corporate it or or whatever, you know, they’re not going to understand why even the mindset behind why you would even think about doing something like this. And so once I kind of had that in mind, I realized that that the people from my past that were in the more the corporate sector, you know, they’re they’re good people and I don’t not take anything away from them, but they don’t understand this idea of being an entrepreneur. And and literally building a business from the ground up is something that’s completely foreign to them.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:28] Right? Well, it’s a different skill set to kind of manage an existing entity and being a cog in a machine and then starting something from a blank sheet of paper. Those aren’t the same skills.

John Jennings: [00:08:40] Yeah. Yeah. And I was just fortunate that I did enough in the corporate world. I was always kind of the create a new team or turn around a failing team or take a project that was failing and figure it out. So I kind of had that entrepreneurial kind of mindset in a in a corporate setting. But it was the entrepreneurial mindset also that kept getting me in trouble.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:02] And I know exactly that. That’s not always as valued as you would think it is.

John Jennings: [00:09:09] Yeah, I use that. It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. One too many times

Lee Kantor: [00:09:16] I lived that to, I am right there with you now in your work. What is typically the pain that your client is having or your perspective client is having where John is the right guy to call?

John Jennings: [00:09:29] Well, you know, so on the on the business side, a lot of my business coaching the business owners, you know, they’re frustrated, they’re they’re stressed over what COVID has done to them. They’re still trying to figure things out. You know, they may have survived last year because of PPP and other things, but they’re worn out and they’re just exhausted and their sales are still going slow. And a lot of areas in a lot of my clients are in the B2B space and health care space in those spaces just don’t move fast. And they’re moving even slower right now because of because of COVID and things like that. And so they’re just frustrated and tired on the executive side. My executive coaching clients are typically people who have just recently elevated into an executive role over the last year, over the last year or two. And they’re working on things like, you know, what’s my leadership style? Do I have an executive presence? Do do people respect me the way I need to respect me and things like that? And I’m just helping them build their personal brand, build their style, develop their relationship with their teams and peers, and that sort of thing. So kind of different to different sets of needs and kind of different approaches as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:52] So now when you’re working with the business owner, how do you kind of or do you stay in the lane of OK coaching? Is me asking questions helping you kind of be the best you you can be versus consultant who is kind of rolling up my sleeves and kind of getting in there and helping?

John Jennings: [00:11:09] Yeah, so I do some consulting as well. In fact, I’m sitting right now, you’re in an office I have at a client where I’m doing some product development consulting, but I’m doing less and less of that, the more coaching I do. I just define it up front. You know that that’s that’s not my role. And if there’s a if there is a consulting role that needs to be filled, a lot of times I’ll try to bring bring in somebody I know that might fill those roles. But but I don’t try to fill them myself unless it’s truly a short term thing. There’s there’s occasionally I might take a short term thing, but yeah, I just, you know, I think we just define it up front what it’s about.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:54] Now, how do you kind of help that person who maybe is new to coaching? Kind of be vulnerable enough to share the important stuff and and be accepting of maybe the hard truths that that’s your job to share?

John Jennings: [00:12:15] Can you ask that again, I want to make sure

Lee Kantor: [00:12:18] So and for some people, coaching sounds good until you tell them something they don’t want to hear. And then, you know, they might take it personally. They might get defensive. They’re not as kind of vulnerable in the right kind of vulnerable mindset they have to be in order to really get the most out of this.

John Jennings: [00:12:40] Yeah, yeah, that’s actually those blind spots happen all the time. In fact, that’s that’s kind of a personal interest of mine. And actually, I’m writing a book on that kind of idea that business owners don’t know what they don’t know. And a lot of times they don’t know it because people won’t tell them or in other cases, it’s because they don’t hear it when people do tell because they don’t want to hear it. And and so, you know, I have been in that situation where the coaching through the conversation, it’s become clear that there’s a problem. I find that if if I’m the one that has to tell them it’s a problem, then it doesn’t go over so well. So as coaches, I think we really have to be careful to avoid prescribing the solution. One of the painstaking tasks we have to do sometimes as coaches, is to continue to ask the questions until the client gets to the point where they realize on their own that they’ve got a problem, something that they need to deal with. And whether that’s, you know, I tell you that one of the most common ones I run into is these entrepreneurial business owners who constantly have a new idea constantly trying something different, constantly want to try something new and different, which is, you know, that’s part of the beauty of an entrepreneur, right? I love having entrepreneurs that are creative and innovative and everything else. But the flip side is they don’t sometimes stay in their lane where they’re good and grow in a smart way. So I’ll give it an example. I had a head of manufacturing client that was really, really solid in one area, and they were they were toying with going into some completely different product lines and and we said, why do you want to do that? You’re going to have to.

John Jennings: [00:14:43] Bring in completely different salespeople, different management people. You know, it’s a completely different way of thinking. Let’s let’s look at what your business is today and why, why it’s so good they dominate their market. They’re not the cheapest price in town or in the country. They’re not the cheapest in town. But yet people continue to come to them. And so we set back and step back and looked at that and realized that there was a certain value add component that they were doing in their services for their clients, that those those appliances were those clients were willing to pay a premium for and somebody took that step back. They realized that that was really their market was clients who would pay extra for this higher level of service. And so we we evaluated the market and found a couple of parallel markets, if you will, that have the same kind of mindset, same kind of clientele, same kind of approach to how they did business and what they found was they could expand into parallel markets much more easily and stay really still within their wheelhouse. All they’re doing is widening their lanes instead of going into a completely different direction. And, you know, once they came to that conclusion, you know, we in the first year, they added 10, 10, 15 percent to their bottom line. I’m sorry to their top line with very little effort. And you know, that’s that’s smart growth versus just just trying anything that will come along.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:28] Now, do you find that folks that go through those exercises and you really kind of poking at their idea and you’re, you know, playing devil’s advocate, you’re really kind of making them defend the choices? Is it something that when someone self-select to be a coaching client that they’re already of the mindset of, OK, this is part of what I get and then I’m good with that? Or do they still kind of put up a defensive front when you’re, you know, asking some hard questions?

John Jennings: [00:17:01] Oh yeah, they still put up a defensive front because it’s their it’s their baby, you’re you’re criticizing. And so when they when they feel you’re doubting their their vision, then some will take it personally. Hopefully, they’ll get over that and I’ll remind them if they start to that, this is why you hired a coach. You know, you didn’t hire me to be your your yes man to know that you got you have those right. Most business owners have plenty of people who will sit there and nod and and agree with them, you know, because they don’t want to rock the boat. What they don’t have is someone who will be still kind and friendly and everything else, but we’ll ask them honest, sincere questions. I had a have a client who is in the IT space, has a great, great company specific niche doing quite well, and was just convinced that there’s something she could do with a drone license. And I kept asking her, What what are you going to do with it? You know, specifically, what are you going to do with this? And she kept coming back going. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just I just think it sounds interesting. And we kept pursuing that, kept talking about it. And eventually, after about six months or so, she she realizes that that was just kind of a temporary dream she had. She was just trying to justify some other interest. And I think he’s moved off that finally. But yeah, sometimes an owner will keep those ideas going because they’re committed to it. They’ve convinced themselves that that they’ve got a brilliant idea no one else has thought of. And if and if they can convince me, I’ll I’ll be right on there with them. But if, if they can’t, I’ll continue to question them about it.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:54] Now you mentioned you’re writing a book. How did that kind of book idea come about? Is it for your own kind of thought, leadership and marketing for your own firm? Was it something that you’ve always wanted to kind of dig deeper in? What was the kind of genesis of the idea of writing a book?

John Jennings: [00:19:11] Well, you know, I’ve always kind of had an interest in writing. I write a new blog. I don’t blog as much as I used to, but I wrote a lot of blogs. I’ve always kind of had a creative writing kind of mindset, not fiction, but, you know, business related. I’ve always been a good writer in business as far as writing proposals and contracts and all that kind of stuff. Not not legalistic contracts, but, you know, just, you know, user manuals and you name it, you know, just through the years. And so my wife and others have told me several times, you ought to write, you ought to write. And I never just it was just one of those things where one, you know, I think imposter syndrome start coaching myself. You’re probably imposter syndrome comes in. Oh, I’m not worthy news. Who’s going to buy a book from me? That sort of thing. And then the others is just over the past several years, as I’ve been in this coaching role and the roles leading up to it, I realize that I’ve had just tons of good experiences that when I share them with people, they’re always feel like they’re very insightful.

John Jennings: [00:20:16] And so, you know, I’ve always just been told I’m a good storyteller and that sort of thing. And so, you know, talking about blind spots, talking about things that business owners need to need to know about, need to hear about has kind of led down this path of of writing something that hopefully a business owner that would read it would would recognize maybe some some gaps, some blind spots in their own mind. And if you’re a coach or a, you know, a team member in a company, you might read it and get some ideas on how to approach your leadership on gaps and blind spots that you’re seeing. And so that’s it’s going to it’s going to be interesting. It’s it’s taking shape. It’s probably 25 30 percent through drafting the first manuscript, working with an editor and that sort of thing. So still early, write a few months down the road for. I have a whole lot to say about it, but it’s going to be exciting.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:20] Well, before we wrap, can you share a story, maybe of a you mentioned a few kind of anecdotes before, but maybe. A story where somebody did have a blind spot, you were able to kind of insert yourself and help them, maybe kind of revisit it or kind of spin it a different way so that they can reach a new level.

John Jennings: [00:21:42] Yeah, well, they kind of the one that that kind of. It’s really kind of stimulated the book writing thing was a client that I work with quite a bit. I’ve been doing some coaching strategic, advising some other things with them. And about just pre-COVID, I was hired to buy them first to develop a strategic plan, which we did. And then then I was retained for ongoing strategic strategic plan accountability. You know, kind of ongoing traction, kind of not traction. I don’t want to get in trouble with the EOS people, not attraction coach, but along that line of the ongoing accountability and that sort of thing. And so they hired me to do that. And then one of the things they asked me to do because I have a background in process re-engineering and improving, you know, improving processes and such. They asked me to take a look at some key areas of their business. And so we went through that. And then there was one area of the business that was kind of the CEO’s pet area. It’s kind of an area that he felt very passionate about. He felt it was a differentiator for them. But I got the feeling when I was talking to other folks in the company that nobody wanted anything to do with it. And so the CEO actually went on vacation and went on a cruise, and I was supposed to, when he came back, have have an update for him.

John Jennings: [00:23:17] And so while he was gone, I met with a consultant that was running that area and really found out that it was a it was a complete mess. There was there was no way this process, as it was designed, was going to make money. In fact, it was losing money and was just going to keep losing money. And it was one of those things where the more you, you know, the more customers that came on, the more money they were going to lose. And it was just it was just wasn’t a good, good situation for anybody. And so when the business owner comes back and we sit down and I won’t go into all the details around how it unfolded, but when when we told him that basically wasn’t going to work, he was he was kind of shocked. It was like we had told him his baby was ugly. And I actually thought for a moment he was going to fire me. But as it turned out, you know, COVID hit right after that, it kind of took a backseat. About six months later, still, they’re still doing some coaching and other things in the company. And he said, You know, John, I want to I want to relaunch that, that service.

John Jennings: [00:24:26] I still believe in it. I said, OK. And he goes, You know, would you would you consider it designing it, building it? I said. Yeah, I think I would, and so I’ve worked with them over the past nine months to essentially build a from a ground up, a new a new product based on better, better assumptions, better logic. And now we’ve got a a product that will not only sell but also is profitable for the company. And so, you know, I’ve I’ve kind of earned that reputation here with them and can do a lot of different things with them. Now moving probably be moving away from the consulting piece of that, but still still doing a lot of the coaching and everything that I’ve been doing. So I know that was still kind of vague a little bit because confidentiality stuff. But you know, the idea of signing a a business. And if you just took this as a business within itself, a business that is broken and is not as profitable or in this case was actually losing money and coming up with a new fresh way of doing it. Working with the team here, helping them figure that out and relaunching, it’s very rewarding to get to do those types of things.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:52] Yeah, absolutely. Well, if somebody wanted to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website

John Jennings: [00:26:01] So inspired business concepts? Is my my my personal business website. My my handle on almost every platform is John K Jennings. There’s a couple of exceptions, but LinkedIn and Facebook and those you know, John K. Jennings. And you know, I love to love to talk to folks always open for a conversation, always open for contacts if anybody wants to, to learn more or talk about how we could work together.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:28] Good stuff. And that’s inspired with a D business concepts with a NASSCOM. That’s it. Well, John, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you rightly.

John Jennings: [00:26:41] I appreciate the opportunity to talk to your folks and hopefully we’ll we’ll have future conversations as I get my book ready to launch.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:49] Absolutely. Well, thank you again.

John Jennings: [00:26:51] All right, buddy. Thanks a lot.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:52] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see, y’all next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Emily Alice Wilson With EKAT Productions

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EKATProductions
Atlanta Business Radio
Emily Alice Wilson With EKAT Productions
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EmilyAliceWilsonEmily Alice Wilson started editing in middle school and founded EKAT Productions shortly after.

She has since graduated from Georgia State University with a BA in Film and Media. Along with completing my BA, she also completed her Avid Editing certification through Georgia Film Academy.

She loves editing and has not only done promotional work for clients but also shot several short films that have been screened in the Atlanta area.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How has the pandemic affected the video editing industry
  • The problem you’re solving

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Frazier With Small Business Pro University

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Coach The Coach
Coach The Coach
Andrew Frazier With Small Business Pro University
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Andrew Frazier, MBA, CFA empowers business owners to Maximize the Value of their companies by helping them Grow Revenue, Increase Profitability, and Obtain Financing.

He guides them along the critical path to create a sustainable business that can run without them through invaluable coaching, consulting, and training services. Mr. Frazier has worked 1-on-1 with 500+ business owners and taught thousands of people about business.

His expertise in business strategy and financial management enables him to take a holistic perspective and provide more optimal solutions for clients.

Mr. Frazier’s book “Running Your Small Business Like A Pro” helps people increase the likelihood and magnitude of their success in business. He has also produced POWER BREAKFAST events in Northern NJ for almost 10 years generating $10+ million in both economic impact and financing for 1,000+ attendees.

His online Small Business Pro University provides entrepreneurs with access to best practices and useful knowledge for running their businesses more professionally. Mr. Frazier recently created The Masterpreneur Playbook a proven 5-Step Business Growth Plan for taking your business from start-up to scaling.

Mr. Frazier graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He also earned an MBA in Finance and Management from New York University’s Stern School of Business (NYU-Stern).

Mr. Frazier completed The Navy Supply Corps training in logistics management and qualified as a Surface Warfare Supply Corps Officer (SWSCO). His focus on continuous learning includes achieving the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) professional designation.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Most important job as a business owner
  • The greatest fear of most business owners
  • Running your small business like a pro

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to BRXambassador.com To learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. Today we have with us Andrew Fraser with Small Business Pro University. Welcome, Andrew.

Andrew Frazier: [00:00:43] Hey, Lee. Thanks for having me on today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about small business Pro University. How are you serving, folks?

Andrew Frazier: [00:00:51] Ok, great. Thanks. Lee created Small Business Pro University as a way to really help entrepreneurs and business owners learn some of the key things they need to know, because at the end of the day, your business can only be successful as you’re prepared to take it.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:07] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in helping entrepreneurs?

Andrew Frazier: [00:01:12] Well, I started as a paper boy in fourth grade and have had different corporate was navy officer ran a nonprofit but really loved business and solving problems, and became an entrepreneur. Found that I can take, you know, the myriad of things that I’ve learned about business and really help other people to grow and be more successful and change their lives.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:36] So then how did you develop this university where you’re always a teacher?

Andrew Frazier: [00:01:42] I’ve done coaching, consulting and training with entrepreneurs and business owners the last 12 years and worked with over a thousand. So just you start seeing patterns and things that are common challenges. So that led me to write my first book Running Your Small Business like a pro and you know, from there, developing additional tools to really, you know, help them to learn what they need to do because a lot of times they don’t. They can’t afford to hire me, but they can still benefit from my expertize.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:15] Now, having worked with so many business owners and entrepreneurs, do you see kind of a thread of a mistake that they typically make or that you see over and over when you go? Here we go again?

Andrew Frazier: [00:02:28] Definitely. So actually, each chapter in my book outlines one. So the first chapter is how did we get here? Many times they lose focus and forget about why they’re doing it or what their goals are. You know, they also don’t know what their most important job is as an entrepreneur and business owner. So we cover that many times, you know, there’s a greatest fear that I find among business owners and really, that’s around basically finances and analysis. You know, they don’t know their most important job in terms of it being marketing and selling. So how are you going to be as successful as you could if you’re not doing the most important job that you should be doing?

Lee Kantor: [00:03:18] All right. So let’s kind of dig into those you said the most important job is selling or marketing. What are some kind of low hanging fruit that people can be doing to do better in that area?

Andrew Frazier: [00:03:28] You know, one of the things is as a small business, many times you have to do what the opposite of what a larger business would do. So, you know, understanding that is key. And, you know, understanding that one piece of it is you have to have the smaller, a smaller target market, you have to narrow it significantly into a niche. And you know, it’s counterintuitive because usually you think, Oh, well, I want to sell and market to the most people possible, but it’s really the least people possible, but the most likely people to buy from.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:02] So that is counterintuitive because, like you said, people don’t want to miss out on anybody. So how do you kind of narrow it down? Like, say, you’re an accountant and you’re say, Well, I can help everybody because everybody needs their taxes done or everybody, you know, needs help with their books in business. You’re saying that it’s better to be like the accountant for dentist and be the the ninja accountant for dentists that know everything about dentistry and and the best way to leverage accounting in dentistry to help them the most rather than just being the accountant.

Andrew Frazier: [00:04:39] Correct. Because it’s more likely a dentist is going to hire you because you’re the best, you know, expert in dentistry than, you know, maybe one out of three dentists may hire you. Whereas if you’re just the general accountant, maybe one out of 20 people will hire you. So you’ve got to take more time, more money and more energy trying to market, and you don’t have as effective a market of a message to them.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:05] So now when you tell this to your clients, are they like, I can’t I’m? I’d be afraid to do that because, you know, there’s only one hundred dentists in my market. I what if I don’t get enough of them? Then I’ll, you know, I’ll be out of business. Is there a lot of fear around that?

Andrew Frazier: [00:05:20] Well, I actually came up with an analogy, a way to really that helps people understand it. And really, it’s called. Market your business like a drug dealer, and one of the key things is they don’t sell to everyone and they don’t even really sell. They offer them, you know, so they don’t try to make anyone buy any drugs. They just offer them to people and they offer to the right people. So when you offer what you have and what you have is a value to the right people. You don’t even have to sell it. They’re going to be like, Oh, that’s what I need. And that’s really what you can do by narrowing your target market to the right people.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:05] So now do you have some exercises that you help people kind of decide who the right people are because it may not be the obvious people it might be, you know, might require a little digging deep.

Andrew Frazier: [00:06:19] Yes, there’s a couple of ways, I mean, depending on the business and how many customers you need, you know, you may only need 10 customers. So rather than try and market to a thousand companies, maybe you pick the most likely twenty five to focus on, you know, one of the key things is, you know, you want to target, but you also have to think about how many businesses do you have the money, bandwidth resources to market to effectively. And when you break it down from a sales thing, you need to have seven to 12 touches. So that means everyone you’re marketing to, you have to market to seven to 12 times. So you know, how many people can you realistically do that with? And you know, how many customers do you even need?

Lee Kantor: [00:07:12] And that and you mentioned this earlier, and I think it’s a critical mistake that a lot of small business people make is that they see the big guy doing something and they say, Well, I’ll just do that. And the big guy can afford it. No one and the big guy can make a lot of mistakes that you can’t afford. So by copying the big guy is not really a great strategy for the little guy.

Andrew Frazier: [00:07:37] Correct. I mean, you have to go where you have an advantage. And you know, you don’t you want to focus on smaller niche that the big guy. It’s not worth their time and effort to focus on because that’s where you’re. You could provide a more valuable offering than what they could provide because they’re providing general solutions and you can provide something more specific and have a better message to the people in your market.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:10] So now let’s talk a little bit about your master preneur playbook. How did you come up with that? That’s a great name. And and what is it?

Andrew Frazier: [00:08:19] Ok? Really, you know, one of the key things is, you know, a lot of business owners get stuck because they don’t know exactly what they’re supposed to do. So what I laid out is a playbook that gives you the path that you need to take to create a sustainable business that can run without you. And it’s a five step business growth plan. And by having that layout, you know exactly what you need to do to move forward with your business. So we look at it in terms of the five steps know there’s a path. Your path is working on the concept of your business, working in your business, working on your business, working on the future of your business and working on scaling your business. And there’s different things that you need to do in terms of a business goal that you have to achieve to make it from each step. There’s a key challenge that you have to make you have to overcome to make it from each step. You as a business owner, you have to evolve each each step and there’s different leadership skills that you have to exhibit and develop in each step. And then you need to build and structure organization behind you so it can support you moving on to the next step. So it really just gives business owners and understanding of what they really need to put into place and how they and their business needs to move, evolve to move forward effectively.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:56] So now you mentioned earlier your first book, but there’s a book out right now. Can you talk about that one?

Andrew Frazier: [00:10:05] Yes. So this is that that’s actually this one. The Master,

Lee Kantor: [00:10:08] The Master Preneur is the latest book. Yes, I thought it was called Running Your Small Business like a pro.

Andrew Frazier: [00:10:14] Actually, that’s the first book. So we got him. Ok.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] So the first book was running your small business like a pro, and then the latest book is the master preneur book. Yes. And then so is, have you always been a writer?

Andrew Frazier: [00:10:28] Actually, I studied mechanical engineering at MIT undergrad and actually went there because I didn’t want to have to take a writing course. So I had to develop my communication skills over time, and I had to seek help help, you know, as a business owner, many times you, you have to seek help because you can’t do everything and you’re not an expert at everything. So, you know, I have a great book coach consultant who I work with and probably would have never finished my book had I not worked with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:04] So now in your business, a person could tap into what you have in terms of taking courses online. But is there coaching also available from you? Or is this primarily kind of online courses?

Andrew Frazier: [00:11:20] Actually, you know, its online courses, we have online certification programs that are combination of courses, live and virtual or virtual, live and independent learning. And then I do small business pro coaching programs. So you know, there’s many ways depending on your needs and you know your abilities and where your business is.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:46] So now what was it like to go from the transition from being a mechanical engineer to being in kind of a coach the way you are to helping entrepreneurs? Because that seems like two different worlds?

Andrew Frazier: [00:11:58] It is. But I actually split off real early because when I was at college, I was in ROTC, so I went and served as a U.S. Navy Supply Corps officer where I ran all the business functions for a ship. So from there, I really found that, you know, business is just like engineering where you’re solving problems. It’s just businesses shorter term problems and you get to solve more of them and see the results faster and easier. So, you know, I’ve got. I guess almost 30 years of experience on the business side.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:39] So now, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, is the website the best place to go,

Andrew Frazier: [00:12:46] The website or, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn? Andrew Fraser, CFA

Lee Kantor: [00:12:53] And the website is SB pro-EU the letter UK.

Andrew Frazier: [00:12:58] Yes, let’s sb for small business.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:00] Pro-eu good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success, Andrew.

Andrew Frazier: [00:13:05] Ok, thank you, Lee. Thanks for having

Lee Kantor: [00:13:07] Me. Well, you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Andrew Frazier: [00:13:10] Okay, great. And so are you. This it’s important to get the word out and communicate.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:16] All right, this is Lee Kantor will sell next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Leveraging Your Business RadioX® Interview

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BRXmic99
Coach The Coach
Leveraging Your Business RadioX® Interview
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In this special live episode of Coach the Coach, Lee and Stone share tips on leveraging your interview on Business RadioX® and any other platform. While they aren’t coaches, they’ve learned a lot from coaches, and they share what they have learned from interviewing thousands of business leaders at BRXProTips.com

If you would like to help other coaches on the next live episode of Coach the Coach please go to BookStonePhone.com and schedule a short call to discuss what you had in mind.

Lee Kantor, Founder, Business RadioX®

Stone Payton, Managing Partner, Business RadioX®

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to be brxambassador.com to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:32] Welcome to this very special edition of Coach the Coach Lee Kantor Stone Payton here with you two decidedly non coaches. Lee, what in the world are we thinking?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I don’t know what we were thinking, but we are definitely not coaches. I guess we do some coaching and we’ve been coached. I know your dad was a coach, so you have a lot of scar tissue from cousins.

Stone Payton: [00:00:57] That’s a fact. But now we do find ourselves from time to time, I guess, wearing a coaching hat with our studio partners, with our ambassadors, our correspondents, and, of course, our clients. And we’re we’re thinking that we’re going to set up this channel to not only share different coaches perspectives on their work, but also to offer some some tips on on how to leverage the fact that you’ve been featured on either a Business RadioX show or in some other media outlet, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:37] Yeah. We learn a lot from all of our guests. And usually in our day job business of running the Business RadioX network, we share those kind of tips on our Brex Pro Tips com website where we have a daily show where we talk about something we’ve learned and how it could help our clients and our people kind of be more productive and sell more and all that good stuff. But in the coaching show, we thought, hey, wouldn’t it be great if we can do a similar thing to help the coaches improve their practice, maybe grow, get one or two more clients. And and we thought we would start with how to get the most out of ordinary. We know most of the people that have come through our interact with us, our guests of our shows. So we thought, why don’t we tell them how they can take their interview, whether it’s with us or any place they’ve been interviewed? Because, you know, coaches like to be guests are very sought after guests on lots of shows. So how do you get the most out of an interview? And because some people think like, I’m going to do an interview and then I’m done and then all these clients are going to come my way. And I you know, I think that’s one of the myths of this industry, that they think that that just by being a guest is the secret and they don’t have to do anything else. And it is possible that you can get clients just from listeners listening and then finding you. That happens for sure. But that’s kind of out of your control. The things we’re talking about are more in your control. These are things you can take your interview and then do stuff with it and repurpose it and leverage it to help yourself when you want to get more clients to, you know, get more known, whatever your objective is.

Stone Payton: [00:03:25] Well, I’ll tell you, one of the things that’s certainly very easy to do within our system, if you’ve been on a Business RadioX show, are in specifically the Coach the Coach radio show, but I bet you can find a way to do it, even if it’s not in our system. In fact, maybe we’ll ask some other coaches about that. But one of the easy things you can do is you can embed the player that we publish for your episode. You can embed that same player on your Web site. And I think that’s a neat way to to to keep that really professional looking. Oh. Design of the image of you being on the show with that player. And you can just take some embed code and if you don’t know how to do it, someone on your staff will or somebody on our staff will coach you through it. But simply just embedding it on your own site is a good one. The other thing that that I think is a is a great way to leverage the fact that you’re on the show. If you have I guess you call it, I think I’ve seen people call this a guesting strategy, like as a strategy for growing my coaching business. I’m going to be on a half a dozen radio shows or media appearances, you know, in the next six months. Use your interview, use one interview, or as you begin to stack them up, use links to those interviews to court the next media opportunity. So those are two things that are just super easy that I think maybe sometimes get over overlooked. Use embedding the interview from Business RadioX or from wherever you’ve been, and then kind of keeping that is almost like marketing assets and linking to them when you want to court another media platform. What are some that come to mind for you?

Lee Kantor: [00:05:18] I think low hanging fruit for any interview is you should transcribe the interview. If the show doesn’t transcribe it, you definitely should transcribe it and then use that content, that digital text as some kind of social media food for all all of your social media for the next week or so. You can use grab a quote from yourself as a tweet. You can use it as a thought starter for blog posts or LinkedIn or medium articles. You can use it as an answer to a core question. You can take your content that you’ve come up with and talked about, take it in digital text form and then repurpose it as digital text on these other platforms. You’ve said a lot of smart things on your interview. So you just didn’t remember them and will have it all in one place. And you can just kind of cut and pasted and repurpose it in a lot of social media platforms pretty easily.

Stone Payton: [00:06:19] And then the. What do you call these things, audio grammes, I think the brand name of the one that we use here at Business RadioX is called Headliner, but there’s probably several of these providers. But I know that here out of the Woodstock studio and then also out of the Sandy Springs studio and probably in some other studios across the network will do what you’re describing. Go to the transcript and carve out just a good little three minute segment. And Endou, that’s how we repurpose the interview. But these services, they make it really look kind of sexy, right? It looks kind of cool if you see some of the stuff that we published on LinkedIn and some of the other social platforms, you’ll see these. I think audiogram is the right word for it. These are all three minute. It’s a video and there’s some there’s some movement, but it’s essentially built on a soundtrack of a of a you know, like a three minute clip. And I tell you what, man, those things get a lot of a lot of traction, don’t they?

Lee Kantor: [00:07:25] Yeah. That’s to use your interview as a soundtrack for video is a great use of the content, because like you said, the people say a lot of smart things in little bursts. Those little nuggets, you can pull out this highlight and then easily turn that audio into a video using one of those tools or even, you know, you can do it yourself in GarageBand and just kind of lazy visuals over the audio. And then you’ve created a video and now you have a little short video you could share, you can put on your website, you can share on the social platforms. It’s taking the content and then just kind of using it in another way and then just creating more kind of legs for it. So you did this interview once, and then you’re able to kind of repurpose it multiple times in different places. It’s a I mean, you’re trying to get the most out of your effort. And this is a great way. You’re you have a lot of gold there. So you you want to mine it and use it in these creative ways. But I think, Stone, it’s really important to share the number one thing that we think that people should do with their interview. This thing is kind of a no brainer. This is a great way to rekindle a relationship. This is a great way to get you one more client. Tell them this. I don’t see enough people doing this, but to me, this is a no brainer. Everybody should be doing this pretty much with every interview they do, Aimen.

Stone Payton: [00:08:54] And this is it’s one of those things that is just so easy and makes so much sense. It gets overlooked. And my most recent experience with this, this sort of reminded me, hey, dummy, you really ought to do this every time and you ought to be telling your clients and anyone you run into to do this. My most recent experience was not from a radio interview. It was from a write in interview. You know, one of these things where they email you the questions and then you craft your responses, you email them back, and then it appears in a magazine and in this case, both a print magazine and they have a digital version as well. But the what I did, I mean, we all ought to be doing this any time we’re on the on the on any media platform. I just crafted a brief two sentence, little note, and sent it out in my case, too, maybe 100, 150 people. And I didn’t do any mass mailing program or anything. I wrote, you know, I copied that to send its body copy. But, you know, I said, hi, Joe had an opportunity to be interviewed and blah, blah, blah. Thought you might enjoy it. You know the same thing if you’re on a Business RadioX show or whatever. Just a quick little too soon. This thing to be, you know. Hi, Cindy. I had an opportunity to be interviewed on the Business RadioX network and we spoke about. Now, that’s one way you can customize this note. If you if if you think about who you’re talking to and you know that they’re specifically interested in or the last conversation you had was on a very specific topic and you covered it in your interview.

Stone Payton: [00:10:30] Like in our case, in my case, I might talk about serving first. So if I’ve had that conversation with a prospective client, a market, may we call them a market partner? Anybody like that? I might. I might. I probably did do an interview. And if I did that, I would say, you know, hey, Joe had an opportunity to be interviewed on the Business RadioX network. And we spoke specifically about that topic. Thought you might enjoy. So here’s what I did. I did that right in an interview. I sent that note out to one hundred and fifty people. You know, it cost me a couple of hours on a Saturday morning. But I mean, boy, was it well invested. I cannot I’m consistently amazed there. There were a whole. Bunch of people, they came back behind that and said, hey, great job, way to go, because we all had that group of people that want us to do well and want to support us no matter what. But I must have had as a as a direct return on that time and energy investment. I must have had a half a dozen people come back behind that and say great job stone or something like that. It’s been a while. We need to talk again. Or I know we were talking about sponsoring that series. There are budget cycles coming back around. Let’s go grab a cup of coffee or let’s hop on the phone. And it’s it’s a marvelous, a genuine, authentic way to connect with people. And every time I’ve ever done anything like this, it’s always it’s rekindled and deepened some relationships. But you’ve had similar experience, haven’t you?

Lee Kantor: [00:12:10] Yeah. This is a it’s such an elegant way to let people know what you’re up to, to just it’s like you said, to rekindle this relationship. A lot of times the timing just isn’t right to do business. But this is a nice, elegant touch to let them know, hey, I’m still out there, I’m still doing stuff. I thought you might be interested in this. And it gives the interviewee this kind of social proof that they’re worth being interviewed. And it just reminds the people, hey, I like that person one on. I reconnect with them and see if if there’s a way to do business this time. I wouldn’t do this every day. But definitely on certain interviews you’re really proud of, I would definitely reach back out to my network and let them know that I was interviewed, because this is a very simple way and it’s something that most people aren’t doing. If you’ve gone through the effort of doing the interview, I recommend that you invest some time in taking that interview and sharing it with the people that matter most with you. I mean, I think it’s a something that is just sitting there waiting for most people. It’s you’re not going to if you’re waiting for people to listen and then call you. And you can still do that if you want to be more proactive. I recommend taking that interview and sending it directly to your last 100 people who goes, did you send that to your former clients who used to work with you? Send it to people who who used to refer to you. Anybody who’s in your kind of database that you hadn’t talked to in a while, I would recommend proactively sending your interview to those people. If you’re proud of the interview you think did a good job. Send it to them. Let them know that, hey, I’m still around and I would love to reconnect.

Stone Payton: [00:13:52] Another quick tip that that comes to mind for me, and it may sound self-serving, but I’ll tell you, it’s strong and it’s strong because it’s based on the timeless principle of when you serve other people. It just it just always comes back to you. But as a publisher and arguably one of the more prolific publishers of business material in the country, on the planet, when a guest comes back and endorses or thinks us in some way, and not only do they, of course, endear themselves with us that much more, we’re so we’re motivated to go right back behind that and do even more to try to advance their cause and promote them. So something as simple as, you know, down the road a little bit, kind of, you know, do your do your initial push and utilize all these strategies we’re talking about. But somewhere in there at least once. Go back and say something good or nice about the bumper magazine or the, you know, this network or that radio show that will pay huge dividends. And I mean, I would be remiss. I mean, I don’t know if you would consider this a shameless plug or not, but I believe it with all my heart. And if I’m if I’m getting the platform, I’m going to tell you all of these things are marvelous ways to to to round out your marketing strategy.

Stone Payton: [00:15:15] And there’s certainly good strategies and tactics to grow your business, seeking out opportunities to share your story and getting that information out there in a variety of platforms and with a truly integrated strategy, everything from social media to print to radio to TV, what have you. All of that is good mojo. And, oh, it’s it’s a little unpredictable. It can be inconsistent and it can be difficult to generate consistent, predictable results. I know that this is a coming from someone with a bit of a biased lens. So just run what I’m about to say through that filter if you need to. But I still say it with all the all the confidence in the world. If you want to get strategic about using this platform anyway and you want to produce consistent, reliable green dollar ROI results. The most effective thing you can do is get on the other side of the microphone and use this platform to shine the light on other people, use this platform to build relationships with the people who matter to you. Most use this platform to to give causes that are important to you, a megaphone to give all of these folks in your ecosystem, in your community, an opportunity to share the great work that they’re doing for the market, for the profession, for the community.

Stone Payton: [00:17:02] With that foundation in place. When you have something like this at your disposal and you use it to serve, to serve first, serve early and serve often. I guarantee you, I mean, I’ve seen it happen for 15 years, and you don’t have to do it with Business RadioX. I think we’ve got a pretty good handle on doing it and doing it well. But whether you do it with someone else, you do it on your own or you come come on board with us and let us work with you. Well, I really encourage you to seriously consider using the platform to serve others. You and yours, you and your organization, you’ll come along for the ride. But I think you’ll find that you get bigger, better, faster, more reliable. Green dollar ROI, actual real ROI from your from your time, energy and dollar investment. So I, I wasn’t going to get on the show and not say that. OK, leave back to our regular programing.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:03] Well, this show, we’re going to do it periodically. But I think what I would like is give the other coaches out there a chance to come on and share how they kind of grow their practice, some specific tips from them about how to grow a coaching practice. If there’s coaches out there that. Would be generous enough to share those kind of tips on how to serve their community, how to help more people, how to make more money and give kind of the right and the horse’s mouth type information to the other coaches that listen to this show. We would be most appreciative if they can reach out to stone that everybody knows. You’re the website book Stone Phone.com. Just have a conversation with Stone. Talk about how you think that on the next episode you can share some information that would help a coach, you know, help smooth out their learning curve. That would be most appreciated. So go there, bookstand, Phone.com, and then we’ll get you on the next episode when we do Coach the Coach radio live like this. And that’s the intention, is to just help the community grow their practice, get one more client, help the community get the most out of their efforts, and share best practices from the people that are doing the work. So if you want to participate next time, go to bookstand Phone.com. Let us now. And the next time we do this live, we will include you as part of the show and you can share what you know. That’s what I got. So.

Stone Payton: [00:19:43] All right, man, that is a wrap. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

Kaiser Yang With Platypus Labs

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BRX National
BRX National
Kaiser Yang With Platypus Labs
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kaiseryangKaiser Yang passionately believes that even the most transformative innovations are accessible to us all. Through decades of research and real-world experiences, he has developed a systematic approach to harnessing innovation to drive tangible and meaningful outcomes.

An innovator at the forefront of the digital transformation, Kaiser has held senior leadership roles at tech startups and large, global organizations, as well as starting several businesses of his own.

Throughout it all, the need to creatively solve problems — to find a way, to figure it out, to do it differently — has been the one underlying commonality. Kaiser’s broad-based experience in technology, operations, sales, and marketing has empowered him with the ability to systematically unlock creativity and apply it towards productive, innovative results.

Currently, he is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Platypus Labs, an innovation enablement firm focused on helping teams and organizations unleash their creative potential.

Kaiser is the author of Crack the Code, 8 Surprising Keys to Unlock Innovation (Sept 2021).

Connect With Kaiser on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • We live in the age of creativity – why unlocking your creative capacity is more important now more than ever
  • Innovation and creativity is accessible to all of us – we are all hard-wired for creativity
  • 5 common traits of the most successful innovators
  • Core mindsets of everyday innovations: Start before you’re ready, seek the unexpected, video killed the radio star
  • Inventive thinking techniques – proven methodologies and techniques to unlock your creativity
  • 8 Surprising Keys to Unlock Innovation

BJ Green With Cadence Bank

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BJGreen
Atlanta Business Radio
BJ Green With Cadence Bank
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cadence-bank-logo

BJGreenBJ Green is a seasoned commercial banker with over 28 years of experience in leverage and syndicated financing as well as equity, debt, and M&A transactions.

He leads Cadence Bank’s Georgia middle market banking team, which provides strategic financial guidance to middle-market companies across multiple industries, including manufacturing and construction.

Green holds a Master of Business Administration from Emory University and a bachelor’s degree from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

Follow Cadence Bank on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Some major highlights for Cadence Bank Atlanta since the 2019 State Bank merger
  • Factors are promoting a strong business climate
  • The outlook for the region’s banking industry in the next 12 months

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’s payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Doug Brown With Summit Success

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Coach The Coach
Coach The Coach
Doug Brown With Summit Success
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DougBrownDoug Brown is a coach and guide to lawyers, entrepreneurs, and C-Level executives who are determined to get more done and make more money in less time and grow profitable businesses.

He is the Chief Learning Officer & Executive Coach at Summit Success.

He is a lawyer turned entrepreneur, educator, business builder, and fixer. Over the last 25 years, he helped create and turn around multiple 7 and 8 figure businesses, from law practices to not-for-profits and international companies.

His clients appreciate how he draws on his real-world experience to help them learn all of the disciplines they need to succeed, and get into action and build a business that supports their whole life.

Connect with Doug on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Change Management
  • Getting Unstuck
  • Lessons Learned

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no-cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to BRXAmbassador.com To learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today we have Doug Brown on the show and he is with Summit Success LLC. Welcome, Doug.

Doug Brown: [00:00:45] Hi, good. Good to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Lee, thank you. Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about some of the success. How are you serving, folks?

Doug Brown: [00:00:52] Yeah. Summit Success is a consulting organization run by Walt Hampton and Shabani and myself, and our mission is to inspire and empower business executives to achieve their highest potential and live the life of their dreams. We work with attorneys and high performing business professionals who are determined to make their life in their practice better, and with coaches, consultants and speakers who don’t really have all day to play around because they’re running a demanding business and it’s getting bigger and they want to be the very best they can be, and we have programs and strategies to help them do that.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] Now when you work kind of developing this concept, why did you choose to go the route of both coach and consultant? Sometimes people pick one or the other.

Doug Brown: [00:01:37] It’s a good question, you know, I I describe the coaches and consultants know what the difference is between coaches and consultants. The market often does not. What they have is they have a problem they want to have solved and they want somebody to help them solve it. And and so when we think about the labels that we apply to ourselves, I try to think about the audience. So in this audience, I can say coach and consultant. Ninety five percent of my work is executive and business coaching with owners of businesses and people who want to transition like I did from being successful in one area of their life and turn it into a successful coaching business.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] Now, so you’re finding that the folks you’re serving, they’re just trying to solve a problem. Or maybe they’re stuck and they want to get unstuck and what you’re doing, whether it be coaching and asking them questions for them to come up with a solution or consulting where you’re actually kind of rolling up your sleeves and helping do the work, that’s kind of a blurred line.

Doug Brown: [00:02:38] Well, it really we focus on what the individual needs to get them, where they want to go, and in most cases, what they need is they need somebody to be a trusted guide and to an advisor and to give them a framework so they can do the work and create what they want to create. And so we call that coaching and we have a program called the Consultants Success Formula, which combines the the curriculum of what you need to do step by step with live coaching and group coaching to not only teach but help our people move through the program and actually accomplish their goal. We’re not that interested in selling programs if unless the people are going to get the results.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:28] Right, so you’re focused on the outcome and the result and whatever anybody calls anything is not really relevant. Maybe it is just for this kind of conversation, but in real life, people are just trying to solve problems.

Doug Brown: [00:03:42] Yeah. And it’s so easy when you’re inside baseball, whether you’re a coach or a consultant or a lawyer or an accountant, you forget that your clients are coming to you to solve a problem or take care of an opportunity. They don’t care what you call yourself. They want the transformation. They want the outcome.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:59] So now some of your work is on this kind of transformation or change. What are you seeing out there now as we come out of this pandemic, when a lot of people are on overwhelm and they’re just kind of getting their sea legs back? How are you helping people through this chaos?

Doug Brown: [00:04:17] Boy, this is such a transformational time. The whole world is turned upside down. But as a result, there’s tremendous opportunities. And part of the work that we’re doing is helping our people get really clear on what their vision of the future is, what they want to accomplish and and what are the first steps in the structure to get there. Because even when you’re disrupted, you’re you’re your resistance to change is very high, especially when you’re stuck in this freeze fight or flee fear cycle. So if we can focus on exactly what’s wrong, what is the dissatisfaction? What is the vision for the future and what are the first steps and the change equation? We can overcome resistance to change and get people building momentum in a direction where they feel like they’re having the control they they lost, you know, in the last 18 months.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:11] Now you’re finding that coming out of the pandemic that people’s why has changed that they’re maybe at one point there was like, Hey, take the hill, we’re going boldly forward and I got these financial goals financial, financial, financial. And now when they’ve had this kind of big pause, they’re like, You know what? There’s some things that are more important. I’d rather kind of shift at least some of my energy into this other kind of more meaningful direction.

Doug Brown: [00:05:37] Yeah, I think this is a whether you call it why or you call it your purpose. There’s a great alignment between opportunity, I guess, for alignment between all the activities that you’re doing and and do they align with what you really want to do with your purpose of what you want to create and to have a plan to get there and people are waking up? I think in a good way that the old I’m going to just get through the day, I’m going to just get through the week. And next thing you know, a year has gone by or two years or five years or 10 years, and you’re just wondering, well, what if? And the good news today is, even if you’ve done that for five or 10 or more years, there are people reinventing themselves in their 50s and 60s and older, using all of their knowledge to turn it into a successful consulting or coaching business.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:26] So now when you’re having those conversations, what does that look like like? Are they kind of that self-aware where they can say that that’s at the heart of the problem? Or do you have to kind of go layers deep to really get them to be vulnerable enough to share that?

Doug Brown: [00:06:42] Some people are self-aware and say, I’ve got the disconnect, but most people just have this general dissatisfaction. This general idea that, hey, I’d like to do something different than I’m doing now, I’m looking for a roadmap to follow. And there, you know, if you want to go as deep as y or purpose, you’ve got to have a pretty good trusting relationship with someone. The the depth of the ask is directly proportional to the depth of the trust. So we’re starting by helping people understand and articulate, what’s your vision? What do you want to create and then why do you want to create it? And then what does that mean to you? And that’s when we get, you know, into, well, it means I have more time with my kids or I can help my grandchildren. Or maybe I just can travel the way I want to. Or maybe I still want to work, but I don’t want to work anywhere near as much. And once they get clear on that, then we can connect that to the purpose. And that’s really the rocket fuel. That’s the power that that moves them forward through the roadmap to do the work.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:48] And part of your work is kind of, I guess, you use the word unstuck. Are there people? Are the are people more stuck now? Or I would think there’s some kind of epiphanies happening out there.

Doug Brown: [00:08:01] Well, I think. There’s both. There are people who if you’re stuck, it’s you’re stuck in a way of thinking and stuck by yourself. I mean, it’s being an entrepreneur, you know, is is a pretty lonely job and there’s an easy to get yourself stuck and you need that community around you, those group of trusted advisers to help you to pull you out because sometimes you don’t even know that you’re stuck. You might be working on marketing copy. You might be writing the same copy 10 ways and just can’t find your way out of it. You might be trying to evaluate what’s my business model? How should I go to market and having a group around you to help you answer that question and find the answer is critically important. Or you might be stuck because you might be thinking you’ve got we call imposter syndrome. Maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m not enough. Maybe I’m not ready. What if the people don’t want what I’m selling? And that’s almost always head trash. And if we can help them take out the head trash, then they can get unstuck and move forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:12] Do you find that people are kind of searching for this sense of community, maybe more now than they were a few years ago?

Doug Brown: [00:09:19] Yeah, I think so. And there are a lot of communities out there and it’s the power of community. And honestly, the power of coaching is is like never been more clear than it is right now. And in my in my life and my transformations, some of the most important moments I’ve had are with communities of people who will build you up and pull you forward, who will tell you the truth when you’re lying to yourself and you often it’s you’re not. You’ve got a lot more going for you and you’re much closer than you think. Just keep going. And yeah, they give you constructive feedback and you’re all pulling together because this is a team sport.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:03] Now, do you find that in the corporate world, in those clients that you’re dealing with, that they’re more open to coaching for more folks, not just the highest level of leadership or the high performers that they’re kind of buying into this, you know, everybody needs a coach and let’s get more of our people. It becomes more of a a must have than a perk for only a select few.

Doug Brown: [00:10:27] You know, Leigh, I’d like to believe that we’re going in that direction. I think we’re in the place where corporations and business owners are finally starting to see that you’re getting a coach because you’re because you’re doing well and you want to do better as opposed to a remedial coach. And so I think as that goes on, the executives and the business owners who have that experience will see the value and will be open to being better at coaching themselves and bringing in coaches for their for their people. It really depends. In my world. I’m working very much with business professionals and attorneys who are pretty unhappy, but they’re really busy. They want to find out how to get more done faster so they can actually, you know, go play golf on the weekend without answering their cell phone all the time or be to the kids ballgame without having their nose in their text messages.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:24] So now in your career, when you transition from law into being an entrepreneur, or you might have been an entrepreneur as a lawyer, but in this kind of more coaching wearing this coaching hat, did you go through that that imposter syndrome? Like, who am I to be giving advice to these people? You know, I was here, I was this person. Did you go through that?

Doug Brown: [00:11:45] I, yeah, you know, I think yes is the answer and multiple times, and I think it’s a natural part of the human condition, especially when you’re trying to push yourself. When I went from being in the I spent 13 years in a corporation where I did start ups and turnarounds. And then when that ended, I had the opportunity to teach in an MBA program and help build the MBA program and innovation and entrepreneurship. And so I had a lot of that like, well, I know this stuff, but who am I to to be teaching other adults and and, you know, having a community around you to help you talk through that and get to the truth of it and and get some simple first steps is critical because if you’re aware enough to to wonder the question, you know, who am I? Am I enough? And the answer is you probably are. You just need to get untangled. You just need to unlock a little bit of that courage.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:40] And did you have a coach when you were younger, are you?

Doug Brown: [00:12:45] You know, when so I’ve had I have a coach, I’ve had coaches. When I was a younger version of me, coaching wasn’t even really a thing. It was more the old school traditional mentors. You know, I remember back when I was evaluating what I wanted to do when I was moving out of the law early on, I went to a career coach and he said, there’s this thing called business coaching, and I’m like, That’s not a real job. Fast forward 20 years. I finally took him out to lunch or dinner one time, and I said, Bruce, this is the you can say. I told you so dinner because I was doing coaching and because it had become a thing.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:24] And then is it what you dreamed it would be? Is this more rewarding for you?

Doug Brown: [00:13:30] You know, I am blessed to do exactly the work that I was meant to do, I have time freedom, I have location freedom. I’m spending the summer in Orleans, Massachusetts, and I live in Bluffton, South Carolina, on a golf course. I get time to spend with my kids, and I know that when I’m working with my clients, I’m making a difference. And that was the dream for myself. I pinch myself sometimes. I’ve actually got there. And so my mission is to help other other people transition and do whatever their version of of of their dream or their successes.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:05] Now you mentioned working with lawyers and executives. Is there a sweet spot? Are you kind of you mentioned turnaround? Is that is that kind of your sweet spot like struggling or people that are looking for, you know, in the midst of change or lawyers that are have these challenges or you kind of industry agnostic or problem agnostic?

Doug Brown: [00:14:25] Well, there’s there’s two things. There’s two general groups. The first one are successful professionals that are looking to pivot and do something different. And that’s why we have the consultant success formula, which walks people through that. And so I get to to work in that program, working one on one with people. And that’s a group that’s a group and individual coaching. My private coaching is with attorneys. They’re generally about 20 years out of law school. They have tried lots of things before. They’ve got a successful practice. They’re busy. They just need to figure out how can I get it done better and faster so that I can grow without having to burn myself out? And so I can actually have a life I’ve been working for. And so they’re already successful and they they they get that the fastest way to success is to have one on one support of a trusted advisor and an expert that will help them get where they need to go. Just like a top golfer will have the golf coach to help them see what they can’t see. Give them the strategies and and help them improve their game.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:29] So if somebody wants to learn more, have more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website?

Doug Brown: [00:15:36] The website is summit success. That’s assuming success. And if you put a forward slash Coach the Coach after that, then there’ll be a document to download to learn about the consultant success formula. And my email address is Doug. That’s DWG at Summit. That’s the little sign of success.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:04] Good. Well, congratulations on all the success, Doug. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Doug Brown: [00:16:09] Lee, thanks for the opportunity to get out here and share my story and thank you for the work that you’re doing to help the coaching community.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:15] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

Delphine Carter With Boulo Solutions

by

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
Delphine Carter With Boulo Solutions
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DelphineCarterWith a career spent rising in the ranks as a product manager, Delphine Carter has frequently been in the position of building highly effectives team fast and with minimal budget.

She realized that in order to build strong teams, businesses needed access to a broader talent pool. And she knew exactly who was missing and where to find them.

There were hundreds of mothers in her community with incredible skills wanting to work but only able to if it looked a little bit different. So, she decided to create Boulo Solutions.

Boulo Solutions launched in 2019 to educate businesses on the value that mothers bring to a team and on offering flexibility can attract top talent without sacrificing company goals.

Delphine has been named by the Birmingham Business Journal as a ‘Women to Watch’, has spoken on strategic hiring multiple conferences and consults on building great products with both start-ups and well-established companies.

Delphine holds a BA in Psychology and French from Auburn University, an MA in International Relations is on the board of Innovate Birmingham, and an advisor to Stream Innovations.

In addition to building Boulo, Delphine finds herself on a ridiculous number of athletic fields supporting her two children’s passions, hiking, and camping in national parks and traveling as often as possible.

Follow Boulo Solutions on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Careers and motherhood
  • Impact of COVID on women in their careers
  • Why you need to be intentional about a culture of acceptance for caregivers in the workplace
  • Hiring is tough, how can you win
  • How to offer flexibility without losing traction

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