COACHTHECOACH_09152021_BrettBaughman_1.mp3
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 on the show, we have Bret Bauman and he is with the Bret Bauman companies. Welcome, Bret.

Brett Baughman: [00:00:44] Thank you, Lee. Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your practice. How are you serving, folks?

Brett Baughman: [00:00:52] Yeah, you know, it’s been extremely busy and I feel very blessed over the past couple of years, especially with the economy and the things happening with COVID. You know, primarily, I work as a life coach and a business coach, but most of my work, I work with what I call overwhelmed and stressed or stuck entrepreneurs trying to help them keep their business doors open and help them keep growing and thriving during challenging times.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:14] So now, have you seen some commonality among your clients that they struggle in the same areas?

Brett Baughman: [00:01:20] Yeah. You know, it’s I would say it’s it’s usually there’s a theme between a couple of common things. I typically feel that it’s either people don’t build their brand the correct way. By that, what I mean is maybe they started from a scarcity point. Like, maybe they worked another career and jumped over to start something new or said, Hey, in general, I’d like to be a coach or a consultant or this person, and they just start kind of doing what everybody else is doing, which is to general. And the other thing is not believing in themselves and taking risks and challenging themselves to continue to grow, which keeps you stagnant and know again fear based thinking, which is not going to create prosperity for you in the end.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:56] So now any advice for that coach? Maybe it’s like you describe maybe they maybe they were kind of achieved a certain level of success working for a big corporation and then they get laid off, or maybe they retire, or maybe they just want to, you know, kind of do something different and shake up their life. But they said, OK, you know what? I’ve been doing this kind of work anyway. I’m going to now be a coach and I’m going to share what I’ve learned to new folks. And do you you find that there too general like there just instead of kind of maybe going after a niche there, just kind of trying to solve everybody’s problem?

Brett Baughman: [00:02:34] Yeah, absolutely. You know, my my my structure, my format that I approach with my coaching, I have a trademark process called the ideal view and the first step I take with any executive, any entrepreneur that’s working with people they want to get started is helping them understand that everything you build has to come from the inside out. And what typically people do, I see, is they look at what someone else is doing and try to copy it, or they say, Oh, I want to be a coach or consultant, let me do this thing. And they start modeling after someone else, which is fine to take the structure and say, Hey, here’s the box. Good to have a book. Good to have social media presence. Good to have a website, but then you’ve got to make it identifiable to yourself. It’s got to be your passion, purpose and speak to your specific target audience and brand. When you do that, what it does is you get in touch with what I call your your kind of core principles, the core drivers that make you who you are. And it’s not saying, you know, Oh, I want to be a coach, it’s like, what about coaching? How are you going to execute that? Like my my specific drive and my music is helping people determine that passion and that purpose so they can be fulfilled and therefore use that as a guiding, a guiding light for how they design their services are offering who their target audience is and how they develop content or monetize that down the road to grow.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:53] So now when they’re when it gets to the point where they’re going to market themselves, they obviously if they don’t have kind of a clear position and in the mind of their prospect, it’s going to be difficult to build marketing around that right. So that is a foundational element is kind of building this. This is who I am. This is what I stand for and this is who I am going to target. Absolutely right. You have to start there because everything else is then you’re just kind of burning money guessing.

Brett Baughman: [00:04:24] Yeah, and you become again, like, if you look online, that’s why when you go to look for stuff, there’s so many general information here. You look up a business coach, a life coach coaching anything. You’re going to find so much technical information about setting goals, getting started and you can find millions of things about that. What people don’t do is give their specific recipe formula or their weapon for why you would do that and how which differentiates you that way. Not only can people see, Oh, I see why you’re different, I specifically relate to this. This speaks to me, but it’s also how people find you. If people are searching just for coaching or help, it’s going to be very generic. But if somebody says, I need help to grow my business because of this or something, you’re going to find people are going to identify with you and say, this is exactly what I need, and it’s less that takes you away from selling and gets you more to executing the results.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:11] Now you mentioned early earlier about maybe sometimes people approach this with kind of a scarcity mentality or a fear based mentality. It’s almost like they’re they’re afraid that they’re going to leave money on the table or they’re going to miss an opportunity so they don’t want to exclude anybody. But I’m hearing you say. That the tighter the better like you, it’s better to start very granularly and expand out from there rather than trying to boil the ocean.

Brett Baughman: [00:05:43] Yeah, it goes back to that old saying, you know, Jack of all trades, master of none. You know, most people will will, like you said, be afraid of closing someone out, you know, missing a sector being too specific. But what happens is they’re thinking one track. They think, if I create this, everyone will read it, need it. But then what happens is what everybody’s doing. And then you’re competing against every other person in your industry. Whereas if you define yourself and your brand and get clear on what you specifically do and have how it differentiates, then people can look and say, Oh, that’s different, or that’s specifically what I need. And I now I understand how you would help me specifically versus just in general. And you’re not getting on the phone with someone that’s speaking to 10 other coaches or consultants and then weighing out, you know, basically how the conversation went versus your ability to produce.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:29] Now how do you help the folks kind of narrow it down? Like what’s too narrow? Like if I said, You know what? I am an expert at coaching fireman. Oh, that’s great. And then I’m like, No, I’m only good with redheaded firemen and I’m only good with redheaded firemen in Wisconsin, you know, like how how niche is too niche?

Brett Baughman: [00:06:49] Great question. You know, the way that I do that is it’s kind of reverse engineer to answer what I what I have my clients do as I have them determine who their audience is, who they want to help, what they want to do, and then go and do research as to specifically how that audience is looking for their help. Where are they going to what websites are they using? Are they using Forbes and Inc and entrepreneur? Or are they using something like Psychology Today or better help? Are they looking for therapeutic help for their mindset, or they’re looking for help to pivot a business and a strategy? And so if you find the keywords and the exact search phrases people are searching for, then you can determine this is how I’m going to speak to my audience and you can develop your content based on that so that everything you do is clearly answering a problem your audience already has. Instead of you trying to pick out what it is like. If you were to say fire with red hair, you’re coming up with that because that’s what you’re choosing to do. Your audience may not be that way.

Brett Baughman: [00:07:41] Maybe no firemen have red hair. You need to go out there and find out who are the firemen or what are they looking for. What’s the problem? The pain points and then answer those and then through a balance of back and forth creating content, putting it out and then running analytics to see how your responses are. It helps you refine the process and you can become more and more of that, but it really has to start with what your audience needs. And then the other part of that it’s important is what you want to do. I watch a lot of coaches build companies again based on what other people are doing, and they don’t want to be doing it. They want to be a coach, but they don’t necessarily want to be doing the services they create. And then what’s funny is the service you don’t want to do is the one you’ll be doing all the time and you get stuck doing it every day, every week, every month, and you’re miserable. So make sure what you’re going to do is what you’re passionate about and what your people are asking for

Lee Kantor: [00:08:28] Now is your go to market strategy usually includes some type of thought, leadership and content. Or is it something where you work? Is it better to have partnerships and kind of people working together, collaborating? How do you kind of determine the marketing plan?

Brett Baughman: [00:08:46] Yeah, great. Great question. It’s really a mix of all of that. So a d all the above, we, you know, in order to do it, I believe, especially if you’re starting out, if you’re well established in the business for a while, I got a good presence online. Collaborations are not as important. Collaborations are going to pull you up on the expertize of someone else and broaden your audience, so they’re always great to do. But if you’re established not as necessary for someone greener or starting out, that absolutely the more you can learn and grow with somebody and share their audience, the more that’ll give you more eyeballs on what you do. But you definitely need to start creating content. And the way I do it is I say your content should be made and translated to be for your art or your blog. You need to have social media and you should be looking for publications. And then also some some radio shows like this or podcast you can do and you want to again speak the same brand and be answering across the board all those same questions. This is my audience. This is their pain point. So when somebody reaches out, says, Hey, we have a show to do on this, you can say I can speak to this because this is what I do exactly. This is my niche. This is my my wheelhouse.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:52] Now, as part of the strategy, you mentioned publication, so having some effort in PR and being published yourself in more traditional publications is a strategy as well and in terms of building up your credibility.

Brett Baughman: [00:10:09] Absolutely. You know, there’s the there’s just the audience looking first of all, that’s going to build trust. It’s going to give that level of expertize. Basically, I look at this what you need to be your audience. The people are looking for your help, need to look at what you’re doing and read it and say, OK, I trust this person by listening to them. They’re clear and just in their conversation, you’re just reading this article. I can see that I’m already changing the way I think. On the other side, it’s important to look for things that are credible again. The more popular, the website, the show, the thing is, the more that’s going to build traffic and ranking for your website, which backs up the match between the content that shows this person’s talking about this and people are searching it and they’re finding things. So you’ve got the, you know, what’s happening in the mindset of your target audience and then what’s happening operationally and technologically online to grow your brand?

Lee Kantor: [00:11:03] Now, let’s go back in time to the beginning of your coaching career before you had a coaching client. What was the strategy to get that first client? What was that? Did you go through any of that imposter syndrome like, Hey, who am I to be coaching somebody? Did you have any of that kind of fear that, you know, we’re trying to help other people get through? Or was this something that you were just pretty confident and you just went boldly forward?

Brett Baughman: [00:11:29] You know, I was I was. Fortunately, I was confident. But here’s the thing. It’s because I grew it organically. I started out managing people. I was working in corporations, working at companies where I was managing people. I was a leader. I was a sales trainer. And so from inside, I was developing people and I started being asked by other companies to come and do the same. So I started working more and more with executives, more and more with managers, sales team from internal. And then what I realized was I wanted to do it also on my own so that I had more flexibility and structure, and therefore I could do. I could go into a company and work with them in that style, but I could also set my own frame and again develop the things I wanted, specifically my way. And therefore, and to kind of answer what I would suggest coaches do is determine an industry or two you’re good at. When I started, what I did was I was very good with mortgage insurance and I did a lot of stuff with car dealerships, and they’re always looking for people to come in and talk. They’ll give a forty five minute hour long talk and just talk to a bunch of people. You got anywhere from 10 to one hundred people in a room. This gives you practice. It starts building expertize. You can get a list. I had every single person give me a review of how I did give a testimonial. So now I’m building credibility and then out of every one of those experiences, I’d have one or two people start saying, Hey, if you do anything outside this and that would turn into people asking me to be a coach rather than me sitting at home going, OK, let me grab the yellow pages and start dialing. People were already coming. I started to see between the reviews, the experience and how many were contacted before I needed to adjust or refine.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:03] And then as you kind of expanded, you moved from coaching individuals to coaching companies like how are you discerning the difference between like training a company like you would like? If somebody brings you in to do a talk or a training to working with a specific individual, your your firm handles, you know, again, all of the above.

Brett Baughman: [00:13:24] Yeah. Well, so what I’ve done now, you know, it’s been an evolution. I’ve done this for twenty two years, so I’ve evolved through it. And, you know, it’s primarily been what I’ve wanted to do that I’ve adapted also the call of the wild, what’s been going on in the world. You have to kind of look at what’s that, what people are looking for again. And so basically, what I do right now is I primarily work with executives, so high level executives because I like taking on those high level strategic problems. So I will either work with an executive one on one and I’m guiding them through a whole life approach. So I never work with anybody just on one thing, because if you’re just focusing on business, the rest of your life is going to fall apart. So we kind of look at all that together to make sure that everything is support is supporting each other and creating a momentum to your future in all areas. But beyond that, based on the experience with that executive, typically they will want me to come into the company and start kind of either facilitating a role or helping solve problems. And I go end to end from either training and marketing, development, hiring all the way down to operations or executive coaching. And so my my kind of fix right now, my structure is primarily executive coaches working on leadership and peak performance. And then I will have a handful, maybe two or three companies that I’ll be consulting specifically or a broader scale to the whole companies approach and success.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:39] Now are you finding since you’ve been doing this a minute, that companies are getting more comfortable and more bought into the importance of coaching, not just for the senior leadership, but kind of trickling down to more more of the everyday employee?

Brett Baughman: [00:14:58] Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it’s great that no one there’s just there’s just so much information is becoming, you know, it’s becoming common knowledge that having a coach is a benefit. I mean, there’s I can’t find a single bit of information in the world anywhere. So somebody had a coach and they did worse, you know, any two heads together better than one. And so it’s the ideology. The methodology is becoming more popular and understood. But this is again where it’s important to make sure that you’re on brand with your message and know what you want to offer. Because then if you can build the credibility, I always tell everybody every single day you should put at least one gold brick in the road to your future. So every day I’m putting out an article, a podcast, something something I’m doing that is letting people know about what I’m doing. And it always has value, always building my credibility, but providing takeaway value immediately. That means when these companies look online, they’re finding information constantly that can help them so that when they look, it’s not just trying to sell somebody into the opportunity, it’s saying, Hey, here’s something you could take right now and you can use this and change your life. And so I think there’s enough of that out. Now, when people start to look, they go, wow, just in reading, this is starting to change my mind just in doing this, I see there is potential and that lowers the bar for people thinking the risk is too high to take the chance, and it’s become more and more more prevalent and easier to get in the door every place.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:18] Now, can you share a story where you had an impact that you were most proud? Maybe it doesn’t have to be the most dollar amount, necessarily, but the one that you’re most proud and the one that maybe took a company to a new level or took them to a place that they didn’t even dream possible?

Brett Baughman: [00:16:35] Yeah, yeah. Know I was about saying the company’s name, you know, several years back. This is back before 2008, the big gold market crash in the mortgage industry. I did a lot of stuff with mortgage companies working in them, owns couple, develop them and I worked at the very large subprime lender. And when I went into the company, I was brought in to do some sales, training and development. And so I was working with a couple of the executives on the management team and they just had a simple structure. You know, they had tons of calls coming in from leads and marketing being done all over the place. There was like seven hundred and fifty agents, but everybody was working individual and what I did was I did it doing a valuation of the whole company to structure the scripting experience from start to finish for a client coming on board a prospective client. And what I realized was, you know, everybody is not good at everything. And truthfully, I’m really into mindset and psychology, so I understand how behavior works and how your mind works. And somebody who’s a great salesperson is not commonly also good at the operational side, doing all the work, plugging the information, follow up, getting the paperwork.

Brett Baughman: [00:17:37] That’s where they fail. They’re charismatic and they’re great on the phone. It’s selling, but then they don’t do the work that needs to be done with paperwork, and I realize this is a hindrance. So I broke up the company into teams. They’d never done this before, and I said every team was going to be 10 people, 10 to 20 people with one team lead. You’re going to have an opener and closer. The opener starts to call, tosses it to a closer, and then that opener is going to be the first that basically conducts all the operational side. What we did is and within the first month, they grew by 20 percent. And I mean, after that, we went from people to people in there that were, you know, doing two three four five loans a month going up to like, you know, 15 to 20 the following month. So the company just grew incredibly. You probably doubled and tripled the size in the first six months

Lee Kantor: [00:18:18] Because again, in those kind of situations, if everybody is doing what they do and doing what they’re good at and what they don’t get frustrated, they’re doing more of it. So if you get people that are operationally minded doing operational stuff and people that are, you know, sales minded doing sales stuff, then everybody’s in their lane and everybody benefits.

Brett Baughman: [00:18:37] Absolutely no big thing that I like to do. But like one thing I’m proud of doing is I’ve worked on very long time, is trying to take, you know, big complex ideas and making them simple so that people can digest it and integrate it. Because, you know, how often do we learn something and don’t use it when we need to? And so a big part of this is that, you know, I look at thinking in two ways there is emotional thinking and there’s objective thinking. The more emotion you are, the worse decision you’re making. It’s not a good time to make them. Nobody ever says I’m so ticked off. Let me sit down and write a business plan, right? I’m so sad. I’m all right. My goals. You’ve got to get your head straight and get clear. And so like the example that business there, everyone was in emotional thinking because the people on the phone would do a great job selling and then were frustrated because they had to go and get all this paperwork or frustrated because it was taking time away from selling something else. The people who didn’t want to be on the phone were being pressured constantly. Where’s your numbers? How are you doing? What your sales get it up when they weren’t good at that? And once you alleviated the stress of something you didn’t want to be doing and put you right into your, into your, your zone and your expertize, then the people saw good stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:38] Well, congratulations on all the success. If there’s someone out there that wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team. What’s the website?

Brett Baughman: [00:19:47] Just my name. Brett Baughman pretty be a you man. And if you search my name, pretty much find a bunch of stuff. Like I said, I’m trying to put gold bricks out there every day, so hopefully I can help people and they can find me easily.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:00] Well, thank you again for sharing your story, Brett. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Brett Baughman: [00:20:05] Thank you. Thanks for having me on it. You as well. Love the show and wish you guys much continued success.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:10] All right, this is Lee Kantor will sail next time on Coach the Coach radio.