Business RadioX ®

Paula Shepherd With The Courage Blueprint

by

PaulaShepherdPaula Shepherd is an ICF certified and credentialed Business Confidence Coach & Brand Voice Strategist, certified Tiny Habits Coach, Certified Program Management Professional, and host of The Confidence Sessions Podcast. She helps visionary entrepreneurs increase their confidence and their business’ bottom line by using the power of the voice to stand out as the go-to expert.

Paula spent 20 years in Corporate America before leaving a six-figure management position to pursue her mission of creating the company she always wanted to work for. She built a 6 figure business in her first 9 months and has helped over 60 people start or reinvigorate their businesses through her signature system, The Courage Blueprint®.

Paula has been featured in the online publication, VoyageAustin Magazine and been a guest on numerous podcasts. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and 4 children.

Connect with Paula on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Why staying quiet is stunting your growth
  • The importance of genuine human connection in a virtual world
  • Values-Based Leadership and reframing what is important in life, relationships, and business
  • Authentic Business Design – alignment with your strengths vs. a cookie cutter method

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 fun one today, we have with us Paula Shepherd with The Courage Blueprint. Welcome, Paula.

Paula Shepherd: [00:00:44] Thank you for having me. I’m really excited about being here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about the courage blueprint, how you serve in folks.

Paula Shepherd: [00:00:53] So the courage blueprint really started as a means of helping people to get out of their own way. After 20 years in corporate, for me it was about building a business that I always wanted to work for, and that meant not serving people on my own, but really having people and their unique talents and zone of genius coming together to create something really beautiful that inspired and helped other people to live out their dreams and their passion.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:26] So what’s your back story, you mentioned corporate, but what roles did you have in corporate?

Paula Shepherd: [00:01:32] So I spent 20 years in corporate America. I did start in non-profits and of course, I loved my job, but I didn’t make a lot of money. So I did what everybody did. Right. I, I chased the the dream of having a bigger income. And in corporate America, I eventually climbed the corporate ladder and was a corporate leader. And so I was managing other people for a Fortune 500 company in a smaller office. And it’s it wasn’t always the best environment. Right. There was a lot of toxicity and a lot of seniority and patriarchy kind of played into. That space, I was the only female manager in that location and I was only one of five females on the program that we were serving. So it was it was really difficult to feel like your voice could be heard and to also feel like there were certain standards that had to be met in order for it to be important enough for you to speak up.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:41] Now, when you were going through that, were you getting coached at that time, like we’re not coaching kind of become a threat in your career?

Paula Shepherd: [00:02:51] Yeah, so this is such a fun story and really glad that you asked, because I the first time I hired a coach, I really, honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I had gone to a networking event and it was filled with entrepreneurs. And I just looked at them with such like loving, inspiring, envious eyes because I was in corporate and I hated my job, but I couldn’t get out of it because I was literally making so much money. And as the breadwinner in my family, I couldn’t get out. I was holding the benefits. I have four kids and I just felt really trapped. So someone introduced me to a career coach. And to be quite frank with you, I thought that the career coach was going to revamp my resume and help me find another job. And what actually happened with something so much more profound during the course of our working together over a few months, she actually said, hey, I don’t normally do this, but I think that you’re a natural coach. Have you ever thought of becoming one? Well, of course, I didn’t even know what that meant. So I did what I do best and started digging into the details.

Paula Shepherd: [00:03:58] And I wound up signing up for a program and thought, of course, I need to have this coaching certification. I want to be the very best coach for my clients. And after that, I really drew a line in the sand about when I was going to be done with my job. And it was for about a year later that I had said, OK, by August 31st of twenty twenty, this was pre pandemic. Of course I’m going to leave my job and and I wound up doing it and all because I hired a coach that I thought was really actually going to do work for me. I started doing the work for myself, got my certification. I am ISEF certified and now credentialled. And in July of the beginning of July of twenty twenty in the middle of the pandemic, I left my job and I actually gave my notice in May of twenty twenty. So it was really honestly kind of an interesting story. I, I put my blinders on and realized that I was going to make this happen no matter what.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:57] Now are your clients, people like you started not have ever having a coach or maybe not really understand what a coach can and can’t do, or are they people who have had coaches that are now, you know, just trying another one?

Paula Shepherd: [00:05:12] When I first started, it was more of me educating people about what being a coach really meant. And I was bringing in some new people. Now I have people either starting businesses, people who have been in business for about a year and have made a little bit of money, but really haven’t made a ton of traction and are ready to give up. And then the third group of people that I work with are people who have worked with other coaches in particular around business and honestly felt like they were wronged or bait and switch and didn’t feel the support or that they were treated as a unique individual. So those are really kind of the three types of people that I serve right now in my business.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:00] Now, when you started, did you start out with this vision of I’m going to be in this business confidence coach, I’m going to be a brand voice strategist? Was that clear to you at the beginning or was that something that’s evolved?

Paula Shepherd: [00:06:13] It has evolved because we all kind of start out and we don’t really realize our strengths because they’re built into us. We have this unconscious expertize and we’re running on autopilot. So for me, it was about people being able to be confident enough to apply sales and marketing to their business. But more than that, it was all about emotional intelligence and helping people learn how to network with other people to build and leverage relationships not in way, but in a really genuine way. Because it came so naturally to me. I didn’t really realize that that’s what I was doing in my business. So as over time, it’s gone from really focused on helping people become more confident to this evolution in a program of really understanding who you are aligning with, that which then develops your confidence and then building your business in a way that feels really, really good to you, and then being able to shout that from the rooftops. I like to call it using your outside voice so that you can learn and grow and develop relationships with people who always have your best interests at heart.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:32] Now, do you find that people kind of forget that? I think that this is a phrase that you use, that we’re humans serving other humans, that that things aren’t as kind of black and white and just very machine like that, that we’re just human beings. Just trying to we’re all just grinding, we’re all just trying to get through the day and do the best we can, and we’re looking for other people like that to have those kind of authentic relationships to so I can learn what you need, you learn what I need, and we can see if it’s a fit and we can help each other where some people are like, well, I, I have this persona I got to get in front of and I got a machine that gets me in front of this and they look at it almost like a machine and not human beings to human beings.

Paula Shepherd: [00:08:18] Yes, and I think that kind of over the course of the last year, when a lot of people have, you know, they lost their jobs, so they were getting into online businesses. A lot of the coaching industry blew up. A lot of people were getting into coaching without even really understanding what that meant. And you had people that really didn’t have the experience coaching other people and cookie cutter ways to essentially do the same thing that they were doing. But what was happening was people were losing themselves in that because it became about making more money and not about their vision, their purpose, their mission and why they were doing it in the first place. So people that wanted an online business so they could then have more freedom to spend time with their family. Actually, we’re now spending less time with their family and feeling much more disconnected from themselves. I do think that there’s a little bit of a shift right now happening happening in the industry. But I also do feel like so many people have been in really unfortunate situations with these programs that have promised things that really were never in alignment with them or sold them into things using thing, you know, psychological manipulation and didn’t really treat them as human, that there’s a lot of concern when people are now when they come to me or when they go to other coaches about whether or not they are going to have success. Right. And so the leaning in on the relationships and helping people really see and serving them in a way that makes them feel. And not in a manipulative way, but makes them feel like the person that they are is incredibly important, it is to me and to the people that I surround myself with as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:10] Now, is that something that you have to work with your clients on, really maybe identifying what their superpowers are, trusting those superpowers and building their service or business around those superpowers rather than kind of pushing them away or ignoring them and focusing on other things that they think are more business friendly or more relevant to business?

Paula Shepherd: [00:10:37] Yeah, I think there’s there’s a little bit of of both in there. Right. Because as a coach, it’s not my job to tell someone what to do. It’s my job to ask them pointed questions to help them come to their own conclusion. So I take a holistic point of view and I really do look at the whole person. And if they have an idea, I want them to really look at it and and decide if that’s really what they want to do or if they’re doing it because they’ve consumed something either on social media and an article that has made them question the way they’re going about their business. Maybe they think that it’s not going fast enough. So there’s opportunity there for them to discover more of who they are and to become really the person that they were always meant to be. And and in that is a lot of deconditioning, a lot of deconditioning where they came from. So maybe it’s, you know, things from the past. Maybe it’s, you know, that corporate mentality or that nine to five mentality and helping them to learn how to ask themselves the same questions so that when I’m not around, they’re still moving forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:51] So now let’s walk us through what an engagement with you or somebody on your team looks like like what is what is the pain I’m having where Paula and her team are the right solution, number one. And number two, once we have a conversation or decide this is a good fit, what what is some of the things that you ask your clients to do? What some of the homework or some of the kind of the early interactions look like?

Paula Shepherd: [00:12:16] Yeah, OK. So the first thing that that we do and we really identify because when we’re when we’re talking to people, we’re really pre qualifying them. Right. This isn’t about selling them on our service. This is about making sure that they’re right, because we have a very curated community. We’re serving less people in a more meaningful way. And and so what I want to do is find out what’s been stopping them from starting in the first place or what’s been stopping them from showing up as themselves. Most of the people that we work with are really nervous about putting themselves out there, about being the face, about taking up space. And those are the people we want to work with. But they also have to be ready and willing to identify who they are and start to take really uncomfortable steps forward, not jumping in a cesspool full of snakes. But, you know, finding what’s that one thing, if they don’t want to if they don’t want to do video on social media, are they more comfortable being a guest on podcasts? Are they more comfortable sharing their voice in another way? And what is their message? So the people that we’re working with are really not comfortable being in the spotlight, not comfortable taking up space, don’t see themselves as the expert, and it’s about digging out those stories for them. I think the second part of your question remind me what that was, because now I’ve gone off on a tangent here.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:51] Well, once the I’m just trying to get a feel for when someone when you and the and the prospect say, you know what, this is a good fit. I’m trying to get give them a taste of what it’s like to work with you. And it sounds like it’s very interactive, collaborative. And you’re looking you’re not looking to sell anybody anything, really. You’re just trying to find out if it’s a good fit or not.

Paula Shepherd: [00:14:14] Yeah, that’s the first step. And then once they are in our program, so we have one signature program, Elevated Voices Academy, and it’s a six month engagement. It is a high value hybrid. So it is a combination of both one on one experience with myself and support coaches and then also. Some group community engagement, so there’s, you know, office hours for them to come to you and really get to integrate. We also have a private community completely off of social media for them to collaborate and get accountability and really share and learn how to step into their own power and their confidence in a space that feels safe at first. And so it’s very highly curated. For that reason. We want to make sure we have the right fit and people and we’re only bringing in five people every single month. We don’t take any more than that because we care very deeply about developing a relationship and not kind of grinding people through the machine. It is a very bespoke process. So it’s all about identifying who you are. It’s a five step process. We go through five voices, it’s inside voice, passive voice, active voice, conversational voice and outside voice. And there’s a variety of different things that happen through there. But it all starts with self discovery and really understanding, believing who you are and and being able to describe yourself in a way that’s not a role or a way that you care for someone else. And so hopefully that answers your question. But it is such a personal journey for so many people, depending on where they’re starting and honestly, their mindset as they’re beginning the process.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:07] And so the service is kind of a group coaching service. It’s not like one on one with you, but

Paula Shepherd: [00:16:13] It’s yes, it is. It’s it’s a it’s a hybrid one on one and group. So there’s opportunity to have both one on one’s with myself. There’s one on one call with my human design expert and alignment coach. And then we also have a copywriter that is on our team who provides feedback so that when people are writing in their own voice that they can just get better at doing that. So we have a variety of team members to support because again, like going back to the whole courage blueprint concept is I want it to build a business that was the business I always wanted to work for, which was allowing other people to shine in the talents that they have and helping people to learn how to do things without leaning into a template.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:05] And if somebody wanted to learn more about the program, what’s the website?

Paula Shepherd: [00:17:09] Yeah, so you would just go to theCourageBlueprint.com and click on work with me. All the information is there to to learn more about the program, to be able to connect with us and to check out options to be able to enroll.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:26] And it’s the word that is at the beginning of that, right? It’s the career blueprint. Dotcom.

Paula Shepherd: [00:17:31] That is correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:32] And then your podcast.

Paula Shepherd: [00:17:35] Yeah. So my podcast is available on Spotify, Apple podcast, Amazon, anywhere that podcast can be found. And it’s called The Confidence Sessions. And I have both solo episodes that are bite size, easy to digest and also amazing guests to help people do anything from learn how to start running ads to creating amazing copy to building relationships.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:07] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success, Paula. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Paula Shepherd: [00:18:13] Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:15] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you Next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

Michael Harris With Harris CMO Partners

by

Harris-CMO-Partners

Michael-harrisMichael Harris’ industry and consulting experience spans Fortune 100 companies to emerging and growth firms in manufacturing and technology. Many of his clients have been acquired. Mike is the Founder of Harris CMO Partners.

As an executive at west coast technology companies for many years, Mike worked throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America and China. He has served variously as the top marketing, business development, and investor relations executive for both private and publicly traded companies. He has also served as a corporate officer for a NASDAQ:NM company.

He is a former management consultant with PriceWaterhouse Coopers and holds a B.S. from the University of Tennessee and an MBA in Marketing from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University.

He has long been active in community service and has served on the boards of Operation For HOPE Foundation and Kids Included Together. For several years he served as a mentor to entrepreneurs as a member of Connect San Diego. He has also served as a guest lecturer, student mentor and program chair at The Rady School of Management at the University of California San Diego.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The Nashville tech community vs. Silicon Valley tech community
  • The changing nature of sales and marketing
  • The emergence of the global platform economy

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 fun one. Today we have with us Michael Harris with Harris CMO Partners. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Harris: [00:00:43] Hey, Lee, how are you doing today?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am doing well. I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Harris CMO partners. How are you serving folks?

Michael Harris: [00:00:52] Yeah, sure. We work with CEOs of technology companies. Our clients are usually in the 10 million to one hundred million dollar range and I would say most of them for the last few excuse me, most of them for the last few years have been SaaS companies. We have clients in Silicon Valley, the West Coast, Washington, D.C. And since I’ve moved to Nashville not too long ago, we picked up a couple of clients here. So what we do is we provide interim CMO services or just general CMO support to the CEO or the actual CMO themselves.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:27] So what’s your back story? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Michael Harris: [00:01:31] Yeah, sure. It’s it’s a good story. When I got out of business school in the 80s, I, I took, you know, one of the glamorous jobs of so-called glamorous jobs with the consumer products company. And that led to a stint with Philips Electronics in the Netherlands. And I wound up running about one hundred billion dollar division of that company based here in the United States. And somewhere along the way, I got a call from a data storage company in California, and they had seen some of my turnaround background and asked if I would be interested in joining them. It was a 500 billion dollar company and they were in a bit of trouble and took a leap of faith and left the southeast and moved everything out to California. And that’s how I got started in technology. That was in the 90s. And I served as a top level executive for West Coast tech companies for many years. Usually that it was a chief marketing officer role or head of sales and marketing something in that nature. And then when I got my my last job out of high school and off to college in twenty eighteen, I decided to return to the motherland, Nashville, Tennessee. And I moved, moved back here, moved my company here and and really enjoy it. Things are going fine.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:48] So now talk a little bit about kind of the tech ecosystem in Nashville versus Silicon Valley. Obviously Silicon Valley has the history and the kind of the depth of companies there. And Nashville is more of an emerging tech hub. Can you talk about how they compare and what you see in the future for Nashville?

Michael Harris: [00:03:10] Oh, sure. That’s a topic I love to talk about. I think that anybody that’s been immersed in the West Coast tech scene or Silicon Valley develops a certain sense of a sense of style and operating certainly a deep, deep level of knowledge about what’s going on with the investors, what’s going on with new ways of technology. And then when I moved to Nashville, I really set out to learn the technology community here and reached out to tech CEOs and wanted to establish a beachhead here, because I really my vision was to serve the Southeast. I knew the technology was coming our way and I knew that there were a lot of companies in the southeast, especially Tennessee and Nashville, that could use Silicon Valley expertize. So here’s the difference. The Nashville technology ecosystem is still it’s still in its infancy. And the reason that I say that is because the investment community here is not the same as the investment community that I observed in California. So people who have made a great deal of money here typically made it in health care or excuse me, health care and banking and commercial real estate. And so those are those are what we would call more old world industries, even though they’re very much alive, very much thriving.

Michael Harris: [00:04:39] People still make a lot of money in them. But the mindset of these investors is is is not evolved enough to be able to understand what new waves of technology mean and how investing in those new ways of technology could create wealth for them. So it’s still a little bit of a reluctant atmosphere here in Nashville. But in the three years that I’ve been here, I’ve seen really, really good progress. So I think Nashville is well on its way. And of course, we see all the time these news articles of California companies, tech companies that are picking up and moving to Nashville. And they’re moving here for very, very good reasons. So so Nashville has the foundation. And I think as these new companies move in and at new blood comes in, that’s already been immersed in Silicon Valley, that is going to. You don’t spread across Nashville, including the investment community, including the universities and colleges and even high schools and in Nashville is poised to grow, I think, tremendously in what I call the technology ecosystem.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:50] Now, do you find I think I mean, I deal with a lot of I interview a lot of folks in all parts of the startup, the tech startup world, from VCs to private equity to angels to CEOs and entrepreneurs. One of the advantages of Silicon Valley is if you’re a startup in Silicon Valley and your thing explodes, you can jump to another, you know, startup pretty easily. And there’s kind of a deep like that’s OK to do that. And the investment community there has a different kind of sense of urgency when it comes to investing and the different kind of expectation of an investment. Whereas like you said, in some of the southern cities, if their wealth was made in real estate, it’s one of those. Well, we’ll just hold on to it. And eventually it’s going to make us a lot of money. And the time, kind of the condensed time period that people are looking to get in and out of the investments are different. You know, the time moves differently in Silicon Valley than it does maybe in some southern cities.

Michael Harris: [00:06:54] Yes, I would definitely agree with that, I would say from the two clients that we had here, we have had so far in Nashville and both were successfully acquired after we started working with them. So that’s, you know, that’s good news. But from my observance of those two companies versus the clients and see on the West Coast, for instance, things tend to move a little slower here because there’s a learning curve that’s already been achieved by most of the people on the West Coast, that it’s still being achieved by the people who do the work here in Nashville. So I do spend more time educating Nashville clients than I would with clients on the West Coast or in Washington or something like that.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:38] Now, what about have you seen? Because I think this is another part of the growth and the maturity of a of a southern city when it comes to this is having some successful exits where you have some entrepreneurs that have gone through kind of the process and they’ve exited and then want to reinvest back into the community. Are you seeing any of that or any kind of hint that that’s on the roadmap?

Michael Harris: [00:08:02] Oh, yes. Yeah, there are definitely good examples here in here in Nashville. One of the companies that I helped was a med tech company, and it was part of the portfolio of a another company here in Nashville that that funds several medtech and health care startups. And I know they’ve had the entrepreneur who founded it. His name is Jim Saw. I know he had a really successful tech exit. And after that, he began to pull together this portfolio of new companies to fund and to and to nurture. So that’s a great example that you and I have heard and read about several others, which are excellent stories.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:46] So now let’s talk about kind of your day to day work in sales and marketing. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what you’ve learned from coming from that technology base from Silicon Valley and how that that translates to the tech companies you’re dealing with in Nashville now?

Michael Harris: [00:09:05] That’s a that’s an excellent question. So what’s going on in sales and marketing now? Is that the the distance between what’s being sold and who’s going to buy it has been dissected into about a million pieces. What I mean by that is know back in the day and I’m going I’m going to go back in the day, a sales guy at IBM or HP or whatever could have a name and a phone number and get in front of somebody to make a sales pitch. And today there is about I mean, there’s just dozens and dozens of places that you have to populate with some kind of a message before you even get the attention of a prospect. And I think the interesting thing is today that any prospect for a new solution is going to spin. They’re going to get 70 percent, 80 percent of what they want to know about you and your company and your solution before they’ll ever agree to even have an introductory phone call. And so that all falls back into what is historically traditionally called marketing space. And it’s it’s required that marketing, especially B2B marketing, technology, marketing, become very, very short with content messaging, what we call buyer personas, which is, you know, who am I targeting? What are their what are their hot buttons, what are their pain points and so forth. So I think the net net of all of this is that sales and marketing has become much more sophisticated. And in addition to that, we’re starting to see a merging of the sales and marketing functions because the technology, the platforms that they’re using are merging. And so they have no choice but to start moving these part departments closer and closer together. And so I’m thinking that at least in my lifetime, in my career, we will see sales and marketing become just one operation.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:58] Now, are you seeing any of the. I know I’m old, too, so I know that there was. Kind of a line in between sales and marketing at one point where it was always like sales are saying like, oh, marketing is not giving me the good leads. And then and then marketing is like, well, sales isn’t closing the glades. And I’m saying, you know, it was kind of I don’t want to say adversarial, but maybe their incentives weren’t aligned. And marketing becomes like more of a support role for sales and not like a partner. Are you seeing any of that change or is the blurring of the lines between sales, marketing, advertising, PR, social media, all the kind of kind of the tools that are out there? Are they all kind of, like you said, merging into one, you know, kind of client acquisition department?

Michael Harris: [00:11:48] Yeah, yeah. The people who perform those functions across the board, the ones you just mentioned. Yes. They are merging into one one department. And I think a good example of that, Leigh, is that, you know, like in my company, we use we use a software platform that’s that scores prospects for clients. And it’s up to the marketer. Business usually resides in the marketing department, but it’s up to the marketer to decide what those attributes, the attractive attributes of a prospect are, whether it’s from static information on LinkedIn or whether those attributes are gathered from interaction with social media, post advertising, whatever, whatever is out there in the in the WebSphere. And so it’s up to a marketer to create that model. And then the marketer has to interact with the salespeople who will be selling this to make sure that model is is tweaked correctly and that the attributes have been have been prioritized school correctly, because ultimately it’s the salesperson who’s going to be using that model, but it’s the marketing person that’s going to be doing all the attributes.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:03] Now, what about I mean, in a lot of these tech B2B sales especially, there’s a lot of kind of fingers in the pie and these decisions are made necessarily by one person. It’s a committee or group of people that have to sign off on it. And you don’t know who is the person that’s got the the power to kind of blackball something or veto something. How do you help your clients kind of navigate the politics of the sale?

Michael Harris: [00:13:33] Well, that’s another that’s another good question. You know, I always advise clients to to put one person in charge, whether it’s the S.R.O., whether it’s the CMO, you know, hopefully you walk into a situation where they have a very good relationship and they and they work as one. That’s not always the case because, you know, salespeople are driven by a set of metrics. That is it’s very you know, right now, right at this minute, oriented marketing people tend to look much further into the future. And sometimes it’s hard to get those two viewpoints on the same table. So it’s it’s a it’s always an issue where I walk into a client. I’d say 90 percent of the problems that I find in a client is are people problems. You know, either the skill sets and capabilities aren’t present at that senior level or they haven’t built the underlying infrastructure to putting people correctly, or that just a general level of distrust between those two organizations. And I’m starting I’m starting again. I’m starting to see that mitigating itself as time goes on. But it used to be a pretty big problem in a lot of companies. And now I think it’s a more manageable problem than most companies.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:52] Now, how has the pandemic impacted your business? I don’t know if the pandemic precipitated your moved to Nashville, but it’s obviously kind of expanded people’s where their employees are located, where their clients are located and working from home or working. Has any of this impacted your business? And if so, how have you helped your clients navigate through this?

Michael Harris: [00:15:18] Mm hmm. But, yes, it’s it’s impacting my business positively. So when I set out to build this company several years ago, I decided from the outset it was going to be a virtual company because I had spent many, many, many years managing a lot of people in big organizations. And I just didn’t want to do that anymore. So the people that I hire are all contractors. You know, they’re all too many lines. They’ve all been with me for a long time and they love the work that they do and I pay them very fairly. So in that sense, it hasn’t interrupted it. And on the on the revenue side, revenues actually gone up because so many employers have had a chance to look at what’s going on in sales and marketing and decide that they want to make changes. And they love the idea of having somebody having an On-Demand professional come in, get the work done and then get out. Right. That’s very different from the old consulting model. So back in my early years, my younger years, I was a consultant for a predecessor of PricewaterhouseCoopers. And the mantra then was, you know, go out and play to the base and then dragging its feet on for years and years. So that’s that that is no longer the case, at least with companies my size. And we like to we like to do a good job. Our our pay is actually tied to whether we get that job done right and get it done on time. So everybody in the organization is incentivized to to to work and to do it right the first time and to do it on time.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:50] So now what is the pain that your prospective clients are having? Are they kind of struggling? Are they in a crisis or are they kind of frustrated because of a plateau? Like where where are they at when it’s time to call a CMO partners?

Michael Harris: [00:17:08] Yeah, it’s usually one of the few places they want is that they’ve lost their CMO. They need they need somebody to come in and steer the ship for a few months until they can get their search done. As you know, in today’s hiring environment, it’s getting pretty tough to find the right qualified people who will also fit into that company’s particular culture. And so they like the idea of not losing any momentum. The second the second biggest issue is the CEO is really frustrated at marketing. So he or she is not liking what they’re seeing. They’re not liking what they’re hearing. They’re they’re really questioning the value of the money they’re spending. And they want somebody with a with a very strong budgeting background and a financial perspective on sales to come in and help sort through what’s going on and get everything realigned with the marketplace in a way that that shows exactly what’s happening with every dollar spent on marketing. So those are a couple of situations. Is that enough for this call?

Lee Kantor: [00:18:10] Well, what is the frustration like? What are some symptoms that a firm might be having that, hey, maybe it’s time to make a change in the CMO suite?

Michael Harris: [00:18:18] Oh, gosh, declining revenue. It’s a tough one. Yeah. So I had one client that was in a market really hot market space. The market space itself was growing tremendously and with companies of that particular. Lion size, it was on average, companies were growing 12 percent a year and this particular client was declining 10 percent a year and they just couldn’t, you know, they just couldn’t figure out what was going on. So that’s that’s a very classic example of a frustration.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:49] Now, any advice for the person that is maybe in an enterprise position right now and wants to go out on their own and start their own firm? Anything that you would do differently?

Michael Harris: [00:19:01] Yeah, you know, I I got very lucky right off the bat and landed a couple of big contracts, but when I when I when I decided I wanted to grow the business, I really floundered a lot with the operational side of it. And when I say operations, I mean really the sales process, the paperwork, et cetera, et cetera. And I luckily found a book called Million Dollar Consulting by a guy named Alan Wise. And I later took some personal training from him and he was able to cut through all of the noise for me so. Well, and his mate has made the selling process for my company so easy. You know, we don’t use we don’t use PowerPoint or pitch decks. We don’t do proposals. We don’t do anything. You know, we just work straight with the CEO and we work on it. We work on a term sheet by email. And, you know, this is what we’re doing. This is what we’re going to get done. This is, you know, how long it’s going to take. The it’s going to this is the methodology we use. This is how we measure the success of the project. And then once that once once that term sheet is completed in that manner, we just crank out a simple like two or three page letter of agreement and the CEO signs it. We’re off to the races.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:13] Yeah, I’m a big fan of Alan Weiss. I mean, a long time reader of pretty much everything he puts out there. He’s a smart guy. It’s got a lot of that figured out. And I recommend his books, his newsletter to anybody out there that is kind of to who wants to make sure they’re getting the value they deserve.

Michael Harris: [00:20:32] You bet. You bet.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:34] Now, Michael, if somebody wants to learn more about your firm or get on your calendar, what is the website?

Michael Harris: [00:20:42] It is HarrisCMOpartners.com, or you could Google Mike Harris marketing either one.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:51] Good stuff. Well, Michael, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Michael Harris: [00:20:56] Thanks for having me. It’s so great to hear about what your your company is doing. I only recently heard about National Business Radio, and I’m pretty excited about it because, you know, Nashville really needs to have stronger business reporting, especially on the tech side. And so I’m happy to make your acquaintance and hopefully was able to contribute a little something today.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:18] Definitely did. Thank you again. You bet. Take care. All right. This Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

Ted Turner With Intelligent Leadership Executive Coach

by

Intelligent-Leadership-Executive-Coach

ted-turnerWith over 40 years of leadership experience in the Engineering, Construction, and Services industries, Ted Turner has successfully managed large, complex projects in 31 states and 17 countries and four continents. His professional credentials include General Engineering licenses in four states and contractor licenses in 12 states, as well as certifications from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The U.S. Navy Facilities Engineering Command, The Board of Certified Safety Professionals, The American welding society, IMD Lausanne Switzerland and other entities. He is co-author of the ACCE Decision and Risk Management Professional Study Guide, and his accomplishments have been featured in Popular Science, The San Diego Union Tribune, The Austin Construction News, and other publications.

As a business executive Ted has directed business portfolios exceeding $3.5 Billion USD to profitable, safe, and timely completion. An example of his entrepreneurial acumen is the recent development of a small specialty contractor from $24 Million USD to $140 Million USD in yearly revenue while increasing EBITA from 6.7% to 16.2%

However, in Ted’s view those accomplishments pale in comparison to the successes in working with executives and others from around the world, bridging differences in culture, education, habit, language, religion, customs, experience, and attitudes to build cohesive teams of people that respect each other’s talents, show patience for their weaknesses, and embrace their mutual success.

Helping individuals and groups unlock their potential and realize successes they never thought possible have by far been the most rewarding experiences in a long and varied career.

Connect with Ted on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How to effectively lead in an ever-changing environment
  • The missing link of alignment
  • The power of vulnerability
  • Building and maintaining strong cultures

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: [00:00:34] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today we have with us Ted Turner with ILEC, which is Intelligent Leadership Executive Coaching. Welcome, Ted.

Ted Turner: [00:00:48] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us a little bit about ILEC, how you serve in folks.

Ted Turner: [00:00:55] Well, I see is really we work individually with folks and we work with groups. And basically, in a nutshell, what we do is unlock their potential to have an impact on their business or their community or their life. We’re not life coaches were leadership coaches, but leadership spills out into every aspect of someone’s life. So we work with those that are that are in the C suite that have accomplished a lot but don’t want to park it there, aren’t satisfied with what they’ve accomplished. And we work with those that have been identified as potential leaders that have a high potential to be very much impactful in their future career. And we prepare them so that they can avoid the pitfalls of the Peter Principle. And then we do a lot of work with groups, companies, building culture, actually measuring the strength, their culture and helping them to to replace the parts that are not effective or don’t really match their values and their mission. So we build teams, we build individuals, we build leadership across across the board

Lee Kantor: [00:01:56] And primarily the folks who are serving our people in enterprise level or corporate organizations rather than like maybe solo partners or entrepreneurs.

Ted Turner: [00:02:07] Not really. You know, universally you find that leadership is something that’s needed everywhere. So generally speaking, yes, these are corporations, large businesses to midsize and small businesses, but also nonprofits or even kind of mom and pops entrepreneurs that want to understand themselves better, want to understand what kind of drilling tendencies they might have that is blocking their success, blocking them from blossoming, so to speak. So, yeah, really across the gamut, a lot of them nonprofits and even the churches find themselves benefitting from executive coaching, leadership coaching.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:45] Now, the folks that come to you, are they kind of self-aware enough for themselves to say, hey, you know what, maybe I need some help because I’m kind of struggling here? Or is it something that maybe somebody higher up in the organization recommends? Hey, you know what? Maybe you should talk to Ted and his team because they can help you through this.

Ted Turner: [00:03:05] You know, again, it’s both of those things. And and when they come together, that’s when it’s the most effective. When you’ve got a leader that is recognized and they want to improve and they need help improving. And at the same time, their organization is saying, hey, we want to provide some leadership coaching to you, that’s when it comes together. Because if an individual isn’t ready to be coached, if they’re not ready to look at themselves honestly and say, hey, these are my strengths that I can leverage and these are my weaknesses that I need to be aware of and fix, if they’re not ready to do that, if they’re not ready to open up and be honest with themselves, there’s a limited amount of impact that you can have with a person in that situation. So we can come from both ends, both that individual saying I’m ready to take the next step either in my career or my leadership. Can you help me? And an organization saying, hey, we’re ready to promote you either now or in a few years. And here’s an opportunity to prepare for that by working with a coach

Lee Kantor: [00:04:05] Now out of like, say, a hundred business folks out there, how many have that self-awareness and humbleness and maybe are vulnerable enough to kind of say, I need help?

Ted Turner: [00:04:18] That is really a great question, and I don’t know that I have any concrete data on that, I would say from my experience that it’s probably about it’s probably 50 percent or less of the leaders out there that are cognizant. Well, let me let me say this a little while. Many people, probably the majority of people have some doubts about their abilities. But when you talking about someone getting to the point where they really open up to themselves and say, I’ve got some derailing tendencies that I need to pay attention to if I want to be better, I’d say it’s it’s a smaller percentage of people that have really reached the maturity as an individual and in their leadership that will take that honest look at themselves. Of course, when they do, that’s when they can just accomplish amazing things. Vulnerability is such an important thing to progress. You know, it doesn’t make a leader weak. It doesn’t make them seem like they don’t have the knowledge of what they’re doing. It really is a humility thing to be vulnerable and to open up and realize that I can be helped, I can do better. And there are people out there that can help me be better.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:32] Yeah, it’s an interesting dynamic because a lot of especially young people think the leader has all the answers. And they have to be if they want to become a leader, then they have to have all the answers. And, you know, that’s not true. And and what do you think? That you have to have all the answers. Then you’re less likely to show weakness or, you know, to kind of listen to others and have all these negative tendencies. So I think that’s a key attribute of successful leaders, is that ability to tap into the vulnerability and humility that it takes to to really lead people.

Ted Turner: [00:06:11] Yeah, and you made a really good point there is that leaders themselves often think I have to know everything. And you see that with younger leaders more than you do with older leaders, although it exists there to you know, they get that idea that their boss is the no, I’ll be all and all and that they have to be the same way. And as as more and more people retire, leave the workforce, you know, there’s studies that say that between 40 and 70 percent of the executive leadership in the US and Canada and even Mexico will retire in the next five years. So we’ve got a lot of folks that have not had as much time in the saddle, maybe in leadership positions as they would like to have before they’re thrust into great responsibility. And so sometimes they build up that wall thinking, oh, my gosh, I’m in this position. I can’t let anybody know that I’m not quite ready. I can’t show my vulnerability. I can’t ask a question. I’ve got to know everything at all times. And that is just a huge amount of pressure to put on oneself. And it’s really not accurate. You’re as you pointed out, I’m a firm believer in the old adage that none of us is as smart as all of us. And so as those folks in those situations realize that they can take a deep breath, there is help out there. There’s no shame in saying I need help, I need advice. And really, that doesn’t mean it’s a weakness. Sometimes the advice and help they need is is recognizing that they already have some real strengths. OK, great. How do we develop them? Even more so a vulnerability just opens you up to support from your people. It opens you up to being human. It helps you connect with them better. It helps you build a culture of teamwork. You know, it just you don’t have to know it all. You just simply don’t.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:00] Now, you mentioned an important kind of, I guess, trend that’s happening where you said that so many, 40 to 70 percent of the leaders now are probably going to exit sooner than later. And how would an organization build that culture that encourages an orderly succession and maybe a good exit for the entrepreneurs out there, but they have to be able to transfer some of their knowledge, some of their leadership skills, you know, to somebody else on the team. So how do you kind of build a culture that just instills this kind of lifelong learning and this ability to transfer kind of the DNA of the organization to the next the next group?

Ted Turner: [00:08:53] You know, it comes down to some basic fundamentals that have been fundamentally true forever, and that is you’ve got to value your people. Now, that connection might not be apparent right on the surface, but your folks need to feel and it needs to be sincere, not just something that you think they need to feel that their input is valued, that their ideas are valued, that their communication is valued, and they need to have good, clear and constant communication back from leadership. So when you do that, people naturally will communicate with each other, they will collaborate, they will help each other. The older folks that maybe are are moving out will be more likely to teach some of those things that they’ve just learned through the years. The hidden gems of leadership or just the technical things of how to operate in. What are that company is you also build longevity and loyalty there, which is which is vital. You’ve got to have a pipeline of leadership. You can’t just wait till all your leaders retire and then go, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do now? None of these people below them are ready to step into that role. So it’s relationships of trust. It’s relationships of value. It’s keeping lines of communication open so that people so that they will share the knowledge that they’ve gained. So they’re not jobs scared, so to speak. Right. They realize that they can that they can succeed by helping others succeed. And that synergy feeds on itself. So that’s one of the key things. Now, there’s certainly some specific mechanical things that can be done to capture lessons learned and to capture that knowledge and those type of things. But from a cultural foundational platform, it’s that value your people give them a platform to open up, give them a platform to share and to learn and to do so in a comfortable, rewarding atmosphere.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:44] There’s something I tell people about company culture, especially on emerging firms. Culture is something that’s going to happen whether you are proactive about it or not. So I would recommend putting some things in place that help you kind of orchestrate some of this or else it’s going to form without you. So, yeah, it’s one of those things that it’s like, same with branding your business. People are going to have opinions. No matter why you do so, you might as well be mindful about it.

Ted Turner: [00:11:15] Yeah, your company your organization has a culture, whether you realize it or not.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:20] Now, can you talk a little bit about how you helped your clients manage through the chaos of covid? And, you know, it’s still going on, but hopefully it’s waning in a lot of places. But to be able to lead through a chaotic or ever changing environment is not something that comes easy for folks. Can you talk about how your were helping your guide your clients through those rough times?

Ted Turner: [00:11:48] Yeah, you know, there will always be upheaval now. It doesn’t always necessarily mean a worldwide pandemic. That’s a little unique, but there’s always upheaval in business and in life. And so good leaders have to be able to be. I know it’s a bit of a paradox, but I kind of refer to it as being flexibly constant. They need to be flexible enough to not just be holding to old ideas. In other words, we’ve done this for 30 years, so we’re going to keep doing it for 30 years. That’s not a good reason to keep doing something. So they need to be flexible enough to see the needs of their people, the needs of their markets. They need to be flexible enough to know that what they thought was true today may not be true tomorrow. And in some cases, that’s literally the facts. You get change from day to day. So to be able to to listen to new ideas, to try new things, to adjust on the fly is hugely vital. The other piece of that, the constancy, and this is something they’ve had to put in place before the emergency hit, your people have to know that no matter what the situation is, you’re still going to have the same values. You’re still going to operate on the same principles. They need to know that they can trust you to be there in the trenches with them to give honest and competent leadership to them. So they need that touchstone. They need that benchmark, something that they can count on no matter what’s going on around them. But then the leaders got to be flexible enough to say, OK, my world just changed from what it was five minutes ago. How is this going to affect me, my organization, my customers, my clients and what are our options? Let’s think outside of the box. Let’s not stifle any thought or communication here. Let’s find the best course for now, realizing that a day from now, a week from now, two weeks from now, we may need to course correct yet again. Now, flexible constancy is a key to much of this

Lee Kantor: [00:13:44] Now can you talk a little bit about your back story? What got you so enamored with coaching to make it your work nowadays? And why why was coaching so important to you in your career?

Ted Turner: [00:14:00] I spent most of my career, I spent 40 years in engineering and construction running large, you know, large, complex projects, megaprojects all over the world, three, four billion dollars worth of work a year. And so when you’re doing those projects all over the world, you’re building teams of people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different countries, different religions, different levels of education, even different languages, and bringing them together as a cohesive team and then often dropping them into yet another country that none of them have ever been in before. So being able to talk to people, communicate with people, build those teams where they’re forgiving of each other’s weaknesses, they they leverage each other’s strengths. That’s something that is always, always appealed to me. I enjoy doing that. I enjoy working with individuals and seeing the light go on in their eyes when they realize what they can accomplish. So throughout my career, I’ve noticed a lot of leadership development, training and programs. I’ve been the recipient of that early in my career when a company was paying to train me, then had more influence over that as I climbed the corporate ladder. And even with really good training, I’ve often seen what I consider to be just millions of dollars of ROIC that was never collected because there are some missing pieces and we don’t have time to go into the real depth of missing pieces.

Ted Turner: [00:15:25] But I just saw where most leadership development programs that I’d seen, even the good ones, were not really leadership development. They were teaching leadership skills, which are vital. We do that, too, but they’re not really developing that individual leader. And the follow up seems to be missing until an epiphany. I had probably a good 18, 20 years ago. My company had sent me to lose on Switzerland to go to IMT, which is one of the world’s top business colleges, and one week there cost twenty thousand dollars. And that doesn’t include my travel mills, the work I’m not doing while I’m there. And they sent 50 of us from different offices around the world. And so it didn’t take long for me to figure out. For that one week of training, the company was spending one million dollars and I came home excited. I learned some great things. I know my boss had been through it six months before I get home. I want to implement these things. I want to go. I want to run. This is fantastic. And I got home and there was no follow up. There was no mechanism to implement anything that I had learned. Now, it wasn’t a waste of time or money.

Ted Turner: [00:16:31] I did learn things there that made me better my job. But I thought, my goodness, what a waste of our life. And so as I again had more influence over those things, my career, I started implementing things that I thought were missing and I found them to be successful. So after 40 years in construction, I thought, what do I want to do for the rest of my life? This is enough. And I thought about again, OK, leaving people, helping them reach their potential. That’s what turns me on the most. I’m going to go ahead and do that. And so I took some time to research some different programs, to get some training, to get some certification. And ILEC really appealed to me. The founder of ILEC is John Moton. If you’re looking up, you’ll find very quickly he is considered to be the world’s top executive coach, really an elite set of systems and tools. And in a program where I could apply my knowledge and my art to the science that existed there. And so that’s my path to where I am today. And I find that marriage between my my history, my background and the systems and processes and tools with ILEC to be a really good and impactful match for my clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:47] Well, if somebody wanted to learn more about your practice and get a hold of you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?

Ted Turner: [00:17:54] The website is Ted Turner DOT Intelligent Leadership, e, c dot com. So Ted Turner, Intelligent Leadership. E, c, dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:07] Well, Ted, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Ted Turner: [00:18:13] Thank you. Appreciate you having me on. You know, I’ve seen some of the other folks you’ve got on this show, and I’m humbled to be among that number. So thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:20] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Entrepreneur Coach Bri Seeley

by

briseeleylogo

briseeleyBri Seeley, Google’s #1 Entrepreneur Coach, helps entrepreneurs create long-term, sustainable success… on their terms!

Bri distills her 14-years of real-world experience into easily digestible and tangible tools to help entrepreneurs go from zero to profit. She knows that one size never fits all, so her approach is customized and tailor-made to help each client monetize their vision.

Bri was awarded a Silver Stevie Award in 2020 for Coach of the Year – Business and a Bronze Stevie Award in 2020 for Woman of the Year – Business Services. She is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and the author of the best-selling Permission to Leap.

Bri’s expertise has been featured in over 50 press outlets including Good Morning America, The TODAY Show, Thrive Global, Entrepreneur, Yahoo!, Forbes, and more, and has been interviewed on hundreds of podcasts.

Connect with Bri on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Building a business requires more than just a skillset
  • Owning and operating a coaching business requires knowledge in marketing, sales, team leadership, operations, strategy, press, etc.
  • Evolving and expanding your perspective from “coach” to “entrepreneur” or “business owner”
  • Scaling a coaching business from 1-on-1 to passive income, one-to-many, etc.

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 fun one. Today we have with us Bri Seeley who is an entrepreneur coach. Welcome Bri.

Bri Seeley: [00:00:43] Hi, Lee. Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to tell us about being an entrepreneur coach. How do you serve your folks?

Bri Seeley: [00:00:52] Yeah, so I see business and entrepreneurship as kind of two separate but both necessary things. And so part of the reason I call myself an entrepreneur coach versus a business coach is that I help entrepreneurs succeed from the inside out. So things like their mindset, their habits, their the way they show up in their business is just as important as the strategies that they employ to serve their customers, grow their business, et cetera. And so the reason the whole reason I call myself an entrepreneur coach is because for me, it’s it’s not one or the other. It’s hand in hand. And you need both to be successful in business.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] So you’re separating kind of the mindset side of what it takes to even just call yourself an entrepreneur and to see yourself as that that has its own challenges by itself. And then running a business, no matter what that business is, is separate.

Bri Seeley: [00:01:46] Absolutely, I think that a lot of people come out of, say, corporate, and they’re like, oh, I’m going to start my own business. And what they don’t understand is even if you have all this experience in corporate, being an entrepreneur takes an entirely different skill set and then running a business takes an entirely different skill set on top of just being really good in your craft. And so for me, it’s just a more holistic approach to being successful as the leader of your business and in your business.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:15] So now what is the pain that somebody who works with you is having where you’re the solution to their challenges?

Bri Seeley: [00:02:23] So a lot of the established business owners that I work with are really good in their craft. They’re really good at their skill set, but they haven’t necessarily figured out how to scale that or how to kind of effectively serve people without directly having to trade their time for their money. And so a lot of what I do with established entrepreneurs is really help them kind of detached themselves from their business, kind of in a way, so that they can establish really powerful revenue streams that don’t require their time constantly and their ability to then scale that business past just them providing one to one service.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:06] So now do you find yourself working with, like you described earlier, does corporate kind of refugees? Maybe they got laid off, maybe they just retired and want to do something else and they said, hey, I can still do consulting or I can do coaching. And they didn’t know they’re having a difficult time transferring the skills that it took to navigate a corporate enterprise than you do when it’s kind of what you call entrepreneurial life.

Bri Seeley: [00:03:32] Yeah, I mean, increasingly more. I don’t know if you’re familiar at all with how many women, especially left the workforce during covid and have kind of ventured out on their own. And just so many people who crave that freedom and that autonomy, remote work life has really taken off for a lot of people. My business has been remote for six years since I started it. And so really serving those people has become more and more over the last year and a half.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:59] So what’s your back story? How did you get to this place?

Bri Seeley: [00:04:03] Yeah, I was raised by an entrepreneur and it’s so funny because I was like, I never want to do that ever. Like, I saw what my mom went through and I was like that life is not for me. And so I got a bachelor’s and master’s, both in fashion design. I’d been sewing since I was five, went to live in Italy for a few years, got my masters, came back to the States, and then kind of accidentally started a fashion company while also working as a workers compensation counselor. And little by little, over a course of seven years, my business kept growing and growing and growing and growing and growing. And the more that it grew, the more I realized that entrepreneurship really is my lifeline. It really is in my blood. So I ran my own fashion label for eight years and then at the end of eight years, I kind of had a come to Jesus moment where I realized that it just wasn’t serving me any longer and my core value was freedom. And having a fashion business was not freedom inducing. And so I was guided to shut down my fashion business and had this opening. I was working with a coach at the time. It was like, all right, what’s next for me? And so I combined my seven years of counseling experience with my eight years of entrepreneurship experience and started really coaching entrepreneurs in manifestation in mindset and business strategy. And I’ve been doing it for six years now.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:25] So now, while you were kind of going through your journey, you did work with the coach. What was kind of the impetus to that? And why did you think having a coach would be beneficial?

Bri Seeley: [00:05:37] Yeah, I’ve worked with a few different coaches. I had one well, I had my fashion label as well. But this one in particular, I had met her. We were both speaking at an event and I had met her. She invited me to a workshop she was leading. And I just saw so many opportunities during that workshop, that three day workshop that I just kind of knew in my gut that it was the next step for me. Like I mentioned, I was I was frustrated with my business. I didn’t know what the next step was. And so I just felt like I needed help. And that’s oftentimes one why I continue to hire coaches and to why I encourage other people to hire coaches as well as because it’s really hard to see your way out of situations a lot of times. And having won another perspective is incredibly helpful. And to the perspective of someone who has been where you want to go and can guide you there and save you the time and money lost from trying to do it yourself is absolutely invaluable

Lee Kantor: [00:06:37] Now in your clients or your clients, people who have never worked with a coach before and are trying coaching for the first time, or are they kind of. Have bounced around with a coach or two before working with you,

Bri Seeley: [00:06:50] You know, it kind of depends. I end up getting a lot of people. So one of the things that’s really important to me, especially when dealing with business strategy, is I do not believe that there is a one size fits all model. There’s a lot of coaches out there that say, oh, if you just do this one thing, you’ll have a successful business. And I’m like, well, but you need to factor in who you are and what your vision is and what your values are and what your zone of geniuses like. There’s so much more that goes into it than just telling someone that there’s a silver bullet approach. And so a lot of the clients, honestly, that I get come to me because they’ve had, unfortunately, a bad experience with coaches in the past who have told them that they either do it their way or they’re going to fail, or they’re told that there’s only one way to do it. And they get into it and it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel line for them. And then they force themselves to try and take these steps that they don’t want to take simply because they think that’s the only way to reach success. And I’m a little more malleable and that I’m like, we need to find your way. Even when I was in fashion, I hated standardized sizing because every single body is different. And I think the same applies to business. You can’t just blindly apply a business strategy and assume it’s going to work for every single person in the market.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:03] Now, when you’re curating your clients, are you only working with folks who have a business that is going and they’re struggling personally or can work the other way where maybe their heads in the right place, but their business is struggling?

Bri Seeley: [00:08:18] Yeah, I mean, I work with kind of whatever, you know, people come to me for all sorts of different reasons, whether it’s a personal reasons. They’re burnt out, they’re overwhelmed. They just don’t know how to follow their intuition to take the next steps in their business or they’re feeling really good within themselves. And they just need I happen to have like a very puzzle oriented brain. And so, like, developing up strategies is super easy for me. And so, yeah, it’s it’s people come to me for all different things. And really the reason people usually start working with me is that they found my website or my socials or some of my free trainings, my YouTube channel, something like that. And they just really vibe with me. I have kind of a no nonsense straight to the point New Yorker style vibe. And like, I’m not going to B.S. you I’m not going to beat around the bush. And so people that generally vibe with that click with me and think like, oh, I need to work with this woman. And so it’s a combination of different pain points that they come to me with. And then I just I use that holistic approach. Even if they think their mindset is on point. I’m always looking at is there any way we can improve your mindset? Do you need to implement different or better habits to help you show up better in your business every day? It’s always a holistic approach for me.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:36] And then the way the folks work with you could be done in a variety of ways, like one on one coaching or group coaching or online courses you mentioned. So there’s a variety of ways to benefit from your services.

Bri Seeley: [00:09:49] Yeah, mostly. So I have if you’re an established entrepreneur, I have a 90 day program that’s a group program that I lead people through, or I do do one on one coaching, but I only work with two private clients a year. And you if you want to be a private client, you need to already be around the three to five hundred thousand dollar mark and you need to be aiming over the seven figure mark. So I work with I also work with people that are brand new entrepreneurs that have like a really great business idea and they have no idea how to get started. And so, again, I help them with the foundational mindset, habit, practice stuff and also the how do you register and then how do you get your business established? How do you open a business banking account? How do you develop a website, those kinds of things?

Lee Kantor: [00:10:38] And any advice for coaches out there that want to kind of think bigger on their own in terms of their business? I guess like you were saying earlier, that a lot of folks come into this with maybe a too small thinking in what their their business could be. And to have an outsider kind of come in and challenge them is worthwhile. So any advice for the coaches out there?

Bri Seeley: [00:11:04] Yeah, one thing for coaches especially that I see is that they get into coaching because they want to coach, which I totally, totally understand. You also have to remember that you are running a business. And so when you look at your day, the amount of time you spend coaching isn’t necessarily going to be the majority of your time because you’re also running a business. So I see a lot of coaches just start their businesses thinking I’m just going to coach all day, every day, and they forget about the marketing that is required, the client development that’s required, the sales process that’s required. There’s so much more that goes into business than just the skill set. And so that’s why I love taking people out of that one to one model. Because it really helps them be more effective with their time and not burn out with having to physically be present to serve someone in their business.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:55] Now, when you when you’re moving from coaching one to one, one on one and you’re moving to one to many, can you talk a little bit about what that transition looks like? Is it do you have a kind of a curriculum that you use or some suggestions on how to serve a group at all at one time rather than kind of the way that maybe a lot of coaches have been doing it before? One on one intimate conversations because you want to create that same kind of intimacy, right? You want to create the vulnerability and you want to get to the heart of the problem. You just want to be more efficient with your time.

Bri Seeley: [00:12:31] Yeah, I mean, I think it is that you have to really sit down and say, OK, you know, of all the clients I’ve served, what’s kind of the common thread and what is the kind of the common journey that I lead them through. And so I sat down and did that four years ago and developed up my current program. And that really helped me just kind of see, OK, what what do I need to hit on month after month after month after month to help guide these people through the process? Because even though every single person is different, there’s generally some themes that most people go through on their journey. And so just kind of identifying those and then sitting down and saying, OK, well, you know, if someone’s coming to me at this point in their journey and I want them to leave me at this point in their journey, then what what needs to happen in between those two points? What needs to happen right immediately when they sign up with me, and then what needs to happen right before they graduate with me? And then what’s the step after the first immediate step and what’s the step before the last step and just kind of filling in that gap to identify the the process that you’re going to take people through.

Bri Seeley: [00:13:41] And then I always recommend I’m not a huge, quote unquote, online course person. I do. My programs are a combination of coursework and coaching. And I think it’s the coaching element that really, truly does help, because if someone is at a point where they they don’t know what they don’t know and they can’t see themselves out of their situation, knowledge and information isn’t what’s going to get them that big breakthrough. It’s going to be conversation. It’s going to be gifting them new perspectives. It’s going to be communicating with them and talking them through things. And so I’m always a huge proponent of, yes, teach people things and give them your knowledge, give them your time and do it in a group setting. And and what I found is generally, if there’s one person in a group struggling with someone, other people in the group are struggling with something similar and can learn from you directly coaching someone else.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] And then that skill, though, as a coach, is a little different in the sense that when you’re one on one, it’s it’s them coming to you and you’re kind of probing and asking questions of that individual. But when you have a group, it’s now trying to have the group come up with some of the answers and ask some of the questions to really create that network effect of that community effect. They can really expand. Everybody’s thinking,

Bri Seeley: [00:14:57] Yeah, I again, I kind of do a hybrid model. So I do like the that what you just mentioned is kind of like the online component. So I have like an online community for all my trainings and that’s where that stuff happens. And then on the live coaching calls. So I do two life coaching calls a month for my groups. And on those calls, people get to raise their hands and then they do get to come at me with a specific question. And I do get to coach them intimately in front in community with the group there as well. So, yeah, again, for me, it’s really important to have both

Lee Kantor: [00:15:36] And then said that way they’re kind of getting the best of both worlds.

Bri Seeley: [00:15:39] Yeah, yeah. And again, it’s holistic. Like, that’s kind of my whole business model, is that I’m I’m firmly against that either or kind of thinking. And I definitely lean more into the both and kind of kind of approach to everything. So it’s it’s always how can one what’s going to be best for my customer and then how can I accommodate that with what I need to run my business successfully as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] So what do you need more of now? How can we help?

Bri Seeley: [00:16:10] I’m actually so I’m getting ready to launch this 90 day quantum immersion for established entrepreneurs, so if anyone’s interested in it, you can visit my website, Brisley Dotcom or shoot me a D.M. on Instagram. The sales page is actually going up later on tonight. So it’s not quite up yet, but it will be. So I’m welcoming in 20 entrepreneurs starting in September to go through a 90 day program to take the next kind of quantum step in their business.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:42] And that’s Brinsden Laowai dotcom.

Bri Seeley: [00:16:47] Yep. And same breezily on Instagram as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:50] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success, Bri. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Bri Seeley: [00:16:56] Thank you. I appreciate you. I appreciate the time today.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:59] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

Victoria Lynne Hannu With Heart and Soul CEO

by

heart&soulceo

Victoria-Lynne-HannuVictoria Lynne Hannu is a business transformation artist specializing in operations strategy and leadership coaching. She is the Founder/CEO of Heart & Soul CEO and works with purpose-driven business leaders to up level their business and themselves to drive success without killing themselves in the process.

She brings nearly 4 decades of combined corporate and entrepreneurial business experience to her work with her clients as a trusted, consultant, coach, and mentor. The creator of the R.I.S.E. Method™, she’s developed a unique integrative approach to business success grounded in her experience and education.

She is a numbers ninja and passionate about working with other business leaders to create transformation in the world through business and thrive in the process.

Connect with Victoria on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What your numbers can reveal to help you realize your goals
  • Objectives without killing yourself in the process
  • How can there be stories hiding in a business’s numbers
  • Importance of knowing the stories hiding in your numbers

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 Victoria Lynne Hannu, new with Heart and Soul CEO. Welcome, Victoria.

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:00:45] Hi Lee. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:48] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Heart and Soul CEO. How are you serving folks?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:00:54] Well, Heart and Soul CEO is about helping entrepreneurs, CEOs and founders really make an impact in the world by bringing purpose into business, by bringing values into the core of the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] So what’s your back story? How’d you get into this line of work? Have you always been a coach?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:01:15] Well, technically, yes. But I started out in corporate and I found coaching as I was getting ready to leave and wanted to figure out what the heck I wanted to do, what was my next step. And I got a coach and it was like, oh, this is what I want to do. And then shortly thereafter, I launched my business. And as I was looking at my business plan, I was looking at it and I’m going, OK, I’m supposed to do a business plan because I have a background. I’m a business analyst and that’s my background before I became a coach. And looking at all of this, I’m going, how do you incorporate values into the business plan? How does that business plan actually authentically reflect who you are, what you’re here to do and where you want to go? And there was no answer. It was just kind of dry looking at it. And so I was on a journey to figure that out and help other entrepreneurs to do that as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:29] So now you said your background was as an analyst. Analysts tend to like numbers and spreadsheets and things are very black and white. When you’re dealing with kind of values and mission, it’s hard to put that on the spreadsheet. How do you help your folks do that?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:02:47] Well, as a as a business analyst and one of the gifts that I have is that I can see the stories in the numbers because we have a tendency as an analyst, you can look at things, the numbers are numbers, math, map, spreadsheets or spreadsheets. Yeah, that’s great. But what do they mean? Right. It’s really. What do they mean.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:11] So then how do you help your clients kind of get a better understanding of maybe the numbers that matter rather than just numbers, because some business people are just kind of collecting numbers and they kind of lose track of what are the metrics that matter?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:03:29] Right. Well, the thing is, is you are absolutely correct, there are so many people out there that look at the numbers, OK, now it’s time to take actions to if you want to increase your revenue numbers based on the market, based on what your past is, you have to take these actions and nine times out of ten those actions. Won’t necessarily get you your next numbers, that your goal, because they’re one, they’re not looking at the outcomes that you want. And number two, they’re not looking at what gets in the way. And there’s a there’s a little Diddy joke story I’d like to ask you, why is six afraid of seven?

Lee Kantor: [00:04:21] Because seven, eight, nine.

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:04:23] That’s right. That’s the story. Gets seven. Really? Eight, nine.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:27] Probably not. I don’t think so.

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:04:30] No, but just the fact that you can give that just that little one shows that there’s meetings inside of numbers because everybody when they look at numbers, you can look at your PNL and you so just say your revenues. You had a top revenue line of two million dollars, right? And somebody could look at that and say, wow, that’s awesome. Somebody else would look at it and go, that’s not enough, that’s. The number is the number one million.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:08] But the number is also a story, and it’s the story you tell yourself or the story they see in the numbers, and I think that a lot of folks have a hard time discerning what are really the numbers that matter most to them. And it might matter most to your banker, might matter most to your accountant. It might matter most to your neighbor. But what is the number that matters to you in your mission and what you’re trying to kind of achieve?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:05:36] Absolutely. And and it could be any of those numbers, right? It could be your bank account balance. It could be your income numbers. It could be the number of people that you help. And it could be the number of sales that you make which are in line with the number of people that you help. There’s also the green numbers. You know, we have companies looking at reducing carbon footprint, those numbers, but they’re all tied up in the stories. You tell yourself about what those numbers mean. And it’s that meaning that can get in your way.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:18] Right. And that’s in the end, if you get that number wrong, that could mean that you’re spending a lot of sleepless nights worrying about things that really aren’t your true north. And it could get you off track and it creates stress and you can create disharmony within your family and your own personal life, your health. How do you help your clients kind of get aligned with their numbers as well as what they’re really trying to accomplish?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:06:45] Well, one of the things we do is the first thing I do with my clients is sit down with them and really help them to identify the stories that are in their numbers. Right. And sometimes the story isn’t with the owner of the company. Right. Sometimes the story is with their staff. I had one client where his accounting systems were one way, but there was it seemed like he was losing money, right. There was not a lot of money left over for bonuses and those kind of things. Well, it turns out that he had staff members, a team. This was a concierge company and they were on site and they weren’t charging people for small things of doing things for clients because they felt it was wrong to charge for something so small. So they had stories about what it meant to serve a customer and it actually was hurting them and the company.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:54] So now walk me through what an engagement with your firm looks like. What is the pain that this client is having and how do you help them kind of get their numbers and their mission aligned?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:08:07] All right. So they’re stuck, right? My clients are typically stuck there in overwhelm their burned out. The camps, you mentioned it earlier, they can’t sleep at night because they’ve got things they think they’re missing something they’ve got things going on in their brain. And so what I do is I work with them to identify the signs that this is the stories in there. No, of course, which overwhelmed burnout being stuck are some of some of the signs. And it’s like, OK, let’s take a look at your numbers. And I also have a quantitative assessment that turns the subjective into the qualitative so that we can really look at that. And then we identify those stories. And I help them to understand what story do they have going on that is keeping them stuck. Sometimes it’s three stories, sometimes it’s five stories, sometimes it’s just one, but they can’t see it. And then we look at that story and see, is there parts of it to keep it there, parts of it to let go. So we let go of the old stories that are keeping them stuck and then we can write a new story that helps them to achieve the outcomes that they want versus going after numbers, which is typically goals and objectives are often numbers driven. What is the outcome? And then we can back off that to find the numbers that match the outcome and we lay out the path to get from where they are to where they want to go.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:50] Now, the way you do this, I believe, is through your first step rise method, can you talk a little bit about that?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:09:58] Yes. So the rice method is the path that we follow and arise. We start with the R, which is to recalibrate your mind set. And you can’t go to where you want to go from where you are without creating the mindset of where you’re going. And then the I in rice is in leadership. Who are you innately as the leader? Because to lead your company where you want to go, you really need to be authentic to who you are innately as a leader. And that doesn’t mean authentic to who you think you are. It’s who you really are. And then the answer is to put the structures in place. It’s a structure. Let’s structure your business. Let’s make sure that your vision is in real alignment and that the purpose of your business is the purpose of your business for real, rather than something that somebody put out there or you put out there in order to have other people think that’s what it is. But it’s not really what it is. It’s kind of a convoluted place, but it’s really having that clarity that you’re really on track and you’re doing what you want to do. And then the E in the rice method is to execute. You can plan, you can lay things out, you can talk things out until you’re blue in the face. But until you actually have the rubber meets the road, nothing is happening. So it’s really about executing and bringing everything to life, to showing up in your business, to leading your team, being the leader in the world that you’re here to be. And then the key is also to evolve and elevate because it’s a constant process.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:50] Now, do you find that the folks that are drawn to your message and to your solutions are kind of these purpose driven companies, the ones that are trying to do well and to do good at the same time? But they’re just maybe operationally challenged that their dream kind of gets cluttered by the reality of some of the operations and that your team is able to help them from an operational standpoint to get back on track.

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:12:23] Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the things is a purpose driven business leader. It’s very personal as well. So. They have a tendency to sometimes be too soft and they don’t think about the operational aspects of it, and my company is here to have people, processes, systems all working together synchronously so that my clients can organically grow and have a sustainable business that doesn’t kill them in the process.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:04] Now, can you share a story about maybe one of your clients don’t name their name, but maybe explain the back story, what they were struggling with and how you were able you and your team were able to come in and interject yourself in your services to help them reach new levels?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:13:20] Absolutely. Well, I’ll I’ll take the simplest story. I have lots of stories. One of my clients was making low five figures. Right. And she was looking at her numbers based on what she thought she should be doing. And she wanted to make a huge impact in the world and she was in marketing. And marketing is one of the best ways to really get out there and help your clients get out there. And she loves working with visionaries. Well, when we first worked with her, she was here in Denver and there’s Colorado Springs, the Denver Tech Center, all the way to Boulder. So she thought she had to her story was that for her to increase her income the way she wanted to, she had to do social media and that she had to be the social media expert for her companies. And she was working in the financial industry at that time, which was kind of out of alignment for where she really wanted to go and the impact she wanted to make. So she’s going up and down, driving hundreds of miles, sometimes in one day, thinking that that’s what she had to do. Well, in the process of looking at our numbers, looking at the stories, looking at what was going on, she had thought because the market was asking for social media. People, that’s what she had to do, regardless of what she was here to do, was to be a leader of leaders. And so we got that turned around and she’s making multiple six figures today and she takes pride in.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:12] So it is it’s not a it’s a dream that can come true if you can get your operations right and get everything in alignment.

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:15:20] It absolutely is. You know, your mind who you are is the leader. What you’re here to do, get yourself set up in your structures, in your operations, put in place to support you, not here to do everything by yourself.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:36] So now you mentioned that she started out as a five figure business. Do you have a sweet spot in the size of the firms that you work with? Are they the five, six figure businesses or do you work with enterprise level brands? What is the sweet spot for your clients?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:15:50] The sweet spot for my clients is six and seven figure businesses is sometimes multiple, seven figure businesses. I really like working with companies that are teams that can be zero to twenty five. That’s the. Sweet spot. And although some are a little larger, one company, which actually was an organization, a nonprofit, I turned them around, got them all on the same page, and they had. 30 employees.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:26] So you can really make a big impact, no matter really what size the firm is.

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:16:33] Exactly, exactly, I have this real sweet spot or this place in my heart for the smaller entrepreneurs, and so I have some things that I do with them. They do more of the work themselves versus me and my team. But when you’re at the low five figures and you’re purpose driven, just know that you can move past that. It doesn’t take a whole lot other than really shifting more into who you innately are as a leader.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:06] Well, congratulations on all the success. Victoria, if somebody wants to learn more about you, your team and your firm, is there a website?

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:17:16] Yes, that’s Heart and Soul CEO dot com. And they can connect with me on LinkedIn as well. And I’m also on Facebook.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:28] Well, thank you again for sharing your story, you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Victoria Lynne Hannu: [00:17:32] You’re welcome. Well, thank you, Lee, for giving me the opportunity and inviting me to be on your show.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:38] All right. This is Lee Kantor Rules. How next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

Tom Sylvester With 2X

by

TomsylvesterTom Sylvester with 2X, set a goal to “retire” by 35. He later found out that he actually didn’t want to stop working, but instead desired to create financial freedom that would allow him to design an ideal lifestyle for his family.

After building 3 businesses to make that goal a reality, he shifted his focus to supporting entrepreneurs and business owners to scale their businesses to create time and financial freedom themselves. He does this through a focus on leadership, strategy, and systems.

When not working with business owners, Tom enjoys golfing and playing video games in his custom home theater.

Connect with Tom on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Business Leadership
  • Systems
  • Scaling -Building Business To Support Your Life
  • Financial Independence

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 fun one. Today we have with us Tom Sylvester with 2X. Welcome Tom.

Tom Sylvester: [00:00:42] Hey, thanks, Lee. Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about 2X. How are you serving, folks?

Tom Sylvester: [00:00:50] Absolutely. So the main thing we look at with two weeks is helping six and seven figure business owners really free themselves from the day or the day of their business, turn it into a consistent machine that is running without them so that they’re free to grow the business and ultimately achieve their personal goals through building the business to meet their needs.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] So now, do you specialize in certain industries or is this kind of industry agnostic?

Tom Sylvester: [00:01:16] The methods that we use our industry agnostic, but we find most of our clients are in a fast growing business space. So this could be online business. This could be service based. This could be e-commerce. But anything where the business has the ability to scale up quick when they put the right team systems and strategies in place now.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:35] Have you found that most entrepreneurs are kind of making similar mistakes and it’s just a matter of just them becoming aware of it and putting the systems in place? Or is is every kind of business its own venture?

Tom Sylvester: [00:01:47] Yeah, I mean, that’s the interesting thing. You know, one of the things we talk about all the time is, you know, business is business as business and regardless of the industry or anything else, what it really comes down to is simplifying things down. Most business owners are trying to do too many things at once, really thinking about what is the business have to look like in order to achieve your goals, because we need to make sure that, one, we have clarity on what it is you’re ultimately trying to achieve, both in your personal life and in your business, and then making sure that you structure the business to do that. And very often what most business owners are doing is they’re going after too many things at once. They’re trying to do too many things themselves and they’re not actually thinking like the CEO. So what we need to do is kind of have them take a step back, get clear on where they want to go, and then structure the business so that it can then support them in making that happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:36] So now are there things that when the the business owner is talking to you and your team about where they’re at, where they’re frustrated, where they’re struggling, is it are you looking in the similar place every time or is it kind of different for each business?

Tom Sylvester: [00:02:53] Yeah, so we use a similar approach because there’s usually common areas, but then we cater what we end up doing for each business. So what it kind of comes down to is the first thing we’re looking to do with the business is simplify. So most business owners have way too many things going on. So we’re looking at what is the 80-20 and where can we cut or simplify the business so we can focus more on what the value is. Then what we look to do is make sure they have a solid foundation in place and very often business owners are trying to scale without really optimizing. Who are they serving? What is their core offer, making sure they have the right price point and positioning in place. And then we really want to make sure that they’re delivering a great result. So we always start with fulfillment, because if a business is creating raving fans through their product or service, then it’s easy to build the rest of the business around that. But far too often business owners are so focused on just getting new leads that they’re not taking care of their existing customers and falling short of creating raving fans.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:50] So is that really the engine you need in order to help them be successful if they don’t have a kind of a recurring supply of raving fans? And it’s going to be difficult to scale.

Tom Sylvester: [00:04:01] Exactly, because then what ends up happening is you get into these business models where it’s churn and burn. Right? So oftentimes business owners come to us and they say, you know, if I just had more leaves, everything would work. And it’s funny because that comes up so often. But when we look at it, we’re like, well, you know, if you were just creating raving fans, then those people would stay with you longer, pay you more money, refer you to their friends. And that’s a much more sustainable business than always having to go and find new customers.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:30] So now when you’re telling someone that and that’s kind of a harsh truth, right? Because they probably thought they had this figured out and now you’re saying, hey, you know, your baby’s ugly, how do you kind of help them understand that it’s not the end of the world? We can still work with this, but we just got to figure some things out.

Tom Sylvester: [00:04:50] Yeah. You know, what we found is that most business owners, by the time they come and talk to us, they have likely already worked with other coaches or done other programs. And they just feel like something’s not connected, you know, so they already know that something’s kind of missing, which is why they feel like they’re stuck and they haven’t been able to scale their business. So they’re usually aware that there’s something missing. And what we do, we do a pretty thorough audit and analysis of their business, where they’re getting some clarity just through the questions we’re asking. And then we kind of bring it back and say, and here’s what we’re seeing and here’s what we recommend. So it’s definitely a collaborative approach where we’re extracting from them to kind of see what they’re seeing, as well as then showing, hey, after working with hundreds of businesses, here’s the approach we’ve seen and taken. Here’s what we’d recommend for you. So usually it’s less about calling their baby ugly and more about saying, why aren’t you where you want to be? And let’s help you identify a couple those bottlenecks so we can focus on that will get you there.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:46] But say they are struggling with the. Not having raving fans, so they have a base of business, that’s OK, but there may be that base is solid, but they’re not kind of growing that beyond that, how do you like what would be something you would do to help them simplify, to kind of focus in on whatever their secret sources are, their superpower, in order to get it to start scaling?

Tom Sylvester: [00:06:14] Yeah, that’s a great question. So there’s two key frameworks that we utilize for this. The first one, we call it model one, and it’s basically answering the questions, are you selling the right people the right stuff at the right price with the right positioning in a way that can scale? So what we’re going to start doing is looking at each of those categories and often we’ll go back to their top 10 or 20 customers and say, all right, what are the commonalities there? And let’s start really narrowing that down, because there’s usually some small tweaks we can make to either their ideal target audience or their offer or even how their position just to help them stand out and make sure that they’re creating raving fans. So we start with that. And then the second thing we do is what we call the gold mine. And what most business owners don’t realize is that they have already probably created some raving fans. Maybe they’re not all there yet, but they’re sitting on a gold mine with the customers that they’ve worked with in the past. The customers are currently working with. And there’s usually an opportunity to go back to those customers. And if they were raving fans, see what support they need next. And if they weren’t raving fans to learn and understand where that gap was, turn them into raving fans and then see what the next opportunity is. So very often it’s looking at what you’ve already done or what you already have in front of you, and then working on creating those into raving fans before we try to bring new people in.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:36] So now, in your process, are you actually kind of helping or are you just advising in terms of like, OK, let’s identify, OK, they have a hundred customers. A good idea, like you just said, is let’s go and have a real kind of deeper conversation with those hundred customers are 80, the 80, 20, 80 of those customers that are generating the most so that we can see the kind of the good, the bad, the ugly, and how that kind of help them leverage that to kind of duplicate that audience. Are you doing that or are you saying, hey, you should do that? And then here ask each of these people 10, these 10 questions?

Tom Sylvester: [00:08:16] Yeah. So what I would call us is more of an implementation program. So with traditional coaching, the coaches doing a lot of questioning and having the client kind of come up with their own answers, we do a combination of coaching and consulting. So we’re going to help clarify and bring awareness to that business owner of what they need to do. And then we’re going to give them some consulting and training on how to actually do it and then enable them and their team to actually go and do that work. So we wouldn’t be doing these customer interviews in that case. But what we would do is show the CEO or show somebody on their team how to go about that process and point them in the right direction.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:53] So it is a combination of both coaching and consulting.

Tom Sylvester: [00:08:56] Correct. And from my experience kind of living in both of those spaces over the years, I think it always has to be, because if you’re doing just coaching but not consulting, you might raise awareness, but you’re not actually guiding people in the next step. And if you’re doing consulting where you’re telling people but you’re not first doing the coaching in understanding where the opportunity is, you might be pointing them in the wrong direction. So I think the best is when you really combine both of those together.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:22] Now, is your solution best for small teams rather than a solo partner, or can it work for both folks?

Tom Sylvester: [00:09:30] It can work for really any business, but it’s really targeted at the 500 K to five million range, because what we find at that point is the business has initially validated their offer. They likely have a team in place and they’re getting to the point now of where that business owner can’t do everything. So there’s always shifts when you kind of go to different levels in business. So when we tend to work best, when a business owner has a team, is realizing they can’t do everything themselves and they need to really elevate as the CEO and start instead of doing everything in the business, figuring out who can I put in place and what system can I build so that it’s then running without me.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:12] So these folks have already kind of got that escape velocity and they’re just kind of frustrated or they plateaued.

Tom Sylvester: [00:10:21] Yep, yep, basically.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:23] So now for you, what’s the most rewarding part of the job?

Tom Sylvester: [00:10:27] Yeah, you know, I think it’s allowing business owners to see that they don’t have to be a slave to their business. So my quick back story is I started out as a software developer and I realized I didn’t want to work for the next forty five years. And so I set a goal to quote unquote retire by 35. And it was a big challenge to get my wife on board. And then as we became parents, to make the business work while not sacrificing life. And so once my wife and I both quit our jobs, what we found was that we were really good at building businesses that didn’t require us. But when we started talking to a lot of our friends, we saw that they were working a lot more in their business than they were even at a job and often making a lot less. So I actually never planned to be a coach, but I was then called to basically say, hey, we’re really good at being able to build the businesses that don’t require us. And I see this is such a challenge out there. And especially with covid coming up the last year, being able to help business owners not only grow their business and free up their time, but then the ripple effect from that, because that helps them. It helps their families and helps their team. It helps their customers. And that impact across the board really is what is going to get us out of covid and help with the economy. So the ripple effect that can happen just by helping one business owner is huge.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] Now, do you find that you’re you’re attracting emerging franchises or is this kind of the person that has their own business and maybe they have different kind of locations? But it’s not necessarily a franchise because we do a show where we talk to a lot of franchise owners and it sounds like you’re attacking some of the same challenges that they might have as they grow their franchise.

Tom Sylvester: [00:12:08] Yeah, I would say at this point, the primarily are the majority of our clients are individuals that are growing their business. But it’s been interesting because we’ve worked with a couple of franchise owners. And to your point, it’s a lot of the same things because what we tell any business we work with is we actually want to set you up kind of like a franchise or. Right. So we want to make sure that you’re building the blueprint in the model for this business. And then part of the way for you to scale up is to be able to replicate that, whether it’s with more locations or more team members or whatever. So we’ve actually found, like I said, at the end of the day, business is business as business. And what we’re looking to do is to build that blueprint that will work for them as they scale.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:45] So if somebody wants to learn more and tap into your expertize or have somebody, someone on your team give them a call or maybe consult with them, what is the best way to get a hold of you? What’s website?

Tom Sylvester: [00:13:00] Absolutely, so our core Web site is to export SEO, but we actually have a free audio book for anyone that’s interested called From Six to Seven Figures, and that really walks through a lot of the basic strategies that we take business owners through so people can find that at six to seven book dotcom.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:19] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Tom Sylvester: [00:13:25] Absolutely. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:26] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We wish you all next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

Ronny Shumaker With Intelligent Leadership Executive Coaching

by

Ronny-shumakerRonny Shumaker, CEO of Coach Shu, Inc., is a master certified executive leadership coach as well as an experienced operational and management leader who partners with executives to enhance their leadership skills and increase their businesses operational efficiencies.

Ronny’s forty years of experience in business leadership and management has enabled him to establish a proven record of successfully implementing new and enhancing established leadership and operational strategies. Ronny brings valuable experience applicable to the total picture of successful leadership, client satisfaction and operational processes. He has served in a variety of leadership roles ranging from Controller to Executive Director, as well as the Chief Operating Officer.

After spending over two decades in the healthcare operational area, with a majority of that time spent in physician practice operations and management, Ronny brings valued experience applicable to the total picture of physician practice leadership and operations. His tenure in healthcare has provided him with opportunities to cultivate professional relationships in the healthcare hierarchy, as well as with key city leaders and governmental officials.

Ronny has an MBA, with a concentration in Management, Innovation and Change, as well as a bachelor’s degree in accounting. He has been privileged to serve on several professional and non-profit boards of directors.

He is the proud father of four children and grandfather of seven.

Connect with Ronny on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Executive leadership coaching
  • Work place culture
  • Post pandemic changes in leadership & culture

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 Ronny Shoemaker with Coach Shu Incorporated. Welcome, Ronny.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:00:44] Thank you very much, Lee. I’m excited to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I am excited to learn what you’re up to. I am a big fan of leadership coaching, and I think it’s so important in today’s world. Tell us about your practice. How are you serving folks?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:00:57] Yeah, again, great question. So I’m in I’m in Dayton, Ohio, the great Midwest, and I am a franchisee and a coach with intelligent leadership. Executive coaching is the main thing that I do through my corporation of coach. So I am providing leadership training to executives from the C Suite down to emerging leaders.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:17] So how did you get into this line of work? What’s your back story?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:01:21] So I’ve got 40 years in leadership, the last 21 or 22 years in health care administration leadership. I started in health care in ninety. Is that as a chief financial officer, worked my way up as a CEO of a hospital, a physician owned surgical hospital here in my hometown in Ohio and have served in many roles CEO, CFO, CEO and health care over the last 20 some years, working with a lot of a lot of physicians and leaders in hospitals and physician practices.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:50] So let’s talk a little bit in a macro level about leadership in general. Do you find that leaders are born or they made? What’s your take on that?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:02:00] I think leaders are born with some with some God given ability, but they’re made through trial and error. They’re made through working with coaches. They’re made with working with their staff and other leaders to get feedback on their strengths and their gaps and their weaknesses. So it’s a little bit of both. I think we have the ability we just need some help. A lot of times leaders do. And taking that ability and using it better, using the strengths to it to experience a better leadership role for them and their staffs.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:30] Now, do you feel that if you took a random person, you’d be able to help them become a better leader? I’m not saying they’d be the greatest leader of all time, but they would just kind of maximize their abilities.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:02:42] Absolutely. I think everybody has some type of leadership ability within them and their inner core. We like to refer to it ILEC and as a coach, I have the the the assessments and the tools and the training and the ability to have them look in a vulnerable type of state inside and highlight through different tools and assessments of what their leadership abilities are. Again, they need to be vulnerable and then take those those strengths that we identify and put together a development plan and an individual leadership development plan to to highlight and strengthen those leadership skills that we have inside. So, yeah, I think everybody’s got leadership skills, some more than others. Some want to exhibit them and explore and more than others. And that comes with your personality. But I think we all go we all have some type of leadership abilities.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:32] Now, when you’re working with an organization, are you sometimes tasked with, hey, fix bill when Bill may not think there’s anything wrong with him?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:03:43] Yeah, I don’t I don’t like the terminology of fixing. I don’t think as a coach, we want to take on the responsibility of fixing somebody. What we what I do as a coach is, is work with the client, both asking the client to be vulnerable and me as a coach to be vulnerable with my experience and identify, again, those inner core strengths that they’ve got, get feedback from their staff, from their stakeholders, and figure out a way not to necessarily, as you say, fix the leader, but identify ways to make them a better and stronger leader.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:19] Now, you use the word vulnerable several times, I’m sure that’s not by accident, in order for this to be effective or coaching, I guess in any situation to be effective, it takes some level of self-awareness and humbleness and openness and kind of, you know, the person you’re working with raising their hand to say that I want to change. How do you kind of assess whether the person is saying, you know, they they want to change, but really meaning they want to change,

Ronny Shumaker: [00:04:50] Know vulnerabilities key for the client and and for me as a coach through just building a personal relationship, I spent a lot of time before really even dove into the actual coaching journey of forming a relationship with the with the potential client, making sure they understand that this is a journey is not a quick fix. And for it to be successful, they have to be vulnerable. We get feedback. We get feedback from many stakeholders during this journey, whether it’s their coworkers, whether it’s the people that report to them, whether it’s the people that they report to. And we get honest feedback from from those folks. So what I urge them is we’re going to find out one way or the other. And when we ask for positive and negative feedback that they need to be receptive enough to hear it, because everybody should be on the same page of making this leader a better leader and not as a personal attack and as a coach, I’m vulnerable as well. I let them know my failures as a business person, what I’ve learned and share with them any any of the any of the failures and the successes that I’ve experienced as a leader as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:03] Now, tell me about a little bit back onto your journey, having as much experience as you had at the executive leadership level. Why was it, a, why did you choose to go the franchisee route rather than just kind of Romney’s own consultancy route?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:06:20] Well, what ILEC brings to the table is a proven set of tools and assessments and training, part of what I like about the franchises in any way and coaching. There was a there was an arts and a science to it. So the franchise provides the science part of it and I provide the art part of it. I provide my personality, my story, my background, but I have a set of proven set of tools through assessment’s development plans, core purpose exercises that allow me to use a proven set of tools proven over 12000 individual leaders over over the the entire world that we that we’ve studied over the last 10 to 20 years. So I’m using those tools. So that’s why I went to franchise. If I went out on my own, I would be having to redevelop or recreate the wheel. And I didn’t feel like there was a need for me to recreate something that was already successfully proven.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:13] Now, when you went out on your own, did you immediately go into franchising or did you give it a go as an independent?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:07:21] No, I went I went straight into straight into franchising about 13 months ago.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:26] Wow. So then this was kind of part of your roadmap when you were figuring out what your next stage would be, was to kind of join this team?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:07:34] Well, when I was when I was 50 years old, I decided that it was 10 years later when I turned 60. I wanted to be working for myself. I turned sixty three days prior to signing my franchise agreement last summer. I did not know at that time if I wanted to go out strictly on my own or be a franchisee and improvement company through some discovery process and working with some business coaches. This opportunity, along with a couple of other opportunities, were presented to me and I felt like with my background, my desire. I’ve mentored a lot of a lot of young business people in my career. I’ve spoken to leadership and management to a lot of different professional organizations. So I have this is a perfect example, perfect time. And with covid in many other jobs not out there because of the covid pandemic and people’s budgets being tighter, I just thought it was a perfect time to jump in feet first in the franchise world and be able to again to use the arts of who I am and my background to do executive coaching.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:37] Now, a lot of your background was in health care. Is that where you’re spending your time coaching now? Are you kind of industry agnostic at this point?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:08:44] Well, I can be industry agnostic, but I am focusing on my contacts in the health care world and in the nonprofit world, in my in my community and not just in Midwest of Ohio, but all over Indiana, Kentucky. I have connections in Tennessee. I’m working with North Carolina and with our with our franchise. We had 12 coaches throughout the country. So we rely on each other’s input in working together. So health care nonprofit is my focal point, but it’s not my only focus.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:15] So what is the challenges that your potential clients? Are having where you’re a good fit to help them get through the whatever that challenge is or maybe take their business to a new level.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:09:29] So, you know, the pandemic covid is present a lot of challenges that 15 months ago nobody even knew was coming, let alone be prepared. Some of my clients I’m working with now, one is an emerging leader whose company is owns a another other types of franchise franchise companies, and they’re expanding. And they want this individual to get some leadership training so that she will be better prepared to deal with the expansion in their business. More locations working with a physician who hire a new a new manager that needed some leadership training on not on the health care side itself. As far as the billing and what comes in running a practice, but working with people, working with the staff, working with the physician. And so that’s that’s what we’re looking at, is it’s a new world out here with post covid people aren’t going back to work in the health care in the health care arena. There’s a lot of now telehealth medicine. So there’s different leadership skills needed and communication skills needed when you’re talking to a patient over a Zoome call versus seeing them face to face in the exam room. So just helping that leader have a sounding board and myself having somebody with 20 plus years in health care look at new and different ways. My my master’s degree is in management, innovation and change. So I think with my experience, my education, I can help leaders of today look at the changes that have been forced on them through covid and look at have them look at a different ways to attack, maybe the same problems with looking at it a different way.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:05] Now, I would imagine, like you mentioned, that since the world has kind of gone remote and is accepting of this new kind of remote communications and remote interactions with their service providers, that it’s a challenge for a lot of folks to maintain that culture that they had previously when everybody was in the same location. And they can see people and shake their hand and hug them and and interact with them face to face. How do you help your clients kind of maintain a culture? I’m sure it has to be tweaked a little bit. It can’t be the same exact culture. But I would imagine the big why in the mission can’t really change that much. But maybe the execution on how they interact and communicate has to be adjusted.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:11:53] Like the change in culture right now is probably our biggest opportunity because it’s the biggest challenge because of what I have friends that work work in the health care world on the insurance side, who went home in March of last year to start working from home and have been told they may come back in January of twenty twenty two, they may not come back at all. And this is a large, large insurance company, the the, the relationship building. A lot of them, if you’ve already got those relationships pre covered, a little bit easier to maintain, especially as the world’s loosening up a little bit with some of the some of the constraints we had. It’s really tough when you hire a new person, you’ve never met them in person. So what I tell my leaders that I’m working with my managers is they’ve got to be able to spend some time, whether it’s on the phone or on the Xoom or teams or whatever, and asking personal questions about that employee and their family, not just about what can you bring to me to make to make you a good employee.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:12:51] But what can we do to form this relationship? Because people strive and yearn for that opportunity to walk down the hallway, like you say, with a cup of coffee and drop it a coworkers office and say, hey, let’s talk about this little problem I got. You’ve got to create that personal relationship, at least in my belief. You’ve got to create that personal relationship first and foremost, so that your staff, whether it’s a coworker or somebody that report to you, is willing to be vulnerable and open up and say, here’s the problem I’m having. So we need to be able to use technology the best we can and look for opportunities to get together face to face, whether it’s at a coffee shop, whether it’s meeting them. And literally, I’ve had people meet in the parking lot of the grocery store because they ran into one another and they’re an hour later talking about what they’ve had to deal with at work. So it is a challenge. But again, it’s it’s looking at different ways of doing things in a different, different world that we’re in now.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:44] And it’s like you said, it’s got to be done kind of intentionally and proactively. This is not something like I believe culture is something that’s going to happen whether you work on it or not. There’s going to be a culture. So you might as well create some intention behind it in some way and be mindful about how this is going to play out and carve out specific times where people can interact in this kind of a more casual way that maybe historically that wasn’t the case in LA.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:14:12] You’re 100 percent right. Every workplace has a culture, whether it’s good or bad, they have a culture. And the leaders, in my opinion, the leaders, are the ones that are responsible for setting the path to create a good culture. So for a leader to, like you say, to be in. It’s easy to be intentional if you can walk down the hallway, it’s a whole lot more difficult to be intentional in today’s world. So they do have to set out time. They do have to carve out time in their schedule and ask their staff to carve out time because you just can’t drop in and have that conversation like it used to be. So, again, to me, all the responsibility is on the leader and the leadership team to create the culture that wants people to continue to to come to work on a daily basis, even if coming to work is walking from their kitchen to their office in their condo, like I’m doing today and talking with somebody on the phone.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:03] Now, when you’re working with a leader about this. Is this something that’s like an aha moment for them that they’re like, well, look, I got a million things on my plate. This is now just one more thing that I got to deal with, or is this something that they’re like, OK, I know this is important. I got to really lean into this in order to really grow my company and really serve my people.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:15:24] It’s not an overnight it’s not a quick fix. It’s not a is not a they may they may realize. They may get a hint or an indication that it’s important, but it’s a process of, again, being vulnerable, having conversations with their coworkers and with the people that the stakeholders that they report to and then setting a plan or a process in place, developing a plan to identify the new hurdles we have in today’s workplace and get feedback on how how this works best. One of my management styles is if I’ve got 10 people that report to me, it’s important for me to understand how those 10 individuals are wired, how they communicate, how they work, and then for me to react accordingly based on who I’m talking to. So if I got an employee that works best at eight o’clock in the morning, I want to be on the phone with that employee at eight o’clock in the morning. Whether I work best a date or a o’clock or not, which I do, I work better at 6:00 AM than I do at 6:00 p.m. So it’s the effort that the leader must take to make themself accessible and vulnerable to their staff as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:33] Well, Ronnie, what has been the most rewarding part of this adventure, this new chapter in your career thus far?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:16:43] Seeing a successful singer, successful journey, working with clients and learning more about him, I’ve had a couple of clients that already had a personal relationship with I’ve had clients that I did not know prior to and seeing success, seeing them come back to me when I meet with them on a weekly or every other week basis and say, you know what? This worked. And I felt I felt a win. A small win is better than no win at all. And I can walk out of out of that meeting no matter where it’s at. Confident that what I was able to bring to the table to help them was successful because it’s all about helping each other. It’s all about forming those relationships and having them be successful. I mentored a number of young business people to see where they’re staying. And I have one that I can think of to see where he’s at now eight years later is not because necessarily what I’ve done, but because he opened himself up to input from a lot of different people in our community. That’s what makes me happy and makes me want to continue doing what I’m doing now.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:43] Any advice for other people that were maybe going through that transition that you went through, working for a large corporate entity and now kind of carving your own path? Any advice for them on how to kind of smooth that learning curve?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:17:58] Yeah, be vulnerable and ask a lot of questions. When I went into this, I reached out to a number of other franchise owners, but not in coaching, but in different, different industries. I reached out to people that I worked with in the health care industry that I that I respected their input and I asked him for in my family and I asked him for honest input on what they thought if I if I could be successful doing this. So anybody that is in health care, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of coaches out there. We all can differentiate ourselves from one another, ask for honest feedback before you make before you dove in feet first. And that’s what I would suggest, is not everybody is necessarily cut out to be a coach. And you may think you are. And I think you need honest input from those people around you that know you personally and professionally. Ask for their honest feedback before you make that decision.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:53] Well, congratulations on all the success. If somebody wants to connect with you and maybe have a conversation, what is the best way to do that?

Ronny Shumaker: [00:19:03] So you can reach me through my website, which is Ronnie Shoemaker Dotcom. Or you can reach me. You can you can reach me on my cell phone, which is nine three seven nine to five five zero zero five. Either way, I’ll be glad to take your call. You can reach me through an email, through my website. So that’s probably the best. The best two ways.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:24] And that’s R.O.. And then why S.H. you may KSR dot com.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:19:29] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:30] Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you, Leigh.

Ronny Shumaker: [00:19:35] I appreciate the opportunity to be speaking with you today.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:37] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

Jeff Martin With Company Growth Academy

by

company-growth-academy

Jeff-martinJeff Martin is the Founder of Company Growth Academy.

After seeing so many people struggle because their businesses required them to be there, he knew he had to do something. Jeff began installing systems that reduce the dependency on the owners and help them move from Service Providers to Confident Entrepreneurs.

After spending 30 years of developing systems and creating efficiencies Jeff is helping free the owners up to explore ideas, entertain opportunities, and even take time off.

Connect with Jeff on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Start enjoying true business freedom

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 Jeff Martin with Company Growth Academy. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Martin: [00:00:43] Hey, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Company Growth Academy, how you serve seven folks.

Jeff Martin: [00:00:50] Yeah, well, for the most part, it’s about introducing frameworks or systems into your business that create enough efficiency, that it frees the owner up to do what they really want to do. And most often that’s, you know, spending time with family or growing their company through different means. So it’s really about giving these owners freedom to do the things they want to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:18] But you built it around kind of creating systems and processes that are replicable. That can be you know, I don’t want to say set it and forget it, but it can at least give you a framework to run your business and the day to day basis.

Jeff Martin: [00:01:30] That’s right. And, you know, I believe that the simpler the better, because, you know, if you have employees, they have to get around this. And if you put something in your business that’s too complicated, it’s not going to go well. So simple is not always easy, but simple frameworks that when all coupled together give you an operating system that provides freedom.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:56] And then if you do it right, your life becomes a lot easier and a lot less stressful.

Jeff Martin: [00:02:02] Yeah, no doubt about it. And again, it’s to me, we go into business for particular reasons. Most often it’s to have freedom, business decision, freedom, geographical freedom, financial freedom. What we lose, though, is time, freedom and opportunity, freedom. And so you take a typical service provider. They are the service. And so it makes perfect sense that when they start their business out, most of their systems are are revolved around them. And so they’re their employees and their customers really become overly reliant on them being there. And so it really takes away from the time and opportunity for you to you need to grow your company.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:53] Yeah, I mean, you’re talking my language. I am a big proponent of systems and processes, and it’s something that can be game changing if you really invest the time and do the kind of work up front to really put those in place. I am with you 100 percent. Now, talk about your back story. How did you kind of arrive at that kind of conclusion that teaching people how to implement systems are the way for growth?

Jeff Martin: [00:03:22] If I’m being perfectly honest, it’s because I got trapped in in a business outside of four years in the military, I’ve been 100 percent sole proprietor, business operator and entrepreneur. I I basically grew a company so fast and got so I didn’t have a healthy position, you know, you want to be on top of the company and controlling it, but when the company takes control of you and every decision you make, it really takes away from the power that you can you can have. And so I was able to regain my control and came back some freedom by implementing systems and frameworks and basically fighting and struggling. So so to tell you, it’s because I it happened to me and I broke through it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:23] So you were struggling and then you almost had to put these systems in place. Are your business, which is kind of run run you over? Pretty much,

Jeff Martin: [00:04:32] Yeah, 100 percent. You know, and it was a really good thing because my company was growing so quickly. It just it just had control of every decision I made, every thing. And, you know, you probably heard this a thousand times. You might be at a party or you might be at a baseball game with your kids, but your minds are back at the office and there’s there’s just nothing worse now.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:59] So you come to this conclusion like I mean. Well, first of all, let me step back a little. You were fortunate enough to have a business that was growing rapidly. I mean, a lot of people think that. What are you complaining about? That’s what we’re all trying to do. But that is kind of a double edged sword. I mean, it can overwhelm you and it can really be destructive if it isn’t managed. Right. So people wishing for lots of business can quickly, if they don’t have the systems in place, be overrun by it and it can turn negative pretty quickly.

Jeff Martin: [00:05:28] Yeah. And I don’t want to get too negative myself, but growth doesn’t necessarily mean profit. And so what I’m about is growing a profitable business and one that you can sustain that growth. You know, as long as you’re in the gate,

Lee Kantor: [00:05:45] So now so you have this kind of moment of reflection and say, hey, I got to get this under control. Did you just start breaking things down into systems like at some point you were trying to, I’m sure, fire yourself from certain jobs?

Jeff Martin: [00:05:59] Yeah, and that’s exactly what I had to do. Again, I talk about my typical client, their service providers, and so you could be a plumber, you could be a chiropractor, a flight instructor. My customers, they are the service. And like I said, it makes sense when you’re starting out. Just think of the plumber, you know? He’s a one man show until he brings somebody in to answer the phone and then his dream is to get multiple trucks. Well, I mean, it’s really hard to do it when you are working in the business. You have to rely on other folks. And so as that growth happens, most of the time they’re creating systems on the fly. You know that they’re creating systems. The worst part about it is they’re all in their head. They’re all in the owner’s head. Right. And so documentation is wildly important, but ensuring that you have a really simple system or process or framework that other people can follow. That is that is the only thing that’s really going to help remove you or transition you from the role of service provider to an entrepreneur who has the freedom to go out and do the things they want, like stop passing up opportunities to start. Looking at ideas and fleshing them out to see if they might make sense, rather to have another location or whatever and maybe even take a vacation, you know, and spend time with your family, it’s there’s there’s nothing worse than being away and thinking your whole business is about to fall apart.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:47] Right. And that’s a clue that you really don’t have a business. You have a job if that’s the case

Jeff Martin: [00:07:52] In a bad job.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:54] Now, what we do here, and I don’t know how you feel about this is the rule is if you do something twice, then write it down. It goes in the manual.

Jeff Martin: [00:08:03] I love it. It sounds great

Lee Kantor: [00:08:05] Because that’s what we find is that we end up doing the same task over and over, like it’s the first time we’ve ever done this. And if you just write it down, then you have a chance to even write it down poorly. You have a chance to delegate it to somebody else.

Jeff Martin: [00:08:19] I love that I make still that formula is absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:24] But so that’s the mentality, though, to be thinking, right, that everything should go into some sort of a manual of some kind, whether it’s digital or an actual, you know, pieces of paper. But you want to get some of these systems down on some form so that you can hand it to somebody else to give them at least a running start when they start.

Jeff Martin: [00:08:43] That’s right. You know, I already have ready-Made frameworks that that when you plug them into your system, it allows you to begin to operate and to pull back from that that service provider role. And it gives you tools to train your folks so they can repeat and and replicate what what you’re doing. And so I but but you’re 100 percent right. Even writing it down badly or writing a checklist. And truly, I don’t care if it’s a checklist or a video of the step by step process, but the thing you want to avoid if you don’t I was a franchisor at one point in my life, and that’s the business that I talked about that grew so quickly. So with a franchise model, you have to have standard operating procedures or, you know, operations manual. The challenge is getting people to follow them, you know, because if you don’t if it’s not one to done and if, you know, the last thing is to lock up and turn the lights off, trust me, one day, if you don’t have it documented, you’re going to drive by and the lights are going to be on. Right. And so you just you just have to document. Well, so I love that you all do that.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:00] So now walk me through kind of what an engagement with your firm looks like. What is my struggle? Am I sound like I’m a service provider? I’m a solo partner? First, I would imagine. And I’m just so I’m getting too busy. And it’s one of those a lot of solar panels or suffer from feast or famine. You know, when I got a job, I’m working on the job, so I’m not marketing. And when I don’t have a job now I’m marketing and I don’t because I don’t have a job. So it’s you know, I’m either on water, I’m on a higher or low, depending on, you know, the time of the month.

Jeff Martin: [00:10:32] You’re right. So the first part, like like anybody would say the first part of a cure is if you have a problem with business owners are sometimes control freaks, we want to do it our way because that’s the proven way. And we prove to ourselves that we like that. So you first have to seek help once you reach out to me. What I would do is I would sit down with you and do a business assessment. It generally takes about two hours, but it’s designed to get to know you. I think it’s fair that you should get to know me and, you know, a prospect would get to know me and how I might be able to help him. And then then I go into a real structured interview where I look at the separate parts of your business to find out what systems you have in place and to see what’s working. We didn’t look at see what’s what’s where we have room to improve. And then we look and I create a roadmap for you and a 90 day execution roadmap. What I like to do, Leigh, is is work in 90 day cycles.

Jeff Martin: [00:11:39] And so we’ll put our heads down and we’ll start implementing, you know, one or two or three frameworks depending on what we get done in 90 days. Then we come up for air and look at what we need to do next. Celebrate victories, continually improving things, and then, you know, could put our head down and get to work again. And so that’s that’s how it is. I am I’m there’s some teaching that goes on to teach the frameworks. There’s some coaching that will always be going on to ensure that you’re on the right track and then sometimes facilitating. Sometimes I’ll work with my customers, clients. One of the things that I found out early on, because I had a great desire to work with the owner, the owner himself or herself. And I found that oftentimes the way to help the owner most is to help bring up the team and grow the team, and that really does help them, you know, make that transition to a confident entrepreneur with with time to do what they need to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:47] So now. So when they’re working with you, are they working with you one on one, or is it a group format? Like what is the engagement look like from the customer standpoint?

Jeff Martin: [00:12:58] Both. You know, I say it’s one on one, but what I mean is one me two one you is the business, you know. So I will work with the owner, I will work with the leadership management team or I’ll work with the different departments. I’ll go in and work with somebody, the sales department and the sales team. I’ll work with the marketing team. So where are we where we have an opportunity to improve something? Typically will will add in a framework and then will we’ll teach that will coach it and we’ll make it happen. So one of my engagements might be a one to one coaching session with a client face to face or bazoo. Another session might be a small workshop where I bring in the whole company or a different department and we do a, you know, two hour workshop to get something installed. And then I work it with small groups and either either I have several business owners or I’ll have their team and work as a small group only. So it’s the same. Product, if you will, service providing the frameworks and coaching them through it, but I offer different mediums to to make it happen. I just want to see you grow and free up the owner to do what they really, truly want to do and need to do for the company.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:24] Now, can you share a story where you were working with somebody and maybe share what don’t name the name, but the pain they were going through and how then they started working with you and how you were able to help them get to the next level?

Jeff Martin: [00:14:35] Yeah, sure. I have a a client. I can tell you tell you several I’m thinking about which wanted to talk about. I have a client though, that is who owns physical therapy clinics. He started out as a solo partner and started in that growth phase. After several years, he realized, I have to back out a little bit, but I just don’t know how to do it. And so he began, you know, replacing himself, if you will. Today he has four locations in our area. He’s in a leadership role rather than the day to day operations. He still does day to day, but he’s got it in a situation now where each one of his physical therapy locations has a clinic director. They’re fully staffed and he does some oversight. He does some coaching. He does leadership. So what’s funny is, you know, I’ve I’ve been coaching for 30 years in every business I’ve ever owned. It’s so nice to see these owners really become coaches and leaders rather than service providers.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:53] Yeah, I’ll tell you, and I’ve talked to a lot of coaches doing this show, the coaches seem to get more kind of joy and satisfaction from their client’s success than even from them getting another client.

Jeff Martin: [00:16:06] It’s so true. In fact, rather than market, I would rather work with somebody, you know, so we coaches can find it’s feast or famine sometimes, too. We may have this influx of clients and we start working with them and then we forget the market for a little while. It’s because we love coaching, you know, and seeing success of our clients. And so maybe that’s a lesson there.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:32] I think it is. Well, Jeff, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story today. Is there a website people can go to to learn more, connect with you again on your calendar?

Jeff Martin: [00:16:43] Yeah, sure. Thank you. Go to Company Growth Academy Dotcom or just visit with Jeff Dotcom. Visit with Jeff Dotcom.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:54] Good stuff. Well, thank you again for sharing your story. Jeff, you’re doing important work and we appreciate you, Lee.

Jeff Martin: [00:16:59] Thanks for having me. I sure have had fun.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:01] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

Business Coach John Whitt

by

Businesswhitt

John-whittJohn Whitt is a “Rapid Growth” Business Transformation Coach, Author, and Keynote speaker. He is the founder of Business Whitt.

John’s clients are Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Leaders that are looking to scale and create improved results using a simple, easy-to-use customizable template for Strategy, Planning, and Communication.

John has been working alongside business owners and leaders to improve performance and profitability since 2010. He serves clients 1 on 1, in groups sessions, and online training programs. Work smarter not harder to make the right moves for achieving your goals and objectives.

Connect with John on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Post Pandemic staffing
  • Current pay rates and salaries aren’t as key a motivator compared to pre-pandemic conditions
  • Non-financial compensation strategies for hiring and staffing
  • Strategy for effectively engaging and recruiting talented staff for small businesses

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 fun one. Today we have with us John Whitt with Business Whitt. Welcome, John.

John Whitt: [00:00:43] Thank you. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about business with how you serve in folks.

John Whitt: [00:00:50] Well, I’ve been in the small business coaching space for going on 11 years. I started my practice in 2010 and I’ve done all kinds of things from executive coaching to startups to businesses that are just trying to figure out how to scale, how to get to the how to get to the next level. And it’s just it’s an incredibly rewarding career. I spent 30 years in multibillion dollar corporate before this. And while I was able to do a lot of neat things, the amount of satisfaction, job satisfaction, employee career satisfaction just isn’t nearly the same as the coaching space.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] So now talk about that transition when you were in corporate to kind of being an entrepreneur yourself, was that a difficult transition for you?

John Whitt: [00:01:38] That’s a yes and no answer to my original thought was to bring sort of big business building tools to small business. And because small business doesn’t have a lot of the things that big business has, they don’t have the time or the money or the resources in many ways. And that in itself is very effective and not tremendously difficult. However, the small business mindset is a big shift from multibillion dollar corporate, multibillion dollar corporate. Everybody’s got suits, ties, degrees, MBAs. Everybody knows with benchmarking is everybody understands goals and objectives, et cetera, et cetera, and how to put plants together. Or that’s a general rule in that multibillion dollar corporate space. In the small business space, that’s not the case. They’re running around with 50 hats on. They’re trying to do thirty five things at once. And the big thing is that they don’t have the resources to make mistakes to you know, if you make a mistake in the billion dollar corporate world, it costs you some money. But there’s a lot of resources to recover in the small business world. If you make that kind of a mistake or a mistake that cost you a lot of money or time, the results could be disastrous. And so working through the the mindset issues was my biggest learning experience in transitioning to from the corporate world to the small business coaching world.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:02] Now, once you kind of made that transition in your mind and then kind of developed, I guess, a service that can serve the needs of that small business owner, the mid-sized business owner, was that you know, was that the key that unlocked kind of the doors now for success for you? Or was there something that helped you kind of propel you to the next level in your practice?

Speaker4: [00:03:27] Well, for me, that was a big success in mindset, in attracting and acquiring customers, clients, but from a personal standpoint, all of the systems and processes that I had to build and developed that allowed me to efficiently and effectively serve my clients. That was the big work ethic. That was a good one to three years. And putting those systems in place, you know, putting together my own CRM system, bringing together my own marketing strategy was the strategy. Those those things took a while to put together. That was really kind of the turning point. And then I guess the other thing that’s really valuable is that, you know, the the need the small business coaching need it. It doesn’t stay the same. When I started my practice, we were coming out of the Great Recession and finding a way to generate money. Was the that was that was well, actually, I would say first, how do we cut back and how do we save money? And everybody wanted to do that right away, but they didn’t really look at how do we generate money in this opportunity as well. And so we went through the first three or four years where really how do we generate revenue? It shifted into how do we serve our customers more effectively know once we got through that recession and then today

John Whitt: [00:04:54] You’re starting to see a big shift in, you know, where do I find employees? How do I get employees to to come work for me? And it’s a different, different model. Used to be we could find employees pretty quickly and today, because coming out of the pandemic, it’s it’s not the same it’s not the same system and it’s not the same model. So while I would say that I built a system to help me serve my clients, I got through the mindset of composition, staying current and consistent with what the economy or what the world system is putting out. It has been a key. You have to shift and change, not necessarily daily, but but frequently to find out what’s the most important thing for the market.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:36] Now, you mentioned the kind of the challenge of staffing and I guess this post pandemic world that we’re living in for a lot of folks. Can you talk about how you’re helping your clients kind of work through that?

Speaker4: [00:05:50] Yes, certainly so. So we have this pandemic where people were literally paying to stay home for over a year, still going on to some degree, but it’s going to end at some point this year. And so the mindset of the employee began to shift. I think they began to this is an opinion more than it is the fact that we do find many people that support a similar opinion.

John Whitt: [00:06:19] The values, what was important really shifted over the last year because it was such a scary time, and now that those values have shifted and they’ve managed to learn how to live on the income that they have, they’re a lot less. Concerned about revenue or making money today, that’s not the same motivator that it used to be, money used to be. Well, and in some cases it’s still obviously a very key motivator. But it’s not as. It doesn’t hold the same degree of importance today as it did a year, year and a half ago, because people have learned to operate and live differently over the last year and a half. And so what we’ve really done here is to identify what are the other strategies that are what are the what is valuable, what’s really important for employees today that would encourage them or compel them to submit for an opportunity for a job. And really, that’s we look at three different forms of composition, compensation. I mean, money obviously is very, very important. But the other two real big keys are the ability to learn and grow and the ability to make an impact. And so we’re really crafting the employment opportunity message to include the ability to learn and grow and the ability to make an impact in addition to traditional financial compensation, insurance benefits, those kinds of things, and and creating that message and making sure that that’s the message that that’s getting out to the ideal candidates that we’re looking for.

John Whitt: [00:08:06] We really have embraced the, you know, a real solid marketing plan that most people are very comfortable or familiar with, marketing their business and their services and their products, not always as knowledgeable or aware of how to market their business job opportunities, which is really what you’re doing. Your might be your marketing an opportunity, and you have to follow a lot of the same principles. I mean, you have to identify who’s the ideal person, who’s the one that you want to have, who’s the one that’s going to most willingly accept, lean in, take advantage of that. What’s the messaging that we have to use for that particular prospect, employee prospect? And then how do we distribute that message effectively? There’s a lot of systems out there that work really well. Indeed, the recruiter, there’s a whole lot of them, but there are nontraditional opportunities through, in many ways, the social media platforms and how many of those are there these days. But how do we distribute that message? How do we target our audience effectively? Those three steps really need to make make a big difference today. You have to make a big difference in how that works today. It’s not just putting an ad in the in the newspaper or an ad on indeed or one of the other job monster or whatever. There’s a lot more sophistication from a marketing standpoint that’s necessary to get your message in front of the right audience.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:41] Now, do you do you find that it’s kind of a double edged sword in some ways that when you say, OK, I’m going to be open to remote workers, then you’re like, OK, now the world is my oyster. I can get the best talent from anywhere in the world. But the the flip side of that coin is the world’s big. You know, now my job is like a needle in a haystack. In this huge haystack is the world. And, you know, how do I even identify the person that has the right values that I have, that has the right skills and I need that, you know, is going to be a good cultural fit and how am I going to manage this person from what they can be anywhere?

John Whitt: [00:10:25] Well, yeah, you’re absolutely right, when the opportunity or the the marketplace gets so big or as big as it is, it becomes a little bit it can become overwhelming. And you have to I think it’s best to go back to basics really thing. What is it that I really need? I need some people with this skill, this knowledge, attitude being the most important and most valuable commodity that’s available out there. Somebody is going to show up and do the work. You can list all of the attributes that you want from an addiction standpoint.

John Whitt: [00:11:00] And then you have to ask yourself, OK, where is this person, where are these people hanging out, so to speak, where how can I reach them? What is the right place? And so you might have, you know, any number of message boards or there’s there’s just a ton of different communication tools that you want to use. And in fact, you probably have to use many of them, you know, 10 or 12 of them to really get your message to the to the market, to the right market, to the right person, to the right prospect avatar. But you’ll find that, you know, again, with a comprehensive approach. And I think that’s what’s the key. And it depends on what you’re really looking for. Right. If you’re just looking for a sort of a minimum of minimum wage worker, I don’t think you’re looking at the world. But if you’re looking at some some bigger talent, especially if you’re looking at any of the STEM activities. You really have to have to craft your message effectively and distribute it to the right place, where is this group hanging out? I’m doing a lot of work with universities in Southern California.

John Whitt: [00:12:05] In fact, I have an intern program and. There are literally thousands of students out there, hundreds of thousands of students that might want to be an intern for BusinessWeek, and I have to market to the the my message who are really looking for what’s really important, what do they really value to persuade them or compel them to apply for my internship. But I put together a system that’s very effective. So I typically now I’m getting about two or three applications a week. And so when you when you’re getting two or three applications a week now, you can be very selective in who you really want to bring up or who’s going to make the biggest impact. But again, my process and my intern program is an education based program. And so it really has to be about, you know, in return for them doing service, servicing for me has to be about what can business would do for them. And I provide some career strategic planning and some education around marketing skills, communication skills and knowledge that trade has to be super high or they’re going to step in. They’re not going to lean into the program.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:18] So now the benefits of going kind of the intern route is that you’re kind of getting them younger and they’re you’re kind of teaching them the good habits so that maybe some of these interns that go through the program can be right. Fit employees down the road. You’re investing in them and they’re giving them there’s kind of a lower risk way of kind of vetting them to see if they really can do what they you think they can do. And plus, you’re getting to mold them before they’ve had some maybe bad habits that they have learned in other places.

John Whitt: [00:13:52] Well, absolutely right. I mean, you’re not getting in balance, right? You’re at the early stage, very moldable stage. And you can work through your system and process to see if they can do what you’re looking for. And even more importantly, will they do what you’re looking for? And in remote work, that’s that’s the key, because you’re not you know, they’re not coming into the office. You’re not looking over their shoulder to see if they’re doing the work that you that needs to be done. You can’t monitor how much time they spend at the WaterCooler or whatever else they’re doing during the day. The question will be, can they do the work

John Whitt: [00:14:27] On their own effectively? And you get a chance with this process to Tibet that, you know you know, some people, you know, over the over two or three months, you can say, hey, these guys are the right kind and move them up into some additional responsibilities. And others are going to be, well, you know, this is really marginal. And, you know, they may not be a right fit for this organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:52] So now when you’re going the internal strategy, is this something that they’re doing this work in exchange for kind, of course, credit, or is this something you’re paying them? And how does the financial side of this work?

John Whitt: [00:15:05] So my financial side, the rule of thumb is that you have to give more value than you get. Otherwise they will be considered to be employees. And my systems pass that that particular test. I don’t pay them in dollars, although I do support their, of course, credit. So if the college will give them credit, I will fill out whatever paperwork is necessary so that they achieve those units and that’s a cost savings to them. They didn’t have to pay for those. But at the end of the day, if I’m not delivering more value to the intern than they are delivering to me, then they’re going to be considered employees, especially in a state like California or Oregon or some of the places where I happen to work.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:50] So then you are an exchange, you’ve developed a way to onboard these people quickly because you need them to provide value for you in some level. So they have to be doing some work that’s valuable to you and your paying clients. Right.

John Whitt: [00:16:05] You know, you’re absolutely right. And you want to get them up and they want to be here. Here’s my understanding as as the these interns come aboard, they want to make contribution as quickly as possible. They don’t want to sit here and say, hey, we’re going to study for three months before I get to do anything. So in the business system, they’re up and running and through our onboarding system, there’s two phases to it. But they’re up and running and making their first dates. And within five days of joining the Internet

John Whitt: [00:16:34] And we quickly find out, can they do it? Will they do it? What can they learn? Can they grow? We don’t expect them to be experts in five days. That is not a requirement. We don’t expect the interns to be experts at all, but we do expect them to learn from their mistakes, learn from the lessons to utilize the group, the collaborative opportunities that we have so that they can get better. And that’s the rules. They have to get better every day, every week, although we don’t expect perfection.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:05] And then how long is an engagement with an intern,

John Whitt: [00:17:09] So it’s a minimum of three months, I tell them mostly that should be six months, because after three months you’ve got all of the basic systems and stuff down in play, which means you’ll have gotten what you came for in some ways. But after three months, you can move into a leadership role and leadership skills are highly valuable. And you could run one of our campaigns or you could be a mentor to new interns. There’s a whole bunch of different things that we could do for this, what I would call the second half, because I typically expect my what my interns typically stay about six months and we don’t track it to the day, but it’s about six months, which gives them the initial skill sets, the learning and the knowledge to be able to do the work that I’m looking for them to do, but then also helps them put their career strategy together and then ultimately achieve and obtain some leadership skills as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:55] So now this business with intern staffing program, is this something that is a service offering? You offer your clients that you help them kind of get this going for their businesses?

John Whitt: [00:18:08] Absolutely. So I didn’t start out that way. I started out saying, listen, I need some help and I had to put something together for me. But then I realized that this can translate this. This program translates to just about any business. You there’s a there’s a strategy that you have to build and it’s going to be a little bit different for each business and the type of work that the intern does when they came on board. And what’s that first impact that’s going to be have to be identified on a on a client basis. But just imagine that you have interns. That’s what my list, my group is right now, as many as six interns that are putting in 10 hours of 15 hours a week for you. That’s a lot of hours. That’s a lot of resources that can be literally can transform a business. And so I offer this it’s a 12 step program that goes from strategic planning into impact analysis and the marketing strategies, how to identify the ideal prospect, the ideal employee, the messaging, the distribution system, the interview process. One of the key things in my entire program that’s really valuable is the. What we call the self evaluation metrics, so the interns are responsible for evaluating new home results and coming up with strategies to improve those results. So I don’t have to do all of that work. That’s a place where a lot of managers can get hung up. They don’t be basically.

John Whitt: [00:19:38] Assume the role that they’re responsible for all of the new growth and all of the new opportunities, that’s a time consuming process. When you teach in this case, educate your team on how to do their own self-evaluation metrics and the value of doing those self-evaluation metrics and the value of putting together continuous improvement strategies, that becomes incredibly valuable. And it’s been proven from interns that have left the program and gone on to careers that those were key hiring components. And why do they get that next opportunity? Because they understood that model and they understood that process. When you bring that to a new employer, they’re like, well, this is different.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:18] Now, when you’re working with a client and implementing the intern staffing program with them is you have to get clear on what is the type of work they need done. And then you have to kind of build out the system to make the intern not only on boarded, but doing the work kind of almost like a machine. Right. It can’t be something that there is all these one offs that, hey, this is a special thing. And I got to explain, like, it’s got to kind of run pretty. Kind of streamlined, right, like this is all the work you have to do up front in order to show that it works effectively once you have that flow of interns coming in.

John Whitt: [00:21:03] You’re absolutely right. You have to build the system. You have to identify in your business operations, your business process. Where does an intern fit and how can we get them to make an impact quickly? And then we have to build the onboarding system. What do we have to teach them and train them? What do they have to learn? Day one. Day two, three. And again, we want to get them up and running. You’re making an impact, making a difference right away as soon as possible. So, yeah, that that’s what I call the intern impact analysis is a key component in it. For some clients, it’s pipeline growth and for other clients it’s the efficiency type activity. I mean, I’m not sure which one it is for each client. We’re going to identify that. And then we put the system, we built the system around it.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:50] And then once you identify that, then you have to reach out and have some sort of outreach to the universities to identify the appropriate candidate.

John Whitt: [00:22:00] Absolutely, I use a system called handshake. Well, it’s not my system, it’s a university system for offering internships and job opportunities, and it’s used by thousands of universities. And you’re able to craft your offering and and make it available to students that are looking for these students that are looking for internships. And learning how to use that system is an important component because there’s things you can or can’t do, there’s there’s some activity there, but that’s where that might be, that that is a classic. If you’re looking for interns, that is a very strong message discipline.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:41] And then is there any kind of dos and don’ts when it comes to making the offer to the intern? Like what are some dos that they want as a deliverable that is going to be like a, hey, this is perfect for me. I got a lot of out of that internship I learned. But I also got this kind of a new credential or something that I’m going to be able to leverage for a job down the road.

John Whitt: [00:23:04] Yes, so we have a couple of different things, so, yes, do’s and don’ts. It’s really all about the intern. What’s in it for them? I mean, they’re they’re. You know already that there’s something in it for you as the business owner when you’re interviewing, it’s it’s really about what’s in it for them. And you’re also interviewing them for me. I’m not asking for them to have any experience because I can teach all of that, that the skills and the knowledge that I’m looking for, what I need is the right attitude. So in that interview, I’m really looking for what that that right attitude is. In addition, once once you go through this particular program, there is a business with marketing internship certificate that you can share, it’s digital and hard copy and then as a as a process as part of our off boarding process. So there’s an onboarding process and an onboarding process, onboarding process. We actually create a video with the intern that helps them describe the value and what they learned and how effective is it was, how effective it was. And we we added that down to about a two minute video that they can then share with potential employers. And it does a lot of things that says, hey, this is what I learned. This is what I’m doing. This is what I did. But you also get to see the person on camera. What’s their personality? What’s what’s their what are their behaviors? You know, there’s there’s a lot of value in them being able to share a video about the program.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:34] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success if there’s a company out there that wants to learn more about how to implement the business with in staffing program, what is the best way to find you? You have a website?

John Whitt: [00:24:48] Yes. So the website is its business with dot com. That’s W w w and then the word business and my last name, which is Waititi dot com just to play on business. So business with dot com and there’s a place where you can book an appointment with me. You can also see obviously some of the other things that I’ve done and the types of work that I do for different clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:08] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

John Whitt: [00:25:15] Well, I appreciate being on the show. I really you know, it’s been fun and I’m glad to be able to share.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:20] All right. That was John Witt with business with Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

Our Mission

We help local business leaders get the word out about the important work they’re doing to serve their market, their community, and their profession.

We support and celebrate business by sharing positive business stories that traditional media ignores. Some media leans left. Some media leans right. We lean business.

Sponsor a Show

Build Relationships and Grow Your Business. Click here for more details.

Partner With Us

Discover More Here

Terms and Conditions
Privacy Policy

Connect with us

Want to keep up with the latest in pro-business news across the network? Follow us on social media for the latest stories!

Business RadioX® Headquarters
1000 Abernathy Rd. NE
Building 400, Suite L-10
Sandy Springs, GA 30328