Ivy Slater With Slater Success

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for coach the coach radio brought to you by the business radio embassador 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 barracks ambassador dot com to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] We can’t hear another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today we have with us Ivy Slater with Slater Success. Welcome, Ivy

Ivy Slater: [00:00:43] Lee, thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Slater Success, how you serve in folks

Ivy Slater: [00:00:51] So Slater Success as a coaching and consulting company. I’m a speaker, author, trainer. I help leaders really do their best. We will come into organizations and help them scale and grow. We look at a variety of things from team to financial to marketing strategies, building books, business, and truly that help that leader who’s in charge of it all work at the top of their game. So they lead to their organizations and achieve what their goals are.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] So now what’s your back story? How did you get into this line of work with always a coach?

Ivy Slater: [00:01:26] Oh, goodness, no. This is this I’d love to say the second it’s actually the second business I’ve owned before this. I was in the printing industry in New York City. I was where I raised my kids. I would say I grew a printing company and grew some children at the same time. I was in the industry for over 20 years. So I truly led the growth of that business. Head of sales, you know, kind of like what we’ll say is that you wash the windows, you do the sales, you do the finance, you build a seven figure company in a very male dominated world. And I was I had a great, great period of time until I reached my mid forties and I was like, when am I going to do when I grow up? Like, what’s the legacy I leave behind? I’m making a great living. I built a seven figure organization. But what about me? What am I leaving behind what’s what’s significant here? And that’s when I knew I needed to look at my next chapter.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:27] And then I of all the choices you chose coaching, what drew you to coaching?

Ivy Slater: [00:02:34] I’m going to say I don’t know if I chose it or if it was just something I did. So one hundred percent mid-life crisis at forty five. And I was with a friend of mine. We were working out, we were in court for those of New York City or New York area listeners. We were doing walking legends as one of the New York City parks and I said, I don’t know what I’m going to do next. What’s this legacy like? I’m going to I’m going to lead. I had all these bold dreams and aspirations in my younger self. I built a great organization about what happens next. And she goes, you ought to be a coach. And my response was soccer. And she laughs hysterically. I’m like, come on. You know, I can’t. I was a dancer. I have a degree in dance, a degree in communications. And I said, you know, I blew out my knee in my early twenties. You what are you talking about? And she looked at me and she said, you know what? Either you help me build my business, you help me see past what I thought was possible. You expanded my horizons. I started growing a business, reaching levels I never reached before. I said, OK, but what’s with the coaching thing? And granted, this was 07. So coaching in 07 wasn’t necessarily what coaching is today. And I went home, you know, after we finished our workout, give each other a sweaty hug. And I go home and I hit the computer and I was like, what is coaching? And of course, soccer comes up basketball, tennis. And then somewhere around page three, we got into what the the new or at that point industry of coaching was. And I said, well, what is this look like? Like what do I need to know? And I am a huge fan of market research and I think we so often forget to do it and it’s so important and so impactful.

Ivy Slater: [00:04:28] So I went to what my belief system was, is let’s let’s find things out in the marketplace. So I started mentioning it and talking to every person I knew about. Have you heard about this industry coaching? What is it? What is it mean? Do I go back to college? I’m getting a degree in therapy, psychotherapy. Explain further. Is this a business thing? I’m not really. The person is going to sit on the couch and listen to people’s problems. You know, I’m a solution oriented businesswoman. What does that mean in this field? So I truly, truly interviewed people. I spoke to my attorney. I spoke to my accountant. I spoke to other professionals in the in various different degrees of industry. And I just immersed myself in 30 days of market research. And it might not sound like a lot, but you also have to I am who I am. I’m a businesswoman. I’m a decision maker. And I was like I wanted to know enough to make a decision, to take an action, to then make my next decision. So is this an. Something I’m going to be interested in, why would it interest me? What impact can I leave, what legacy like who does it align with, Ivy Slater as a woman, as a businesswoman, as a mother, as in all the facets of Ivy? And so I did that. And then when I said, I think this makes sense. I sat down and this happened in April, started in April of 07, I’m going to tell you, by the end of May, June one, at that time I was enrolled in a certification program.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:06] Now, as a dancer, you mentioned being a dancer at the start of, I guess, your career, did you have a coach then?

Ivy Slater: [00:06:16] I we had you as a dancer during class every day, even if you’re in a show, you’re in class every day. You have to have your foundation down, and I strongly believe in mentors and teachers and coaches, you know, a dancer doesn’t look at a coach. You look at your mentor, your teacher, you might be following this specific teacher in modern dance or ballet or in this theory, in this style, or that you are immersing yourself in one hundred percent. So early on, I thought it would be really easy to build later success. I was like, I know what I’m doing. I built a business before. I know what I’m going to do. This is how I’m going to do it and be complete transparency. The first couple of years was not good and I’m being really polite. OK, if you didn’t have the answer, I’d probably put it in a much, much more harsh answer. But it really, really stunk. I was like I was used to pulling in X amount of money and running a business, a salary, a building our clients. And I was like, this is not happening. And I had to kind of stop and say. What can I do about this and how can I do it? And I said, well, I the there are things obviously, you know, and there is a ton of things you don’t know. And are you going to move your pride away and hire somebody who could show you what you don’t know? And I did

Lee Kantor: [00:07:55] Now, so as a dancer, you leaned on mentors, experts will call them whatever you want, but some sort of coaching to help you get to a new level in your dance, in your business. When you were in printing, did you have the same infrastructure? Do you have mentors and coaches or people that helped you achieve success there? Was that kind of on your back?

Ivy Slater: [00:08:20] I always, always believed myself in surrounding myself with people who were smarter than me. So there was when I got involved in printing, I was in my late 20s and there was this great, great guy who is in my world, and he he owned several different printing or printing. He owned actually two different printing company pieces of the building. He was a great businessman. And I would just say, hey, Rich, can I talk to you? Can I ask you some questions? And it would be notorious of I would be like, what are the early jobs on press in the morning? And I’d show up with, like an extra cup of coffee and like, have my eye out for him, you know? Hey, can I ask you about this? And it’s like, how do sit down, Ivy? And then it would be like, you know, who you really need to talk to. Larry outside. Larry’s going to be great with sharing this information with you. And I always believed in surrounding myself with people who know more than me. And if you want to, I look at it as coaching, I look at it as today for Slater’s success, we are in our 13th plus year and I still have a coach in my world because if I didn’t, I would be spending all the time focusing on my clients goals, their organizations, and forget to put the work into my own organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:52] And is that a challenge you find with other coaches? Is that sometimes it’s like the cobbler’s children, you know, they’re focused so much on their clients that they’re not kind of doing that. The blocking and tackling for their own organization.

Ivy Slater: [00:10:09] A thousand percent. True. You know, we we especially it’s so many people who go into the coaching field are givers. We were here to help. We’re here to make a difference. We’re here to help others. And you have to remember the fear about putting your oxygen mask on first. If you don’t help yourself, you can’t help others. And I think it’s important to always have somebody is holding you accountable, somebody that you have that special place that you can work on your organization, that you can work on yourself, you can work on your goals, your dreams, your desires. Because if not, we just fall into the same patterns every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:50] And then you probably don’t even recognize you’re in those patterns

Ivy Slater: [00:10:54] A thousand percent, and I’m going to tell you, I was recently I took a couple of days off and I went to, what, like a spa type of hotel? I don’t know, whatever retreat with my daughter. We did a mommy daughter thing for a few days and May, Mother’s Day, etc., etc.. And as a former dancer, they had this wall of photos up. And I love I love some great quotes. I’m always attracted to quotes. I have always been. And all of a sudden I didn’t even see who wrote the quote. But I looked at the quote and I said, Oh, that’s you, Ivy. It’s talking to you. And then I saw who wrote it. And I was like, Of course it is. So if you look at so he he was never my my mentor officially because I’ve never met him in my life. But he was somebody I looked up to and admired and followed my entire dance world. And the quote said, I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. And I saw it was written by Baryshnikov and growing up, Mikhail Baryshnikov was my idol, my, you know, my unofficial mentor, right. If I could have paid him to coach me, believe me, if I could have found a way, I would have. I so admired what he did. I admired it in his innovation. His determination, his uniqueness is willing to push boundaries. And I’ve always done the same thing for myself and not because I’m in competition with any other coaches out there, I want us all to succeed because we could all make a huge difference. But if we sit complacent and and do just what we do and we try to get another client and we don’t work on better and improving ourselves on a regular basis, we’re not being of service to every person we touch.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:48] Right, I think it’s almost kind of your duty to be kind of that lifelong learner, continuous learner and try to make yourself as good as you can be so that you can serve your clients even more.

Ivy Slater: [00:12:59] Absolutely, absolutely. Now, you been in that one hundred percent, now

Lee Kantor: [00:13:04] You bring up an excellent point of mentors and coaches can come in a lot of forms. It can be somebody, you know, you write about, saw a TED talk on it. It doesn’t have to be a formal coaching relationship. But having a relationship with some sort of coach is kind of key, I think, for people to to get out of their own way and maybe eliminate some of the self sabotage or some of the biases or kind of issues that they’ve created for themselves that they may not see in. And that’s where elevating these informal coaching through an author or inspirational quote or something like that, where you need that person that’s kind of giving fresh eyes to your organization

Ivy Slater: [00:13:48] If it’s successful. All you know, I think it’s it’s out of service to us all. There are always going to be challenging times. There’s also times of expansion in and we live in it. We live in a world of abundance. It’s so easy to get caught up in, especially in running a business. That’s one of the things I say about coaching, coaching. It’s not a business. Coaching is a modality of business delivers.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:15] So what is. Walk me through what you mean by that.

Ivy Slater: [00:14:18] Ok, so I have been brought in by various coaching coach training organizations to talk about this in theory. Being a coach is not having a business. Being a coach is a modality coaching is a modality of business delivers. Slater Success is a coaching consulting training company. One of the things we do is we do coaching, so we will help our clients create their strategy. And we will work with them, holding them accountable to the actionable steps and in that accountability, there’s always a lot of coaching in there. What obstacles are coming up? What is holding you back? Where are you hitting that brick road? Where you hitting that dead end? Right. But as a business model. Right. Remember, I’m a businesswoman. I’ve been a business woman for over twenty five years. Plus, plus. But don’t talk don’t say that to anybody, guys. It’s what is the business structure so, so many people are like, well, I coach, I was like, OK. Why do you coach, who are the people coming to you, what is the problem they have? How were you going to deliver your service? How are you going to scale that? What are you looking to achieve in the goals of your organization? So coaching is something that is a delivered piece, but it’s not the business itself is that makes sense.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:55] Yeah, that’s just one of your deliverables.

Ivy Slater: [00:15:58] Right. And any coach, we. Work with is what? What is the coaching they’re delivering? Sometimes it’s marketing, sometimes it’s sales, right? Sometimes it’s strategy, sometimes it’s inner work, sometimes it’s life work, sometimes it’s transformation. Sometimes there’s, you know, grief coaching. There’s so many things. What is the delivery of the coaching is something the business delivers, but it is not the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:30] Right. And so you help your clients kind of discern the difference between that and then maybe help them productize other types of deliverables.

Ivy Slater: [00:16:41] Right. Because coaching is something that can be delivered. But I’ll never say coaching is actually the business. Right. And I guess business has marketing structure, a sales structure, a financial structure, a team structure where. Right. That’s a business.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:58] And then some people probably think that, oh, I’m going to be a coach and then I’m going to and that’s my business and I’ll be doing coaching. And they don’t realize that that’s just one thing they’re delivering or even if it’s the only thing they’re delivering, it’s just they have to separate it from the business that they’re getting into.

Ivy Slater: [00:17:17] What you have to look at yourself. So if you’re a coach, are you also the CEO of that organization?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:22] Right. And the salesperson and the marketer and the correct and the service deliverer, like, you know, where does your job begin and end?

Ivy Slater: [00:17:31] And the mind set of looking at it is the CEO. So how right how are we going to deliver these services? Where are we growing this company to? Am I going to be the only coach or they are going to be other coaches? Are there going to be group programs? Are we going to be doing trainings? Are we going to be doing workshops or seminars that we’re going to be speaking or are we paid to speak or are we not paid to speak? What is the whole thing look like?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:56] And then when you’re working with your clients in this way, they’re probably these are like eye opening kind of things for them where they’re just like, oh yeah, I never looked at it that way. And all of a sudden now they have multiple revenue streams and they can really grow their business.

Ivy Slater: [00:18:10] Yeah, I don’t love building a business on only one type of revenue stream because it leaves you vulnerable. You know, in the same in the same way back when I was selling printing, I didn’t agree with just having, like, you know, just having a few big clients. It’s like, well, you lose one client or something happens with that client, they get acquired, you know, back in the day, Fairchild Publications was one of my biggest clients that acquired OK, they got acquired several times that they were my client, but. Right. What is the impact if that’s one of your main revenue streams, when you have something that could be vulnerable in going to a global pandemic this last year, are people paying for one on one coaching? Do they want group? What are the new problems they’re having? How are we rising to the occasion to listen to the problems that are occurring, occurring today? And how are we being of service in that area?

Lee Kantor: [00:19:08] Now, when you’re working with your clients, do you have kind of a sweet spot of an ideal client or is this kind of industry agnostic or do you have a specialty?

Ivy Slater: [00:19:19] I definitely work very much in the professional service area, so service based businesses in the professional area. So I work with enormous amount of law firms and attorneys in the accounting space, CPA, CFO organizations, financial organizations, a lot in the agency model area and some with some coaches and consultants who are looking to scale

Lee Kantor: [00:19:42] Now, are they what’s the pain they’re having before they hire Slater success? They plateaued or is it are you working with individual kind of workers within the firm or are you working with the firm itself so you can serve all of their employees?

Ivy Slater: [00:19:57] We come into two different areas. One, we work with the leadership team on where they’re looking to scale to next, so it could be that their leadership team has expanded and we come in and helping them now grow and expand to their next level with their leadership team sometimes, which brought in just about sales and sales teams and helping them in doing a lot of training and accountability on building a book of business. I do a lot of leadership work. And that could be from organizations that are reaching their first million to 10 million and more, so sometimes it’s it’s the C suite and the top tier leadership. Sometimes it’s within a department, within an organization, depending upon the organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:46] Now, you mentioned at the beginning of your career coaching was kind of it was more exclusive. Now more and more folks are kind of getting coached and believing in coaching. Are you finding that more organizations are offering coaching to their people?

Ivy Slater: [00:21:01] Well, I’m finding first thing is more organizations actually know what coaching is. So my early days, we actually had to explain what the value of bringing in a coach to an organization. Now, it is a very common term. It’s a common knowledge. So I think that’s a huge win win in it’s not unheard of if the organization brings it in. Sometimes people say, oh, I want to join this peer mentoring coach group or something like that, and organizations will cover part of it or all of that. So it’s a common conversation paid for and supported in various ways.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:43] So you’re saying that that being offered it used to be a perk only for like the highest levels of the organization. Now that’s kind of trickling down further.

Ivy Slater: [00:21:53] Yeah, it was either a perk for the highest tiers of the organization or somebody brought in or a problem in the organization. They bring the coach in to fix.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:03] The board was fixing the CEO,

Ivy Slater: [00:22:06] Fixing the CEO, this person on the you know that they can’t play nice in the bullpen. Can you come in and fix that

Lee Kantor: [00:22:15] Fix, Bob?

Ivy Slater: [00:22:16] Right. Exactly. I not work. I love to do I believe truly in elevating the whole team. And so in unless I hear a story, a story about a client in a large global organization, VPE and I was brought in to work with him, it was kind of like a perk. They threw him. But he also had some goals that he was being passed over. So it was it was a win win on both sides on OK, we’ll throw you a coach moment and. I will say after working with him for our contracted period of time, I always stay in touch with everyone. And what was really cool is it was about three to four months after we concluded. And one of my just random touch phrase, hey, just thinking about you want to check in and see how you’re doing. And the response back was not only was I promoted. But two of my people on my team were promoted on based on how we’re running this team now. And in one of my new acquisitions of what we’re managing, the review on their people has been a program they thought they were going to have to throw out is a program they’re now loving. So that’s what the long term win is about. It’s about full elevation of the team not fixing the person.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:42] Wow. And that goes to the heart of what you got into this business for, is to create that legacy and those ripple effects that must be very kind of rewarding to be to hear that

Ivy Slater: [00:23:53] That’s where the joy is.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:54] Is the joy nowadays of seeing those kind of successes where you’re seeing your clients and your clients colleagues succeed based on your coaching as much as, you know, getting that big printing deal back in the day?

Ivy Slater: [00:24:08] Exactly. It’s truly it’s the ripple effect and it’s the relationships you build now and the relationships that last from here to eternity if you put the effort in. And that’s that’s a huge, huge ripple impact. Now, seeing clients who have gone on to whether their current client or a recently passed client or a past past past client and staying in contact and them saying, oh, my goodness, I I want to let you know this happened in my world, whether it be business, personal or whatever, but they’re still owning the work that you guys did together.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:44] Now, let’s talk about the importance of relationships. I know you wrote a book about how relationships are kind of a keystone in growing a practice and a business.

Ivy Slater: [00:24:56] Absolutely, I will say relationships are the golden ticket to success. When you actually work those relationships there, somebody I had lunch with just literally in the last couple of weeks that I go back close to 20 years with when I follow the line of business we have done together from printing, through coaching, through leadership, through referral sources, through this woman, it ties to seven figures, through one relationship.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:29] Wow, that’s amazing. And that and just the fact that you track it is amazing. I mean, how many people are able to do that?

Ivy Slater: [00:25:37] I am a numbers game. I like a number one. No, truthfully, I see and think in numbers. It might be the dancer in me that I grew up in counting forward and backwards and eight. More importantly, it’s always the leading numbers tell us the story and are we actually willing to read that?

Lee Kantor: [00:25:55] But if somebody is out there that wants to learn more and take their practice, their business, their professional service agency to a new level, what is the website to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Ivy Slater: [00:26:08] It’s Slater success dot com. And then in the book, for you to love the book, it’s actually if you go to say the success that dot com and scroll on down, you will come to getting a free chapter from the bar to the boardroom and the bar to the boardroom. It’s choreographing business success. So authentic relationships, please grab that free chapter and then if it intrigues you, go to Amazon and grab the book.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:34] Well, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Ivy Slater: [00:26:41] Thank you for having me. It’s been a joy while

Lee Kantor: [00:26:43] You’re doing important work and we appreciate you. Thank you. All right. This is Lee Kanter, Rules Hero. Next time on Coach the Coach Radio.