Chaos to Clarity: Transforming Your Business with Coaching

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on this show we have Steve Feld, who is also known as Biz Coach Steve, welcome.

Steve Feld: Well, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your practice. How you serving folks?

Steve Feld: Yeah, I primarily work with small, medium sized business owners, trying to help them get some operations and systems in their business so they can build a long term, sustainable business that one day they can actually sell and get that sweat equity back.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Steve Feld: Well, I’ve owned and operated several businesses and turned well for others around, Round, but I started like any entrepreneurial journey back as a kid. But my first business was actually writing plans for techies so they can get venture capital money. And then that morphed into teaching them how to speak business and not tech so they can speak to the investors. And everything was going good until the tech bubble burst and, well, so did my business. And and then after three days of crying in a corner, I opened up my second business consulting with the businesses that were still around and everything took off from there.

Lee Kantor: So what’s kind of the what is your current client pool look like now? Are they startup technology startups or are they kind of mom and pop brick and mortar? Do you have a niche?

Steve Feld: A lot of mom and pop, because that’s where my passion lies, is small business owners. A lot of them are owner operators, so they’re probably doing anywhere from 5 to 20 million as an owner operator. But I’ve been teaching entrepreneurs classes, workshops. I’ve been doing that as my pro bono, as a mentor of Score Arizona Commerce Authority. I taught a class called ABC’s of starting a business three times a month for ten years. So my passion is to see anyone going into business, to be a business owner and not set up a hobby or an income stream, but really make a business out of it.

Lee Kantor: So when you’re working with a client, are they typically a client in a local market, or are they kind of, you know, the world’s their oyster?

Steve Feld: Yeah, a lot of them are the world’s, their oyster.

Steve Feld: I’ve had clients in Australia, Dubai, England, Germany, all over the world. They just needed someone to really kind of kick them on the backside, tell it to them straight and help them grow their business and keep them focused. And that’s a big thing with entrepreneurs. We have shiny object syndrome, so trying to keep them focused. Focus. But yeah, I’ve worked with clients all over the world, which has been quite a great experience.

Lee Kantor: Well, let’s kind of, uh, give some advice to our listeners. Let’s say they are a local business and they get their clients locally. What kind of strategy would you deploy for somebody in that world, as opposed to somebody who’s trying to market to, you know, people all over the planet?

Steve Feld: Right.

Steve Feld: Yeah, it’s the same. Uh, those clients that were I worked with over in other countries, they all obviously operated locally. But yeah, the first thing I always ask is like, who’s your target market? Many business owners think everyone’s their target market, and we have to really hone that in, because once we really know who their target market is, that’s going to set us up great. When we start working on the marketing and operations parts of things. So our language, our verbiage, mission statement, websites, everything will be towards that target market. And of course things do evolve and change. But many business owners, what we see is they’re getting either lucky or they just don’t know who their target market is and they’re picking up scraps. I call them the scraps, not the real. They’re real core market. So that’s where usually I start off with.

Lee Kantor: And then like, what are some of the questions or how do you kind of determine who their actual ideal client is as opposed to who they think it is?

Steve Feld: I just usually straight up ask them, who is your target market? If they hem and haw and they can’t figure it out, they don’t really know. Give you an example. I worked with an insurance agency owner, good size agency. I asked him the same question. He rattled off all his stats, so we pulled up his client database and found out it wasn’t anything what he thought it was, and I said, let’s start pulling these people. Why did they hire you versus the next insurance agent. So we did a poll, a survey, and we found out that certain words that he was projecting in his marketing were resonating with them. So we actually changed his marketing to actually target that market. And we also found out he did not want to be targeting certain types of clients. So we actually put some of that in the target in the marketing as well. So now he was really honing in in his agency started taking off even faster.

Lee Kantor: So is that unusual to, uh, for a business owner to think that their target is a but actually, it’s, you know, gee.

Steve Feld: I know I, I’m a victim of that. I used to target insurance agency owners and financial planners, and one day I am filled up with clients. I can’t take another one. And I started looking and I did not have one of those that market in my client list. So I talked to each one of them, like, why did you decide to go with me? And they told me, well, this May. This really spoke to me. This spoke to me. I just changed the verbiage in my message, in my messaging to small business owners and owner operators or businesses. And it didn’t change anything. It actually increased my business.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you say you changed kind of that language, was that changing the language on your website in communication, if you went to a chamber meeting, is it? Um, you know, on your social media, like on your business card, like, did you just you just change everything once you learned everything?

Steve Feld: Yes, everything. Uh, it was top to bottom. My elevator pitch, uh, business cards didn’t really change because it didn’t say who I targeted there, but my website gave I got testimonials by doing the surveys to which actually helped my business. And yeah, just changed all the marketing, the messaging of who was my real target market.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re doing that type of surveying, are you the one actually doing it or do you hire a firm to do it? Or maybe somebody on your team to ask those questions like, how do you kind of, you know, the nuts and bolts of going out and polling your clients to see, you know, what, what persuaded them to buy and what they like about your service?

Steve Feld: I’ve used all those methods, actually. So a lot of times I’ll work if it’s the owner. Operator. Let’s come up with the questions, because we do have a large list of questions that we’ve used in the past. I’ve also had to hire a company that does the surveys because they had a large contact list, and we wanted to get a bigger database, a bigger pool of it. So we hired a company that was professionally done in that, and they really helped us out. And we also have hired a company that did surveys like electronic and mail surveys, because that was their specialty. So I tap into the pros. And then if it’s a smaller business like okay, you only have 15 clients, let’s just call them up. You have the relationship with them. This is going to take no time at all.

Lee Kantor: Now early on you mentioned the importance of getting the operations right. Do you find that a lot of companies kind of take that for granted and they focus maybe on sales first, or maybe too much on that and not enough on operations?

Steve Feld: I think they they’re not focusing on sales first. I see that more. So they’re trying to like sell like come up with their message which isn’t hitting anyone. And then they wonder why they have no sales. I’ll give you an example. One of my companies, I just focus on sales. I did not have a website, didn’t even have business cards. I was after sales. I honed in my marketing message, my elevator pitch, and that’s what did it. Whereas a lot of businesses are just going out there and like, hey, I got a product or a service, by my stuff, and then they wonder why it’s not working. So that’s why we go back to the target market. But then if they’re up and running, I go into their internal operations, their systems, they might be doing redundancies or they’re doing accounting and they hate accounting, and they’re spending hours and hours and just getting frustrated with it. And my question always is like, well, why don’t you have someone who loves this stuff? Do it. It’ll save you a lot of time and money. So it depends on the level of the business. But yeah.

Lee Kantor: So, um, you one of the first step is always kind of ideal client. And then you get into kind of marketing messaging and sales and then you move into operations.

Steve Feld: Yes. Because we want to get the money coming in. That’s the key thing. And then start testing systems. How are they flowing? I’ve worked with manufacturing businesses, brick and mortars, retail service based. So it’s a little bit of difference in each of them. And I want to see the operation flow like they have a product. How’s the logistics working? Is it being touched too many times? How can we flow it in and out of the building faster? And then how we, you know, looking at our inventory levels and capacity, it just goes on, goes it goes really deep. But we also document everything, especially for smaller business owners, because one day they’re going to want to sell their business. And if they don’t have everything documented and systems in place as a buyer, it’s not very attractive. Now we try to get those built as well.

Lee Kantor: So you’re kind of um, you don’t you don’t neglect keeping the end in mind. Uh, you want to be able to give them something that at the end of the day, they have an asset that’s sellable.

Steve Feld: Absolutely. And every business has a different end goal. Could be legacy, passing it down to their kids. It could be I’m going to just use this as an income stream for the rest of my life and have a great living and a retirement. Perfect. Others want to sell. Others want to be acquired by a competitor. And unfortunately, we saw a lot of that in in 2020 with Covid. They didn’t have a business to sell and they wanted to sell because of Covid. And it’s like, wow, this is where you have to build a business and have your end in mind when you start the business. What is the goal at the end? What are you going to do with this business?

Lee Kantor: Now how do you deliver your coaching services? Are you kind of just asking them questions and then they’re going out and doing the work? Or are you kind of also, it sounds like maybe doing some consulting where you’re rolling up your sleeves and helping them out.

Steve Feld: It depends on the client. I used to have one of my companies was consulting, so I rolled up the sleeves and did the work. Now it’s a lot more coaching, asking questions, going deep and then giving them my toolbox so they have at least a reference. So when we’re talking like even surveys. Well, here’s a pages and pages of survey questions. Let’s go through them together and find what hits with you that you think your audience would react to as well. So I do have the resources. I share them with my clients all the time.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you, um, leaning into AI at all in your practice?

Steve Feld: Oh yeah. I’ve been in AI for a while. Um, I’m loving it. And it’s a tool. And I show a lot of the business owners. They think it’s the end all or it’s going to replace me, which is false. It’s. It’s a tool. But I’m teaching you how to use the tool in your business. Use it for marketing, use it for operations, use it for, you know, even answering your emails. It can be done for that now.

Lee Kantor: So what’s some kind of low hanging fruit for somebody who hasn’t taken the leap into leaning into AI just yet, but what’s kind of an easy way to get them started? At least exploring and experimenting?

Steve Feld: I would say start off with the most common ChatGPT and learn some prompts. So it could be things you can actually have a conversation with ChatGPT and many other programs is just getting in there. What do you want out of it? It’s just like anything else. What is your end goal when you put this information in and what do you expect it to come out? So for example, I write articles all the time. I actually write them, throw them in ChatGPT. I say clean up my grammar because that is not a strength of mine. And then also make it maybe more entertaining or emotional and it’ll help me on those things that I those are my blind spots. And then I take it out and I play with it again, and I might run it through 3 or 4 times, but at the end, I still proofread every single word and make the adjustments. So it’s still me. I don’t believe in. Hey AI, write me this article and I just take it, copy, paste and call it a day. It’s a tool.

Lee Kantor: Right? I think a lot of people think it’s that. And I think you’re 100% right. It’s a tool, but it’s not you. You. There’s no replacement for you, and you don’t want it to replace you.

Steve Feld: No. And I’ve been playing with, uh, with, uh, perplexity lately with a couple other coaches, and we’re sharing each other’s prompts and we’re taking our prompts to a whole different level now, and we’re having a lot of fun just as a group learning and how to expand it. And now we’re taking that knowledge and using other AI programs because we’re getting our prompts so good, so well honed in.

Lee Kantor: Now, how important is community? Uh, is that part of the deliverable is that you help your clients kind of, uh, work with other clients of yours. Do you do you have something that forms a community?

Steve Feld: Yes, I have. I’ve had mastermind groups and group coaching the mastermind groups. I see those individuals. It takes them a little bit of time to really form the bond, but I give it time every meeting so they can network with each other. And I have seen relationships and third businesses. I call it the third business because they each have an idea, and then two of them get together and create something even bigger and better. It’s amazing the power of the mastermind group and I’m and the community that it brings. By the time you’re in fifth sixth month of this, everyone has bonded so well and they are sharing everything.

Lee Kantor: So it sounds like you, you kind of eat your own cooking there, that you also have kind of colleagues that you, um, work with in that manner and have community.

Steve Feld: Absolutely. And I’ve ran mastermind groups for I don’t even know how many years. Quite a few years. Same with group coaching. It’s a different format, but it still builds the bonds. And I’ve been running an accountability group I think for seven years now. It’s just people coming in saying what their goals are. Did they achieve them or not? No excuses are allowed. And then here’s my goal for the next meeting. Fast and furious. And everyone in the group knows each other outside of the group because connect with them. Get to know them. And a lot of them have formed joint venture partners together.

Lee Kantor: Now, what would you say to somebody who’s never had coaching before? What would be something that might surprise them about having a coach?

Steve Feld: I think the number one thing is, oh, I hired a coach. So they’re going to like, take over my business and do everything. And that’s farthest from the truth. They’re there to get you back on your track. So they’re going to ask you deep questions, some very uncomfortable questions, but it’s for your benefit. And a lot of times I see with entrepreneurs, because I was one of these who rejected having a coach with the mindset, no one knows my business better than me. My business is unique, and I was telling myself one of the biggest lies out there. Once I got over that and my ego, I hired a coach because my business was failing and within 45 days, my life and my business changed because they kept me on track. They were in looking out for my best interest, even though it was some tough love and I was very focused and I had goals and strategies in place. After two years, my business was just thriving while my competitors were wondering like, what the hell did I do? And it was the coach that actually kept me focused and asked me those hard hitting questions and I still did all the work.

Lee Kantor: So what are some of those hard hitting questions that got you moving?

Steve Feld: The biggest one was, well, why? Why are you doing 20 things in your business when you should only be focusing on, like these two that bring in revenue? And I couldn’t answer it. I’m like, well, these also bring in revenue. Great. Let’s pull up the financials and look. And then we pull them up. Well as a business owner you’re go go go. You’re not looking at this stuff when someone says stop and look. Now you have a coach saying stop and look. When I looked at the financials, I almost threw up. I was sick. I never stopped and looked. And now I have someone forcing me to do it. And it was the greatest thing. After, you know, I got done dry heaving because I didn’t like the financials. And then I realized they’re right. I’m doing too much and I’m spread too thin. Let’s focus on what’s making me money in my business.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Steve Feld: Yes. My website. Com or LinkedIn? I’m on LinkedIn. That’s probably the best too as well. And you get to learn a lot about me and ask me any questions. I’m more than happy to help people. Short and simple questions. I’m not going to solve the the world’s greatest universal questions, but you know, I’m going to help you out. Whatever I can or give you point you in the right way, give you the resources, whatever it takes.

Lee Kantor: Now, before we wrap, can you share a story maybe the most rewarding or impactful, uh, relationship you had when it came to coaching? Share maybe what the challenge was when they came to you, and how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Steve Feld: Yeah. So one of my clients came to me. We met multiple times so he can figure me out. And he said, I’m going to pull the trigger. And our first meeting, I go, you’ve been holding back the whole time. Really? What’s going on in your life and in your business? He broke down crying. His wife’s on the verge of divorcing him. He was ready to file bankruptcy. His business was five times their earnings in debt. And he was getting sued by his ex-partner. So. And he and the bank was coming to him every day ready to foreclose on his building. The guy was in shambles. And it’s like, okay, let’s breathe. And, you know, we got him calmed down, but it’s like, let’s take what’s the biggest things on that we can change immediately. And the first thing we noticed when I was doing just a little research in his industry is he was the lowest, the cheapest in his industry, but one of the highest selling volumes. So we increased his prices to the average. That started bringing the income in. I actually got him to start communicating with his wife and that changed.

Steve Feld: I got to meet his wife very well. She really appreciated that. He finally got out, got some help. I had him go talk to the bank and we had a game plan how he’s going to talk to the bank. We prepared a game plan. They liked it and stayed off his back for a while. I got him to actually meet with his ex-partner to find out what what the real deal is. On being sued after about. He said they met for two hours. In the first ten minutes, he found out he was suing him just because he was mad. So the lawsuit got dropped, got the bank off of him, saved his marriage. Then we started really working on his business and within eight months he turned his first profit he’s ever had since he started the business and started paying the debt off two years later, paid off the debt. He had hundreds of thousands in the bank. Him and his wife were probably the best relationship you’ve ever seen. And his ex-partner? Uh, they were now best buddies again.

Lee Kantor: The coaching impact is real, huh?

Steve Feld: It is real. I mean, I’ve been on both sides of it. I even have a coach. I still get kicked in the backside every now and then. And I love it because I know the power of it. It really helps to have someone look out for your best interests. That’s not, you know, having their hand out the whole time, but they’re looking out for you and your best interest and whatever they do, it’s like, hey, I’m trying to help you reach your goals. It’s not about me.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Steve Feld: I am about ready to open up a new mastermind group for the beginning of the year, so I am looking for those great entrepreneurs. Usually been in business doing a couple hundred thousand or more, because then they can talk at a different level and get them in the room together and watch the power of the mastermind group. And I’ve seen that power time and time again, and people have broken down with problems, and there’s someone in the room that’s been through it, done it. They have the the answer and the knowledge and the resources, and that problem gets solved within a minute. It’s amazing the power of a mastermind group.

Lee Kantor: And they can sign up at com or connect connect with you on LinkedIn.

Steve Feld: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Well, Steve, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Steve Feld: Well, thank you very much for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.