Biz Bites

Transform your sales and marketing for growth and building purpose driven websites. In this episode of Biz Bites, I welcome Steve Bambury, the co-founder of Growth Partners Ltd, who shares his passion for accelerating the impact of purpose led organisations and reveals the secrets behind successful revenue generating strategies used by global brands and how to make that work for mid tier businesses and down.

Tune in to explore the importance of aligning values, With clients understanding customer behaviour and leveraging technology to predict future revenue. Additionally, you’ll gain some insights into the common pitfalls of website design and the unique methodology of building websites backwards. Don’t miss the bonus content as well on the three biggest problems with website design.

That’s a special one. You’ll have to sign up in the details below in the show notes. If you want access to that one, all that, and so much more on Biz Bites, the destination for professional service, business leaders, just like you to learn about those one percenters that will transform your business. ge So let’s get started on changing the world. One person at a time. Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of Biz Bites proudly brought to you by com together, the people behind podcasts done for you, because we’re all about exposing other people’s brilliance. Don’t forget to subscribe to Biz Bites and check out.

Podcast done for you as well in the show notes. Now let’s get into it.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites. And I’m really fascinated by my guest today because we’ve had a little bit of a chat recently, and his approach to building websites is quite different, but he’s got a lot of information to give. Give us and share and I know that they’ll make a big difference to everyone listening in today.

So let’s welcome Steve to the program. Welcome. Thanks for having me Anthony. It’s great to be here. Look, I appreciate you giving up your time and I think best way to get started with these things is for you to give us a little bit of an introduction to who you are and what you’re about. Sure.

But my name is Steve Bambury. I’m very proud and privileged to have co founded you. growth partners a number of years ago now. And I’ve been in the field of sales and marketing, helping connect companies with more of their ideal customers for coming up to 40 years now. It’s something I’m really passionate about.

My personal passion is to accelerate the impact of purpose led organisations. And as I say, a few years ago, I had the privilege and the pleasure of co founding growth partners. And our team have successfully delivered revenue generation strategies for some really big global leaders, brands like Qantas, like Apple, like Johnson.

And we’ve taken what we learned from working with those big brands, those same, if you like, elite methodologies. And we’ve developed the systems and the processes and the technologies that allow us to deliver those same strategies for the mid tier market in a way that’s just previously been unreachable for them.

Fantastic. There’s a lot to discuss in in this and we’re definitely going to to get through a whole bunch of things, but I wanted to pick up on you very first. On the very first part, just about the idea of purpose driven, because I think that’s a fundamental idea that you’re about. Tell me what that means to you.

Yeah, look, that’s a great question. I think in business with the speed of business that’s happening and it’s accelerating it, we lost our way that, we’re really, it’s humans doing business with humans. All right. A friend of mine said to me the other day, we don’t sell to a building, do we?

It’s no, it’s so for me it’s really about that human connection. It’s really understanding the other person, the person on the other side of the conversation. What’s really important to them? Who are they as a human? What is their core purpose in life?

What is the difference they want to make and what are their values? For me, a value exchange. Starts with the value alignment. So it’s really important for me that we, we have these common values that we work towards. And when we engage with a customer, we don’t look at it as a supplier customer relationship.

We look at it as a partnership and a formal real partnership. It’s important that you’ve got those common values in that way of being. And that enables us to work together in a collaborative partnership for the mutual benefit of all parties. So when I talk about accelerating the impact of purpose lead organisations, it’s like, what are you passionate about?

Why does your business exist? And what is the difference that you want to make? That’s what I’m really interested in to start with so that we can make sure that we were actually partnering with someone that’s going in the same direction is what we are. Yeah it’s such an important thing, isn’t it?

Because if you’re not sharing values, then the chances that the relationship will work out not very good. And it’s not something that people spend enough time, I think, discussing and working out what actually is their purpose. It’s become a little bit of a catchphrase for some at the moment and people think, Oh, it’s a bit woke.

I don’t need to do that. But it’s not That’s not the case at all. The underlying idea of the purpose of the business is so core to who you are and what will attract people to you, isn’t it? Absolutely. Absolutely. And look, Simon Sinek’s got a lot to, he played into that with, start with why.

Why does your business exist? And why should other people care? And cynics, as people don’t buy what we sell so much as they, they buy what we believe. People, if they believe that what we’re doing is good, then we can attract an audience to that. And for me, it’s you know, you touched on a point there, Anthony, which I think is really important.

We’ve worked really hard to build an amazing culture and to be able to attract the talent into our team to deliver the outcomes that we do. And that talent is really hard to find. And if we bring people into that culture that don’t fit and don’t align with that culture, Then we run the risk of losing good people.

We run the risk of bringing people into our ecosystem, if you like, that don’t share those core values. And that can be that can be a real mismatch for everyone. Yeah, sometimes the best people in terms of a skill set are not the best people for your business if your values and your purpose are not aligned.

Absolutely. Yeah, couldn’t agree more. So talk to me then about how you take this idea of what you’ve been, what you wanted to achieve as a business and how do you end up with clients like Apple and Qantas and the like. We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Bites podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast, one for your business, where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world?

Come talk to us at Podcasts Done For You. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you. So all you have to do is show up for a conversation. But don’t worry about that. We will do everything to design a program that suits you. From the strategy right through to publishing and of course, helping you share it.

So come talk to us. Podcast done for you. com. au details in the show notes below. Now back to Biz Bites. And how do you end up with clients like Apple and Qantas and the like? It’s really come down to, the quality of talent that we’ve had. within the organization. People have been in this game for a long time and have been on top of their game and have been doing good work.

And it all comes down to results and outcomes. At the end of the day, we can talk a lot about what we do, but at the end of the day, it’s those results that make them make a real difference. So delivering those results allows people to get recognized. for the work that they’re doing.

And if they’re good people, then people want to spend more time with those good people. So some of the talent that we’ve got within our team they’ve been doing this for a long time. And they’ve delivered some pretty amazing results for big brands like the ones that we mentioned. And that’s that’s awesome.

and being able to then, smart that down so that we can make it available to companies where it’s been unreachable previously. That’s a real buzz for me. It’s been, I came from, the startup community. I’ve started a couple of my own businesses in the past. So I love that notion of having an idea and one to create a meaningful difference in the future where you’re in that startup phase, but you haven’t got the, the size of the budget that these big brands have got, but you’ve still got access to the skills and the talent that can actually take you on that journey and allow you to make a big difference.

Yeah, it’s and it’s interesting is that difference between working for those big brands. I know when you’re a business and you’re tied to those big brands it’s great at first. There’s a lot of expectations on what to deliver. And big budgets can mean bigger pressure as well.

Usually does. And so what made, what triggered the decision to go from, okay, we’re targeting these big end of town to saying, we need to start looking at a different model for the business. Yeah. Look, I think for me, a couple of things, one has been able to bring it back to the community that I live, that I really cherish having come from it myself.

And having seen the struggles of the, the small to medium enterprise and being able to give back to that community is really important. So that for me is, the fundamental in being able to do that. One of the other things that’s quite important is that this is a level playing field now.

This whole digital world. It’s not so much the size of your budget in many cases, not so much the size of the budget that’s going to make the difference. It’s about deploying the skills and doing things differently. And when I say it’s a level playing field in the area that we’re in the organic space, you own that organic space by being relevant to your customers.

And the way that they’re searching, the way that they’re behaving online. And you can’t necessarily buy that. So we we see in a lot of cases the ability for smaller brands to be able to go up there and upset, upstage if you like, some of the bigger brands by doing things smarter and by doing things better.

And by being able to connect with their customers in a way that their competitors aren’t doing. So that’s exciting. And one of the other things to consider also is that with some of the big brands and I don’t want to make a gross generalization here, but one of the one of the big advantages for smaller companies, the reason that we work in that mid tier is by having direct and immediate access to key decision makers.

We can make decisions quickly. We can present a strategy that makes sense for everyone, collaboratively agree on it, and then we can move like that. And a lot of these big brands don’t have the luxury of being able to do that. Decisions are made by committee. Some of those people are overseas. And that decision making process can be very long and very slow.

And and that that could be quite frustrating. So the mid tier, as I say is exciting because we’ve got the ability to have that agility and and move quickly and are moving quickly, we gain a competitive advantage and a team love that. The team, one of our core values is passion and you’ll see that our team are very passionate about the partnerships that we choose to engage in so that when we have that partnership with a customer that customer’s competitors become our competitors.

Our number one goal was to go out there and help grow their business and we do it together. And we’ve got a much better chance of doing that if we can be agile and move quickly. What I love about your response to all of that was we started off. Before I asked that question about the big brands talking about why and purpose, we didn’t actually ask you what, completely what your why and purpose is, but it’s so evident in the way that you responded to that, that being in that mid tier market is something that you guys are absolutely passionate about.

And that, Ability to move with agility is clearly a big differentiator in and it is a, because when you move to that market and even at, to smaller businesses beyond that the struggle is under, it’s one thing to take the ideas of what you’ve got at a high level in a corporate, but it’s another thing to understand that, I understand that resources and ability even to think strategically in the same way that a bigger company is quite different in that mid and smaller tier.

So how do you correlate those two things? Because it’s bringing it back down and it’s the idea of what you’ve learned and then bringing it back down to that level. How much have you had to change in the way that you think and even communicate? Yeah. Look, great question. We’re very process driven.

So having process is a foundation allows us to create consistency, and it allows us to communicate really well with our customers, what we’re doing, how we’re doing it in that partnership and the outcomes that we’re going to achieve. So we’re very clear on sitting there expectations from the outset and having that process is the foundation is fundamental to that success.

The mindset is totally a big one as well. Having the right mindset, and that comes back down again to, our core values, having that value alignment and every single team member will be able to talk. Freely and openly about our values. We choose our team members based on their values.

We the very first slide in our presentation to our customers when we identify if they’re the right fit and we can actually solve the problems that they’re looking to solve and we can make a big dent in their world and we put a proposal together. The first slide in our proposal is our core values.

That’s what we talk about very first and foremost. So that alignment with the values, having the right mindset, having the process to support everything that we’re doing allows us to be able to make that big difference for the smaller brands as well. It’s such an important starting point. How much as well do you have to, show the vision of what because is the vision of what you want to try and deliver for businesses beyond what they can see themselves? And how easy is it to sell them on that? Absolutely. And I love the questions that you’ve got. You’ve got some great questions here, Anthony. Yeah, totally. A lot of the companies. That we work with.

Not all, but a lot of them are struggling. They’re struggling to make headway in this digital space. A lot of companies have been burnt in the past. They’ve invested into digital strategies that haven’t been effective. They’re feeling a little bit, feeling a little bit burnt by that experience. Their growth may have stagnated.

Their sales and marketing activities that they were doing even as little as 12 months, two years ago are no longer effective. Because this digital space is moving so fast and they’re confused with all the options that are in front of them. So in a lot of cases our customers are confused, are frustrated that what they’re doing is not working and they don’t know what to do.

And we’re able to show them a clear pathway to being able to solve those problems in a way that they haven’t considered before. And that’s really exciting. One of the things that we’ve worked really hard on is building that trust and building that trust early. Because when you’re operating in a market like, like we are, there’s a lot of mistrust.

There’s a lot of broken promises that have taken place. And if your inbox is anything like mine, your inbox is overflowing. But people promising this promising that and people looking at and go, I don’t know what to do. I’m confused. I don’t know where to go. I know what I’m doing isn’t working.

I need to do something different. So in order for us to build that trust, we need to be able to show them a pathway to a better future. And we’ve incorporated a really interesting process into our process. To our sales process, which allows our prospects to try our program before they buy it, and that builds tremendous trust, because in doing that, we can identify some of the reasons why they’ve struggled in the past and how we would do things differently to change that outcome.

And then we start creating a picture. Of the future that we can create for them. We’ve even developed the technology system, which predicts future revenue for three years from the work that we’re going to do together. So they can see clarity to a, to their future state clarity, to a better future, and they can actually see that the money that’s going to flow as a result of that.

And that’s a tremendous way to build trust and be able to paint that picture for them of where they can go and how they can get unstuck. And where they are now. I think and a shout out to George Bryant and you and I’ll talk about George Bryant after this, after the show, but for listeners of BizBytes, you’ll be familiar with the podcast we did earlier in the year with George.

And one of the things we talked about is the no, and trust, but it’s beyond that. It’s the safety. And I think that that’s where a lot of people go astray. They build the trust and then they destroy the trust. Almost immediately because they try to sell upsell people almost straight away or they take the money and then there’s large gaps before anything is going to happen.

And then they get told that it’s going to take a while before you see results and all of, and there’s nothing being fed into the process. Whereas when you do what you’re doing is building that idea of safety in there and people feel safe straight away with the knowledge of that process. Of what is going to happen and how it’s going to happen.

And I think that’s a incredibly clever way of doing it. So talk to me a little bit more about the technology that you’ve got and utilizing for that, because it’s quite unique, isn’t it? Yeah. We’re really hard to develop the solution that we have and it stemmed from, the frustration in the market.

When I got together with my business partner we both shared a common frustration having been in marketing for years. I started. My first business in 93. Back in 93, marketing’s role was to, I placed an advert in the yellow pages, the phone would ring, and that was marketing’s job done, right?

Now we see in a complex selling environment, when I say complex, where a salesperson is required to complete the transaction. As opposed to, you buy a water bottle, you see it online, you pull out the credit card, you buy it. Fairly simple transaction, e commerce.

That’s not the space that we’re in. It’s more of that complex sale. So with a complex sale, people are 70, 80 percent of the way through their journey before they even engage with the sales team. So that whole process has changed now. And we recognize that that shift. From, those earlier days of yellow pages, probably 10 percent of the way through the journey.

So that means that we’ve got to fundamentally look differently at our digital assets and primarily our website. Because we see websites that just aren’t doing the role that they need to be filling in today’s today’s modern environment. And that, that stemmed from starting to develop the process and starting to put the technology around that process and the systems behind it to allow us to build websites differently.

And that’s when we came up with a methodology of building websites backwards, because we looked at the traditional way they were being built and said it’s not working. Fundamentally websites are just not performing in the way that they should be. And if your website’s not consistently generating high quality leads.

Then I would venture to say that your website’s not doing what it needs to do in that complex selling environment. Sure, there are going to be websites that just sit there as a nice glossy brochure to validate what what you needed to validate. And in some businesses, a small percentage of them, that’s probably all that it needs to do.

But for most, it needs to do a lot more than that. And we saw a big failing in websites. And that’s that’s why we started to put that technology and the systems in the process around that, taking what we learned from those big brands, putting that into the blend and coming up with. With our methodology that’s got us to this point here.

So for everyone listening in we’re going to do a bit of bonus content that you’re going to have to subscribe to and the details will be in the show notes to get the three biggest problems with with website design. So we’re going to look at that whole idea of building the website backwards in a little bit more detail in the bonus content.

So you’re going to have to stay tuned for that one and we’ll come back to it. But I did want to pick up on, on this whole idea of digital. Assets and changing environment because I think that Often business doesn’t, is looking for a quick fix and the problem with the quick fix, if you find it, and I doubt whether you find it because all those people that are advertising those very quick fixes usually are full of, what the problem is, as you said is things are moving so rapidly.

So how do you keep on top of that as a business, how, you talk about it, Agility in terms of making decisions, but you also have to make, try and find time to allow things to see whether they’re going to be a success or not, know when the right time is to move to the next thing and know which thing to pick because it is a little bit of a gamble because things are moving so quickly.

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a real challenge for a lot of businesses, even big brands are struggling. In many respects to keep up with some of these changes, as I mentioned earlier, Anthony, we’re an organic agency. So our strategy is based on having that website is the foundation of everything that we’re doing right.

And in our space, it’s moving so very fast. As an example, Google made four and a half thousand adjustments to their algorithm Last year alone Google are the major player in this market because they’ve got over 93 percent market share here in Australia. And that market share hasn’t gone backwards anywhere fast in the last five years.

I think it’s been consistently floating around that level. We’ve seen a move away when chat GPT and other technologies have come in a very small move away, but then it moved back again. Why? Because Google is the most relevant platform out there. And in the organic space, it’s relevance that makes the most important difference.

When you go to Google, you get a relevant answer to the question that you’ve got or the problem that you’re trying to solve. So when they make all of those adjustments, the way that they’re making that relevance and lining up that customer behavior with that website changing all the time, it’s very hard to keep up.

And that’s why our expertise, it plays into our hands and some to some extent because our team are dedicated completely to that very narrow space. And it makes sense. There are other areas as well. Paid media. Whether it be paid social, whether it be Google AdWords, our team have got some experience with that, but we don’t do it.

We’ve got partners in that place that we just pass people on to. And the reason is that we’ve got our hands full keeping up in the space that we’re wearing. And even those big brands come to us. And ask for our expertise in that space because we’re very, very niche in that space.

So if you’re a company, if you’re a, a mid tier company, a small to mid tier company, you’re going to have a marketing team. It’s where do you deploy that marketing team to get the best results. And in some places it makes perfect sense to keep it in house, whether that be some of your social media posts, whether it be making nice brochures for the sales team, those things that make sense to keep in house.

Okay. Where it really makes sense to outsource paid media with your with your Google AdWords, for instance, you definitely want to be outsourcing that type of thing, unless you’ve got a big team that can keep up with all the changes. And in our space, it makes sense as well, which is why we form those, why we form those partnerships.

So talk to me a little bit more about your space and give us some insights and tips for what businesses can and should be doing at the moment to, what is happening in the market? What are your predictions of what’s happening? Where should they be moving? There’s a lot of talk around AI and AI is, you Since the mid fifties.

It’s really only been in the last couple of years that it started to lift its head up, and there’s been a lot of talk around AI since, open AI and chat GPT first hit the market. The challenge with AI is that a lot of companies are doing, they’re doing one of two things. They’re typically copying what their competitors are doing or they are using AI to create their content.

The challenge with that is that Google knows that their index is going to be flooded. By copycat or very similar content. So if your content is exactly the same as everybody else’s, it’s not going to stand out. It’s not going to stand above the crowd. So companies need to start thinking differently around how they create their content.

For example, we we look at multilayered content. And let’s just take a step back, initially. If you think around, we talk a lot around Google. How do Google prioritize that relevance and what are their ranking factors? Their ranking factors, have you heard the acronym EAT? E A T.

EAT’s been around since 2014. So that was how they tend to rank content. Expertise. authority and trust. So they’re looking for those factors. Now, in late 2022, they introduced a new one to that acronym, and that was experience. So with experience, they wanted companies or they wanted people to show that they actually had experience relative to what they were talking about.

Now, this might surprise you, but there were travel companies or travel guides that were writing about destinations that they’d never been to. There were companies that were reviewing products that they’d never seen. Alright so what Google’s looking for now is that they want us, is that they want us to demonstrate that we’ve got experience as well as that expertise, as well as that authority, and as well as that trust.

And there are a number of ways that we can do that. So things like case studies, for example, that demonstrated our expertise, are going to build trust. If we’re a company that’s selling a product that’s got medical benefits having medical professionals, whether they be physiotherapists or doctors, providing context to how it benefits those companies, the products benefit benefit people.

Gives us that layer of expertise and experience, and it builds that authority. That multi layered approach to the way that we’re generating content is a great way to start differentiating. Like I say, if everyone’s looking the same, then you’re not going to stand out. So we need to start thinking about that differently.

That’s why I love podcasting so much, because it brings out the individual stories and expertise, which is what the differentiator is, as you say, because it’s okay to use AI to generate the base level of content, because, some things that when you pack a box, it’s still packing a box, right?

But it’s the experience around it and the stories around it that make the difference. To whether they choose one person over the next to who you want to who you want to utilize and I think that’s it’s the whole AI thing is really interesting as well because particularly in the content realm, I’ve noticed a significant difference between the different AI tools that are out there as well.

And I find it really fascinating. fascinating. I tried a bit of an experiment the other day where I was interviewing someone for a client. And so I needed to understand a little bit more about the area of expertise because it was outside of my core understanding. And it was really fascinating to see the difference between what different AI tools.

delivered. And I think that’s part of it as well as keeping on top of, even if you make that decision to use that chat, GPT has the name that everyone talks about, but it is it the best one to be using for your business? And that’s, even that requires some thoughts and constantly reevaluating.

Absolutely. There are so many tools out there now that are all a lot of them in that very narrow space of providing expertise for this or for that or for the other. And they are constantly changing. So one of the things that’s constant is change. But like I say, it’s knowing where to use it and where not to like the point that you made is a good one is that you can use a I to help ideate.

And give you some thoughts and ideas, but there’s this currently we know where it’s going. We’re not too sure where it’s going to end up. But right now, that human curated content that’s been given some insight, if you like, or some ideation from AI is going to help you stand out. It’s going to help you create that content that Google sees is more relevant.

more authority, more trust, and you’ll get traffic as a result of it. Yeah. It’s a very interesting idea that people are so becoming so reliant on AI and the amount of people that I’ve encountered that have championed the fact that they have written eBooks to full books, for example, Just using AI.

I find that a little bit it’s not even that it’s scary. I find that it’s mind numbing because it’s not them. Yeah. And what I want to buy into is the individual. It’s, It still gets back down to that principle, doesn’t it? That people do business with people and if you’re, as you put it earlier, if you’re just buying a bottle of water, that’s a very different story to buying an engaged service with someone and and a much greater expense.

But even even with the bottle of water, there’s a story that is around it that can be quite different to this, to the next bottle of water. Absolutely. Absolutely. And look content today. Sure. We’ve gotta write our content to some extent so that it, it appeals to the robots that are trolling and giving us that, that, that are doing their work.

But we’re selling to humans, right? So it comes back to that early part of the conversation we’re having today, making that human connection. And if we are gonna be 70, 80% of the way through our buyer journey and that’s gonna be a digital journey. Then we need to make that human connection. And what better way to make a human connection than a human, writing that content and delivering it to another human on the other side, to be able to express our differentiators in a way that AI can’t necessarily do it.

By making that, that, that connection, we’re going to build a deeper layer of trust and we’re going to earn, we’re going to earn those differentiators through Google’s algorithms as well. So they’re looking for that. And I think people are craving that human connection as opposed to content that, you’ll know it yourself.

You’ll see content that’s been produced by AI and it goes, oh that’s all well and good, but it’s, yeah, versus someone that’s actually taking the time. Because it takes, let’s make no mistake, it takes longer to create it in the way that we’re talking about. But the results are certainly worthwhile.

A reminder to everyone, we’re gonna come back to some website tips and bonus content. So you’ll have to click on that link below. But I did wanna ask you about one other area, because you talked from the beginning about sales and marketing, and these are two fundamental areas that. Often have been in conflict with one another for lots of historical reasons.

But talk to me about in this changing environment that we’ve got, how that blend is becoming more and more critical and how you find that idea of where does, what is it that, Marketing needs to do now. And where is it that sales needs to take over? Yeah, look, that’s a great question. We have a lot of conversations with CEOs that had the marketing team in the sales team are a little bit of war.

That the marketing team had an experience recently where the marketing team had generated 1000 leads for the sales team, and they were frustrated. They were complaining to the CEO that, Sales team were useless. They couldn’t close one single lead that they were given. The sales team were frustrated because they said, look, we’ve been given a thousand leads, I’ve gone through a hundred of them, they’re absolutely rubbish, the marketing team have got no idea of what an ideal customer looks like, and they’re giving us all of these rubbish leads, their wheels were spinning and they just gave up on it.

So there’s this tension or this friction between sales and marketing. At the end of the day, the most important connection that we need to make is with our customer. So by deeply understanding our customer. And then sharing that information with both sales and marketing, we have the opportunity to get them both on the same page.

And that’s that’s one of the joys that we have with the work that we do is by deeply understanding the customer and then sharing that knowledge with the sales and the marketing team and collaborating together, we can bring everybody onto the same page. So I think fundamentally we need to get You know, we need to get sales and marketing in the same room at the same time and collaborating more closely together.

And some organisations are really good at doing that. You’ve seen the rise in recent years of the chief revenue officer so that you’ve got a revenue, someone who’s responsible for revenue and recognizes that revenue is a responsibility for both the marketing and the sales team working together.

Other companies that are still getting it wrong and they’ve got marketing and sales completely siloed. They’re in separate parts of the building and they never get together and you get that, that, that tension and that frustration that comes from it. I think the ability to really understand our customer, the way that they’re behaving, the problems that they’ve got, the challenges that they’re facing, because we can see those in the digital world, and then bringing those two teams together and working together towards a common goal and a common outcome is certainly a way to resolve that.

I think it’s such an important thing and something we could delve into more at another time. But it’s just to comment and say that to me, one of the interesting things about this is that for marketing and marketing companies, be they, small outsource things to, ideas to, internal marketing teams, making the phone ring is not necessarily the hard part.

Making the phone ring with the right people. Is where the challenge is. And I think too often, what happens is people look for quick fixes and they go out and they do this. So I’ve worked with an organization recently where they’re saying what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to guarantee this and you’ve got to guarantee a certain amount of sales.

And you talk all of these things up and. And you, and I look at it and say, but there’s no way for this business to deliver on that. So yes, it’s bringing in a whole bunch of leads, but they’re under false pretenses. So you break the, so you break the trust almost immediately, but also as the question of whether they can even afford it.

forward what really is the solution and the time it takes to deliver that solution. There’s just a complete mismatch. And I think really understanding who those ideal clients are and taking them on that journey is so important that when you feed off from the marketing into the sales area, that the story is not changing because otherwise you do waste a lot of time.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s a really good point. In a complex sale. We’re consuming not only we a long way through our journey before we engage our sales team today, but we’re consuming multiple pieces of content and we’ve got lots of questions and in a complex cell. It’s never just one question.

So if you’re doing a social media post, if you’re doing a Google ad word and you create some interest and you answer one or two questions, you’ve got to bring them back somewhere. We can continue that journey was effectively for every question that’s relevant to our business and relevant to what we sell, the problem that we solve.

We need to be the ones that answer it. For every challenge that the customers got, we need to be the ones that overcome it. Because if we don’t, then we’re not going to attract our audience of ideal customers. And we leave the door open. For our competitors who do answer those questions.

And now we’ve lost control of the sales process. So you’re absolutely right when we need to be able to take customers on a journey, we need to be able to dynamically engage them, attract them and engage them. And we need to answer their questions and help solve their problems. And that gives us the opportunity.

Then we weren’t the right now to put our differentiators in front of them. What sets us apart? Who do we work best with? Who don’t we work best with? So that we’re using our website asset. To qualify and disqualify so that those that aren’t the right fit, we may help them and educate them. And that’s great, but they may not be the right fit.

And if we’ve helped them and educated them, we’ve built some trust. And if they’re not the right fit, they might bump into someone that is the right fit and say, Hey, it was written as content from this great website content here. You should give these guys a call. So we’re never going to damage our brand by doing that.

But then we qualify disqualify so that by the time they do reach out to our sales team, they we’ve got tremendous trust with them. Because we’ve answered their problems, overcome their barriers. And we’ve got, they’ve got preference for our brand because, they’ve largely made their mind up by the time they reach out to the sales team.

And if they’ve largely made their mind up and we’ve qualified and disqualified, we’re generating really high quality leads for the team. And that’s a fundamental difference. As you point out, not all leads are created equal. Those thousand leads that were created, I don’t know how many, there was bound to be a few good ones in there, but the sales team were going to, they just stopped running it.

They were so frustrated that they were sitting there wasting their valuable time finding people that weren’t interested, hadn’t been qualified, didn’t know the price point and didn’t have a problem that they could solve. Flip it around and get it right. And it’s a totally different conversation.

So much insight in that again, want to thank you for everything. We’ve got one last question. I want to ask you before we finish up, but just a reminder to everyone. You definitely have to stay tuned for the For the bonus bit of content, because we’ve got three big problems with website designs that we’re going to talk through, that’s going to give you some huge huge ideas about how you actually work backwards in designing your website.

So I’m fascinated by that as well. So stay tuned for that one, but just to finish things up wanted to ask you The question that I love to ask all of my guests, what’s the big aha moment that clients have when they start working with you that you realize that you wish people would know in advance that they were going to have when they work with you?

I think the biggest aha moment would be understanding the extent to which their customers are actually online and engaging in content. Relative to the problem that they solve. I think the biggest mistake that a lot of companies make is that they don’t actually believe that their audience is online.

They’ve always felt that, for the, for that, for the history of their company, it’s always been word of mouth. Or it’s been referrals. And days gone by, that was true. And it’s still an important part of many businesses today, so I’m not discounting it. But companies make the mistake of actually not thinking that their audience is actually online, relative to what they do.

I’ll give you an example. We worked with a with a manufacturing company in the New Zealand market, and they were selling an agricultural product to dairy farmers. It was an expensive product. So it was, in the tens of thousands of dollars. They didn’t believe that, that dairy farmers were online actively using the internet.

But their sales had stagnated and they weren’t getting the growth that they wanted to get. We were able to dispel that myth and we took them on a journey in their first year. They grew tremendously. And over a period of less than three years. We almost doubled their revenue.

Now that was, they just couldn’t believe that their audience was online. So I think the aha moment is actually realizing how many of their customers are actually actively engaged Online is the big aha moment. And then we lean into some of the other problems with website design is a couple of aha moments there as well, but we’re going to talk more about that in the bonus content, right?

Absolutely. We can do that shortly. For now, Steve, I just wanted to say, thank you so much. So much great content that you’ve given for everyone to learn from. And I think there’s a lot of ideas that people that will get people start thinking about how they might State start changing the way that they’re operating, making those little 1 percent of differences to their business.

And and I thank you for that. We are going to of course, include all the details on how to get in contact with Steve in the show notes. But for now, Steve, thank you so much for being an amazing guest on the program. It’s my pleasure. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program.

Don’t forget to hit subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by Podcasts Done For You. The service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. Contact us today for more information. Details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on BizBytes.

A very typical comment I hear is, Oh my goodness, I never thought I’d end up running a kindergarten that has a business attached to it. When you start a business and you’re on a shoestring budget, yes, then you have to do a little bit of everything. But as soon as you can start finding ways to stop doing the stuff that you’re not enjoying, that’s not bringing you joy.

Work out what your superpower is. And focus on that. Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of Biz Bites proudly brought to you by com together, the people behind podcasts done for you, because we’re all about exposing other people’s brilliance. Don’t forget to subscribe to Biz Bites and check out podcasts done for you as well in the show notes.

Now let’s get into it.

Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of Biz Bites. And I have with me today, Angela Sedran, and we got to know each other. We’ll get to that as we go into the podcast, but we got to know each other at a function that we were both at, and we hit it off straight from the beginning.

And I thought she’s going to be a great guest on the program. So Angela, welcome to the program. And I’d love you to introduce yourself to the audience. Hello, everyone. My name is Angela Sedran. I help scaling businesses to actually implement the right systems and this right leadership behaviours to drive accountability down, which basically means I help them lift their capabilities so that they can grow without the overwhelm, the headaches and the overwork.

Yeah. And I think that is a big thing, isn’t it? The whole idea of the headaches and the overwhelm and the overwork and all of these things. It’s such a big factor in business these days, isn’t it? It really is, particularly with a lot of the clients that I work with, because they’re great at the technical skills or the products that they’re actually building, it’s their area of expertise.

It’s where they’re super power lies. They’re not necessarily experts in growing a business, though there’s also a very big difference in starting a business and taking a business to the next level. Because what happens is that they have to start hiring more staff. And then a very typical comment I hear is.

Oh my goodness, I never thought I’d end up running a kindergarten that has a business attached to it. Yes, it is amazing, isn’t it? Because things change, don’t they? The, and I think they’re moving at an even faster pace these days than they have been in the past. But the truth is what a business starts out as and where it ends up as can be two completely different things and something that was not predicted at the time of opening it.

Look, that’s very true. And I think a lot of business owners got their business because they want something that gives them more time or freedom or money. And in the end, it actually gives them none of those things. It becomes, it can become a bit of a beast that ends up creating tremendous burnout.

And. That’s not why they started the business. It’s we’re not in Kansas anymore. This is not what I signed up for. So it’s really also about working with those leaders to work out what it is they want, because some of them have actually say to me, look, I’m quite happy winding this business back down to one or two people and having a much better lifestyle, or they might say to me, I don’t want to manage people.

I’m passionate about what I do. I love my service. I love my product, but let’s get this business to the point where I can bring someone else in to manage it so that I can then become the creative director or sit on the board half the time and then spend the other time pursuing what I love or sitting on the beach.

Yeah, it is a big difference, isn’t it? Because I’m finding it fascinating when you start digging into people, you start What, why people establish the business in the first place, how many of them are there really with their eyes wide open? Because I look back sometimes and people that I’ve met over the years.

And I think there’s this enthusiasm for starting a business because it’s the idea of starting a business without actually really necessarily understanding what the implications of that are and where it might go. So the enthusiasm is there for the, Concept of a business, but the reality can be so completely different.

It really can be there’s a whole world of things people don’t realize they have to deal with and that they have to do when they start a business. And I’ve often had a conversation with a business owner where he’s saying to me I’m not in love with my business anymore. I actually can’t stand it.

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Now back to Biz Bytes. And I’ve often had a conversation with a business owner where he’s saying to me, I’m not in love with my business anymore. I actually can’t stand it. So part of what I do is Come in and really help them assess where their business is at. Start engaging this stuff and really start pushing things down to this stuff so that they are doing the tough stuff and the daily grunt and the down and what I call the down in the weeds stuff so that you can lift yourself out of the business to really start working on the business again, because that is business owners get to the point where they’re doing everything.

They’re running the business and doing stuff, daily stuff they don’t want to do. They end up trying to do all the sales and marketing and the strategy stuff as well. And that’s not what they want to do. It’s too much. Yeah, it’s, and I think it’s that one of the hard parts about being in business is there’s that inclination to feel as though you need to do everything.

And I think that’s a, it’s a big danger that happens in society these days, because you’ve got a powerful tool in your pocket with your phone. For starters, there’s so many apps and so many bits and pieces that you almost feel like you should be doing it yourself rather than trying to work out what your core thing is that you’re great at, and that is really going to help you move forward.

That’s a really good point. So work out what your superpower is. And focus on that. And look, when you start your business and you’re on a shoestring budget, yes, then you have to do a little bit of everything, but as soon as you can start finding ways to stop doing the stuff that you’re not enjoying, that’s not bringing you joy.

But the other thing I’m seeing, and interestingly, I was having a conversation with the CEO of one of the private equity firms recently. And he said to me, when people come to him with their business and he assesses Most of the time he finds they are not focused. So a lot of business owners suffer from the bright shiny object syndrome and a lack of focus.

We overestimate what we can achieve in the short run and underestimate what we can achieve in the long run. So It’s not only a question of farming out things that you don’t enjoy as soon as you can, so you can stick to the stuff you’re good at. It’s also about strategically deciding not just what you’re going to do, but what you’re not going to do.

Because strategy comes down to Actually, most of the time, the most important part of it is what you say no to. And there’s always this temptation to do more. Oh, a hundred percent, isn’t it? It’s so easy to be led off course. I think we’ve all had those days where you start off and you’ve got a list of might be one, it might be three things that you want to get done and you get to the end of it and you realize you didn’t do any of those things and you think, how did I end up doing all of those things?

Where did that day disappear to? Yeah, typically driving home Friday night going, Oh, it’s been such a busy week, but I’ve achieved nothing. Very cool. It’s, and I imagine that there’s that realization that people have, but I’m wondering as well, what drives them to you in the first place?

Because I often think that, it’s great if people have this realization, they go, either I’m not enjoying my business or I’m time poor, overwhelmed as we talked about at the beginning, does it need to be that, or is there a point before that where people have more of a realization? So they need some help.

Tony Robbins always says that people only change when the pain of staying is greater than the pain of changing. So number one, they have to be in a significant amount of discomfort to make a change. The other problem I find is that A lot of business owners don’t know what they don’t know, particularly if they don’t have any business background.

So they make a few plans, put a few band aids on things, and then they just accept that this is the way it should be. I really hate it, it’s a drudge, but hey, all business owners have to go through this. And this is actually a mistake. The business owners who come to me are the ones who have actually done some homework and even just open to having a conversation with me and saying, I think there’s a different way to do this.

Can we have a chat? It’s the ones who think, nah, I’m all good. I don’t need that. I’ve got it all covered that are the ones who suffer the longest. But what I would suggest is that you don’t wait until you’re literally overwhelmed, overworked and over it. If you realize that in order to take your business to the next level, to really scale it properly, what got you here is not going to get you there.

Most businesses where the entrepreneur has grown the business, unless they have changed something, that business has gone out of business. And I can think of Sophia Amoruso is a very good example with nasty girl. That business got to the point where it imploded on itself. So logically, If you don’t change the way you’re managing your business, like getting in a racing car, the thing takes off, it accelerates, everything’s beautiful.

But you must know that if you don’t change gears at a certain point, that car is going to burn out and your business is the same. What I’m saying is understand that is going to happen. It’s a natural progression in business. Don’t wait until you’re at your wit’s end. And unfortunately, a lot of business owners do come to me with that.

So part of what I also talk about is really starting to educate them and say that as your business starts growing, as you bring in more staff members, your problems are going to grow exponentially. But it’s easier to put a system in place at the beginning and make sure problems don’t occur than to unwind things and fix problems.

Yeah. And that whole idea of putting systems in place is in of itself an overwhelming task for many people because there’s, there can be a lot, it’s only when you start diving into it, isn’t it? Any given business that you realize how many systems there actually are for doing so many different tasks.

Yeah. Very true. It’s even something as simple as a process. To create a landing page, you’ve got to go through a system. But one of the things actually that I can say, I gave a speech last week on AI because overall I help businesses build their capability and I help leaders build their capabilities as well.

And AI is part of that. You can actually use AI to start documenting some of your more mundane systems, like. How do I create this? How do we go through the process of posting on a social media page? Those sorts of things are simpler to create, but there’s so many of them. But once you have them in place, and this sounds counterintuitive, Systems will set you free because it means that you’ve taken them out of your brain and put them on paper and it’s much easier to train someone else to do them.

The other thing about a business is that or a system rather. So the system I use is really to come in and implement what they call a balanced scorecard. So with the leadership team, We work for a day and a half together in a workshop removed from the normal day to day work, and we actually create a plan and a page for that business now that in itself is terrific, but it’s a piece of paper and it’s work done in that room unless the team take it.

And implement a system and a rhythm and a cadence where they’re actually tracking those measures every month and reporting on them, but not just saying this is what happened, actually saying this is what happened, but this is what it means. What is the so what of those results to the business? Is it good?

Is it bad? Do I do more of something? Do we do less of something? Who’s going to do it? And when are we going to do it by? So that at the end of every month, the business starts getting into that habit of really assessing and adjusting the sales. That’s when the They no longer have to worry about that stuff because it happens automatically.

And this is where once you can get a system in place, it starts automating things. Yeah. I think that’s the key is to, you need buy in from people and you need that to happen, but I’m intrigued as well as your approach to the Developing the systems in the first place because actually taking that information out from people and putting into something that is constructive can be a difficult exercise within itself.

Look, people are going to be the hardest thing that anybody has to deal with in a business. And number one, getting the information out of them. And number two, also making sure that they start using it properly is the other real challenge that a lot of business owners face. So for me, engagement is super, super important.

When you are hitting someone over the head with a stick. To get them to do something, it’s much, much harder than when you have a carrot, when someone wants to be there and they feel engaged and they feel like they belong to the business’s vision, they’re going to start giving you discretionary efforts.

And this is where they are going to be much more willing to come on that journey and start using the processes. Because if you tell them they have to use a process. It’s like nobody likes to be told what to do, but when you can start explaining to them, this is why we need it. And this is how we’re going to use it because it belongs to this greater purpose of our business, whatever that may be.

This is where you’re going to start finding that your staff actually want to be there and they actually want to do the work. Does that answer your question? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it’s very interesting. I’m going to cross reference a podcast that I’ve done with a client of mine, and he was talking about the fact that there’s some surveys done recently in his particular industry where everybody, all, everybody completely admitted that they’ve never worked to capacity because they were too scared to work to capacity because then people would expect that’s what they would be able to do all the time.

Interesting. It’s an interesting mindset when people have, because you can’t operate at 100 percent capacity as a human being all the time, it’s just not possible. And you need to have some leeway in there and you need to have some ability to keep up the slack. But engaging people, engaging your team is so difficult.

And we go back to the beginning. of where we discussing the idea that, you start this business and suddenly you’re hiring people. And just because you’re good at your job doesn’t mean that you’re good at managing a team. And there’s an obligation that you feel as though it’s my business. I should be good at this.

And sometimes it’s square peg in a round hole, really, when you’re doing that, because you’re genius or superpower may be in something that doesn’t exist. Doesn’t doesn’t really lend itself to that kind of level of leadership and engagement. And that’s difficult for a lot of business owners, isn’t it?

Look, it really is. And it’s not just business owners. I’ve recently worked with quite a senior level executive in a company where she’s really been slated to be the next CEO. And he brought her on board to help her learn to manage people. But what she realized on the journey with me is she doesn’t like managing people.

It’s not her thing. So what we realized from that journey was that maybe CEO wasn’t the right role for her. She’s much more analytical in terms of her thinking. I So it’s not her superpower and honestly, she scares her staff can change that you can work on it. It is an acquired skill, but it’s not one that she wanted because it’s not one that would give her a sense of fulfillment and for her it really would be hard work to actually have to be that different.

She’s extremely introverted. So you are very right. It’s not necessarily a skill of many business owners. I think the real question is do they want it? It’s not a skill. Then is it a skill that they want to do that? Otherwise, they’re actually better off bringing what he always calls an integrator into the business.

So the business owner remains the visionary remains the person who works on the strategy. Maybe they go out and do business development, but they have somebody underneath them who actually Makes it all happen and manages the people also like a chief of staff. Think of it that way, and I do that for some of my clients as well, but I also have a very different philosophy in terms of leading and managing.

So I grew up and maybe you did too, in an era where you came to work at nine o’clock and you left at five o’clock or they’d make you work till seven or eight, but the point is you had to be there at nine o’clock, not nine Oh five. Or even nine oh two, nine o’clock, and you had to sit at your desk between nine and five.

I actually Can’t personally work that way. I can’t sit still long enough and I’m also more creative. So my philosophy with my staff, and I will always say this to ’em, is I don’t, you’re not children, you’ve gotta achieve this job. This is what I’m paying you to do. I don’t care how you achieve it.

If you’ve gotta go and pick the kids up from school, or you want to do it at a certain other time or in a different way, that’s fine. I’m not here to babysit you. And I also think you’re an adult. I’m going to treat you like an adult, but I am going to hold you accountable. So what I’m saying to you is I need you to be the best that you can be.

And I will do everything in my power to help you be the best that you can be. But I’m also not a psychic mind reader. So if you know that these are the goals and the measures that you’ve agreed to in the business, know that my door is open to you. And if you need my help, I’m here for you, but you have to achieve them.

It’s, and I’m intrigued by all of that because a lot of that comes down to shifting the mindset of whoever’s the leader as, it could be the owner, but the leader and then trying to shift the mindset of the people that are underneath them. And that’s a difficult thing to do, isn’t it?

It really is. And I’ve been doing some research around Gen Z at the moment. And one of the problems that has been flagged to me with Gen Z, and it also comes a lot from the social media that they look at, is that they’re constantly being told they have all these rights at work. And I’ve got to worry about my mental health.

So God help you if you ask me to read an email after five o’clock, even five 15, that’s a no. And the thing about mental health days, I’ve got to have a mental health day today because I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. That’s not quite the way it works. A mental health day is when I just can’t cope anymore.

And I need some space sort of thing. So on the one hand, we have the older generation who still have this idea that we’ve got to be like little soldiers who have to conform to the nine to five and literally we’re going to measure how many minutes you take for lunch. But then you also have the new generation coming in and not all of them.

Obviously, this is a generalization. Who are like, Oh I need to fulfill myself and I’m going to work certain hours a day and I’m not going to work too hard. If I have to work too hard, then I’ll just go and become a social media influence and make a lot of money. So there is a grind in terms of all of this.

But what I would say is that it also really comes down to the business’s values. And if you hire to the right values, then hopefully you’re going to get that match between what you need you. And the ability to actually manage not more loosely because believe me, there is accountability, but manage a system where people feel valued because it’s a give and take.

And they’re prepared to give if you are prepared to give what you talked about there about values, it’s something that I’ve hopped on about with people over the years many times. I’m interested in your take on it, because it is a difficult scenario to get. What the business values might be versus what personal values might be when it comes into a, a business that’s been started by one person and built up from there.

There is a difference, but there isn’t a difference. And to some extent as well, isn’t there. And it’s and trying to make sure that you’ve got that. Very clearly done. I know the whole idea of putting values down used to be the realm of corporates who just did it to tick a box, but really, we know that working out your values is such an important tool to do.

It really is. And values is a term that’s bandied around like strategy, leadership, almost gets to the point. We’ve heard it so much. We don’t even, we don’t even hear it anymore. But values, really, every business has a set of values. The thing is, have they created them and nurtured them strategically to be the right values?

So I’ve worked with a number of businesses now where I walk in on that first day when we do the audit and they have no actual articulated values. Some of the ones have articulated values and they might rattle off five words for me that they have. But then they haven’t actually written down what it means.

What are the behaviors that support this value? And what are, what I call the roadblocks, the rock stars and the roadblocks. The roadblocks are the behaviors that we don’t really want to see, the uncool behaviors. And that is the granularity that you actually need. One of my clients, they didn’t have any values in their business.

They were struggling with a couple of staff members, the owners. They had two notes. They weren’t keen on doing any sort of personal development discussions, and they were trying to work out with me, how do we hold this guy accountable? He’s a fantastic operator, really knowledgeable, but quite toxic to the business.

He was a perfectionist. He was a bit of a grump, but not the most pleasant person. He’d almost come across as rude sometimes to people and upset them. And the way he did things also just things didn’t flow through the business because of him. So what we did is we went to the entire team and we asked them to Pick what their values were.

I have a template for it. And then we came back. I went through all of them. We really grouped the similar ones together because there were themes that came through. One of the themes, for example, was family and family for them was the way we actually treat people. And we treat everybody in our business that way, whether it’s our customers, whether it’s our staff, our stakeholders, it doesn’t matter.

We would treat them as we would family. We really careful. That’s about having an actual definition, not just a word. And then it was about saying, okay what behaviors do we want to see that support this value? And from the research we’d done with the group, they had already nominated a few things. So we were able to start listing things that really supported that.

But then we also said, okay what is an uncool behavior? So for example, being really rude to somebody is an uncool behavior in terms of the family values. To really implement values into your business, you have to have that clarity of a what exactly is the definition? Because having a word on its own tells you nothing.

And then saying what is it that we want people to do? Because then you start rewarding people for that and celebrating that. And what is it we don’t want people to do? And what you find is the more you talk about this, the more your team will actually be. Police themselves, police. I don’t particularly like that word, but I might say something to you.

Are you okay? Because I noticed earlier that you were a bit short with Susan and it’s not like you at all. It’s everything. Okay. Because that’s, obviously one of our values that the uncool behavior, and that’s where you really start getting traction in a high performing culture. Is when the staff know very clearly what’s expected, what’s not expected, and then they start actually looking out for those things.

It’s such an important idea. So simple, but yet so often done wrong from the beginning. I’ve, I recall this is a number of years ago working with a client and one of their values Really stood out for me as being something that I questioned because and ultimately it, it rang true that it was misplaced was it’s, there are often when you talk about the words and then the explanations, but if you talk about the words, there are often words that people go.

This should be a value of the business because they feel it’s the right word. And it’s what everybody does. So we should value this. And what actually happened was over the next 12 months, as I was observing the business, that particular value, as great as it was in theory, in practice, it’s not the way the CEO operated.

That’s not saying that he operated badly. It’s just saying that a value that he thought was should be there and should be really important. And ultimately, a lot of messaging and things was built around that particular wording was simply not true for the way that he operated in the business.

And he was not going to change that. So that word was just misleading. And what actually happened was they attracted a lot of staff. Because of that particular messaging and value, and ultimately they had a massive turnover of staff. What’s fascinating is that the CEO ultimately left, management changed, new people came in, the values changed, and retention has not been a problem.

And it’s just because there was a mismatch, as you said in the beginning, it’s getting it right for that and it’s something that you have to review regularly. Absolutely. And the thing is, it actually speaks to, the integrity of the business. Because if they’re saying one thing and doing something else, then there’s a lack of integrity.

But you’re right about businesses saying, Oh, we need this as a value. And the typical one that I dislike intensely is integrity. So for me, a test of a value is, Would it be idiotic not to have this as a value? I don’t, I can’t think of any business that could say, Oh no, we don’t worry about integrity.

It’s not an issue. It’s just, it’s a ticket to the game, right? So for me, that shouldn’t be one of the business’s values because every business should have integrity. Even the mafia have a code of honor and they stick to it. But it’s more about the way I guess that. The value is interpreted. And it’s also about something that is true to your core because you have to have that authenticity of this is our value and we genuinely live it.

And what you’re saying is not untypical. I have seen many businesses. I worked a lot in mining and consulting for mining before. And there were a lot of businesses where there was one particular one that I visited that had 12 values. And one of the senior people said to me, Oh yeah, every time the owner, cause it was a privately owned company thinks of a new one.

We just stick it on the wall over there, but actually we don’t necessarily live to that value. And what happens is it undermines everything in that business. Yeah. And I love what you say there about the, integrity as well, because the thing is that there are things that should be accepted and staple.

It’s, it fascinates me that communication, which should be a core value of every business, because if you can’t communicate, then how are you going to retain clients, suppliers, staff, like those things are all reliant on your ability to communicate. But yet sometimes. feel as though it needs to be there as a reminder.

And but I think quite often people don’t understand what the implications of it are. But as you say, it’s a bit like integrity that you can’t have a business without communicating. So you need these core rules of the game, if you like that need to be there, which are. In addition to the values themselves.

Yes, exactly. And communication is an interesting one because what I find is where communication breaks down, there’s usually two reasons for it. People are not good listeners. And the other thing is people will not say things because they are fearful of the potential yucky conversation. They could be called courageous conversations, whatever you want to call it.

But it’s usually a conversation where something hasn’t quite gone and it may even be something like a PDP or a colleague may have upset you. And it’s about really, Building behaviors and a mindset into the business where if we’ve had a disagreement or if I’m offended by something let’s say I’m even sitting you down for a performance development discussion.

It’s not about hitting you over the head with a stick and saying, Oh my gosh, that was just you’re an idiot. That was terrible. I’ve got to punish you. It’s about saying, Hey, let’s talk about this. So what do you think went well there? What do you think didn’t go so well? This is, let’s say if I’m performance managing you now, if you don’t immediately say to me, actually, I reckon that could be done better.

I will then prompt you to say, okay, I see what you were coming from. What about this particular area? How do you feel about that? And then we’ll talk you through it. And if you still don’t see it, I might say from my perspective, I really feel that could have been done this way. What do you think? So it’s about leading them through a question process where they actually come to the point where they got, what, You’re absolutely right, or they think of it themselves, and that’s a very different paradigm too.

I’ve got to sit down and whack you over the head because you’ve done a lousy job. And that’s also not necessarily a yucky conversation either because there is development in there. It’s not just right. This is your personal development discussion. Let’s go through the list of 25 things I’m going to wrap you over the knuckles for.

But if you’ve got that level of trust where I know I can come to you and say look, When you spoke over me yesterday Today in that meeting or when you interrupted me. I really felt disrespected or I felt a bit embarrassed. Could you please next time just watch out for that because you’ve done it a couple of times and it really makes me feel this particular way.

Now if I frame something in that context of when you do dot I feel dot can you I’m not coming to you and saying hey you’re an idiot you keep doing this. I’m actually owning it and saying look I feel this particular way. Could you please do it differently? And that is also a very useful tool to have those conversations that could potentially be yucky and we could have a stand up argument with somebody over this.

Or you could actually approach it from the paradigm of, I need to fix this. Your relationship, our relationship matters to me and I’m honoring that. It’s not that we’re best friends, but we work together and it’s important to me that we have a constructive relationship. Or it might be that I have a staff member who I’m working with and developing and I have this life preserve and I can see they’re struggling.

If I don’t go and tell them that there’s something wrong, I’m actually at fault as the leader because how can I let them drown if I’m standing there holding the life preserver? So these are the kinds of behaviors when you use value as an example of, sorry, communication as an example and as a value of a business.

where you can actually start shifting a paradigm of what that actually means. And it doesn’t necessarily mean, sorry, you go. No, I was just going to say, it’s so important to, for people, in that active communicating and that idea is to make people understand what your interpretation of it is.

It’s a bit like when you do a survey and they say, can you rank me? Can you rank whatever out of 10? Now there are some people that will only ever give a nine. doesn’t, it could be the best thing ever, but they will never give a 10 because they’re always holding it back in case there’s someone better.

There’s all sorts of reasons for it. So how do you actually work out that someone’s nine is actually really a 10 for everybody else? And I definitely, I remember working years ago in a business where it came to Performance review time. And there was a certain percentage that was thrown up as saying, this is what you can get.

When the truth was that they never gave that full amount that they, if they said it was going to be seven and a half percent, they never gave more than 5 percent bonus because that was the. That was the rules that they played by. Now, if every, if all the staff had have known that was what it was like going into it, you would have had a very different perspective.

But if you go into a performance review thinking I’ve done everything great. I’ve been really good all this year. Everyone’s told me I’ve been great. And I’m going to get seven and a half percent bonus out of this. And they say, you’ve been really great. We’re going to give you five. It’s a it’s a really slap, big slap in your face.

And I think, that’s a raw example, but that happens all the time. Doesn’t it in the way that people’s understanding of what words mean and what expectations are that needs to be, on the table and. part of the value system of understanding that you’re going to be on that same page? Very much and I think a lot of disagreements and guffawfuls happen because people are not on the same page. And there’s two, the biggest reason I think for that is that They make assumptions. So I make the assumption that a five means the same to everybody or I make the assumption that you know I would give something a ten because it’s it was really good, but I’m assuming you would do the same.

So assumptions are one of the biggest things that get in our way. So I would always say test your assumptions and make sure that you’ve tested them before you go into something. Either at the beginning, when you start going into the performance review process, I would say to my boss, what does good look like?

Would you give, so what would be the best score you would give it or whatever the question is, but I would make sure that we both understood how things were viewed and measured. And look, in terms of performance reviews, there’s always a little bit of subjectivity as well. And when man’s poison is another man’s pleasure, hopefully in performance reviews we’re somewhat aligned.

But I would still always test assumptions because they can trap you up. I think you talk about that from an internal point of view, but the same thing can happen externally as well. That if your clients have an expectation at a certain level, And you’re not on the same page with that. That also spells trouble.

It really does. So there’s an interesting story. I was asked to give feedback on a business, a club that I’m a business club that I’m a member of recently, and we were invited by email. Would you like to come and do it? I said, yes, I made an appointment with the CEO. It was half an hour. And I then had another appointment straight after that.

And I turned up on time and he was 15 minutes late for half an hour appointment. And I was starting to get antsy because I had to, I knew I had to leave on the dot to get to my next appointment. And he then turned up and he was quite flustered. He was clearly having a bad day. And there had been an email that had gone out a few weeks before for a charity event that a friend and I were working on.

His team never responded. So when he came downstairs, I said, look, no problem. I know that things happen. I can’t stay, but whilst I have you, can I just ask you, we sent this email a few weeks ago. No one’s responded. And he was like I’m very busy and we get lots of these requests and I said to him I’m actually quite busy too, but all I needed from you was to say, forget it, go away, send me anything, smoke signals, a carrier pigeon, whatever.

Just tell me that you’ve received it and that you can’t do it because I don’t know what’s happened with this. And he calmed down a little bit and then we spoke for a little bit and then I left but he had actually Asked me for my opinion and my feedback and I genuinely went with the attitude of I love this place I want to help make it a bit better because there were a few things that could be improved So that evening I sat down and I thought well, I’m not gonna go into the city again to do this It takes me half an hour on both ends.

It’s just a waste of my time to do it again And I didn’t feel My time had been respected because a, he should have apologized to me for being late and he should not have been rude to me either. So I wrote him an email and it was a very nicely worded email and I said, look, Your style is very dominant and very direct, and it’s incredibly useful in a number of situations, but that style is only 9 percent of the population.

So please consider that there are 91 percent of the population. This does not work for, and for me, I really felt disrespected. And I was quite humiliated the way you treated me. And then aside from that, you’ve asked me about how we can make this better. I’ve sent a number of emails over the last year to my relationship manager, to the CEO of the club, haven’t had a response.

I really think that there is an opportunity to improve the service in this business, because certainly from my perspective, and there’s some of the other members, we never hear from you. Once we’ve joined up, You’re so busy trying to sign up new people that we never hear from you again. And I said, look, I have heard that in the past it was a bit of a cocaine and party culture because it’s established business signs, but I didn’t believe any of that.

I chose to overlook it because I believed in you and I believed in the service and in the membership. Oh my gosh. He sent me an email that knocked my socks off. He told me I was rude. I was unprofessional. How dare I talk about people’s businesses like that. And I appreciate he was having a bad day, but he acknowledged that he was rude to me the day before, but he didn’t send me an email that evening saying, I’m so sorry for being rude.

Or even 10 minutes after he was rude to me, or pick up the phone. And that should have been an instance where Instead of him saying, calling me names effectively, he should have just said to me, I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s really interesting though. Can you tell me more? Because I wasn’t calling his business names.

I was literally saying there is. And for me, if it had been my business, yes, I probably would have been a bit still taken aback. But if this had happened in the past and I knew it, then I’d say, okay we did have some issues at some point, but you’re right. We did clean it up, but that’s still there, that some people are still talking about it.

So tell me more. What else can we do to fix this? Even in the end of the day, if I don’t ask that they use everything that person’s shared with me. If I’m asking you for advice to then barrack you, because you’ve given me feedback is ridiculous. So there’s gotta be a level of trust in any business. And your customers have to be able to come to you and say, look, I really think there’s an area for improvement in this space.

I’m not saying they’ve got to come and give you a bollocking. And sometimes they do. And that’s not really right either, unless it’s a business. Sometimes we have to take that, but you’ve got to have a level of trust in the business because your customers are going to, your values transfer down to them.

If you have a culture that’s a little bit sour where you don’t trust each other, where you can’t talk to each other, Your customers in all likelihood are not going to be able to come and talk to you. There is so much to explore in, in what you’ve just said there. And I’d love to do that, but we’re going to our listeners are going to end up going, hang on, we’ve got to, we’ve got to get to work, got to do these things.

So we’re we’re going to pick up that a lot of that conversation another time, but there is certainly plenty in that because I think that realistically What you’ve talked about just then is such a common problem. I learned very early on in the piece from a a very good boss I had that it’s all about the way you respond.

Things will go wrong. We’re human beings, we make mistakes, we get upset, we have outside influences, but it’s how you respond is Absolutely everything because that’s what you remember and I’ve seen too often examples of businesses that do something along the lines of what you’ve just described and that’s what everyone remembers, whereas if they’d have turned around and he’d have apologized, as you said, and you’d have said, You know, they’d done something about that, listened, taken on some advice, then the way you would have felt about that business and the way you would be talking about that business would be completely different.

And in fact, one big differentiator would have been, you probably would have actually mentioned the business name. I’m not asking you to mention the business name, but you would have done. If the experience is positive. We’re never afraid to really tell people about it when it’s negative. We might in a private situation, probably not in a podcast, go out and say they’re a bunch of loonies, but they’re we do tell people don’t go near them, and that’s the, that’s a problem.

And people, I often say to people, you never know what you’re missing out by having poor or no communication. And that’s a really good example of very poor communication. Absolutely. Even just the opportunity to say, look, I really felt this way. We sort it out, but now this is left in the air.

And every time I go there, I feel a little bit uncomfortable. So if there’s one thing I can leave people with today, and this is something that Harry Upanana told my dad at his graduation, kindness and good manners cost absolutely nothing. Use them liberally. And it works both ways as well. If in that situation he just said to me, look, I’m really sorry.

I’m having a really lousy day or a lousy week or whatever the case is. No problem. It happens to all of us. I have shitty weeks too, all lousy days. And I completely understand that we’re all human, but I don’t know if it’s an ego thing that gets in the way. So yeah, remember you’re dealing with humans.

You don’t always know what they’re going through. Good manners and kindness literally cost nothing. And even in the business, the more you can get that going in a business, the easier it is to create values that everybody loves and that works. For the business. 100%. I want to give listeners the opportunity to also say that there’s ways that they can get in touch with you.

And we’re going to share that in the show notes, but also that you’ve got a thing called the profit pulse of the five P profit formula that you’ve got, that will include a link to that in the show notes as well. So people can get ahold of that information. And Also, I wanted to point out that we’re going to have an extra little discussion about how to identify and fix the bottlenecks in your business that are holding you back.

We’re going to have that little separate discussion in our bonus bit of content. So again, something else to look forward to in the show notes, click on that, and we’ll get that there. But I just wanted to wrap up the main podcast with a couple of things. One as we talked about right in the intro, you and I met at a function for B1, Thing that I wanted to ask you about, and for those who don’t know who B one G one are, buy one, give one, look up B one G one.

We’ll probably include that as well in the show notes. Love it. Yep. Yes. And go back to the interview I did in a previous episode sometime ago with Paul Dunn. It was earlier this year, and you’ll hear a lot more about it there. But talk to me about the importance of impact for you because that’s what B one G one is all about.

Look, I spent most of my life in corporate and I was stuck there. I had golden handcuffs because I was raising my child on my own. His dad died when he was a baby, but it never really felt genuine to me. So as soon as I could, I left, which was eight years ago. I started my own business. And part of that was making a difference and making an impact.

So my goal is actually to help a million women achieve financial freedom or a life on their terms by 2030. And I was looking for a way to do that. And I wasn’t sure what the best way forward was because I’ve often seen companies put I donate to X, Y, and Z on their website, whether they do or don’t, one never knows.

And with a lot of these charities, you don’t know where the money actually ends up going. But when Paul was introduced to me by a friend and B1G1 with it, I really fell in love with it because I can actually donate to projects that are Doing exactly that. My million women is not just obviously clients, although that would be lovely.

I don’t know how I’d cope with it. Actually, maybe it wouldn’t be lovely. It’s also about my speaking. It’s about the impact that I can make. It’s about what I can do to help women with maternal health. And people don’t know this, but something like five jumbo jets of women a day die because they don’t have access to maternal health in third world countries.

Trafficking is the biggest industry in the entire world. Human slavery is a bigger industry now than in the days before the American civil war. And generally it’s women and children. It’s bigger than the cocaine industry. It’s the biggest industry in the world. And it galls me to think that women’s value are the biggest value monetarily actually, is because of having sex with us.

There’s so much more to it. So I am a very big proponent of helping women get an education. So I will also sponsor things through B1 and G1 providing them with sanitary wear so that they can stay in school or providing them with a bicycle so that they can get to school. Maternal health is another one that’s really important for women because whether it’s something like Hospital by the River.

I don’t know if anybody’s ever read that book by Katherine Hamlin, where these little girls are married off at the age of 12 and they can’t give birth at that age because their little bodies are too small. But because they strain and the child won’t fit through the birth canal, that child ends up dying and they tear everything down there.

So three or four days later they pass the stead fetus, but everything’s torn, so they leak and they get ostracized and sent to live on the edges of villages. And they have to live that way for the rest of their life. And what Catherine Hanlon’s hospital is doing is it’s actually providing them with a surgery to fix it.

There was another instance in the bulge of Africa where these little girls were being taken off by the rebels and raped. And then once they had their children they were no longer useful. So there are operations there to actually teach these girls skills. And also empower them to understand it’s not a shameful thing.

They can go back to their families if they want to. If families will accept it. So it’s also about training the families and in instances where they don’t, they actually teach them the life skills so that they can afford to look after themselves and their child. And these are the things to me that are making a difference.

I was CEO of a children’s charity in Australia that provided wishes to kids who were not actually dying. That was just, they were chronically ill. And whilst I feel that’s a lovely cause, For me, there are much more critical things that we actually need to address. And B1G1 helps me do that. But it also gives me a community who think like me.

And maybe this is why when you’re in my eyes locked across the room, we have this instant like we’ve got to speak to each other. I think so. I think it’s just, it’s an amazing community. And and the impacts that you’re making by doing this. Those things are huge and being able to speak about it.

And I think the accessibility to be able to make an impact on that. I feel strongly about B1G1 as listeners would know. I’m lucky enough to have known Paul Dunn, who’s one of the founders for a long time. And every opportunity to speak about B1G1 is worthwhile because I per, I personally believe that the best way to change the world is to make an impact one person at a time.

And B1G1 is enabling that to, to actually happen as well, which is amazing. Just to wrap things up one final question I like to ask my guests, what is the what is the big aha? that clients have with you when they start to work with you that you wish other people would know in advance that we’re going to have?

Oh, that’s an interesting question. The big aha for me would be, I think one of the biggest ahas comes for them when we actually go through that initial diagnostic process. And this is where we’ll talk about bottlenecks later on. But when we actually start strategically looking at their business, because One of my superpowers is the real ability to look at a business and think strategically and look at it from different angles and see things that are right or wrong, but then also see the potential of that business.

So working with them, the first AHA is really to See the low hanging fruit and realize what they should be saying no to. And then working with me to actually get a team that sees that as well, and then understands where the business has to go and gets on board. Fantastic. I love that. As you alluded to, we’re going to have a continued discussion and there’ll be a link to be able to access that on how to identify the best.

bottlenecks in your business that are holding you back. But as far as this is concerned, this main podcast, it’s such a pleasure having you on the program. We covered so much territory and probably could talk for about another, 10 hours quite comfortably. But for now, thank you so much for being part of the podcast.

Oh, it’s been my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bytes. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bytes is proudly brought to you by Podcasts Done For You, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance.

Contact us today for more information. Details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on BizBytes.

A business is either growing or dying. There really isn’t a middle ground, but even that’s us as humans in our life. We are either growing or dying. There’s no treading water. The hardest thing as an individual who wants to coach and help people is when somebody says, I’m okay. You’re not really okay. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites proudly brought to you by CommTogether, the people behind Podcasts Done For You, because we’re all about exposing other people’s brilliance. Don’t forget to subscribe to Biz Bites and check out Podcasts Done For You as well in the show notes. Now, Let’s get into it. Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of Biz Bites and my guest today. This is one of these wonderful things that happens when you meet people on LinkedIn and you just click immediately. And I think we got into the conversation from the beginning and just said, I’ve got to get you on my podcast. So first and foremost, Ellen, do you want to introduce yourself to to everyone in the audience always? And I think this is a brilliant way of asking, because what I want everyone to understand is we’re just a compilation of our stories. And I spent, and I almost cringe when I say this, but a lot of decades in a different profession. But in that profession in financial services, I gained valuable skills. That I didn’t know I was amassing along the way, which was opening businesses, opening offices, opening regions. I just like talking to people. And I thought when you put me in a place that I get to talk to individuals and in the financial world, it’s to help them know that they’re going to be okay. But in that timeframe, I also worked with a couple of coaches. And it was unusual at the time, but within financial services, they were always doing sales and sales training. And I was so fortunate that somebody took me to a Bob Proctor seminar long before the movie, the secret came out. And personal growth and development exploded, but I’m a really good student and I did everything that he told me to do. And I about an inch shy of tripling my income did that. And I enjoyed great growth in my career, but for most of us, when we get to an inflection point, it’s that something’s not working in the current role and we’re looking for something different. And it happened pre pandemic, but it was right time. Wrong place. And I discovered that I either needed therapy or a coach and Bob had partnered with Sandy. I decided I’m not going to make that mistake a second time. And so I hired them and three months into the relationship, they were growing their coaching division and made an offer to come and be mentored by, at that point, the greatest of all time, Bob Proctor.

And I jumped at the chance. My purpose stayed the same, but I decided I was going to have help more people have the experience that I got to do with Bob. So far, that’s the story. What a great introduction and story is the right word to use there. I wanted to explore that a little bit first. Firstly, the idea of, before we get into Bob, just the idea of coaching. I I think I’m similar to you in that there’s a point in your business career where you have this revelation that you need someone, and is that how it is, do you think for the majority of people? Is that what it needs to be to, for that relationship to be successful? I think so. I think that for each and every person, it might be a frustration or that you start to notice. You’re not doing as well as that, you can be, or you look at somebody else outperforming you and you think they’re no better than you, which is true. We’re all, all even. And I think when you have that, you do start looking for answers and it’s easy then to have a conversation. It’s not quite so easy to always be mentored and coached, but once you understand that they have the knowledge that you’re missing, like driving a car. Your parents, when you were 15, weren’t going to hand over the keys to the car yet. We get out of school and think we have the keys to our life and understand how we’re going to navigate it and get to where we want to be. So if we can just understand that when things aren’t going right, that’s a really great time to start just looking. You know what, I just had a revelation that I hope is not the same. My, with kids, the teenage years I think are amongst the hardest years. We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Bites podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast? One for your business, where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world? Come talk to us at Podcasts Done For You. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you. So all you have to do is show up for a conversation. But don’t worry about that. We will do everything to design a program that suits you. From the strategy right through to publishing and of course helping you share it. So come talk to us, podcast done for you.com au. Details in the show notes below. Now back to Biz Bites. The teenage years I think are amongst the hardest years and it’s really great when you get to the other side of it. And I’m at the other side of that. I just hope that my, me and my business being in the teenage years right now are not reflecting the same idea where we think we know it all and we think we know what to do but it’s only when we get to 20 that we realize that we have absolutely no idea and we do need to ask people for help. I have. Got it. I have that up for a little while. So hopefully the parallels are not quite the same in the years worth. But it’s an interesting one though. That question, when do people come to you? When do you have people coming to you? Is it, is there a time that they’ve been in business?

Does it need to be from the start? They need to have had a bit of a, Okay. A bit of a attempt at it themselves. Usually they have to have been in business for a bit. Unless, and that’s why it’s always funny, there’s never an absolute. If somebody like me stayed in the corporate world for a really long time, and we get inoculated with this is how business is and this is how it runs. When we decide to go out and start a business, Sometimes we know at that point we need help because all of a sudden you don’t have somebody else doing marketing, sales or advertising. You’re everything. But other than that, it usually is in business for a while because we’ll get as far as we can go on our own skillset. And until we hit that point, We’re not always thinking that there’s somebody who can help us. Yeah, it’s it is interesting, isn’t it? I, my journey was that I enrolled in a particular course and met someone who I really enjoyed what, hey, what they gave in that particular course. Had an opportunity to go back the next year more as a volunteer to help. And for the, I think for the year after as well and enjoyed sessions with the same guy and then just for whatever reason forgot about him and forgot about everything there. And it was only sometime later where I thought, yeah, I need a coach and started looking around and suddenly. He popped up in my feed again and it just was a, it was a natural fit. But I’m interested to you, you talk you’ve interchanged between coach and mentor and that tends to happen. Is there a difference? It more depends on the client and how they view it. It’s almost like the word Kleenex. Coaching right now is such a general term that it does become more specific with how do you help the individual get the end result that they want. And they can hear a mentor a little bit easier even though the main role of a coach is to provide the tools but to keep them accountable. And so some will view those words different. Some use consultant. I tend to think that’s not a most appropriate word because consultants tell people what to do. And as a coach, It’s that, I always tell somebody, I teach you how to study you. I like that. I like that. It’s a, it’s, and it is, I think that’s one of the interesting things in certainly again, in my journey in coaching and is that it is, you can stand in front of a group of people And everyone will hear something different, but not only that, they need to hear something different, don’t they? Because not everybody’s at the same stage. Not everybody has the same background or the same understanding of things. And that’s a difficult thing at times, particularly in those groups. group environments, whether it’s a conference or a, or literally group coaching sessions is recognizing the difference and where people are at and where you’re at and having the confidence to dismiss certain things and go, that’s, I don’t need that bit of information now.

When you go back over and study this, the same thing, because repetition is really how we change. And what is always fun when I get to have somebody notice, because they’ll either read or listen to the same information that we might’ve done three months ago, and they will swear it wasn’t there. And the reason that happens and I actually had to learn this because I love to read. If you look at the bookshelf behind me, that’s not on accident, on purpose. I do love to read, but there’s a difference between reading and just gathering knowledge. and reading and absorbing it and learning how to apply it to you. You’re a different person the next time you read it. And so what you just said is very key. You’re going to pay attention to what the new you has to understand to get to the next level. And you’ll swear it wasn’t there. Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? I, I’m reflecting on a couple of books that I’ve read in the past year and how you reflect on them, even though I haven’t reread them, but As I reflect on them now, having absorbed that knowledge over a period of time, it is a different feeling because it’s it’s when you watch the movie and what’s coming up, you get to celebrate certain scenes and you get to find other nuances that you didn’t see the first time through. And I think that’s one of the joys of it, isn’t it? It’s knowing that you’re progressing towards the next level. And so It’s just fun. That’s absolutely. And it should be, that’s the point, isn’t it? Of business. You shouldn’t be doing it. If it’s not fun. A business is either growing or dying. There really isn’t a middle ground, but even that’s us as humans in our life. We are either growing or dying. There’s no treading water. And the hardest thing as an individual who wants to coach and help people is when somebody says, I’m okay. You’re not really okay. You just gave up. Or you think, Oh, this income is good. I’m just going to stop. You give up so much opportunity to grow. Yes, there’s always something. I think it’s, there’s always another mountain, isn’t there? There’s it’s, you’ve always, you’ve reached a ledge, you think you’re at the top, but there’s always just another mountain. Yeah. Jim Rohn has a great quote, new level, new devil. Yep. I like that. I like that. Talk to me a little bit about, we’ve explored around the coaching bit a little bit, but talk to me about the influence of Baldwin. And in fact, I think perhaps for people in the audience who may not have heard of him and may not have seen the movie, tell me a little bit about him and the and even the movie as well. And I think to understand is that, as an individual, he devoted his life to learning why he had such a dramatic change early in his life. And I always I tell my clients, we should be thankful every day that he went from 4, 000 a year to 150, 000 a year. And we’re talking like 1950s, 1960s. So that’s a huge dramatic jump.

And he could have been fine with that because he also then grew that to a million, but he was very aware that. He didn’t have book knowledge. He didn’t go to school. He didn’t finish school. He dropped out and he just wanted to understand what caused such a dramatic change that He could explain to somebody else. One of his earliest mentors gave him the book Thinking Grow Rich. So he always quoted from that book. But one of the stories is that he would drive around giving that book to everyone and didn’t understand why they didn’t have the same result. Because we don’t do the work. And so he, Just started to do the research and amassed, Dr. Ryan at Duke or Leland Val Vanderal or Dr. Thurman Fleet in Texas, who in the 1930s was a chiropractor. And where all those names, would it make sense to someone else? He was just looking for the pieces of the puzzle that went together for him. And then what really propelled was yes. Then the movie, the secret came out Rhonda Byrne. Put him and John Osroff and Michael Beckwith and Marie Diamond and probably other people I’m forgetting to mention on the map, but personal growth and development and coaching really wasn’t a thing. It was reserved for presidents and CEOs and an average person like myself wouldn’t think that it was possible. And then the next interaction that really propelled Bob into the forefront was the, Sandy Gallagher, who’s now the CEO after Bob’s passing. And what she did, she was the piece of the puzzle that took everything that he had amassed and put it in a logical sequence for anyone to understand and follow. And so you had these two great minds come together. who were still focused on helping everyday people. And that’s really where in my mind, he separates from the rest is that he wanted to make sure that there was a coach in every country in the world. And by 2020, they had attained that so that this could get in their hands because it can change their life.

And the other part that stands out is that he was so humble and so generous. And we lead with value. I will tell a person what to do, whether they work with me or not, because it’s that accountability and he always led with that. Give them the information. Don’t make it a secret. Don’t do, a workshop or a conversation.

And I think that’s what a lot of people don’t know about him. Very generous man, probably the most generous man I’ve ever met. And isn’t that interesting though, that whole philosophy of generosity it’s counterintuitive to a lot of people, isn’t it? Because they so want to hold tight to, everything that they have.

They think if it’s a secret sauce that then somebody needs that. And I just sit here and say, this works for everybody in every place, but it’s because it’s not specific to. One type of industry, one type of person, one age and all of that. And they still need the accountability. I always find it interesting, isn’t it?

Because we often use that phrase that you just slipped in there about the, the secret sauce or secret recipes. And it’s funny because the. Comparison to food is not really relevant. It’s a nice one, but, I know there, you can talk about KFC and people spent years trying to work out what was the, what’s the colonel’s secret herbs and spices that went into it, but does it really matter?

Because the next, this, there’s no point in the next restaurant opening up and selling exactly the same chicken is there. And I think that’s, it’s, the difference is in the human element in any business. And there is no absolute ingredients list of ingredients. That’s going to make one business exactly the same as the next one.

Even if you’re producing the same widgets at the end, there are so many variables that happen in that. I think it, and yet you hear so many times people spending, Oh, I’ve got to find out this. What’s the secret to doing that? And I’ve had many, I’ve had conversations this week with people who are just like I’ve tried to, I’ve looked at a few different things and I’m trying to pull it apart and work it out.

What’s the right, and I’m like, nah, I don’t know if that’s the right way to go about it. I’ll help you a little bit with that because you’re exactly right. It starts with what the person thinks. So if we think the answer is outside of us, we’re always going to be looking. And coming from us, I was in sales, I’m an introverted sales people, which most people think that’s not a possibility.

It just means by the end of the day, I just want to read and have quiet and that, but it’s to understand that it’s the belief in what you’re doing that makes the difference, not. The actual tactic and working in financial services years ago, and they probably still do had a very. not helpful habit of bringing in the sales flavor of the month.

Meaning this is how this person built it. And then the next month, this is how someone else. And even in today with everything that’s out there, it does cause a person to believe that they just haven’t found the right external thing compared to And I always use an example. I worked with a gentleman who during the pandemic was going to do a webinar like this, have a fun conversation.

This mortified him. He didn’t like doing this. He didn’t. And I just said, then it’s not going to work. Oh, no, Ellen, I’ve hired this company that’s well known for this. And I go, you have to believe that the process works. And that’s really what they’re missing. Everything works. Yep. And, that’s, it’s an interesting thing too, because part of that is you talk about the sales process and when you’re being sold into something that if you don’t have an opportunity, and I think it is an opportunity to be able to believe it.

Yep. And because I’ve talked about this in the previous episode of the podcast with a guest. I had George Bryant that some of my listeners may remember, and George talks about the idea of, no trust. But then you’ve gotta move into safety. And if you don’t deliver the safety, that’s when it all falls apart.

And part of the mechanism for getting to safety is not only you as the person selling the product needs to help make the person feel safe and not immediately go and say, oh, you’ve paid for this. but you really need to pay for more. That’s just, destroying that level of safety from the beginning, but it’s also about making sure that the person that’s purchasing from it is feeling safe enough to believe in the product and to believe all the, in this product or service that they’re buying.

And if they don’t believe no matter how Much they’re willing to pay. It’s not going to work. And that’s part of what being, making them feel safe is. And it’s also part of understanding not everyone’s a great fit for your product or service. And a salesperson’s role, and this is where some get uncomfortable, is, as you said, our role is to help them make the best decision for them.

But it’s also for us to recognize you’re not quite ready. There’s probably some things you can do beforehand. But, The saddest thing for a coach is to have somebody decide to hire us and then not do the work. And so it’s our responsibility to make sure that they’re the proper fit. There’s more than enough people in the world.

There’s plenty of people to work with. We do not have to corner everyone. Yes. And that’s interesting too, isn’t it? It’s it’s almost like the coaches need to have that revelation as well, don’t they? Because. There are many out there that believe that everybody should be working with it and should be doing it their way.

And that’s not true. No in any role that a person has with what they’re serving a client with should understand some of the characteristics. And first of all, the question really is, who do you like to work with? I do not want to work with somebody I don’t like. And I always say this and it’s always funny.

It’s not that it’s a questionnaire or anything, but 95 percent of the clients I work with have animals as pets.

It’s okay, but it’s just, it’s a characteristic. Yes. And I think it’s a thing that is people underestimate this whole idea of, values and purpose, because if you relate on that level, then the chances that you’re going to have a successful relationship, whatever that relationship is. Much greater than if you don’t.

And it’s it’s, and it’s funny because you see in, in relationships, people often ask you a cat person or your dog person. And if you’re one or the other, then it may not work. And it’s funny, but it’s. It’s true. It’s, there are some underlying values that need to be need to work from the outset for a relationship to work and whether that is a whether that’s a business relationship or a personal relationship, it doesn’t matter.

Because ultimately if you don’t have some of those underlying values, then it’s just not going to, it’s not going to work. I tell everyone when they start, my job is to kick them in behind, but eventually they’re going, we’re going to be friends. And I have that expectation. Coaches hire coaches and that’s actually one of my first requirements if I’m ever interviewing a coach is to understand that they also recognize like we, we drink our own Kool Aid that we understand that we need to do this.

But I also have the expectation. I’m either going to respect them or become friends with them because I don’t want to be fearful of them. Or not think that they know what they’re doing. And so the natural evolution is to have a friendship.

Yep. And I think that’s it’s actually really interesting when you say that, because I’ve seen that with some way you can see that’s moved into friendship. There’s still there’s still a respect there because you, even as friends, you need to have that respect. Don’t need to be able to kick them along at times still.

Don’t you? Because that’s the difference, isn’t it? Because if you just. Friends and it’s a non work kind of friendship. You don’t tend to give people a real kick unless there’s something that’s, they’ve done something, really stupid and and ridiculous. Most of the time we just go, Oh yeah.

Okay. That’s great. But if it’s but you need to have that level to be able to give them that kick when they need it. I think for me, what was really just eyeopening for me, my very first client is one of my very best friends. Now that should put the fear in most people because when anyone starts a new role or a new profession and to this day, she still asks and I support her.

And sometimes I am kicking her in the rear because for any of us, when we’re in the midst of something and we can’t see our way out of it, it’s just. It’s really just the ability to ask questions and to help somebody see it from a different aspect. And if they didn’t believe that this process has the ability, then they wouldn’t ask.

Yeah. And it’s, and that’s the, that’s. That has to be part of it from the beginning, as you say. And it’s interesting that relationship continues on even beyond the sort of the professional relationship, which is a wonderful thing. And, but by the same token, having that trust, because I think what people forget is that we’re trying to pick up bits and pieces of information, From different sources all the time.

And we’ll, those little things will have an influence in different ways. And that stuff that you can pass on as you interpret it and do it in your own way. Which brings me to the question of saying, you started off with Bob. How much have you, how much of what you do keeps to that original idea?

Or how much have you developed and say I’ve still got that but I’m. Over here now, and it’s not quite the same. I think the best way to describe it is how I evolved as a coach and just how anyone evolves with a coach. And there’s different paths a person can take. And again, not right or wrong.

We’re all serving different people in my world because what Bob and Sandy put together is brilliant and I don’t want to have to go recreate it. is that becomes a cornerstone of what I do. And in the very beginning, what they really have created was the ability for someone to leave a completely different industry and learn how to become a coach.

Because in the very beginning, you’re letting go of that. Bob and Sandy do the coaching and we’re facilitating, easiest way to describe it, but because it’s a world that we love, I sit there and I, that’s the thing about this. I get paid to ask questions. I get paid to listen to podcasts like this.

I get paid to read books because I need to expand my knowledge as how to help them and what other pieces of information will land in a different way. And so it’s the evolution of. Now, utilizing some of the software that has the training that Bob created, and then wrapping around my own style.

And I love that is, is it does have to be bringing your own style and things into the equation. Tell me a little bit about what what do you think or do you, let me rephrase that going into working with people and whether it’s a new person or someone that’s existing, how much is listening versus being prepared that this is what I’m going to give over today?

I’m usually, most of my clients know. It’s not like school. I don’t, I have an idea of where we’re going one because of the work that we do in some of the lessons, but a lot of times it’s intuitive in the sense of somebody needs to hear something and I don’t know who it is. And sometimes I’ll wake up and I’ll decide, Oh no, this is what we have to cover today.

And when it creates that skill level to even get better and better is to be intuitively tied into the energy of the group. But sometimes it’s To cause it to settle with them in a very unsettling way. And so it’s a bit of both. There’s the process of the 12 things we go through. So they know that’s coming, but you can’t just deliver it the same way over and over again.

And it’s, so for example, right now we’re doing a quantum leap challenge for 30 days. And so four mornings of the week, they have to be on the phone with me at 6 45 in the morning. And now part of it is that there’s certain things that we’re following, but then it’s unscripted. All meant to have a quantum leap by one of the best books written, which is U squared by Price Pritchett.

Brilliant. What’s the, what is the what is the brilliance here? It’s easier to have a quantum leap than we all think. And usually you’re in the middle of it. before you even realize it. And it is stop asking how things are going to happen and just start taking little action steps every day towards the goal.

And it’s interesting because I’ve and I’m going to remember that. I think it’s 10 X is better than two Xs. The book. Yeah. And it’s and it’s the same kind of principle, isn’t it? Because, but it’s a different way of thinking. I think that’s the key here is. When you want to double something, you’re thinking quite small, but if you’re really wanting to make that quantum leap, then you have to completely change the way you think about something.

You can’t work harder. That actually was one of the things Bob said early on, is that most people think they have to work a little bit harder to get, And that you have to think differently.

We got where we are by thinking the way we think. Albert Einstein said, You can’t find the solution thinking the same way that caused the problem. I’m paraphrasing that, but that’s essentially what he said, which is true. And it’s that ability to sit back and recognize, How do I unlock thinking differently?

And stop getting in our own way. Yes. And I think that’s the key, isn’t it? It’s it’s, you realize that you are your own obstacle and that’s, and it’s one thing to realize it. It’s another thing to be able to push through it as well. There’s a couple easier ways, but you’re right. We’re the problem, but we’re the solution early on.

If I’m chatting with someone, because again, if they think it has to be industry specific, it doesn’t matter what industry. Because it applies to everything because they’re the problem and they’re the solution. But we also have to recognize that the paradigms that we’re carrying around, those are just a fancy word for, our parents said things to us, our bosses said things to us, and we just accepted this in broad terms, it went into our subconscious.

So you didn’t put it there, but it is your responsibility to get it out. And once somebody lets that settle in, And it really is, it’s a great awareness, is that whatever we were told in school is what we carry forward or what we think about money with how we saw our parents. And one of the greatest ways to ask a question, because we’re trying, everyone’s trying to come up with solutions, is to just, Turn it around and go.

If I did know the answer to how do I find five more clients? What could it look like? Because you’re not asking yourself. How do I, you’ve got guards up again. If I knew how to get five more clients, what would it look like?

I love it. It’s really, it really intrigues me these days how there’s been this bit more of a revelation, I think, in coaching and generally in things about how important language is. The way we speak is often a reflection of the obstacles we’re putting in the way. And it’s the words you don’t speak that are between the ears and your head.

That is the biggest problem. Absolutely. And it’s because here’s the thing, isn’t it? That we all have our skill sets, but if we’re in business, particularly if we’re a, a CEO of a, whether it’s a small business of whether it’s a business of one or it’s a business of many, that there’s lots of skills that you Think you need to learn along the way that you we can talk about outsourcing in a different time, but the whole you get into this whole idea that you have to do everything.

And then you’ve got these obstacles that are in the way and your own, you’re limited by your own beliefs as we talked about before. And suddenly those things that should be achievable or not. I know. Personally, that I’ve had that obstacle, with sales, because being a marketing background person, you you’re taught that marketing and sales don’t talk to one another.

And in your head, marketing and sales don’t talk to one another. And it’s a difficult obstacle to overcome when you’re doing that. And part of it was the, part of it for me, and I think I’ve said this on the podcast once before, is that I was always, people were saying to you, you’ve got to have the sales conversation.

And all I heard was the word sales. And when I suddenly twisted and I went, I’m going to have the conversation that happens to be about sales, but when it’s a conversation, I can do that easily. I can have a conversation with people. We’re having a conversation now, but if you tell me that I’ve got to have us I’ve just got to go into sales mode.

It’s just not me. And I have to, I can’t follow the script of what other people might do. It has to be my own script. Always.

I’ll help you a little bit with that one too. And this came from David Bayer who wrote A Changed Mind. And that’s why I tell I just pull things out because all of a sudden it just is going to help my clients. But our beliefs control our actions. And so when I talk about paradigms, that’s really what we’re working on changing.

And he had such a profound exercise because a belief is a decision. And let’s talk about sales because that’s where everybody’s I’m not good at sales. I don’t like sales, whatever they think about it. So if that’s the thing, if that’s the thought I have I’m bad at sales. I can’t close anything.

I’m not good at this. And so the way that he words it in the beginning is what evidence do I have that my new belief, so that I’m great at sales is true because you take the opposite. If I’m saying I’m bad at sales, it’s no, I’m great at sales, but it’s asking you what evidence do I have that I’m great at sales?

And so you look at your own history and you find what you can pull out. Like I sold a billion dollars at the asset manager. I think I can do this or I sold and got clients enrolled in managing their assets. But if I only have one and I’m really looking for more, I can say Kim, who’s also a coach in Ireland, I Was penniless and now sells 3 million a month.

If she can do it, I can do it. And that’s where you start to bridge. What evidence do I have that this new belief I’m great at sales is true.

I love it. We could talk for a long time about all of these things, but we do have to start wrapping things up, but I guess we we’ve gone around this whole idea of coaching. Tell me. I think, I would suggest that you probably believe that every business owner and CEO should probably have a coach.

And then the question is, and we how did they get to the point of knowing that? And then how do they choose the right one? I’m going to answer it two ways. I’m hoping that by the time somebody is a CEO, that they’ve been coached a couple of times. Cause I have a former client that coached early in his business and a lot of people thought he was like, that’s it.

I’m good. I’m done. I’ve got all the data I need and I can go on. And it was from a podcast like this that he heard and it settled in him finally that I always need a coach because I equated to sports. If somebody played sports or a musical instrument, you don’t just learn a couple of tunes and then stop.

You don’t just learn how to hit a ball once and never stop practicing. If they’re at that level, they hopefully have understood that. And maybe they just need a little nudge that to be a great leader, you had to be a great follower, but you also need to increase your skillset and lead people. And coaching could be, maybe they need to be a better public speaker because they’re not able to encourage their team.

Because coaching is all different avenues. But I think in today’s world, there’s so much evidence out there how coaching works. It’s why I like podcasts like this. I’m a sucker for the, I was penniless and now I’m not stories. If somebody listens to that enough, they’re going to start to understand their skills that they need.

And that a coach will help them. A coach can help in relationships, they can help in money, they can help in health all different avenues.

And finding one? What’s the best way? You’re on the one side where you find it. where you’re coaching a lot of people. And we’ve talked about, the shared values and things that, but that’s when you get into the conversation. But if you think, yeah, I need a coach because I had this struggle when, and it was lucky that I found the person that I’d already had a relationship with previously that I went, Oh, I should go to there.

Not everyone is that lucky. And so how do you, how does someone go? I need a coach, but how do I find the right one? How do I find the one that’s going to have the impact that I need them to have? I’m going to use you as an example. You weren’t lucky. That person was meant to be your coach. It wasn’t just at the right time.

The best information I can give someone is to just start asking themselves, what kind of coach do I think I need? Because You can go to any meeting and they’ll be overrun with coaches, financial advisors, realtors, and insurance people. There’s coaches everywhere. So the most important is for the person to sit and think, because it really is, what do I think I need help with?

Where am I struggling? And then have conversations, but have conversations with purpose and Understand that coaches come from all different walks of life, and it’s to, to ask yourself what’s important. Now, I’m a science math person, so very process driven. It’s not a surprise that the coaches I’ve always worked with were process driven and research backed.

Which most is all of the types of personal development go back to the Bible, thinking, grow rich signs of getting rich. But I have a couple of questions that I tell people I would ask, where’s the coaching come from? What’s the process? And I just say that because I may not be attracted to the person that just got struck by lightning one night and decided to become a coach because they wanted to help in a certain area.

That wouldn’t appeal to me. And then I would also ask them, do they work with coaches? Because I want somebody who bleeds what we do. Just like when I was a financial advisor, I wouldn’t put somebody in an investment I wouldn’t put myself in. So those are my questions. And I think it’s just be aware that it’s an interview on both sides.

And I’ll, one more thing, cause this is really important. Whoever you decide and choose, be the best student you can possibly be.

That is, that a hundred percent is the truth. The is the right thing to finish on in that part of the, that part of things, because I think we’ve all probably experienced where we’ve tried things and we realize in reflection, we just didn’t put what we needed to into it. And and you’re spending money on these things as well.

So it’s not good. Cause you’re getting further behind if you’re not prepared to put in the effort or for one reason or another, you allow things to come up and you don’t put the effort in. So I just want to wrap things up finally with a question I like to ask my guests, which is what is the aha moment that people have when they start working with you that you wish people knew in advance.

So more people are going to come flooding to you. Most people come to coaching to increase their income.

They leave this process understanding. Money is just energy and that they truly can create work and life the way that they want it to be.

I love that. What a terrific way to finish up. Um, there’s so many more things that you can explore and maybe we’ll do that in another episode, but just wanted to say to everyone out there listening in where of course, as we always do going to include all the all the information on how to get in touch with Ellen in the show notes.

But thank you so much for being an amazing guest on, on Biz Bites. I feel like I said, we could talk for hours and hours, but as we speaking now, you’re at the end of your day. I’m at the beginning of my day, so that’s not really going to work. So we’ll have to park that for another time, but thank you for being a part of the program.

Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been my pleasure. And to everyone listening in, of course, don’t forget to tune in and of course subscribe so you don’t miss an episode of Biz Bites. Thanks everyone. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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