022 | Have You Hit a Plateau in your Business? Unlock the Secrets to Breakthrough Growth

 Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan, and today we have the privilege of hosting David Greer, a seasoned business coach with a passion for guiding entrepreneurs to success. David’s expertise lies in strategic planning and coaching for entrepreneurs at pivotal stages of growth.

Whether you’re navigating a plateau or scaling from a few million to a hundred million in revenue, David’s insights are invaluable. In this episode, we’ll explore David’s unique approach to strategic planning. Distilling complex strategies into actionable plans using the one page strategic plan framework.

We’ll explore the importance of personal growth, culture building, and achieving harmony in your life during the entrepreneurial journey. Join us as we uncover the keys to business success, personal fulfillment, and navigating life’s challenges with David Greer. Stay to the end. When the conversation gets real about how to handle the stresses of entrepreneurship and David’s recovery journey as an alcoholic.

Let’s dive in. David, thank you so much for joining us here today. I’m excited to get into this discussion about everything from, you know, strategic planning and getting our head up and looking, you know, where we’re going in our, our business to, uh, really kind of digging down into how to turn that into practical day by day.

Steps that we can, we can execute on, on the planning that we do from a strategic point of view. So thank you very much for joining us here today. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here with you today. Yeah. So if it’s okay, can we just jump in and talk about strategic planning and how important that is?

’cause I, I think as entrepreneurs we find ourselves, we grow and then we, we sort of bump into some of these plateaus and it, it takes a new set of thinking ideas. Thought processes, processes in general to, uh, really get us to, to a next level. So can you just walk us through a little bit of the value of strategic

planning?

Yeah, I, strategic planning is really making a decision about where it is that you want to take the business and where you want to end up and what that looks like. And I’ll just, I use a particular template and framework, which is called a one page strategic plan. Cause I think that binders. With copious amounts of documentation are completely useless.

But if you can boil your whole corporate plan down to a single page, admittedly, you got to print it on double sided sized sheet of paper so you can read it. So I use stuff from a guy, Verne Harnish, two books, The Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up. So like you don’t, you can go read those books, right? Yep.

And they are filled with, with useful things. So in the early two thousands, I was an angel investor and I was invested. I was looking about a hundred deals a year and investing in one. And then I’ve become a board of department, the board of directors, but all my, and I come from a high tech background, so I have a lot of high tech entrepreneurial friends here in Vancouver and, uh, they all kept telling me about this one page strategic plan, one page strategic plan.

You got to go use it. So I took one of my young. Software startup CEOs and Vern Harnish, the inventor of all this, was in town to do an all day training session. We went to that session and he presented an incredibly simple idea that blew my mind away, which is look three to five years out. Like, where do you want to be in three to five years?

What are the key capabilities or thrusts? Like, is it new markets, new products, new services? Do you need, is it key hires? Like, is that some of the capability or do you need bigger plants? What do you, what will be required to get you to that three to five year vision and then work back to what do you need to do this coming year to set you up because you probably, you know, you’re not going to get all this stuff done that’s in a five year plan, but like, what are the critical things that you need to get done this year to set you up?

For where you want to go. And then once you’ve set those, what do you need to do this quarter, uh, in order to achieve your goals for the year? Um, now, you know, I joined a young software startup when I was still in university and as the first employee after the founders, and I liked the place. He stayed at 20 years, grew it into a global powerhouse.

And, you know, we did strategic planning the way I think a lot of people do it, which is, well, what did we do last year? Like, can we incrementally make it a little better the next year or than last year, you know, and keep moving it forward. And, you know, we did that for 20 years and we were hugely successful.

So I’m, I don’t want to knock it. We also, I wonder how much stuff we left behind because we didn’t do a little bit more and we had a relatively stable, you know, we specialized in a particular computer system and it was somewhat stable, uh, until the very end and when it wasn’t like, if your markets are growing at 20 percent aggregate per year and your business is not growing at 20%, then you are losing market share, but that’s a strategic analysis.

Like you don’t do that. If you’re just. Answering then, you know, if you’re like going great guns, if the market’s growing, then you probably have a lot of demand and you’re probably having trouble keeping up. Um, but you might also still be losing market share and maybe over time, that’s a bad thing. Like I, I, again, I don’t know, but if, if you don’t step back and look at this bigger picture.

And this three to five year vision of your markets and, uh, you know, in Vern harness this world strategy equals marketing, like understanding your markets, understanding your competitive advantage, which in a scaling up world as we call 10 X, like if you’re not 10 times better than like, you probably have work to do.

Yeah.

Yeah. And one thing you touched on that I think is super, uh, important for entrepreneurs is we can have our nose down just continuing to grind. And one of the things we we’ve discussed earlier was conscious intention. Like let’s be really intentional on where we’re going. Let’s, let’s get up and really look.

Otherwise it’s like we could just keep doing the same thing over and over again, making some incremental improvements, but is this really where we want to go? I think that’s a really important, uh, piece to this whole thing is stepping up and really thinking about like. Do I enjoy this path that I’m on?

And am I going to be happy if we get to that destination? So, yeah, I think that’s, uh, that’s an important distinction

there. That’s great. And so a lot of entrepreneurs are like me, we get bored easily and what we actually thrive on is the next challenge. And so when you just sit there and you operate the business, there’s, there’s a certain probability that you’ll just get bored because you’re just, you’re Operating the business and there’s not new, new challenges for you to go

after.

Yeah,

a hundred percent. We feel like entrepreneurs, like progress is essential. Like if we’re staying stagnant and stagnant can be even just, you know, consistent growth, like that can get awfully boring. Like let’s do something new, different. Let’s mix it up a little bit. And that can also be problematic, right?

The team can be like, stop mixing it up. Right. Like a little bit of shakeups. Okay. But we don’t need to reboot the entire company. Well, what I’ve

learned is. that in a, if I get everything smooth running, which I am good at doing, like taking a mess and cleaning it all up and getting it going. And that’s exciting for me.

But once it’s going, like I need to have someone else in charge and I really need to get out of the way because subconsciously I’ll end up breaking stuff so that I have some new challenges. To go fix. No, I’ve actually observed this about myself. I’ve learned enough about myself to know this is the case.

And it’s like, yeah. No, you need to go find something new in your life. It’s a new business activity, right? Something because it’s for most of us entrepreneurs. That’s really what we thrive on. And also a lot of entrepreneurs thrive on that. It’s kind of, it’s not so much me, but that early stage where like you’re finding those first customers and you’re figuring it out and like, Product market fit and like all of that chaos, which most people like is just can’t handle and, and full of uncertainty.

That’s the fun part.

It is. Yeah.

Give me more.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to go back to something you said about, uh, cleaning up the mess. Like there’s lots of, I’d like to talk a little bit about what you see is the mess in a lot of businesses that you, you come across. Because I, I think, you know, there’s probably some consistent issues that pop up for, for businesses.

I’d like to just talk through maybe what a few of those are and then what you do to clean those pieces up.

Sure. So I think, so I didn’t get to the, the last piece of the one page plan and the Rockefeller habits. So you do three to five years, you do a year, you do a quarter, you And by the way, you’re looking at no more than four to five, like goals in each of those areas.

So one of the things I see a lot is entrepreneurs try and set too many goals, like for a quarter. So many, many people have said you can, you grossly overestimate what you can do in a day and a week and a month. And underestimate what you can do in a year and two years and five years if you just, if you just stick with it and stick to a vision and a direction you’re trying to go in.

Yeah, there’s some interesting data out there on that point that says if you have five to 10 goals, you accomplish almost none of them. Three or four, you get a few of them done, one to two, your percentage goes up dramatically. And it’s like, just focus on the things that are critical to moving your business forward and yield that consistent progress will make a huge difference.

So,

yeah, so what’s, what’s the, so the biggest question I think for entrepreneurs and leaders is what’s the number one thing. I mean, that’s, it’s literally boils down to what’s the number one thing. And everybody loses sight of that, right? We, I take them off site. We’ve come up with the plan. We decided what the number one thing is for the quarter.

And then they start achieving the other goals. And I ask, you know, I have my monthly meeting. Okay. Number one, where are you at? On track, right. You had behind,

um, right. And do you think that’s because they’re urgent gets in the way? Okay. Uh, there’s important and then there’s urgent and we, we sort of get sucked into the urgent things of life in the business.

There’s

definitely that. And um, I think maybe before we, we started, we were talking, you were mentioning about habits. So to me, this is a really critical habit question, which I ask entrepreneurs when I’m working with them. So we come up with this plan. We know what the number one thing is, and maybe this, the entrepreneur may be not assigned that task, although there’s still obviously responsible for making sure that it comes to fruition.

But. I’ll ask an entrepreneur. So how many of the best hours of each day of the week are you putting into the strategic goals for the quarter?

And I surprisingly. Number of times we’ll get zero.

Yep. Yep. And like, from my perspective, if it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t happen. Correct. You know, if the entrepreneur thinks they’re going to do it in their free time, that time doesn’t exist. Like if it is not intentionally put on the calendar, time blocked, Phone shut off, email closed down.

Like it’s just not going to happen.

So, and then the piece from the Rockefeller habits is who, what, when. So the idea is you have like at the end of a quarterly planning session, you sit down and you create like your who, what, when for the next week and like the things that you can see. Like over the next three to nine weeks that are going to, you know, be critical milestones in achieving your goals for the quarter.

And then the idea of a weekly meeting is you get together, you take a few minutes and celebrate the wins and the stuff that’s going well. And a positive cultural story. Um, and then you get into debate about, you know, what’s not going well. What is, you’ve got the most expensive, most talented people in your company, in the room.

Like it’s not about just reading. You don’t want anyone reading a report and right. Like you want them debating what’s going on. And then you want the last half to be updating the who, what, when for the next week for the group. And it’s really an art because you. You only want things in the who, what, when for the management team that are, um, that most of the people in the management team need to be aware of, like if only two people need to be aware of needs to be on their to do list, but not necessarily the groups.

And then the, um, you know, the entrepreneur needs to make sure that his critical items are on there. And then he has to make sure even if he’s not sharing the week, I think it’s best if the chairperson is shared around in that meeting, but, um, everyone has to hold each other accountable to. I’m doing that.

And you asked, so chaos comes because people are not accountable or, and also cause they never write things down. So if you don’t write down a quarterly plan and then three weeks later, the entrepreneur changes their mind, which they always do because there’s some shiny red ball that happened to go by on their way into work.

Um, then like, Oh, left turn. Oh. mm-Hmm. three weeks later. Right. Turn. And not that discipline and focus to going. Yeah. So like this, the things you talked about, keep putting things in your calendar, only doing things in your calendar. Mm-Hmm. , that’s a discipline and like, that’s a really critical habit, but that’s a, you have to really work to build that level of discipline and habit.

It doesn’t just come naturally, I don’t think, to most human beings. Right. So you, it’s something where you really have to consciously work on it.

Yeah. And I, and I think you were, I think there’s also a discipline and habit that comes to not just writing it down, who’s responsible for what by when, but really like that accountability piece matters.

And I think it starts with personal accountability. Like if you’re going to lead your team, you Did you do follow through on the things you said you were going to do? And then I think, and then I think leading that meeting also takes some skill that can be developed over time too. I think we think, Oh, meetings, it’s not hard, but like keeping it on schedule, on topic, following up, you know, ending it up on, Who’s responsible for what by when like is, is a critical piece to those meetings to make sure it wasn’t just a fun conversation.

And now we’re, we’re missing out on really driving the business forward. So I think those things are, I think maybe even underestimated, like you were talking about, like the discipline of getting it on the calendar, like same thing with running those meetings. Well, uh, it’s, uh, it can be a little bit of a challenge to, to get good at it.

first. So I love the fact that you’re rotating that chair person around. So,

and another, you know, like a suggestion that from both my meeting practice, meeting practice, coaching practice, always start a meeting with something positive, like a win. Uh, cause it, it resets, you know, if you’re going to go dig into the biggest challenge, it helps remind you that you just climbed K2, even if the next challenge is climbing Everest.

It’s like, Oh, right. Like we know how to climb really big. Very difficult mountains. And then at the end of the meeting, which is what I do with my coaching calls is, uh, I, I ask, um, so if we had this management meeting, what I would do after getting agreement on the who, what, when’s, um, is I go around the room really quickly and ask each person, what’s your biggest takeaway.

From our meeting today, like what’s your biggest takeaway or insight? And oftentimes it’s really surprising to the individuals, like when they, they don’t really think about it. They just blurt out like the first thing that comes to them. And then for some of the other people in the room, it can be really eye opening.

To like hear someone else’s like, observe it like, Oh yeah, they’re right. Like this was this aspect of the business we weren’t understanding. And this really is a massive insight. Um, and I do that on coaching calls as well. Like, you know, what’s your biggest takeaway from what we talked about today. And it just causes this very 30 seconds, maybe 60 seconds, max reflection.

And often produces these, like sometimes what’ll come out is just. Nothing to do with the topics we talked about, but it erupted this huge insight, um, for an individual. Yeah.

I love it. And these, these are just a few observations that I’m taking away from our conversation. So we’re on the finance side of things and finance is great and can really help a business move the needle.

But from my perspective, none of the finance stuff matters if you don’t have a good culture. Uh, a strategic vision and plan for where you’re going. The scriptures tell us without a vision that people perish. And it’s like, okay, let’s spend some time developing, uh, that. And I, I think I’m, I’m hearing you, you say all of that.

Um, so to, to go to the finance side, like how important is it to have all of the finances buttoned up? Do you have some, I’ll just say best practices that you see in all the companies you work for on, uh, things that, The winners are

consistently

doing in

their, their businesses. Yeah. I think the winners are definitely doing the budgeting process and making sure they’re monitoring.

Like the thing about the one page plan is it has a financial piece. It’s the high level metrics. It’s probably only a half a dozen, but it’s like a half a dozen of the key metrics that are driving the business. When the Rockefeller habits in a bigger, more sophisticated company, uh, there would be one person probably from the senior management team, maybe one management layer down responsible for every line item in the balance sheet and the income statement, like for that number.

Like, they know where that number comes from, they know what it means, they know what’s driving it. Um, you know, I believe culture is driven by stories because it’s about behaviors. And um, so I think that’s all story driven. Um, the business needs to be run by the data. And so a big piece of the Rockefeller habits and work that I do with clients is figuring out what the key productivity indicators are, what the leading ones are.

And the financial statements are great, but they’re like trying to drive the business by looking in the rear view mirror. Tell you where you’ve been. Like I, if it’s a well run business, I would say by the 15th of the month, the entrepreneur should be able to probably within two or 3 percent predict what the revenue is going to be for the month.

Because they have enough leading indicators to know, you know, it’s like if it takes time to me, if they make stuff and they know how long it takes to make stuff, then they know how much is in the pipeline. They know how much capacity they have for the last 15 working days of the month, whatever that is.

Um, And, and so they can say that, you know, like this is what we should ship and this is what we should invoice. And, and that’s when they really get good at it, that’s, uh, you know, those, those KPIs are, are indeed very predictive of where you’re going and tell you when you’re off course or not. Um, my former coach, Kevin Lawrence, who is, uh, one of the top scaling up coaches in the world.

Um, some of the really big, he works with, you know, billion dollar companies. So some of the entrepreneurs and companies he’s working with are now working on 10 year budgets. And he said, going from five year to 10 year has been just a complete, he says it’s brutal work. Like it’s really hard work, but it’s like, just has been game changing in, in planning.

Uh, for some of the businesses working with, I don’t know the specifics of that for me and stage status where a lot of my businesses are trying to just get them to do a budget and then actually, and not as a, just an exercise, but like you’re doing a budget. So every month you can see this was your plan and how are you doing?

Against the plan, right? Um, absolutely. And as a reminder, like the number one reason you go to business, you run out of cash. And so if you’re, if you’re not on top of your finances and what’s going on and what your bank balance is, then

I

tell you, you’re

at risk. A hundred percent. And like most of the clients that come to us come to us for a, you know, they’ve got a tax problem, but the number one thing we’re focused on with our clients is liquidity.

Like, I’m not going to solve your tax problem at the expense of liquidity. Like it just, it is, like you said, the number one reason that businesses go away is they, they run out of cash. They can’t pay payroll, can’t buy more materials, like it can get ugly. So we, we work really hard to, to maintain that piece.

I think

that’s, yeah. So Jim Collins book, Great By Choice, in the businesses that he studied, You know, and he’s incredibly methodical, um, but all of the real, the successful ones that he studied, um, had five to 10 times the cash reserves of their peers. In their markets.

Yeah. And the way we look at it, it’s like, if times get tough, which they will, like economies go through cycles, right.

And we get caught up in those. And so if times get tough, it allows us to survive. Like that’s step one, like, let’s just make it through this thing that we didn’t see coming. And then step two is if we survive now, we can thrive because. All of our competitors that don’t have the cash on hand. Now we’re picking up their assets for pennies on the dollar right now.

That’s when the opportunity exists. It’s like now we, all of the upside happens on the buy, you know, like if I buy it, right. The business, the asset, the piece of real estate, like that’s where I make my money. And it’s like, there’s no better time than when the economy’s in the toilet and everybody else is struggling is to come in and, and pick up those assets.

Cause that’s what the great deals are. I love that. Right. Yep. Absolutely. So you also talked about, and I, I love this. So we, one of the things that I think we, we see entrepreneurs run into is this, you How many people report to the entrepreneur and how to manage that, you know, like I would love to think I could manage 10 direct reports, but I think that’s somewhat ridiculous, right?

Like I, all of a sudden I’m, I’m losing track of what people are doing. So can we talk a little bit about how to manage direct reports and what the, you know, uh, how to hand some of those things off as, as time goes on and the business continues to grow.

I’m, I’m pausing because there’s, it’s like how to unbundle that because there’s so many kind of aspects to it.

Absolutely. Uh, so you’re correct. You know, I, I think, I don’t know what the magic number is. It’s probably around five or six, um, and just lines of communication. Right. And, um, and it’s hard, um, you know, at, in the, in the Rockefeller house, we talk about the, and in other leadership books, the, you know, the number one challenge of high growth businesses is the next level of leadership.

Like you have to be constantly coaching, finding, attracting, building the next level of leadership, which also means like when you look at a three to five year plan, then you look around the room. You know, probably if you’re pretty ambitious in your plan, you want to grow at 25 to 30 percent revenue growth year over year.

Um, probably half the people in the room won’t be there in three years because the business will have grown because they can’t grow at the pace that the business is growing and nothing against them. It’s just, you And as the entrepreneur, you have to be aware of this and like, that’s part of your leadership role.

You know, the, the other, the other piece that’s more, I guess, kind of straightforward is when an entrepreneur, so if we talk about owner founders, started a business, grew it, um, like just as that cohort, um, well, you did everything. Because you had to do everything, so you figured sales production, every damn thing you figured out.

And you’re a smart entrepreneur because you’re still in business. So I know you’re a smart entrepreneur because you figured it all out. But now you’re in the growth phase of the business where, you know, you’re proven there’s demand for your products or services. Now the challenge is you got to start hiring people who are better than you.

And so for a lot of entrepreneurs, that in itself is threatening. Like what’s my role if I have all of these smarter people, which, you know, I remind them your role is still the strategy. You have the bigger vision. You understand the market and it’s your money. It’s your risk. Like you’re taking all the risk, right?

So that, right. Like, that’s, that’s a huge piece of it. Right. And you’re not asking them to take the risks. So, you know, so be okay with hiring people smarter than you. Um, and then when you hire people smarter than you, you need to let go. And so a lot of my coaching sometimes is just around letting go. And it, these people may do it a way that doesn’t look at all, like how you’re used to doing it.

And, you know, give them concrete results that they need to achieve, like measurable results. Um, and, you know, let their behavior, like, let them achieve or not achieve the results, prove whether they’re on the right track and let them do it and don’t interfere. Right. And that can be hard, you know, considering it’s really hard for most entrepreneurs.

That is, like, really hard. Not to stick your hands back in the steering wheel and wrench it to the direction you are certain it has to go. Um, so that really is requires a lot of personal growth by the entrepreneur, um, to, um, I think you should go and let go.

Yes. Go ahead. That’s great. You said something that I think was profound that I want to go back to that, uh, a business that’s growing at 20%, 25 percent a year.

You’re, you’re looking around and. Third of the people in the room may not be there anymore because they’re not able to take you to the next level. I think something that entrepreneurs have a hard time with is, uh, accepting the truth of the situation. You know, oftentimes inertia is a challenge and we just have been going this way.

This person’s been my operations, CFO, whatever for the last five years, they helped us get here. I’m going like, Oftentimes those people hit a plateau or hit a ceiling that they just, they don’t have the skill set to take you to the next level. So can you, can we talk a little bit about like, personally, I think there’s, there’s two aspects of that.

Like generally I love and care about the people that work for me. So it’s like really hard to go, Hey, uh, thanks, but you gotta go. And so how do we, how do we navigate that? Not just from like a, Yes, I see the truth of this first. I have to accept the truth. I see the truth of this situation, and I need to go hire somebody else to like, you know, how do I take this person that’s maybe been with me through a lot of the stuff and, uh, put them on a path for, for success, maybe outside of my business.

There is no, you know, there is no easy way. It’s a hard conversation. Um, and then if that person also is like a friend, Like if there’s other like interpersonal, which often is the case, especially if like you brought in like a friend who then grew and helped you grow the business. And, but like, you just get to that point where you just, they, it becomes clear, right.

That, um, they, they can’t do it again. It’s not that they can’t maybe get there, but they can’t get there fast enough. They can’t get there at the rate that the business needs to have that level of leadership. Um, and. You know, I think you just have to have the tough conversation and then you need to be kind and caring about, you know, is, is there another role inside the company?

This person has a lot of valuable knowledge and I’ve seen very successful transitions, um, where they moved, um, underneath another senior, you know, a new senior leader came in or maybe it’s in a different department. They went under them and actually better use of their skills and or you just really, you know, help them to find the next opportunity.

Um, outside of the company, there’s lots you can do to, to help them coach them.

And, and I think that’s a really good point. If we go back to Jim Collins, right? Like we’ve got to have the right people in the right seats on the bus. And it’s like, okay, this seat may need to need have somebody else in it, but maybe we can look around and find another seat for you.

And if not. Like this isn’t going to be a situation where I just kick you out. Like, let’s, let’s figure out a transition plan where, uh, you can have time to go interview. I will give you all the recommendations. I’ll make introductions like, Hey, this person has been fantastic. You know, let’s, uh, let’s help them along on that, that next chapter of life.

I think that’s, uh, uh, that’s an important distinction. So good.

Thank you. I want to go back to the start of how you introduced that, um, kind of topic, because I think it’s one of the, the things I work on so hard, especially with my facilitation clients is what I call facing the brutal facts. So again, there’s, there’s building trust among your senior leadership team, like, um, they’re not going to put the most brutal fact on the table.

If they don’t trust you or the other people around the table to honor it, what’s often true is the brutal fact is that the entrepreneur needs to change. Yep. Right. And until the entrepreneur is ready to hear that, or somehow that’s sometimes we’re hiring an outsider like me as a coach, I can just, I won’t know any of that, but over time as we work together and you know, the situations come up.

I can often just gently shine light until, like, the brutal fact is, like, staring the individual in the face. And, you know, you know, David, I think I need to change. I think you could be right. Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, no. And I think that’s it. You’re making a really, really important point. If we think about. I’m just going to call it coaching in general, right?

Let’s use my golf game as an example. I have a very sub par golf game. I’ve got some, some golf lessons in the past and it’s, it’s helped tremendously, but I’m swinging the club. What I think is properly right. If I, if I thought it was wrong, I would do it different, but I’m, I’m swinging it correctly in my mind, but for what you believe, yeah.

Right. When somebody gives me feedback, like that, you know, this thing is happening and here’s a video of it. It’s like, Oh, okay. Now I’m exposed to the truth. Now I can start to like, when I accept the truth, now I can start making some changes. And I think that is a, is a really important thing. It’s in my mind, underscores the value of having a business coach in your life, because who’s willing, like.

You would have to have a really special culture, you know, uh, where somebody can come to you and say, Hey, you’re missing this thing. And then you accept it and be able to like, you know, move forward. I have worked with entrepreneurs who can do that. Right. Yeah. But they’re, but they’re not a lot of them.

Right. Absolutely. And you know, I, I think about core values, like one of our core values is love for our team, clients, and community. And, and we think about if I love you as a team member, like care about you and want the best for you, I’m obligated to tell you the truth. Yes. Right? Like, Hey, here’s something you’re not seeing that we need to work on.

So you can be the best version of yourself. And so, um, Again, I think that culture can take time. It takes work to build that trust to be able to speak into people’s lives in a way that matter. And even then, it’s hard to give that communication upstream to, to the owner, leader, entrepreneur. And if they don’t accept it right away, it’s hard to keep coming back.

Right? Like it’s easy to go down. We can, as, as leaders, we can go, Hey, uh, you’re not seeing this thing. Let’s work on it. And then when they still aren’t getting it, it’s like, Hey, uh, we need to keep fine tuning. Right. Like, but as entrepreneurs, we can dismiss those things. And, uh, like they’re, they’re not a problem.

And I think having somebody like you in their lives where we can work on a strategic level and then all the way down to like, what are the things that I need to do personally and professionally to like be a better leader, uh, are really important. So, yes, yes, exactly. Right.

Exactly. Great. Let’s segue to the culture piece.

Since you. Yeah. We talked about culture because, um, you know, a big part of the Rockefeller Habits is culture. Um, and my belief is that, um, high performing, that, um, developing and being very proactive about culture is how you create high performing companies. And, you know, my work, when I first, uh, work on strategic planning with an entrepreneur, I’ll work with them on what I call a discovery process.

Like, the culture will already be there. It’s typically mostly the culture and belief system of the entrepreneur. And what they kind of grew up with, um, perhaps tainted or not tainted, but adjusted by some of the other first hires or some of the early leaders. Um, but I think it’s really important to make the culture explicit rather than implicit.

Right. And so we ask questions like, who would you hire again in a heartbeat? And what are their characteristics? Tell me more about why you’d hire them in a heartbeat. Uh, or Jim Collins exercise is the, the go to Mars exercise. Like, you know, you’re on a spaceship going to Mars, who in, who around here are you taking with you?

Yeah. Yes. And why? Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. And the reason, you know, it’s culture to me is really about behaviors. And what I know about humans is that changing a human’s behavior is really hard. Teaching them skills by comparison is relatively easy. I mean, if you need a very experienced computer programmer, then they have to come with a lot of skills.

But if they, you know, really highly driven cultural organizations, if you do a mishire, will eject that person like a virus, like, because they’re toxic, they’re disruptive, right? And I work with clients to try and over time, like build policies. They often won’t do it at first, but, um, they’ll often do the hiring, but, um, so like you interview for cultural fit first.

I mean, you might have some filter for the skills, so at least they’re at some floor that you can live with, but, um, then you really dig into the cultural piece. And there’s ways to do that in open ended questioning, um, and you’ll fire for agrarious cultural, uh,

I, I agree. I think about our work lives. We spend so much time at work.

If we’re working with toxic people, huh? Man, what a life. It’s it burns you out. It’s just not worth it.

Um, so when you hire people who all have the same belief system, which is, you know, What they have, if they are all operating in similar cultural way, um, like you don’t have to, you don’t have to oversee them as much.

You don’t like, it’s just, you don’t even, you don’t have to communicate like, cause we’re going to behave in certain consistent ways because we all share this culture. And so. That’s part of what makes it all gel and go faster. Yeah.

Right. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. So, and maybe this ties into culture a little bit, but, um, we’re thinking about direct reports.

We’re talking about habits. Uh, we’re talked about the calendar and getting things scheduled. How, how does the entrepreneur, like what does an ideal week look like for the entrepreneur to like really make progress? Progress week over week, quarter over quarter. I love the quarter is a timeframe, you know, you just like 12 weeks to really sprint and then we get another week to sort of, you know, refresh our goals and, uh, be off and running again.

And so, uh, yeah, can you just talk a little bit about like what those weeks look like that, uh, the entrepreneur should have to, to really

drive success? Sure. I’ll just, I’ll back up to one thing you just said. So a quarter is 13 weeks. And my argument is in 13 weeks, you can get a lot of it done. And after 13 weeks, if you pause and go off site and think about it, you’ll know if you’re really off course or not, and there’s still be enough of the year left to fix it.

So that’s why I think that that’s a reasonable cycle. Um, uh, so an entrepreneur’s ideal week, um, 25 to 30 percent time minimum strategic thinking, strategic conversations. Strategic, like working on the strategy and however that looks like that might be talking to key customers. It might be talking to key suppliers.

Like, you know, it’s not just like sitting in your room with everything turned off and you’re like thinking, um, and by the way, you know, walking down by the river where I live by the ocean and the mountains, That may be a hundred times better, like for your thinking and being creative and coming up with the next idea.

And like, so maybe you need to be doing that at least an hour a day. And

on that point, real quick, there’s a book called rest and it talks about how the great creators, uh, writers, thinkers, they would, they would spend two or three hours really working on their craft. And then they would spend a lot of time.

Walking and that’s where, or just letting their subconscious work while they were painting or doing something else. And that’s where a lot of the great like thoughts came to them. It wasn’t the like actual production. It was like, I, okay, I took it to a point. Now I’m going to go, uh, just, uh, spend some time enjoying nature and their mind is continuing to work on the problem at hand.

And they come up with solutions that wouldn’t happen if they were still engaged in, I’ll call it the day to day work. So I appreciate that, uh, that observation. Yeah. So for me, for

me, it’s the shower. Um, it’s sleeping on it. Like I always sleep on a big decision. It’ll be clear the next day, whether you’re.

You know, he’ll wake up and know, uh, you know, my belief is for any level of the organization leaders should, you know, at least have a half hour conversation with each first report a week. Um, maybe not if it’s not as super high growing, cause things are not changing fast enough. And you know, I believe leadership, my belief about leadership is my goal as a leader is to make you successful in your role.

So my, I need to find out what’s blocking you. And it might be your own belief system, it might be your skill set, um, it might be the resources that you don’t have access to. And in those, and you need to build really good listening skills. Part of the things I talk about in my book, Wind in Your Sails, is listening is not spent 80 percent busy brain about how you’re going to rebut what the person is saying.

Listening is actually hearing their point of view. And holding space for it and being open to it and what is being said. And so I’d say in the one on one meetings, it should be like 80 percent employee talking and 20%. You talking. Um, and I think this is a really, really important of an entrepreneur’s week, which is why I’m, I want to talk about it just a little bit more.

The other thing is, you know, again, owner founders who grew the business, know every aspect of it. So the default tends to be someone asks a question, you just answer it. And so what happens is for your first reports or any other employee in the organization, there is zero. Like motivation or to go figure out the answer on their own.

Cause Hey, just go ask David. He’ll tell you the answer. Yeah. Right. And so you need to learn to not give answers and to just, you know, my biggest thing, my biggest asset I have as a coach is, is my questions. Like, that’s really all I got is curiosity and questions and, uh, like get better asking questions and coach people over time.

Like if you’re going to come to me with a problem, I want you to suggest at least two possible ways that can be solved.

Yeah, right. I love that. So that’s my wife. Uh, she’s got an organization that has 400 employees and, uh, she, she was a hospital administrator at one point in her career and, and she was overwhelmed by all of the questions.

And she was like, it was amazing what happened when I said, I’m happy to problem solve the question with you, but you’ve got to come with at least two solutions before we talk through it. And she was like. Nobody started showing up anymore because they problem solved their own issue because they engaged their brain for a second and went, Oh yeah, it’s clear what I should do.

I’m just going to go that do that thing that is like obvious. So yeah, that’s a, that’s a wonderful, uh, but again, for someone who’s

used to always just giving the answers, it’s actually, it’s that awareness. You’ve got to start with being aware that you’re always giving the answer and you’ve got to like learn to stop yourself.

Right. So it’s another piece of personal growth. So. You know, the, the, that at least 25, 30 percent of your time on strategic work, um, you’ve got your weekly management meeting. You’ve got your probably half a day of one on ones with your first reports. Um, so that probably gets you to 60 percent of your week.

You want to leave 20 percent of your calendar unallocated, um, is my kind of rule of thumb. So that’s like one day out of five business days. And then, you know, we’ve got like stat holidays and stuff. So. We ended up with more four day weeks than you think. But so anyways, but nominally five day work week, one day you leave flex.

I mean, not necessarily a day, but some flex in your calendar to deal with emergencies and stuff that will come up. Um, and then, um, if you own one of the rocks for the quarter, then. Um, you know, that may not fall into the 30 percent strategic because I’m strategic. I’m more the three to five years in the year and the big picture and, you know, the like bigger picture stuff, but you may need to, you know, do block and tackle on a particular.

Goal for the quarter. That’s your responsibility. Um, so that’ll easily consume whatever that 20 percent or so that was unallocated. And that’s, you know, as a leader and the leader of the entire enterprise, like you have to get out of operating, you know, I’m talking about a business that’s now 20, 30, 50, a hundred employees, right?

Right. You got to be doing a lot less operating and it’s mostly being the. Uh, orchestras director, right. And orchestrating, that’s where your value is. Um, and, and there’s still a lot of value in management by walking around. Um, or, you know, there’s set times where you leave your door open. Anyone can come in and talk to you.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s, that’s fantastic. And I think, uh, just to a key point you mentioned there that I think. entrepreneurs need to consider is just being proactive with their calendar, looking out three weeks going, okay, I’m blocking off these important things. Otherwise, if it’s like my calendar, people can put themselves on there.

And now all of a sudden I’m, I’m busy doing all this urgent stuff. That’s not that important. And then it’s like, we started the conversation. You know, I’ve been walking with my head down. And I haven’t been driving the direction of the business, uh, in a, in a healthy way. I’ve just been stuck in the day to day.

So I, and if you’re in a,

you know, like a high tech, high growth tech business, then as CEO, you probably are going to have three to eight or 10 trade shows like that you need to attend where your presence, like just to create belief in the company, especially you’ve got really big, much, much bigger entrenched competitors.

So like those, those consume, uh, you know, a lot of, of your time. And again, it’s like, Oh, I’m going to have to go fly to Europe to be in this trade show two weeks from now. So you got to back up like, so what’s that going to do to my key quarterly rock that I’m supposed to be executing here, right. And what I’m going to do in my absence to make sure, you know, what I’ve found is that when I.

I was leading and with for 20 years, like when I was away, the business operated, but it’s like those key strategic projects tended to not, they lost momentum when I either went away on holidays or I went away, uh, to trade shows or, um, presentations, uh, work related things. So. I would really be conscious of that and try and set it up so things could still happen.

Like, like people were really clear. This is what needs to happen in the week that I’m away so that we didn’t just coast because I wasn’t there. Yep.

I love that. And, and I think one thing that I’m reading a little bit between the lines, but one thing you’ve not said is work 80 hours a week. I think building in rest.

Uh, is an important piece as entrepreneurs, I, I, I see, unfortunately, we have clients that, uh, don’t take rest and then, then their body will take them out of the game. Okay. They’re like, if you don’t want to rest, fine. Yep. Yep. Totally. We will, we will take you out. We will make you sick. We will, you’ll have a nervous breakdown.

You’ll have something that is going to take you out of the business. And, and again, this goes back to the part where we think we’re indispensable. We can’t delegate things. We can’t. You know, and it’s like, no, we, we need to be able to go, all right, what are my most important activities? I’m focusing on those.

I’m delegating the, the things that aren’t that critical that can be handled by other people so I can take time and have relationships, have some peace of mind, have some hobbies, you know, I, I’ve got some, yeah,

so I have a model I coach around that. So my, so for nine years I had this coach, Kevin Lawrence, who, um, it’s a great scaling up coach.

He’s great. human being. Um, he has a great book, your oxygen mask first, and he has what he calls his master plan, which is one page. Surprise, surprise. Um, and here’s the thing Kevin asks of us is that we look at our lives in three fundamental areas. So we look at like our business, You know, career finances, that’s one bucket.

And then we have our life and relationships, our friends, our spouse, our family, and most entrepreneurs are super passionate actually about both of those areas. They’re often very passionate about their kids, what the kids are doing. And then he asked us to do this third piece, which is the part almost all of us miss out on self.

And like he says, like, if you want to do 80 percent of your passion is in your business this year and 10 percent on yourself and 10 percent of your family, That’s fine. But again, conscious choice. What’s your passion ratio for those? And here’s my experience personally and observing others is that we’re super passionate about the business.

We’re super passionate about our life. And we literally squeeze ourselves out of the middle. Like we do not do those things like, and sometimes you have to remind yourself, like, what did I do as a teenager? Like that I really liked her in my early twenties, right? So i’m guessing for you it might be golf A

little bit.

Yeah, if you look behind me, there’s a lego eiffel tower and uh, I still I still play with lego bricks I think they’re fantastic way to just like, you know, let my mind, uh work on projects while i’m not Super involved in, you know, whatever business things going on.

So, yeah, I mean, for me, it’s, it’s being involved in sailing, getting away, being on my sailboat.

Um, I know of an entrepreneur like indirectly who like every spring goes and shops for a new motorbike, buys a new motorbike, does one or two road trips through the summer. And in the fall sells his motorbike. And, you know, people say, well, that’s really expensive. Like, you know, it depreciated and, but this is what makes him work like in the spring, going and seeing the new models, smelling, going into the shop, smelling the smell of the bikes and, and choosing which one and getting it set up just the way he likes and, you know, Like it’s, that is the process that works for replenishing him.

Yeah. Yep. So again, no, no judgment, right? Like just, just figure out like, what, what is it? I, you know, I have another, um, uh, person I know, um, goes to movies with his brother and then he forgets. And his brother forgets and then their lives are not as good. Just their lives are just, and, and, um, you know, this is someone I’ve coached and I would just, I’d listen to them and I’d go, what was the last time you went to a movie with your brother?

Oh, it was two months ago. Well, what do you think? Yeah, it’s like you could hear it going in the calendar call my brother Yeah, and yeah get a movie date, um, yeah So it’s finding those things and then making sure you do them and then and people say to me Well, that’s a selfish. Well, here’s the deal. If you’re not selfish, like you can be selfless and give all to your business or all to your family.

Um, but in the end, if you do, if you do that, like forever, um, you will crash and burn, right? Like the only way to be there for other people is to first be selfish for yourself and to make sure that you are replenished physically, emotionally, spiritually, um, and mentally.

Right, right. A hundred percent. Like, if I’m not well, it’s really hard for my business to be well, it’s hard for, you know, my relationships to be well, and let’s just use a business example, right?

Like, if all of the cash gets sucked out of the business, right? That’s an unhealthy business. It’s not going to last very long, right? So it’s like, okay, we’ve got to maintain a, an appropriate level of, of financial health in this business. And if we don’t take care of it. It’s not going to take care of the rest of us either.

And it’s the same, same way with us. Like, uh, we’ve got to take care of ourselves. And I, I think this leads us to a, uh, sort of the next part of this discussion. Um, and, and I, I think you can speak with some authority on this, um, You’ve got some history that you talk about, uh, of alcoholism and how, uh, you’ve dealt with that.

And I think as entrepreneurs, we’ve, we’ve talked about the stress of running a business. It is not easy. Most people actually shouldn’t do it. You know, financially speaking, it’s better to just go get a W2 job, right? Success rates are way higher than, uh, than running a business. And so dealing with all that stress, if we don’t find a good way to take care of ourselves, you know, it can manifest itself.

And, you know, we can be workaholics, we can be alcoholics, we can have a gambling problem, a sex problem, a whatever problem. Right. And it’s like, we need to find healthy ways to. To, to deal with those things. So do you mind just sharing a little bit of, of Sure. Your journey and how that plays into this? Uh, so, so for your listeners,

um, you know, I’m an alcoholic and, um, and I’ve been in recovery for some time now.

Um, but congratulations, . Thank you. Um, yeah, it’s not easy, but for, for a very, very long time I was in complete denial. Um, and, and so that, that’s the first really big challenge is, you know, at what point are you willing to admit. That you have a problem, you know, I was a daily drinker for um, you know, at least 20 years and alcoholism is a progressive disease So it like got worse and worse over time and I had to consume more and more And there’s even neurological reasons why that happens to us.

Um, but I was in such deep denial You know I would, Mondays, I would go to the local liquor store for the supply for the next couple days, you know, and Wednesdays, I’d go to the one that’s a little farther away, and Fridays, I’d go to a different one, because, you know, the same person kept selling me that booze, they might think something of me, so there’s a part of my brain that’s like doing this, and at the same time, another part of my brain that is in complete, you know, Yeah, like, um, and, and, and this is the weird thing about, you know, some about, you know, mental health and about, you know, alcohol use disorder is a mental health issue.

It’s a problem. It’s officially diagnosed, right? Um, and you know, it’s not a moral failing. Um, and alcohol is particularly problematic because it’s socially acceptable. Um, right. And it’s one of the few things, like if you stop eating bananas, no one says to you, Why did you stop eating bananas? Here, have a banana.

Yeah, don’t you know how good bananas are for you? You stop drinking. Why’d you stop drinking? What is something wrong with you? Uh, you know, oh here have a drink like yeah Like right man. Um, you know, which makes it that much harder to stop. Um, yeah that coach kevin lawrence. So Um, you know, I, I went to my first, we’ve been talking a bit about Rockefeller hobbits and Vern Harnish and his stuff.

And I went to this event in 2007 to learn about Vern and his stuff and the one page strategic plan. But at the back of the room were two coaches. I talked to both of them and one of them made me more uncomfortable than I’d been in a number of years. Um, and that was Kevin Lawrence, who I’ve mentioned a few times in this conversation and I had tears in the corner of my eyes.

Um, and I, you know, after I sold Robel, we did a big adventure. We commissioned a sailboat in the south of France and we took our three kids and we homeschooled them for two years while sailing 5, 000 miles in the Mediterranean. But you know, I came back and I did this angel investing and what Kevin pointed out to me was how completely unfulfilled.

I was, you know, I had joined this young software startup and, you know, by 25, I was already in trade flow, shores, trade flow, or, um, the floor of trade shows, like giving demos, the majority of the demos and selling software and like doing all these things that, um, you know, I learned how to do and to try and coach someone, you know, it was taking a year to bring them up the ladder.

So anyways. Kevin gave me his card. It was by my phone for probably three weeks. And every time I thought of calling him, the phone weighed, I don’t know, at least 10, 000 pounds. Yeah. And very, very thankfully Kevin called me and that started our coaching arrangement. And, uh, we worked together for a total of nine years, but we worked together for 18 months before I finally got to a point where on the night of January 26, 2009 drank my last beer.

And I’d kind of planned it all. Cause I’m a planner. Uh, And I, I sent an email, my, my mode with, with Kevin was I would always send an email message the day before saying what the topic for our coaching call the next day would be. And I said the topic of our call is my drinking. And that was the first admission of defeat.

And the thing was I built such a strong trust relationship with Kevin, I knew the jig was up because he would never let me off the hook. Like, and the next day, um, we had a coaching call and Kevin coached me to, uh, give a try to 12 step recovery. And I agreed to go to a meeting before the end of the week.

And it was a Tuesday of January 27th. 2009 and being the overachiever that I am. I looked that afternoon, I knew I was going to a networking event, downtown technology, networking event presentation. I knew it’d be finished by eight. Um, so I went online and I looked and lo and behold, there was a 12 step meeting that would be a quarter of a block off the road.

I would be driving down on the way home that started get this at 8 30. Perfect. So, um, So I went and, um, you know, that was my first meeting and, um, you know, I kept going back and, um, a month or so later, I made that what’s called a home group, which is the group you commit to going to every week. And, um, a couple of weeks ago, um, I wasn’t able to take my, my cake celebrating.

We take a cake, which is in our neck of the woods in our 12 step recovery to celebrate. And, uh, I was away. When my actual anniversary date was, so just a couple of weeks ago, um, I took my 15 year cake celebrating, uh, 15 years of continuous sobriety and that, that home group has been my home group the entire 15 years.

And uh, when I took my cake, two of the people in the room were there the night that I walked in. Like they remember me walking in and. Just a few things for entrepreneurs who are listening or anyone else who’s struggling, um, with any kind of addiction. Um, just a few things is I talk openly and publicly about it because I’m trying to reduce the stigma for alcoholism.

It’s a mental health disease. Um, and, you know, what I’ve learned is that, um, no matter where you’re at and how hopeless it seems, there is hope. There, there is a solution for you if you want it, but what I’ve also learned is that none of us get sober, um, alone.

Right. Yeah. And I think that’s a really important thing as, as guys, uh, I’m going to speak about guys.

We like to keep things in, right? Like, we don’t want to talk about our problems and show any weakness. And like, I’ve seen tremendous value in having a group of guys that I can be intimate with. Like, Hey, this thing’s going on in my life that I don’t know what to do. And I need some help and it’s like they can show up and help.

And, uh, and I think you saw that with your home group, right? Like there’s people that were willing to show up if the chips were down and you needed somebody, they would be there. And there was some accountability and there was some structure around helping Everybody was just moving in the same direction, right?

Like I think that, that can’t be underestimated either, the value of our peer group, right? Like if everybody in our peer group, like the five closest people to you, if they smoke and drink and are overweight, guess what you’re going to be? A smoker, a drinker that’s overweight, right? Like you’ve got to, you’ve got to make some changes on those, uh, those groups of people you hang out with.

And I think

today, and at least Western society, this like, to have a group of people around you who can hold space for each other, And where you can be emotionally vulnerable. I think it’s difficult to find. And then I think as guys, it’s like 10 times as hard to find. Um, like in addition to my home group, I found a men’s step group that met every week.

and read from one of the books of literature. Um, and I have heard, and I’ve been part of that group since about my eighth week of sobriety. And we still meet every week and the level of emotional sharing, like, and what’s really going on, not what we show on the surface, like what you’re talking about, right?

Like really what’s in our heart. What’s, what’s really hurting emotionally and, and to be safe, like to. I can share with that group anything and know it’s never going to be used against me. It’s uh, right. They will, they will honor it. Uh, yeah. Yeah.

It’s everybody’s there for you. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Completely. Yeah. No, I, I’ve been a part of a men’s group. We do a Bible study. Uh, it’s been going on for 10 years and it’s the same thing. Yeah. We’ve done. real life together. And we’ve worked through things that nobody else is aware of. And it’s, it’s just been, been great. And I think there’s also like going back to the stigma, um, around, I’m just going to call it mental health in general.

Like we think we’ve got it all figured out. Like I go to counseling on a, a weekly basis. My wife and I have been to counseling because it’s just, again, it’s coming back to this coaching idea, right? Like I love the fact that I have a business coach. I’ve had. A golf coach. I’ve got, I’ve got coaches in every area of my life that I think matter and my mental health and my relationships matter.

So why not invest the time and money to like, go get some fine tuning there? You know, somebody that can speak the truth to me that maybe my wife can’t speak, cause I don’t want to hear it. Right. Uh, or your wife can’t even see.

Right.

Absolutely.

You can’t see about your wife. Your wife can’t see about you, but a professional, like it’s obvious to them, um, and they help you walk through it and over time to see it.

Right. And then they got, and they got big toolkits. That’s the thing about coaches and therapists is they get fricking big toolkits. Toolkits. So whatever you bump up against, like they got, Oh, here, let me reach into the toolkit. I, you know, I, I had a special tool just for that here. Why don’t you give it a try and let, let me know how it goes.

Yeah, absolutely. So David, speaking of toolkits, we think about, uh, coaching in general and the, the value of a coach. Like I could go by scaling up or Rockefeller habits or any of Vern’s books or any of those business books. But at the end of the day, the thing that really helps is having somebody that can, can see how things are actually going.

You know, it’s a, a who in my life, not a how right. That, uh, Holds me accountable. That’s on my calendar that I have to show up with results on a regular basis. So can you just talk a little bit about how you engage with, with business owners? I think there’s a couple of different ways, uh, that you, you do that.

And I, I think that’s important to talk about. So if people are ready to take their business to the next level, they’re tired of being at this plateau, they can, they can do that.

Sure. So I have two primary service offerings, although sometimes I get in conversations with entrepreneurs and we adjust that for whatever they need, but the Primary ones are I offer one on one coaching to entrepreneurs, which is typically structured as two one hour calls a month.

Um, plus assets, assets, access to me at any time for like an emergency, an instant coaching call. We’re usually in five minutes. I can get you unstuck on anything that you’re stuck on. I just paid for that monthly and I look for a six month minimum. And at the start of that, you know, we help you set up some six and 12 and 18 month goals and you know what you want in a coach and don’t want in a coach and hope to get out of it.

Um, and then, uh, I offer a strategic. planning service, um, which looks very different. So that’s always with the entrepreneur and their senior leadership team and requires, uh, an initial two day offsite to do an annual plan. Again, I use the Vern Harnish stuff, so it’s that structure and those templates. Uh, and then three quarterly, like three quarterly, again, one day offsite.

I look for a minimum 12 month commitment. Because that strategic planning piece, you need to commit to the process and you need to really stick with the process over time. And then you see that you see benefits immediately, but the really like hockey stick shoot out the stars kind of benefits 12, 18, 24 months in, if you stick to the process.

Right, absolutely. So that, you know, and, and then that one’s priced differently, um, because it’s a different, it’s a different product. Right. So those are my two primary ways that I work with entrepreneurs. Mm hmm.

Yeah. No, that’s fantastic. And, uh, you know, I’ve been doing business coaching for nine years and I think it’s just a critical piece to, uh, business success.

So can you give us an idea of. Uh, what’s an ideal or who’s, who’s coaching ideal for like where, where’s that business at from a, a revenue perspective, number of employees, where would the strategic planning, maybe, maybe just walk through those two different offerings if there’s a different sort of,

yeah.

So generally I look for like owner founders, uh, have grown their business, you know, you’re at least, um, 10, 20 employees. Like I think a lot of the value I bring to the table is the interpersonal piece. Okay. Thanks. And, uh, you know, um, so I, I generally don’t coach solopreneurs. It’s always, you’ve got people and usually there’s people issues because we’re humans.

So there’s always people issues where they are. And then, you know, strategic planning, uh, because it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a more expensive service and it requires a lot more commitment. You know, I look for companies that have got a half a million or a million dollars in profit and are really. Looking for more structure to take them to the next level and to really accelerate their business and really grow their business.

Um, the one on one coaching is really anyone, I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs that need help and a lot of them are not open to help. So it, it’s an entrepreneur who’s stuck on something really hard. Or is in crisis. Um, and it’s just gets to a point. This is what’s like me. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired in my drinking.

So it’s kind of an entrepreneur that’s sick and tired and sick of being sick and tired of the same problem showing up over and over, um, or really getting stuck, you know, in either the same or, or a place in their business. And it’s just open to another perspective. You know, I, I don’t have the answers like I know you have the answers.

It’s just, I’m there to help you find them and to give you perspectives that maybe you’ve never been able to see about yourself and your business. Like sometimes I tell people about themselves and their business and they’re like, they’re shocked. Like to me, it’s just patently obvious by the success that they’d have.

This is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I say it to them out loud and they just pause. It’s like. That’s not who I

am. And that goes back to our conversation about accepting the truth, right? Like, am I willing to accept the truth of this situation? And sometimes we’re just not. And we’ll just continue to live in that pain.

Right. Absolutely. That’s okay.

But sometimes, you know, we get open to new possibilities. And once we’re open to new possibilities, then almost anything is possible. Yeah,

I love it. Uh, David, this has been a fantastic conversation. I’ve loved everything about strategic planning culture, even to the inner game that is taking place with all of us entrepreneurs and how we deal with that in either a healthy ways or unhealthy ways.

And so, uh, I, I do appreciate that. What’s the best way for people to connect with you? If they’re, if they’re looking for, Uh, the strategic coaching, uh, how, how, how should people connect?

Uh, easiest is my website. Uh, so it’s coach djgreer. com. So it’s coach D as in David, J as in James. Uh, if you Google coach David Greer, pretty good chance I’ll be in the top five there.

And my, every webpage on my website has my email address and it has my phone number. Like email me, just reach out and, uh, you know, so your listeners know, uh, I will always do a one hour, no charge coaching call. Um, and we like dig into something substantial. We have the experience of being together. Um, cause I really with new clients, I tell them like try two or three coaches because like I want the coach that you relate to the best.

Right. And if that’s me, fantastic. If that is someone else, fantastic, because I really want what is best for

you. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s great. And we’ll make sure that all of your contact information is in the show notes so people can just go there and, uh, uh, click on those links or shoot you a quick email that, uh, that’ll be fantastic.

David, again, I’ve really appreciated this conversation and, uh, we might have to do this again soon just to, um, you know, dig deeper into some of these topics. So.

Thanks a lot, Patrick. Thanks so much. It has just been a joy to spend time with you here today. Thanks so much.

Thank you for listening to the Vital Strategies podcast and our conversation with David Greer.

For links to the resources mentioned in today’s show, see the show notes of this episode at vitalstrategies. com. Forward slash episode 22. The tax filing deadline is right around the corner. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the money that you’re sending to the IRS and want to pay less tax, go to fiveminutetaxmakeover.com and download the free resources that are designed to help entrepreneurs save up to $10,000 in income tax or more. Visit fiveminutetaxmakeover.com to start paying less income tax today. We look forward to having you back next week when we have a conversation about a niche tax strategy with Mike McGarry.

In the meantime, keep up the good work building your business. We are sure you’ll take away some ideas next week that will help you pay less tax so you can build more wealth and live a great life.