John: ...and welcome to today's episode of the Trade Business School podcast.
John: Today's a pretty cool day for me. Something that I've wanted to do for a little while.
John: I have the man that was my business coach for 11 years here, Steve Kay. Now, Steve did two main things for me. Number one was instrumental in helping me grow my business to the point where I could sell it. And number two was the main inspiration for me becoming a business coach. So, Steve, welcome to the studio today, mate.
Steve: Thanks, John. Thanks for having me and also picking me up from here.
John: You're welcome. It's great to have you here. So, why don't we just get started by you telling us a little bit about yourself.
Steve: Sure, sure. Well, I'll only get back as far as my business coaching days, but I was a senior retail executive and became a general manager of a small American company, Australian-New Zealand company in Australia. And I fell in love working with all my distributors around the country that were small business people. And I always decided from about then that I wanted to get into some sort of consulting role in things and then coaching came along. And I saw this work business coach. I had no idea what I was going to do. So, I moved forward from that. Decided to get into the coaching. Had three young kids at the time. I resided at Terry on the central coach of New South Wales. And we also had places in Sydney, which we also stayed during the week. And the interesting thing was that when coaching first started, three young kids, that was the career. I took the big punts, taken off my wing, and I never looked back because the working with the small business people was more of my interest. I tried doing executive coaching and going to those big towers in the city and coaching people, but it just wasn't what I wanted to do. I found a niche with small businesses and working with a business owner because I could make a real difference. And part of my life mission and legacy was to make a difference with something. And it just happened to be around small business people.
John: So, Steve, when did you start business coaching?
Steve: 25 years.
John: That was way before it became sexy. Now, every other person wakes up one morning and becomes a business coach. So, it was before the industry was formed, before it was a thing. How did it happen? How did it come about?
Steve: Well, I think it all started from a guy called Brad Shugas that I got involved with from the action business coaching. Brad was an accountant and was giving a lot of people advice. As an accountant, he just found that people needed more advice than financial advice. They needed sales advice, marketing, recruiting, a lot of leadership and management. He decided to get into the coaching and get away from the consulting. Because, again, the difference back then, which people have probably bastardized a bit now, I think coaching as a consultant, as long as you know something, you've got to go and teach the right people where coaching back then was going to be a skill about how do you get people to actually take your information and implement it into their business. And I only talked to people an hour or two a week. And that's how it started was that to work alongside people more than just give people advice. Because typically most people in small business see their accountant once or twice a year, get a few ideas and off they go. So the whole coaching was then born out of what if we worked alongside people on 12-month programs and things like that, but seeing them every week or two to ensure that what strategies would be implemented were implemented and people would actually take the action. And that's where the accountability came in. All of a sudden people would say, we all need someone to push us a lot and that was 100% correct.
John: Yeah, I think I've read, Brad's got a whole heap of little books. They're all good. I've read all of those ones. But how did you find business coaching? What happened? Did you see an ad somewhere? Did someone tell you about it? Did you think about it? How did you end up getting involved?
Steve: Brad was seeing the newspaper, just going to business coach and I was intrigued by the word business coach.
John: Okay, so just hang on a second. What did you see in the newspaper? Was Brad Sugar's advertising for business coaches?
Steve: Right. And the first thing that I looked at was I played sport of my life and ended up by this stage. I've also been coaching some sporting teams and things like that and realized that the coaching was pretty cool because you could lead by example and get people to follow structures and systems and things like that. So I talk a part of what must be similar to sports because there's always been a sports coach but no one has really heard about the word. What was it? Business coaches like a consultant? Well, sort of. Is it a trainer? Sort of. Well, what really is it? Is it like a mentor? Well, then we worked out it was a bit of everything. It was taking all those consulting training, mentoring and facilitation type words and saying well the coach had to be over all of that. So, that's how it all started. A business coach? Sort of like a sports coach?
John: So can you talk me through what happened there? You saw the ad. This would have probably been before email. I don't know. Did you ring a phone number? Did you talk to somebody? How did they step you through the process of becoming a business coach?
Steve: Well, it was interesting. We all had email back then. I'm pretty sure. But it was just one of the different forms of advertising in the day. And all I did was pick the phone up, make a call to the guy that was a master license in New South Wales and went in to talk to him. And like an interview, like a job interview. And by the end of it, within an hour he said this sounds exactly like you. And when someone knows and someone then you know, then it was straight away we just jumped into it.
John: So what happened when you jumped into it? Was it like an onboarding process? Did they just...
Steve: So again, these are all the different things that people didn't realise about coaching today. So we would go away and do 10 days training to learn what coaching was. Everything you need to cover. So where do people think you just go in and you're a great sales guy so you become a coach? You know, we're doing sales, marketing, and up about accounting, team recruitment, leadership management. So for the first few years, all I was doing was attending a lot of courses with people all around the world. Some of the best people in sales, marketing to find out, well, one of the important things you start learning about coach, you can't teach what you don't know. And so we had to learn as much as we can about every area of the business. Now, it was okay for me because I'd been a general manager before, small business and levels of retail. So I got to know a fair bit about most things, but some people become business coaches, but they only know one thing. They might have been good in one industry. And that's great, but that's really like consulting because they know an industry, but they can't coach other people.
John: And back then when you started before people knew what a business coach was, I mean, these days you don't have to sort of explain to a lot of people what it is and a lot of us that are in coaching and do it well, we get a lot of referrals. How did you find business back then when nobody knew what it was and nobody knew they needed it?
Steve: Great question. And the interesting thing is, and here's a stat for you, was back in 2002 or three when they did a survey on business coaching, less than 1% of business owners knew what a business coach was. Where if you ask today, it's probably as high as 60 or 70%. So what was difficult back then? How did we sell 12 month programs of between 20 and $40,000 where the business owner didn't know what it was?
John: And we probably didn't know what we were really going to do. So the first thing as a learner is how to sell coaching. So back then, Steve, how did you actually sell the idea of business coaching to people? I mean, like, how did you actually do it? Were you going out talking to people? Like, was it advertising? I don't know if it was advertising online back then. How did you find clients?
Steve: Way back then, it was direct mail. You would send mail out to people with a gimmick or an offer in there about taking a free session. So the free session was valued at about $400, will come out and talk to you about your business. What I picked up on really early, John, was that it was hard. But what I did is I went to a lot of old contacts. And a lot of people do new, new, new business. So this sounds really great, what you're doing. And why don't you coach me? And so that helped me move along with my first two, three clients. And then I worked out pretty early that I enjoy networking. So I would go to a lot of networking groups. And every networking group or referral group is what they were called. It'd be between 10 and 30 people in there. And I worked out quite simply by different presentation. Again, the earlier I presented to people, and the more I showed them what I do, how I did it, then out of all that group, I'd get one or two people and say, "Could I take that free session with you?" And that was my sell job at the end. This is what I've got to say, then at the end of the 20 or 30 minutes, who would like the free session? So when you work out of every, say, 20 people, you get one or two people, wouldn't you do it every week? So gradually, I started doing that. And then eventually I bought a networking business. It's called Business Referral Group. So I bought the company, which my wife still runs today, 20 years later.
John: So over the, what did we say, 2001, we're 2026 now. So 25 years, a quarter of a century. If you were to pick the three main ways business coaching has changed, what would they be?
Steve: Well, when you say changed, I would say that we probably focus on more today. What stands out by far is leadership management. And I'm going to pick more on management than anything, because, you know, I coach people in their 20s and 30s more today than I ever have. And what I found is that teaching people how to manage other people is very difficult. That's what they're frustrated with the most. So I would say teaching people how to manage a team, grow a team, expand and train and coach them. So two business owners in the coaches as well. The second thing I think we've changed the most is that when we first started coaching, because we weren't accountants, we didn't want to upset them. So we would stay a little bit away from the financials. But as you know, now after being coached, as we're heavily into the financials, profit loss statements. Checking them every week, every month, balance sheets and educating people assets liabilities. So that would be number two for me is that staying away from financials was probably wrong. Because what we found out is, and I'm going to say this to staff, but I reckon that over 80% of people in small business don't understand their numbers. Everyone has an accountant. And so all of a sudden you think, wow, we've got to go in there and spend more time with them and actually teach them how this works. Instead of turning up to get your tax returns signed, you actually can ask some questions. So that would be number two. And number three is, I think people just need to know a lot more around recruiting, how to recruit people and stop recruiting family. How to recruit people and set them up in the first three to six months to succeed. And again, the more you give people the better training, you give them the more they stay. And so, yeah, I would say more around around those three things is what a lot of the focus is today. And if I had to say a little bit more about the people, what I would say is, the guys that have been busy coaching for 20 years now probably understand more around the mindset. And attitude, and you hear a lot of supporting teams and coaches talking about that. So I think we're a lot more into behavior, mindset, communication and attitude than we've ever been. Because we're noticing that if you don't improve the person, you won't improve the business.
John: I'm going to come back to mindset again because that's really important. And that's something that we worked on a lot together. And one of your sayings, which I tell my clients now, is business is 80% mindset. And I think that's true. I want to pick up on your point about accountants because this comes up regularly with people that I meet and even sometimes my clients. And I'm not going to have a go at the accountants out there because accountants, especially good accountants, are very, very important. And I've got a good accountant that's excellent at making sure that I pay the correct amount of tax but not a penny more. And that's his job. I've had new clients where they've been paying their accountants quite a bit of money to do financial reviews on a monthly basis. And this one client in particular, he was paying his accountant $3,000 a month. And at the end of every month, the accountant did a review on his profit and loss for that particular month and also for the corresponding month last year and for whatever quarter he was in and the same last year. And he brought it up on his computer. And he was using Loom. And he was doing a two-minute video where he just went through these reports. And I could tell by the way the guy was going through it that this is the first time he'd seen them as well. And I remember telling my client, "Why are you paying for this?" And he said, "Because somebody told me that I should have my accountant involved in my business more so I understood the numbers." Now, that was advice that someone gave me years and years ago. What I've learned about accountants, most of them, is they're not forward-looking people. They will look at your figures and they will tell you what's happened, but they're not business owners themselves. Most of them. Some of them are. So they don't know how to look forward, how to have a look at these numbers that you've got now and measure or add in what your projection for the future is, what your gut feel around some of your work is, and actually have a look and help the business get to where you want to take it. So the advice that I have for people now is find yourself a good accountant only for tax compliance. That's all you need them for.
Steve: Yeah, I think I was saying before how 80-20 is 20%. A lot of my fuck-up mates are all accountants and things as well. So I'm not certainly in the bag then. They just don't have time today. Every time the government makes changes, they get more compliance work. The guys just don't have the time. So when comments want more information, they come to us now as coaches because we understand them, because the questions aren't too technical.
John: They're not. And the other thing that's happened, especially over the past 10 years, when I first started in business properly, we didn't have zero. Now that you've got zero, and I'm just going to use zero because that's the one that I'm familiar with and I know it's good, you can quite easily pull up any report that you want about your business profit and loss-wise, business-wise, age payables, receivables. So you don't need an accountant to run you through it. And with a couple of clicks, you can have percentages and everything put up there and you can review it against whatever period that you want. So one of the things that we spend a bit of time with, with new clients, is the financial education around your profit and loss. Try to teach them the difference between accrual and cash accounting, because that's something that I did not understand. And one of the stories that I tell people when we're going through this is I remember sitting with my accountant at the time, his name was Lou, and Lou was trying to explain this to me. And it just would not go into my head. And I could see like Lou was getting frustrated. And if you ever see like a nerd get frustrated, it's kind of funny to watch. But I said, Lou, I'm not leaving this fucking office until I understand this. So keep explaining it to me. And then the penny dropped. So I understand why so many people don't get the difference between cash and accrual. And you need to know both because they both tell a different story. I think the other thing that a lot of people just don't understand is their balance sheet. And some people, their profit and loss looks good. They're making a decent profit, but they've got no cash. And one of the reasons for that is they've got loans and debt that's coming off the balance sheet that's not shown on the profit and loss. And you're smart because you've been through all of this. But my point is you don't need an accountant for that anymore. You just need to spend a little bit of time educating yourself, which is easy to do.
Steve: Yeah, it's a good point where I probably pick up on that a little bit more is that I think every good business needs a great bookkeeper. Yeah. I think the bookkeeper that makes sure it's reconciled every month and with the snapshot reports in zero, all the business they need to do now is if they get all their books reconciled every month is ask the bookkeeper to run reports. And a bookkeeper can educate them now on most of their finances. And the challenge that, you know, around the financials I mentioned before is that, that again, people don't explain very well to people, is understanding gross margins, just margins from their quoting and the article do it. And people know their sales, they know their expenses and they know their net profit. But where the value is in education of people around this gross margin is what are you trying to make on every product or service yourself? And do you know how much you make on it and do you track it? So a great bookkeeper for me, because if they do their job great, the accountant's job is easier because they can educate more on the balance sheets and things like you said. But where we spend a lot of time educating on the margins and the quoting and really digging into wages and things where still in the days of today, you know, where I spend probably the most, you know, talking about profit and loss statement is that the first thing I see is sales. But they're doing two million dollars. But where the sales come from? They're all in one pot and they don't break their company down. So I go in and help them break it down as a residential, commercial, industrial, you know, what is it? Where do you make the money? And then I look at the margin they're making on each of the products and services. And for a lot of trades business, as you know, we put a lot of the wages fulfilled guys up in the margins. There's no point in having all your wages at the bottom. If people are part of the job. Correct. So, you know, we probably change it because as you know, most accounting like NYB are all alphabetical. Yeah.
John: Where our jobs are going to say it's not about alphabetical make it easy for the tax department and accountant to do a tax return. What it is is we've got to educate people on what these figures actually mean. Yeah. And then we have to do that is you do it every single month with someone at once a year. Correct. Yeah. It's one of those things to when you do educate people on how to read their profit and loss and their balance sheet correctly. Once they've got that skill, they've got that skill. And I get it to start with because it might take you a year, but you persist with people. Yeah. Because you don't know your money.
Steve: Business is a terrible place. And how many times have you spoke to guys about tax? They're behind with taxes. They haven't paid supreme. Yeah. Well, you should never be behind with that if someone's meeting the obligations every month. Again, if you only sue accountants and bookkeepers are not telling you to have to pay, people are getting away with things. And our job isn't to be the guy with the baseball bat and hit people over the head. But our job is to say, do you understand the ramifications of not paying things and how that works? And if that's about cash and you probably understand this as well, what coaching other people now is that if they don't understand their business financials, do they actually understand their personal finances?
John: Well, probably not even if they do understand their businesses, sometimes their personal finances are a right for a better word. Yeah, if they pay their bills every quarter, when are their council rates due? When are their loans due? Then they want to buy investment properties. Yeah. You don't have spreadsheets and understand this. Yeah.
Steve: And if you get lost in it, you can't turn up to your accountants a year and say, do I owe anything? Yeah. That's why I love, I said a lot of the younger guys I coach now, they want to know it, where I think a lot of old people still put their head in the seat.
John: Right, interesting. Why do you think the younger people?
Steve: Because they're more interested in how to make more at the end of the day. Yeah. Why is because property is just livestock. And at the end of the day, if we all want to live good lives, you need some money. Yeah. And they don't like debt. And so not that we don't, or we shouldn't have debt, we all need some debt to progress forward. I just think they want to learn it, which is really good coaching. If they don't want to learn it, it's hard to actually work through those things with them. So I'm probably pretty pushy with it. Yeah. And I get to know their accountants as well. Yeah. If they need to change accountants because that accountant gives them no advice, I've got plenty of recommendations.
John: [Tell] us what your coaching business looks like these days.
Steve: Well, as I've got older, John, I only coach one-on-one. I know there's a lot of people out there that do group coaching, but I just want to make sure everyone knows who's listening to this podcast. Group coaching is different to coaching someone one-on-one. Yeah. Coaching in a group is training, all right? It's giving people information. It's not until you get to the heart of someone one-on-one, you're really coaching. So I coach over 20. I've been coaching between 20 and 24 people for the last three or four years. I only coach in three days a week. My Monday's and Friday's, and hopefully Friday's golf. And Monday's very much administration or if I've got a plonker clong in there for you or something like that. But yeah, now I'm loving coaching because it's not because it's easy for me, it's because it's now personal touch. Where you get to know, like, you could be in coaching one, two, three, four years. I don't think you become a great sports coach. I've been coaching for a long time. I've been saying in business coaching, it might take you 10 years to really get it. But when you get it, the trust you have, the referral networks I have, my whole business is referrals. So I probably refer one or two people a month. And the referrals come from clients, ex-clients. They come from my networks. My network's strategic partners I've had for years. And I don't take every client that comes in because I interview them all properly. Sometimes I recommend them to go to some other type of coaching. Things like that. And yeah, over 20 people, as you know, most people probably would be coached one on one there. Probably 60% of the clients are on Zoom. And they're all over Australia. So driving around to see people as much anymore. I mean, ever since COVID, people are really now the grass, the concept of, hey, listen, as long as we've got action points and strategy to work on, then Steve's just going to make sure we do it. So there's no point in jumping on something if you're not going to take action and do things. So that's where the enjoyment is. I'll push people through now. I'm not so easy and so light. I might have been before. It's like, we've got to get these things done. And pushing people through is the accountability that when those people talk about coaching, they say, Steve, there's two things you give me the most confidence to make decisions. And number two is understanding coaching other people is about a follow-up and accountability. You can't just tell someone what to do.
John: You've got to ensure it gets done. There's a fine line when you coach people. Like, everyone's different. Different people have different personalities. And sometimes what that personality needs will change. But it's a knack of learning when you've just got to wrap someone up in cotton wool or when you've got to kick them up the ass. One of the things that I've observed, not just in coaching, but in a couple of other areas of my life, is that for so long, it's been so much around positive reinforcement, that when you actually do the opposite and you kick someone up the ass or you put pressure on someone, they respond really well. And I'm finding that very, very interesting. There's something that I'm doing outside of work where I've had, I don't want to say, negative feedback, but I've been pushed and I needed to get better. And it was very difficult at the time to hear that and go through it. But at the end of it, I was like, geez, that was good. I'm glad he grilled me. I'm glad he pushed me. And now I'm better because of it. Okay. So, Steve, how do you know when you need to wrap a client up in cotton wool or whether you really need to give them a good, hard kick up the arse?
Steve: I'll tell you how I do it, John. I've found it works. I might be a tip for you and anyone else that I just ask for permission. What do you say? So I'll say to John, do you mind? I'm about to tell you something. You may not like. But I think somebody else very close to you has told you this before. Is that okay if I bring that to the table today? You can say no. And 99% of people say, "Bring it on." And you say, "You mightn't like it." And I say, "I don't care." And because I pre-frame it in that way, they ask for it then. And then it's much easier for me to say, "Well, I just don't think you're listening." Or, "You're not putting things into action. I think you're taking my information and just giving it away." I said, "I think you need to learn how to do it. And I think you need to treat people a bit better." I'll say something like that. But I pre-frame it. So you never come out and just say, "Hey, you need to improve this. You're a dingbat or something like that." In my second year of coaching, I had a guy stand up at the table in front of me, and he left the room. And he didn't come back, and I sat there for about 15 minutes. He was quite a big, solid guy. And it won't be that cheap of a Jeff.
John: It wasn't Jeff. I was picturing Jeff in my mind as he was saying it. Well, that's not what Jeff was. He was in my hands and then I was thinking, "You can do that." If you're listening, Jeff, you'll enjoy that.
Steve: Great podcast, Jeff. And what happened, when the guy eventually came back, I said, "You okay?" He said, "I was about to clunk you. I was about to whack you, but I like you too much." And he told me something that I needed to hear. And you're right. I'm the problem. And we got on the swimming well after then, and he changed his life, which was very important because part of the issue was him and the way his mindset was around people and how people worked for him and blamed them for everything. And all of a sudden, it's a really interesting thing, but I said, "Pre-frame it properly. You can sit there and people will look at you and give you pictures." And at the end of the day, they normally take it away. They might talk to you for a week because I always follow them up there and we'll send them a nice text message saying, "I hope you understand where I was coming from." And as I said, 99% of the people say, "Thanks." Yeah. "I'll give you the thanks, John, and that's why you know it's good."
John: Yeah. One of the ways that I was taught to frame it, I'm not sure where this came up from, but is if I could tell you something that was difficult for you to hear but it would help you, would you want me to tell you? Most people say yes. And the other thing that I've learned is people have capacity to take bad news well if you set it up correctly. And this is an area where a lot of people that I talk to struggle when they've got to have a difficult conversation with an employee, so they avoid it. Okay. And one of the reasons they avoid it is because they don't want to be a bad guy or they don't want to sit in the awkwardness. And one of the things that really worked for me was when I had to have one of those conversations comes in and it'd be like, "Look, Steve, we've got to have a chat about something today." This might be a difficult conversation, but I think it'd be worthwhile. And that sort of frames them and in a way removes some of the defensiveness. I don't know if that makes sense. I don't know where I'm going with that.
Steve: Yes, but you know what's interesting about that is how you said that you didn't need to be a business coach to come up with that. Any business owner should do that approach. Correct. Why is because some of the things that I think my personality was really important with coaching is because my voice would go up and down. People knew where they would stand with me. Yep. I could be soft when I needed to be, but I would talk quite firmly or assertively when I also needed to be. And so you can use the words like, "I want to tell you something you may not want to hear." But you can say it in three or four different ways. Yeah, true. And as a business owner, they may need to talk to one of their team members. And what's really important is that instead of saying, "Let's have a meeting tomorrow," it might be, "Is it okay we have a meeting tomorrow?" And they'll say, "I'll see you tomorrow about that situation. I'll see you at seven o'clock." And then that person knows, "Oh, I know exactly what the meeting is," where people say, "I'll see you tomorrow morning at seven." And people are not prepared. And some people are then, or they become confrontational. Because what happens is when you're not planning to think and do things, sometimes people can be irrational and very emotional as you know. So I think that's one of the keys of being a great coach, is understanding your own behavior and emotions, but how to get the best out of someone. I still think that's the number one thing by having a business coach job, is to get people to understand that they know we need their potential. You will never get to your potential in business or sport or anything without someone walking alongside of you that continually looks for your strengths and weaknesses and pushes you along.
John: And you would probably see this with you coaching people, as though without you there, some people would not be doing today what they were doing a year or two ago. Correct. I think there's another aspect to it. And I was talking to a friend of mine a little while ago that I hadn't seen for a while, and he asked me what I was doing. And I told him, and he said, "What's that like? Do people need that?" And I said, "Yeah, you know what? I think even if you had a really bad business coach, but you took an hour to an hour and a half out of your business every fortnight and spoke to somebody about it and thought about it and planned for the future, it'd be beneficial." If you get a really good business coach, it's even more beneficial. Just that time thinking about it, and this particular person I was talking to had been a property developer for a long time. They had an enormous amount of money. And he said, "You know what? I never had a business coach. He'd be in his 70s now." He said, "But I did a lot of driving, and I was always thinking about things when I was driving." And I said, "Right. That was your time." A lot of people just need the time out of their business to think about it and work on it, not in it, which you would know. I want to come back to mindset. Why do you say that business is 80% mindset?
Steve: I suppose it took a few years, and we always talk about having the right attitude to help people grow, because we find if you haven't got the right attitude, you're not going to move in the right direction. You're not going to take people with you. So we started getting into mindset more when we would look at a strategy, and it could be, "We need to do more marketing." And that person would start saying things like, "I've tried everything before." Or, "That doesn't work." Or, "That does work." And then all of a sudden we would start thinking, "Well, hang on. The way you think about marketing could be right or wrong." So what do we need to do to get you thinking that marketing all worked instead of saying, "Because you told me why marketing doesn't work?" So what are all the things that's worked before, and we'd work them out, and we would say, "Well, why don't we just do more of those?" And people would always relate it back to school. Some people liked maths, and some people hated science. It's the same thing in business and life. Things that you don't like, you avoid, and yet they are things that you need. And to be like, when we talk about financials, if you mindset around financials, because I don't like them, I wasn't very good at school with numbers, you're never going to learn them. So we would have to turn their mindset around as that they were fun. And maths was good fun. And fun was cash and money and spending money and how that all worked. And all of a sudden people would start saying, "That's how we teach you a little bit about mindset." It's the way you think about that circumstantial situation or thing. But your mindset is not positive about everything. But in a lot of people's mindsets it's not negative about everything. But every single thing in business, you either like or you don't like, and that's more of a mindset, more than just attitude, if that makes sense. That's why we started saying, "Is it 80%?" Because I would sit with people and say, "Let's keep your goals clear. Here's the strategy. Here's our action plan." So now, what's stopping you do that? Well, I've got the plans and the action. Yeah. But right now, I don't think I can or I'm not sure of that. And that's what the mentoring is. The mentoring is I will work alongside of you with this and help you every step of the way. And that's what gets people through because they don't think it's an idea. We have to make them do it. But we need to work with them on that. And again, that's that. You're not a trainer where you're just going to give, go to a seminar and learn things. Yeah. But I've got to get you to think properly about it. Yep. Because if you don't like it, ask anyone if they bungee jump. That'll teach you about mindset. No, I don't want to bungee jump. Why not?
John: Because I might die.
Steve: Well, 99.99 people have survived. So, if God makes you that .00001, that's going to die from bungee jump.
John: I'm just unlucky. I'm just unlucky.
Steve: And do you know that we did a lot of this in some training and not that they were bungee jumping something similar, but the amount of people you had to push to do it. Yeah. And guess what happened when you pushed someone to do something they didn't like? What do you think by the time they walked back up to see you, do you think that person was ready to smack you?
John: No.
Steve: Or were they about to cuddle you?
John: Yeah, I give you a hug. That was so great. I couldn't believe I didn't do it earlier.
Steve: Right. And then what did they say next?
John: Thank you.
Steve: I want to do it again.
John: Yeah.
Steve: And then all of a sudden we're saying, you're doing something that you feared. Yeah. And do it anyway. There's a great book around that about feel the fear and do it anyway. Yeah. And so this is all the education of coaching, which I do a lot of, you know, before I take any clients, I spend one or two hours with them going through a whole portfolio of the way they think their attitude, their behavior, communication styles, because again, coaching isn't just telling people what to do. Yeah. And I think I was mentioning this too before there was about my second or third year in coaching. I, you know, because we hung out with a lot of good coaches and we really challenged each other. And one of the things that we decided to learn more of was adult learning. Yep. All right. How do you get an adult to do anything? Yeah. Because as you know, when you've got kids, we've all had kids, kids will do what you say to a certain point, do they become teenagers?
John: Then they don't. Yeah. So how do you get 30, 40, 50, 60 year old people? You give them an idea. How do you get them to do it? That's a great question. What's the answer?
Steve: When you study adult learning, it says a simple thing. They have to think it's their idea. Yeah. So that's an important bit of goal for you in coaching is it doesn't matter how many times you tell someone to do, you've got to get them to understand that, to believe it, to do it, to back you and say, I've got this great idea. And you have to be humble as a business coach, not an ego. And let that person go and say, fantastic. I know you've got a job. Go and implement it. Well done. Yeah. And not walk away and go, I told them everything. And that's what happens with a lot of coaches. They have an ego. Yeah. So they think everything's about them. Yeah. I've survived 25 years because you make it all about them. Yeah. And that's why I'm living off referrals. Yeah. The rest of my life, because at the end of the day, the results is the most important thing.
John: Well, that's interesting. So like further to that, what are the top five areas you focus on with a client's business in the first year?
Steve: Yeah. It ranges between things, different clients. Yeah. So when you say five, I would not say I have the same five every client. If you said what a five general views, number one is teaching people how to do goal setting for them. Yep. All right. Not just one year, two year, five, 10, but life goals. Really find out what someone wants. And that takes hours to do that, especially with partners, thousands, and different things. So I love the goal setting to show people what's possible. The planning. I don't think people plan very well at all. Yeah. People are very good at fixing problems. I don't like, we talked about financials. People can't forecast. If you say to someone, forecast your next 12 months. Yeah. I don't know how to do that. Yeah. Well, you do. It's a guess. But what do you think you want? So I teach people a lot how to plan by guessing and projecting. And it is projecting and guessing. It's not like setting a budget. See, we've got one of the things I hate about corporate that small business can't handle. And I have to say this from everyone's point of view and counts is don't set people budgets in small business because I want to smash them. What we do is we give them targets to set. So targets be different because you have different targets. But when you set budget, they think they had to work to that. Yeah. Where targets, we would adjust the targets all the time. Yeah. And so there was a lot around that. And the margins I talked about before is the education of financials and margins and things like that. Another big one is just leadership. What's the difference between a leader and a manager? You know, managers manage the things. But leadership is what's next all the time. And if you continually say to someone, that's great. Well done. What's next? They have to know what's next and next and next. And that's why it's because it's much easier to push people along if they think they only have to achieve A, what they'll end up doing is working, putting all their time into A. And then even they'll do B, C, D, B, F. And as I said, a lot around mindset and attitude and the way they think behavior we do profiling on people. One of the things that I probably talked the most about generally when I'm in networking groups and from a coaching perspective now is that communication is a real issue in the world. Because for us and we're not communicating well, just call someone on your phone today and see how many people answer. Yeah. And it's like people don't want to talk to people anymore. And my biggest and best strategy being a business coach and being in business has always been get out and talk to people. Yep. And so the key things that I work with, obviously sales marketing systems, you know, we talk about systems all the time in business. But that's getting down to grassroots. I really got to get the foundations right at the top and then we get into the weeds and things like that.
John: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you make your client learn and take action on in the first three months?
Steve: Well, I don't do anything in the first month or two without knowing their financial situation. Because, you know, about three months ago I was given a referral to somebody. You know, I was about a four million dollar business. I contacted the person. And, you know, we can all have conversations and things. And my conversations are quite direct, what I want to know today. And I asked him, what's one thing you need to tell me that you probably don't tell many people at all that I need to know? And this person said I've got a seven hundred thousand dollar tax debt. Yeah. Yep. And I said, right. Thanks for telling me number one. All right. So there's going to be some big problems with cash flow. They're probably paying me. So unless you see that he is being someone that is very valuable to helping you get out of this. I'm going to let you sit on that and you call me back. But right now that's a red flag for me. Someone's like that because you don't know your financial situation. And when I ask more questions, he blamed everyone else while he was there. Right. Didn't take responsibility. Yes. So in that first few months is I've got to know the numbers and everything. Because there's no point in hiring people, firing people, putting a system in place. If they don't know if they're making any money. Yeah. So I'm pretty big on understanding how that works. And not just now. The last six months, the last two years. I want to tell me that they know how money circulates. How much cash is in the business debt. Yeah.
John: Yeah. How important is personal development?
Steve: Yeah. Well, it's a super thing in coaching, as you would know. Because, you know, most of the growth that comes in business, because they have to learn it first. You can tell people as much as you like how to grow a business. But they need to develop the confidence that they're working on the right things to get there. So reading is always one of the first things you and I have always spoke about. I've read two or three hundred books. I've got bookshelves for them. I've always read them. But that was only 20 years ago, John. I've like reading books and even reading buying books. So I do a lot more with the videos and podcasts. And you've got audio books. So giving people a lot of information to absorb. So if I talk about a subject in marketing, then I give them a marketing book. I don't turn around like a lot of coaches do nowadays. We just give you any book just to get you reading. I work out what I think you need the most. If it's leadership, I'll push them into a leadership learning. So I'm a little bit more directive around just don't go and read anything. Why don't you read this? In some cases for businesses and business owners, they won't read a business book. But I've tapped into their motivation. They love sport. So I recommend a sports coach. So I'd ask them, who do they look up to? I'd ask them, hey Richard Branson, go and read his book. Whatever it was, a football coach, which one? So you can't tell people just to read things for the sake of it. I think if you've got a meaning of it, then they'll read it. Because they'll want to learn. Because you'd let them know that that self-development is what they need right now.
John: Yeah. One last question that we'll finish off on here. Unless there's anything else you want to talk about afterwards. And now I'm smiling because this was a big problem for me. And this is a big problem for a lot of the people that I coach. When we sit down and we talk about goals or we do a review, the business side of it's real easy. It's the personal side that's hard for people. So you and I spent a lot of time over the years and we actually developed some personal goals. You end up being so focused on business, you forget about your personal life. But what's the point in working so hard over here and being successful if you're not actually enjoying yourself? So what are the things that you do outside of business and your personal life?
Steve: I thought the question was going a little bit different to that. What do you do with your clients to make sure they're enjoying life?
John: Well, we can start off with you and then we can talk about your clients.
Steve: I will, but one of the things is go out and have lunch with them and dinner with them and play golf with them. So there's no point in being a business coach or consultant and only talking to people on the phone or Zoom every now and then. You've got to go and see them in their real life. You've got to go out and have dinner with them. I've stayed at some client's houses. As you know, we stayed with you when we come down and do things. Why? Because it's really important to see you, the real you, outside business, if that makes sense. And so I get to not just understand their personal goals, life goals. I call them life goals. You know, life coaches, I had to learn life coaching, you know, similar things, but, you know, on different and shorter time frames. So learning about how to motivate someone is one thing. Learning how to get into their head and motivate towards what they really want and other things. So again, you've got to learn. These are the more skills you've got to have as a business coach more in life. But your question was around what do I do? Well, see, the biggest thing for me is family and the health. And at the end of the day is that if you feel good, look good, and everyone around you is in there, gives you good spirits and things. I've got a good social network of mates and friends and things. And my kids are now having grandkids. So, you know, that's it. And then, of course, as you know, holidays, conferences. We're always away doing things. Having clients all over Australia allows me to visit and to do things. And I add days to those things to make sure that while I'm away I'm having fun. Because you can get coaching people is that you're so busy helping everyone else. But you're not getting what you want. You've got to have that fulfillment. It's like the old psychologists at the end of the day is if they don't have a psychologist too, they're going to be in trouble. And so I've got to, you know, I get coaching from my wife and kids and friends all the time about, you know, how do we keep enjoying life and doing more of it. But for me, it's just that simply, if I've got really good balance, then people notice that as a coach. I'm always there. I'm always early. I'm always five minutes early for everything. I hardly miss any sessions. They don't change them on me because they know I don't change many things. And because I'm committed and dedicated to your success. Because everyone I make successful means I feel better about my success. It's not about me first. If everyone's getting results and they're happy and they're spending money and they're buying cars and houses and having holidays, I love them doing that because that's what life should be about. But I also do it too. Because if I do it and they do it, we'll do it together. Yeah.
John: So that's really good, mate. How do you get your clients to do the same thing? Prioritize having a good personal life when they focus mainly on business.
Steve: Well, good question, John, but I coached you for over 10 years. So what are some of the things I did with you to help you? Because as you know, when you were in business, you went through a lot of tough things. And business could have been everything to you. So what did I do with you then?
John: You enjoy life and get out there. Thanks, mate, for throwing it back.
Steve: Don't tell them about that Las Vegas trip.
John: No, I think it was a big problem for me because I was so focused on business. When my daughters came along, that was a big change. And that happened naturally. Like I just wanted to provide for them, but also be there for them. But the biggest thing is very simple. And quite often the biggest things are simple is just focus on it. So every time we did a goal review, okay, what are your personal goals? Business goals are great, John. What are your personal goals? Are you going to catch up with some friends? Are you going to go on a holiday? Long weekend. We used to have a goal every year for four long weekends. Do you remember that? Every quarter. Yep. A Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And quite often they're a lot better than when you go away for a couple of weeks. There's always at least one two-week holiday as a goal too. And I generally like to take it in the middle of the year for two reasons. Number one, to get away from the Melbourne weather and get some sunshine. But number two, if I didn't take a break in the middle of the year, by the end of the year I was frazzled. That two weeks in the middle really helped me get the last six months done. I would probably phrase it this way. I think I helped my clients celebrate their successes.
Steve: So in the middle of the year what we've been doing is end up on entry year. You had a great year, John. So what will you be doing with that? Will you be going away for a weekend and things? And as you know, one of our big success stories was conferences. We were going to go away once a year for a good conference. That's what we're going to start again soon. We're going to work out to do some more conferences. Why? Because we had so much fun around the pool and having a drink and dinner and things. We learned so much about each other that we wanted to do more. Because we were tapping into some more than just, "This is about business." We've got to be great people. And we enjoy being. So if you enjoy being around the clients, they don't last ten years. We both get on with each other. The only guys that have a relationship in coaching is just a 12 month, one year, two year. Where out of my 20 clients, I've probably got a third of those clients over ten to ten years. And I've got another third which would be five to ten. So when you think, "What am I doing differently from other coaches?" Well success comes through enjoying and being happy in your personal life as well. That's probably why I like doing this as well. I get to know people. Their families, their wives, their kids. I look out at people's houses. It's all those little things. It's not just business anymore. Business is the easy thing. It's the life for me. I see people really improve their life.
John: Is there anything that we haven't covered off today that you'd like to talk about before we finish up?
Steve: There's two things. I want to let people know that why I also enjoy a lot about the coaching now is there's the 25, 35, 40 year olds. They never had access to all this coaching. You mentioned up front when we first started coaching, how hard was it? Well we weren't hitting 25 and 30 year olds because they had no idea. But today, 20 and 30 year old people in school understand coaching, mentoring and learning. And as business people, we have a lot of people in that age, 25 to 45, that go into business. And coaching now is for them the most. This is not about everyone. I'm not saying a lot of people shouldn't have a coach. Everyone will get a coach at some stage. But it's so much enjoyable for me today knowing that, and in particular on my son's 34, I'm coaching one of his best mates from school in a business that he's now in that his parents sold to him. And now he's taking over and doing amazing things. And he didn't think he wanted to be coach by me, but we know how to do business and personal.
Steve: And the other thing is, what have you learned the most? Because you're coaching, you've been through coaching, but what have you learned the most? What's your top one or two things? What have you learned the most about coaching other people?
John: I think it's actually a hard question to answer because there's so many different things with different people. But what comes to mind the most, like a common theme is we want to make more profit. We want to make more profit. And so one of the things that I've learned about people is they're not making the money that they want to make because they don't focus on it. And you remember back when I was in business, it was a very, very profitable business. And I assumed everyone's business was like that. But when you get out there and you start seeing some people in their businesses aren't like that, it was a little bit of a shock to me. And through thinking about it and reflecting, I think the one thing that I did differently was it was a focus. My biggest focus was always profit, not revenue, not even gross profit to a certain degree. It was net profit. How much of this money do I keep? That's the first thing I'd learn. I think I'd say about coaching people is there's people out there that are really hungry to learn. And I love it when there's someone that's hungry to learn because I got all this knowledge from 20 years in business and selling it. And it's great when someone wants it. And they start sucking it out of you.
Steve: Yeah, you don't force it on you.
John: They want it from you because it's completely different.
Steve: And you're trying to shove things down people's throats. It's fantastic when people are hungry for it.
John: It really is, yeah. There are probably two things that come to mind.
Steve: Okay, one quick question for you, John. What have you learned about you after coaching other people now for a few years? You know yourself as a business owner.
John: Yeah.
Steve: But what do you know now about John the business coach?
John: Do you know what? Coaching people, I've learned is about getting them to get the most out of themselves. It's not pushing them. It's not pulling them. It's helping them get the most out of themselves. And I learned that from having a couple of difficult clients. And I had to think, what do I have to do to help this person get what they need? Not, how can I make this person do it? And then you have a look at like the really good sports coaches. You mentioned this before. And if you listen to some of the players that were coached under them, they'd say, he just knew how to talk to me. So I could get the most out of myself. And it was different to how we talked to this other guy. I think that'd be the thing.
Steve: Yeah, they'd take an interest. And then, yeah, correct. Good question, though.
John: Well, mate, thank you very much for coming all the way down from Sydney. It's been great to do this podcast for you. Sorry, with you. And like I said at the start, this has been something I've been looking forward to for a long time. I know my clients that listen to this are going to like it as well, because I talk a lot about you in our sessions, because I learned so much over the 10, 11 years that you coached me. So thanks, Steve. I really appreciate you coming down. And I'm looking forward to this seafood lunch that we're allowed to. And maybe if I can twist your arm a little bit, a cigar afterwards. We'll see how we go.
Steve: John, that's always that personal approach that you always had above everyone else. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
John: Thank you.
