Latest / The Ambitious Coach Lab / Change the Question, Change the Answer: Lessons From the Session Room with Ren Flickinger

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Change the Question, Change the Answer: Lessons From the Session Room with Ren Flickinger · The Ambitious Coach Lab

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Ambitious Coach Lab, Powered by Nightmare.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Cam.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Each week we explore the real tactics, tough conversations, and breakthrough moments that drive coaching success.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Let's jump into today's episode.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, hello, friends.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: I am so excited to uh welcome Ren Flickinger with us.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Ren and I have are in the same town, so we are Green Villions.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Um I used to work with Cullen Talley, who now Ren works with, and so the exit memento, so Cullen connected us, and we have just hit it off since then and developed a cool little friendship.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: And uh we both love cars.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: We just have a lot of same interests, just cool dudes.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: And so when we were thinking about guests for this show, I was like, oh my gosh, got to get Ren on here to kind of talk about stuff.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: So, man, welcome to the show, dude.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Excited to have you.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man, I appreciate it.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: I uh I hesitate to call myself a Green Villian because I am an outsider, but I guess I have been here long enough to earn the title at this point.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh dude, 100%.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Like you get to through a couple years, like you're you're a local.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Like it was funny, I was in a group the other day, and over 50% of the people were actually like from born and raised in Greenville, which is unheard of.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Because usually it's a pretty big mix of like people that transplanted, or like maybe you get a couple born and raised, but most of the people, it's like they came here for college.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, man, but there's a lot of good people that are in Greenville.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: So, and you're one of them.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: For sure.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks, man.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: But dude, like to kick us off, kind of tell people a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, I know a little bits and pieces, but for those that maybe don't know you, kind of share a little bit about how you got to exit momentum.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh actually it was a move across the country that kind of led me down this path.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh prior to this, I had an experience where we were uh growing and scaling inside of a construction company.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: So we actually were on the customer side of not exit momentum, but on the customer side of an operating system and a management system inside of a high performance and high-growing company.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Um so the construction company, we went from my first year that I was there, we were just shy of 20 million bucks.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: Five years later, we were over 120.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: We added eight locations to that.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: We added about 550 people.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, just you know, like on a rocket ship kind of company, uh, we hired somebody to come in and help us from a third-party perspective pretty early on in that journey.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: We knew where we wanted to go.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: We tried to self-implement some things.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: We were already using um uh what at the time was a competitor to 90, the program, but what's called Bloom Growth, which I'm sure you're familiar with.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: Bloom.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Very familiar.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: We were already using that.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: So we hired somebody to come in and kind of help us uh press the fast forward button on this thing.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: There was eight leaders on a leadership team, and yeah, that was that was my journey within an operating system.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then when we decided to move from Omaha to here, um we just decided, hey, like this is something I have this unique uh experience that I've gone through.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And it's taught me how to navigate this process and through a set of introductions and circumstances.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: I was on a phone call with Cullen and uh, you know, about a week later, I've been interviewed by the team and decided to go on do a partnership deal together.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: And so for the last three years, I've been partnered in with Cullen and that team on the exit momentum side.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Dude, that's so cool.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Man, it's like full circle because I was working with Cullen like early on before it was even firm.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm sure he had that vision and plan.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And now to kind of come across and see fruition, it's so cool what you guys are building.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is next level.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is even back in the early days, you could just tell it was different.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Like it was an elevated experience.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: And now with you coming on the team and some of the others, I mean, the experience that you get with exit momentum is just next level, man.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is awesome.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a it's an experience that's rooted not in theory, but in practice.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Like every single person on this team has gone out and either scaled a business, been a part of a business that was growing and scaling and running some sort of an operating system, or owned their own business and grew it and scaled it and exited it.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's that's that's the experience.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: You feel it on the customer side or on the client side when your coach or your implementer or whatever word you want to use has been through the journey that you're on and they're sort of at the bottom of, you know, base camp one, helping you understand the path to get up to the top, but they've actually done it instead of just saying, like, here's the theory.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: I think if we just do this thing, we'll probably get here eventually.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: That's a little more terrifying.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, dude, that that tees it up so well for where I'd love to go.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Cause, you know, the the season of this, you know, we're we're started this show at the beginning of this year in 2026, and kind of at the half mark of the year, I was like, hey, let's just call it season two for whatever reason, you know?
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And started, I got a lot of feedback from people of just wanting to dive into like the actual just practical side of being in a session room with clients and working, like kind of sharing more stories and lessons learned and that kind of stuff.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things you alluded to was talking a little bit about like process.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: So for you specifically, and I I want to lean into like the business operating system experience and how that influences like the client and those that have like worked inside businesses that implemented an operating system and how that helps you as a coach.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: So, can you talk a little bit about kind of that journey of you took the leap uh to kind of go into coaching and how that's kind of framed from your experience of walking in a business and leadership role with business operating systems?
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say just from a psychological standpoint, I can sit across the table from a potential client and a leadership team and say for a fact, hey, I've been on the other side of this table.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: I know the thoughts that you're thinking right now.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: I don't have the time to do more things.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: I can't prioritize this time.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: I've tried these things and they've failed.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: I've been on that journey personally.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: And I had colleagues on the team that if I wasn't experiencing that, they were.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: And we were all talking amongst each other, saying, here's our fears and our thoughts going into this.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: So I'd say from a psychological standpoint, I mean, I've been there.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: I get it.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, and you're probably not gonna tell me anything from a potential client standpoint that I haven't felt myself.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that's probably the biggest advantage that I have going into uh what I've done for the last over three years now, which is actually working with leadership teams and coaching them, is like I've been on this journey from beginning to end that they're about to go on.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: And the revenue numbers that we went through in the construction company, oftentimes a lot of my clients, you know, they may never even touch that number, but they know that they can be safe in the fact that I've seen what 30 million looks like with multiple trucks and drivers and this and that.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Like they, I can keep pace in the room or push the pace with them in that sense.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that empathetic um probably just adds so much uh credibility to you as a coach of like, okay, I'm working with somebody that has actually gone the path that I have am trying to get to.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm thinking of a you know a company, I mean, we know it, but um, because it's a former uh company for me, but the, you know, back when I was there, I mean, we couldn't have even fathomed probably like a five million dollar year.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And now they've soared past that.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: And now they're going and shooting for that, you know, 20 million or whatever it is.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And you having that experience of walking in maybe similar industry of how that goes forward, I think is probably so beneficial.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: And probably just even from, say, the CEO or the visionary or whoever, you know, whatever the title of the individual, but that's at the kind of the helm.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: But having that just almost peer-to-peer type thing where you can kind of speak into that probably is really helped just from that relational capital trust building aspect.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Would you say that?
8:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and I can also speak that language to them, but also speak the language to their individual leaders inside of it.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, I I worked in sales, I worked in ops, I did some production work in the construction company.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: So when I get a business like the one you're alluding to locally, they're very structured, like the way that we were.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's production, there's sales, there's marketing, there's, you know, like the standard functions of a business.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: And I can go to their sales leader, I can say, hey, I I see what you're doing, but it's not translating to your salespeople.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: Like you need to help them see a different picture.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: You need to clear this up for them, or you need to go ride with them or go run some appointments on your own and like go experience it yourself.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Cause you can, because I've worked inside of those functions as well.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: So it it it again, like at exit momentum, the experience is obviously what we're always after as a coaching team and as an organization.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: But that experience is so many layers deep inside of an organization, not just with the owner.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: That's that's so good.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, so one thing when we were talking in like preliminary conversations for this, you said something that really stuck out to me.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: You, and I want I I probably will slaughter how you said it, but I'm just gonna ask the question and let you talk about it.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: So you said something about basically how you frame something for a client.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Can basically like I think the word you used was like materially change what you get back from them.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Do you have an example of maybe a time where you changed a question or you asked something or frame something in a way that kind of unlocked the room in a way that just led to an insight or a specific moment that really kind of transformed that that team or that that organization?
10:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think how you frame things, and this was the conversation that you and I had prior to this was how you frame things ultimately is going to determine the result that you're gonna get out of that conversation.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: So if you frame things, like let's, you know, there's a million different books out there, and the book itself is its own frame, if you just continue to use that frame over and over and over again, you're probably gonna get the same result that you got when you got done reading the book.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: But if you take the concept that the book is, you know, trying to teach you and you frame it to something that's relevant to that particular organization or that particular team, and you open up their mind to think about a problem differently by a series of questions, you're gonna get a much better and less stock result um out of that.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, when we talk about everybody talks about three-year, one year, 90-day plan, right?
11:06
SPEAKER_01: That's a concept that's been coined a billion times.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: And almost every success leaves clues, almost every great organization does that process, right?
11:15
SPEAKER_01: But if we think about what happens if we have to double this business in the next year, that's gonna yield a completely different response from that team.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: And it's gonna expose different barriers, different issues, different opportunities than us just saying, hey, what do we got to get accomplished in the next year?
11:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, that's a whole nother set of answers and questions.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: So the frame in which you go about things and how you present them then leads to a much better result for most clients.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: And we do that, you know, it's customized to each client.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: If you're a landscaping company or you're a hat company or you're a bookkeeping company, we use different frames to get you there.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: What would you say is as you're thinking about framing things, are there specific frames or you know, questions is the word that pops into my brain, but are there specific, like almost cues to get people thinking in the right thing that you have like relied on on a regular basis, if that makes sense?
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Just specific things that you can lean into in the session room that's like, okay, I can this is a proven go-to thing if somebody's stuck or something like that.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we talk a lot about science of scaling that's come out recently.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, scale up faster.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of these new concepts that are coming out.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: It talks about frame and focus and floor inside of, you know, science of scaling.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: And we we really hammered down on implementing that book as fast as possible and getting people to think a little bit broader about what they're actually trying to achieve.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: So we've actually gone back with some of these clients that are, you know, three, five years old with us, and we've gone back and we've reset some BHAGs that are much larger when we start to refocus them and reframe what we're trying to achieve.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're just using a lot of new tools and books and concepts that are out there to try to drive people to think a little bit differently because the traditional path works.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: We know that.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: But the traditional path isn't necessarily what's going to continue to push organizations forward.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: And it works for a small sector of people.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: So we have to find a way like, how do we broaden this lens a little bit and how do we start to speak to different industries who are, you know, dealing with different challenges?
13:32
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, think about an engineering company.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: It a lot of times it's really hard for them to think about purpose and core values and some of these things that a marketing agency is really good at, right?
13:42
SPEAKER_01: So it's like we have to reframe things a little bit differently to extract the same powerful information out of them that we can then go implement inside of the business.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: You just got to be smart about who your who your audience is in those moments.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really good.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: And on the flip side of that, have you ever found that because I mean, when you boil it down, like organizations are, you know, I mean, it's somewhat simple.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: You have structured people, right?
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And so, like you boil it down that, you know, engineering firm and that marketing firm probably have some of the similar issues.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Do you find that you pull in like cross, you know, industry type things, obviously, specific terminologies or analogies and those kinds of things, you have to be specific.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure you've probably pulled from, okay, hey, this marketing agency, you know, I can apply that to this engineering firm.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Do you find the flip side true as well?
14:35
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the struggles sometimes are the same, they just manifest themselves in different ways.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: Like we talk about functions of the business, and you know, every business has similar or the same functions.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: But it's like if we're struggling, like right now, AI marketing is such a hot thing, right?
14:52
SPEAKER_01: Google has changed their algorithm.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: Like everybody, most people that are in the small business sector, like three, five million bucks, yeah, has really they can't just dump money on the marketing fire.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: So they've really struggled to figure out like, okay, we aren't getting as many leads as we once were.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: What's the problem and what do we do?
15:12
SPEAKER_01: So it's like if one of my clients figures something out, it doesn't matter what the industry is.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times we can translate that across the rest of our client base.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: And that's the great thing about, you know, the group that we have at Exit Momentum.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: There's eight of us, or nine of us now, coaches.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, we just added another coach.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, we've got that many people with that many experiences, and we serve a little over one and a half billion dollars a year in annual revenue.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: There are ideas in there that we're able to cross-translate across multiple coaches on the team and then into the businesses that we help individually.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: So, yes, 100%.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: Those things translate.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: You just got to be smart in extracting the right things out that are gonna work and be a lot more less prescriptive and say, well, this company's doing this.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, have you thought about doing this?
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Have you tried this?
16:02
SPEAKER_01: What was the result, right?
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Those kinds of conversations.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, dude, that's so good.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: I want to double-click on that because um, when you said that, that made me think the value.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: So coach, I'm gonna frame frame this with coaching can be a very lonely sport, right?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of coaches that are trying to do this by themselves, right?
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Sure, there's lots of franchise, you know, but even as a franchise, you know, you're still sometimes felt alone.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Whereas with what you guys have done, you have a firm model.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Now you're out there grinding, doing your thing, right?
16:34
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you're working with your clients.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: But are there ways that you guys have more of that experience share or regular, you know, sequences where you're able to like, hey, we just had a breakthrough with my client, which then will unlock the way that you're working with.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys have like structures in place that opens that conversation up?
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have really two big things.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I'll hit on both of them.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: The first one, we obviously have a we use Voxer, which is the walkie-talkie app.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: We use Voxer.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: We communicate all of our notes from sessions, not like communicate financial data, but just like, here's what we did in the session.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I learned, here were the mistakes that I made, here's how I prepped, here was the result, here was how they rated it.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Like every single session, every single coach is going in and we're just documenting those.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: And we're like excited to do it.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: It's not mandatory.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: It's just, hey, we want to share our experiences because there's always nuggets inside of there.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: And then people are bookmarking those or saving those, or we're taking some of that and we're developing our own um, you know, new tools on the side based on the feedback that we're getting from clients.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's number one, um, is live feedback all the time.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: And between the nine of us, there's always some something going on every week in terms of sessions.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that's very unique, and you kind of mentioned the franchise model, but there is the individual coach model and there's the team model.
18:00
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: And I say we're kind of in between both of those.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: We are individuals.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: When you work with me, you work with me, you don't work with the team.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: You benefit from the team's knowledge and experience and all that through me, but you're it's a one-to-one interaction.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: However, since there is a group of us, we do exactly what we coach people to do.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: We run a weekly meeting, we take rocks as a team, we report on KPI, we have a scoreboard, we do those things, we do quarterlies together, we do annuals together, we actually do a semi-annual, we do CEO events together, we do all these things together that is constant exposure to what we do and how we do it and how do we facilitate it.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: We all run the meeting at different times.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, there's this approach of like we're constantly sharing information between the, you know, the nine of us on the team, and we're constantly poking and prodding on how we can be just 1% better here and here and here.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: And we're just constantly giving the feedback on that.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so good.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I I love that because you can get that there's almost probably a little bit of like healthy competition where, oh man, you know, I I brought in this great insight that like people resonated with, or I'm hitting my scoreboard numbers, like all those things, you know, they're that's healthy and you get that from the team aspect.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that's great because I think that is so valuable.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I there's a lot of coaches or consultants or even fractional executives that, you know, they go out there and they just try to base it and they're doing it all by themselves.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, oh my gosh, you've got such a wealth of knowledge around you of people that you could kind of partner with or whatever it looks like and and pull from.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: But are there specific moments where you know you've been in a session where I think a tension that that a lot of coaches feel, especially newer coaches, is this desire to kind of help solve for or give answers or hey, uh this, you know, situation in my other client, or hey, in my past life, I can, you know, speak into this and you know the answer.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: But how have you worked through that as in your own coaching practice of being able to kind of shut up and let the group kind of figure out versus like, hey, let me give you the answer?
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, how have you worked through that dynamic?
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would just say number one, like I struggled with that, and still to this day, like there's times where I have to go back and say, uh, I wish I wouldn't have said that as fast as I did.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I think when you go through an experience where you grow and scale a company over multiple locations and the journey that I've been on, you you get this perception that your identity as a coach is wrapped up into solving problems.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: The reality, and I think a lot of coaches make a lot of money doing that, you know?
20:53
SPEAKER_01: And I would argue that those are more consultant-based and not necessarily like coaching and operating system based, but that line gets blurred a lot.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: And to be honest with you, and just vulnerable, like that's probably the most frustrating thing about the industry that I work in, is because when I go talk to somebody who's talked to other coaches, their perception of what I actually do oftentimes is a little different than what they heard from the other three or four, you know, coaches or consultants or whoever they've talked to.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: So, but your direct question about how do you overcome that, ultimately, like you your identity can't be wrapped up in solving people's problems.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: You have to remember a very fundamental truth as a coach.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And that is that those people inside of that business probably know more or will always know more than you do about their business because you don't work in it every day.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Your job is to bring a third party perspective and help them see the blind spots, especially a fast growing company.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: It's like the fastest cars, it has the Biggest blind spots, right?
22:01
SPEAKER_01: Your job is to open up the blind spots and say, I think you're missing some things here and here and here.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: Help them strategize their growth.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: Help them identify problems that they're not seeing, people problems, culture issues, purpose problems, you know, whatever.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Identify the issue.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: Your job is not always to solve their issues.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: So if you just run the play, you're going to solve 80% of their problems, which is they're wasting time, they're not efficient, they're spending a lot of money where they don't need to be.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: And the the system itself solves those problems.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: But they're little problems about, oh, we have a sales problem.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you do.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't disagree with you.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: How are you going to solve it?
22:44
SPEAKER_01: I can't solve that for you.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: I, you know, at the end of the day, you have to remember your job is to facilitate, identify issues and opportunities for them, and provide a system and a platform for them to be able to discuss, solve, and go implement those things into their business, not solve their problems all the time.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: And I I I know that's hard because I mean it's, you know, you're entering into almost the danger and the emotional side of things because sometimes you do have to let the team work through things of, okay, hey, I gotta let them kind of wrestle through this and maybe I would have gotten to the conclusion, you know, 20 minutes before they did.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: But there's often that's often a catalyst for trust being built.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And where if when they work through things, so do you have an ex uh uh, you know, an example of of a team that when you intentionally decided not to open the mouth and help and let them work through that where they like had an unlock?
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have a I actually have a team that I've worked with since the beginning of the coaching journey that does the exact same thing that I did in the business in Omaha.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, like literally the same industry.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: We actually targeted them as a dealer to be on in our dealer network.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: It didn't work out because geographically there was some overlap.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: But it's it was just a great fit because I already know their business like the back of my hand.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: I've done that for several years.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: So they had this issue that we identified through a a frame that we use as a team on financial impact and PL.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: So managing a PL, how do we go through and how so as I'm teaching this, it becomes very apparent that they have this giant, like$2 million worth of inventory just sitting in a warehouse that they're never gonna sell.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: It's discontinued product, and they've just kind of walked by it every single day, right?
24:39
SPEAKER_01: So I said, this is a problem.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: Two million bucks is two million bucks.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: Like literally, we're walking out the front door every single day.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: There's a bundle of two million dollars sitting on the front porch, and every single one of you is walking past it every day.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: What are we gonna do about it?
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: So framed it.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, framed it.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: Right and they're like, okay, yes, it's urgent.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: It hadn't been urgent up to that point.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, okay, what are we gonna, what are we gonna do?
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And we're just gonna whiteboard solves and I don't want any every idea is on the table.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Even if it's a stupid one, let's we're gonna write it down.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: We had like 50 things on the board, okay.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: And what I could have done if I had, you know, not had discipline, I could have said, okay, here's the top five, let's discuss those.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: But the 51st idea that came out, because we just stayed silent for a little bit and I asked three or four times, like, is this it?
25:30
SPEAKER_01: The 51st idea was the one that stuck and it was the best one.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's like sometimes it takes time to get to the right answer.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes the most important thing that somebody is going to tell you, or the most important thing that the business is going to tell you, is often the last thing that they're going to tell you.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: They're not going to lead with the most important thing, right?
25:54
SPEAKER_01: They're going to end with the most important thing.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes you got to sit back a little bit and let the answer kind of uncover itself instead of just trying to dig and dig and dig and force an answer.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: Because if we're speed to answer, oftentimes that's not the full answer.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: We got to be able to let it kind of come to us.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: But there's also the flip side of that coin to be careful of.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Like we can't reel it out too far, right?
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Where we spend three hours solving something that's going to save us five dollars, right?
26:23
SPEAKER_01: There's a balance.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, on a two million dollar deal, like, let's spend some time on this.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: This is a big deal.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: It's been sitting there for over a year.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Let's figure it out.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And that idea, you know, we came back the next quarter.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: It was a rock.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: It got implemented.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: They recouped everything and they actually turned it into a recurring revenue machine that they'll collect on for the next 10 years.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: So it's like the idea I personally would have never thought of.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: I would have said, sell it back to the manufacturer at a discount, take your 40% loss and call it a day.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: That would have been my solution.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: The solution they came up with was brilliant and much better than I ever would have come up with.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's that's such a great story.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: How cool.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: And one thing that, you know, being able to have that discipline is something that I think is critical for coaches to learn.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: We talk a lot.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: One of the competencies that we talk about, just being a good coach, is mastery, right?
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Got to be able to master that ability to kind of resist the urge to jump in.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Because you're right, had you done that, was it a wrong solution?
27:31
SPEAKER_00: No.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: But because you discipline yourself to stay quiet, that 51st, you know, option came out and it was a great thing and turned into maybe an additional revenue stream.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Like, how cool is that when you take the time?
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Do you find um this is kind of an opposite flip side of what you said, but do you find there are times where, all right, you've let the team kind of work through things and say it's a more an emotional type thing, right?
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're dealing with like a culture or a people-related thing.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And have you found there are times where you have to interject to kind of bring team back into focus or you know, hey, we're we're getting a little bit too maybe into the personal level or we're getting way off on a rabbit hole or whatever it is, like where you kind of bring people back in.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean that happens probably just as frequently.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's really, it's it's again, it comes back to bring them back in, but don't solve the problem for them.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: Like help them see the trap that they're falling into.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: So if we're discussing a people issue and like let's say we put a people analyzer up on the board and we just go through everything and we're split across the board on whether they're the right person or they're the right seat or whatever, right?
28:48
SPEAKER_01: And people start to get emotional, and there's I've had people cry, you know, tears.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: We we've had a heart attack in a session before.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: We've had all almost everything that you can possibly think of, right?
28:58
SPEAKER_01: So you got to always expect the unexpected.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, like you just gotta step up and be like, hey guys, this feels like we're at an inflection point.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: So it feels like number one, it's getting personal.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: Number two, it feels like it's getting emotional.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: So we have two options here.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: We can either regroup, reset, and look at this thing objectively, or we can take a break.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: Let's let the emotions, let's let it air out, let's walk around the building a couple of times, let's come back in here and just agree that we're gonna make a decision that's gonna get us seven days forward or a month forward.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: We're not making a lifelong decision here.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: So, like if we're not ready to let this person go based on a split room, can we just agree for the next 30 days we have to spend time with this person and we got to get them back on track?
29:44
SPEAKER_01: And the next 30 days are gonna tell us whether they're coachable or not, right?
29:48
SPEAKER_01: Instead of oftentimes they're looking at the solve.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: And it's like sometimes we just need to look a few days ahead or a couple of weeks ahead and just get us there.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: And that we don't have enough information to make the right call yet.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: Let's get the information we need and then let's regroup back to this conversation and say, okay, now we have some more information.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: We have some data set.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: Now what how does everybody feel?
30:12
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that that um the the specific question that you referenced right at the beginning of what you said.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: It was just like, hey guys, it feels like we're at an inflection point here.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, kind of bringing it into the room and then kind of level setting.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the best coaches have this just it's the art of kind of how we're gonna, okay, I'm gonna let the team go this far.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: And then, all right, man, it sounds like we're we we need to land this plane is sometimes what I'll say a lot of times, like, hey, we have talked about this thing for 20 minutes.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, we let's let's figure out what the action steps are.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: What's the next step to get this thing move in?
30:47
SPEAKER_00: But having those kind of phrases, are there any other um phrases that you use in in specific situations to kind of either bring back things or in transitions?
30:58
SPEAKER_00: I I had a guest on here.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: The reason I asked that is I had a guest on here and he literally has a uh like a book that he writes down phrases that he hears for like transitions and stuff.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't know if there were like certain things you lean into.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: I then I'm gonna like text him and let him know some more.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I definitely have, you know, any of my clients will tell you that there's certain things that Ren always says, like, that's not a that's not an employee issue, that's a leadership problem, right?
31:23
SPEAKER_01: Like saying sometimes you gotta, you know, one of our values, and Colin said this when if you go back to his podcast, so this is a callback to uh earlier uh podcast.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: But if you go back on there, one of our values is to say what needs to be said regardless of risk, right?
31:38
SPEAKER_01: So that that means like calling the hard things.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: I was in a, you know, uh a momentum meeting or, you know, a client's weekly meeting last week or uh earlier this week, and they were talking about this one employee that's always a problem, just shows up late, shows up late, shows up late.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, what's do they do they know what the standard is?
31:57
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, yeah, they of course they know what the standard is.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, great.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: So if I went to them right now and I said, hey, what time do you have to be to work?
32:03
SPEAKER_01: They would tell me the standard.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, yes, 100%.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, great.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: If I went to them and I said, what's the consequence if you're late?
32:09
SPEAKER_01: What would they tell me?
32:10
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, that's the problem.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a consequence.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that's not a Nathan issue, right?
32:15
SPEAKER_01: That's a leadership issue.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: Like that you, the this team in this room, you're allowing that behavior.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: So if you're frustrated and you don't want to allow that behavior, somebody in here's got to do something about it, right?
32:28
SPEAKER_01: So that's, you know, people don't want to hear that.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: People want to blame it on Nathan.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, he's the he's the reason he just can't be on time.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, no, no, no, no.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: We're allowing this behavior, right?
32:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, there's a lot of catchphrases.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: You if you watch some of our content, we've got a lot of coach content out there.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: You'll get a lot of them, like businesses like a boat, or I dropped one a minute ago.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, the the fastest cars have the biggest blind spots.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: It's the same with the fastest growing businesses, the biggest blind spots.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of them that are out there.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are ripped off, some of them are original.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure, for sure.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: That was there's nothing new under the sun, right?
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: But uh, no, that's good.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because it's, I mean, it is those little things actually make a difference because sometimes those little statements, especially when it's been internalized so much that, hey, you understand the deep underlying meaning of that, said in the right context, can be that unlock moment for leaders where it's like, or it's just a kick in the pants where it's like, yeah, that's a leadership issue.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, have you ever had moments where you feel like you've either pushed too hard or, you know, uh said something maybe out of turn that maybe, you know, you kind of had to walk back from or something like that.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to go like super negative, but like I'm just curious.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I'm certainly make mistakes.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'm probably make mistakes.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm a very critic.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: I look at every session, I'm like, what's one thing I could have done better every single time?
33:55
SPEAKER_00: It's not even a cultural thing.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: Like you guys actually like look into doing that to try to improve, you know?
34:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: But even just on a personal level, anything I do, I'm just like, man, how could I have just done that in 50% of the time?
34:07
SPEAKER_01: Or how could I have just done that better?
34:09
SPEAKER_01: It's the same with sessions.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: So every session I leave, I'm like, okay, I probably should have done this a little bit better.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: Or I should have, you know, going into it, I think I probably had an agenda to get this, this, and this done.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: And I should have let this go a little longer.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: I probably should have cut this off a little earlier.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's just this constant, you talk about mastery.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm a huge uh drag racing fan.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to racing, like engineering, nothing that you engineer is perfect.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: Perfection is defined by the amount of intolerance that you're willing to accept.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: And every individual accepts just a little bit of different intolerance, but they call that perfect, right?
34:48
SPEAKER_01: You're never going to be perfect in the session room.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: You're just not.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: So it's it really the question is is how much intolerance are you willing to allow yourself?
34:56
SPEAKER_01: Because this company's paying you literally thousands of dollars a session or a month or however your bill model is to for you to be perfect.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: So any amount of imperfection that's in there that you're not analyzing and trying to be better on, that's on you.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: Like if you really want to charge that amount, you got to constantly be whittling away on being better and better and better to the point where somebody comes to you and is like, hey, I want to be as good as you are at this because you prepped good and you did this and I watched your session and you did these things that I love.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: But until somebody walks in and is like, you're the master at this, I'm constantly whittling away, getting a little bit better and a little bit better in the session room.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's a good word.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh wow.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh do you have uh a specific like pre and post session kind of process that you follow?
35:50
SPEAKER_00: Like from the maybe we take it from the prep side.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm also fascinated with like the the actual conclusion and actually postwork too.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: That's fascinating to me.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: So uh it depends on what stage in the engagement we're in.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: So you know, we we break up implementation and execution, those are our two terms.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: Implementation being, you know, that first kind of sprint phase or that first 60 to 90 days, execution being that quarterly and annual cycle.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: So we kind of split those two.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: So uh in if we're in implementation this kind of first 60 to 90 days, my pre-session, like pre-first session, I'm going in, I'm researching the heck out of the company.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing at least one or two owners' calls where I'm like trying to understand.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm probably meeting with every member of the leadership team pre this first meeting, getting everybody's perspective.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: I want to understand the dynamic that I'm actually walking into inside of the session room.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not surprised when I see things inside of their in terms of the dynamic of the team, because that really everything that I do is dependent on everybody in that room working together.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: If there's people that aren't working together, it ain't gonna work.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: And I've experienced that, you know, where we've had to either fire a customer or a client because it ain't gonna work, or I feel it and they let me go as their coach because the dynamic's off, right?
37:16
SPEAKER_01: And that's acceptable.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: It sucks, but I mean, it is what it is, right?
37:20
SPEAKER_01: So I'm doing a lot of prep to get to that first session and then post those first few sessions, I'm sitting in on their meeting, I'm making sure that they're being disciplined.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at their 90 constantly.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: Like every week I get an email, you know this, I get an automated email.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Once they run a meeting, it tells me how many issues they solved, how much time they spent, if their milestones were in, did they drop things down?
37:44
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm analyzing the heck out of those things because if they're not being disciplined or running the play, I already know what the results are gonna be because I've lived it that way.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: Where I, you know, half-assed ran the play as a salesperson or whatever, and I got half-assed the results.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: So like I already know that that's gonna be the result.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: So it's constantly poking and prodding.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: If we're in this quarterly cycle, I'm sitting in on a few of their meetings throughout the quarter.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm making sure that we're keeping the rails on.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm watching their meeting every single week in terms of the notes that are coming back, but we are relentless as a team about still using paper notes, taking pictures, all of our check-ins, all of our checkouts.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: We're documenting all of that.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: So pre-quarterly session, I'm going in, I'm like, okay, what did they tell me last quarter?
38:30
SPEAKER_01: What were their commitments?
38:31
SPEAKER_01: What were their rocks?
38:32
SPEAKER_01: What were their this?
38:33
SPEAKER_01: What were their that?
38:34
SPEAKER_01: And like I have a full recording of that session.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: I prep that, and then I go in and I keep referencing those things.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, you know, last time you said that you just had a new grandbaby in the room.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: How we're three months down the road.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: How's that going?
38:48
SPEAKER_01: Is she starting to do this?
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Is she starting to do that?
38:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, like it, this personal connection because of the prep work that you put into it, right?
38:57
SPEAKER_01: And then the post is a lot of like all of my clients use Boxer to you know talk to me.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: So it's, you know, them sending me a message and saying, hey, we're doing this.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: Or if I'm not hearing from them, it's where are you at on this?
39:12
SPEAKER_01: We talked about this two weeks ago.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: I still haven't heard from you.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: I noticed you didn't drop your rocks down, and there were four that were off track.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Like it's just constantly, you know, pushing the ball on those things.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, dude, that's so good.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, I appreciate you sharing and giving a sneak peek behind the curtain, if you will, or under the hood.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Um to me, that's one of the, and again, I'm a little biased because I'm a big tech guy, but I think having technology as a as a thing, that was one of the things as a former client of Exit Momentum, and also understanding uh a little bit of depth, especially from the 90 perspective, of how valuable that is as a coach, of being able to get a pulse on, okay, I can see whether that's the meeting recap, or even more further than that, like, man, you rated the meeting, you know, a four out of 10 or whatever it was.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, you guys good?
40:05
SPEAKER_00: Like, is everything all right?
40:06
SPEAKER_00: Like you have that ability to pivot so quickly and get that pulse, and then also go in and see on top of the notes and documentation you already have, being able to see kind of going into a session, okay, looks like we missed a lot of milestones on some things, like we're not executing, like you have a little bit of data going into that session, which is probably invaluable going into like a quarterly or an annual.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, I have the data, and I think the key is is I don't wait until the end of the quarter to present that data.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: Like if you think about it, like if I'm a business owner and I see a problem and I don't solve it for three months, like I can't expect a good result, right?
40:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: And I can't expect that result to sometimes you waste a half a year because you just don't take action.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: It's like when I see something, immediately I'm taking action, I'm sending out a message, I'm checking in, like, hey, if I if I see a four on there, you're getting a text message.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: Right.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: Or a phone call.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: It's like, we got to talk because I saw this come across.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I don't care about the rating.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: I care about the productivity.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: And if you rated a four in terms of productivity and you felt like it was a waste of our time, I can't have a leader sitting in this room that feels like this was a waste of time.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: Like that's just unacceptable, regardless of whether the what the reason is that they feel like it's a waste of time, still unacceptable, right?
41:26
SPEAKER_01: So when you see something like that, you gotta say something immediately and keep these teams on track.
41:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, at the end, that's why, you know, and you know this, we we bill the way that we do purposely, because this isn't a I come to your session and I say see you later for three months.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: We're very different than a lot of the coaching systems that are out there because we are literally walking in this thing with you from a third party and a coaching perspective.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: Nick Saban doesn't go coach that team one time a week on Saturday and then come back around on Saturday and do it all over again.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: He's in every single practice.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: He's watching it, he's coaching his team, he's coaching his coaches.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, you have to take that approach.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you can't get to the game and expect a high result.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: You just can't.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: I had a I had like a healthy fear of Cullen when we worked with it.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: It was just like, because you knew he was gonna hold you accountable, which is exactly what you need.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's just like a coach.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, I guarantee you, those guys that played for Saban had a healthy fear of him.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you would hold him to the fire.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: So so man, this has been awesome.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, the I want to ask one more question before we kind of transition to the the conclusion, but is there a specific situation that you have that maybe is just uh a highlight of a just a success story or just a giant win inside of a session where it was just the team got it.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: It was just like it clicked and it was based on maybe a frame that you said or a question that was asked.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: Do you have something in mind that just is like a a good success story?
43:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't have like one specific example, but I will tell you like broadly, yeah.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: When I get that feeling is when I hear we tried this with two or three other coaches and it didn't work, and we know that this is the right path now.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: Cause I've gotten that so many times and it's sometimes it's timing, you know, like you weren't ready or you weren't disciplined or whatever, and the the stars just align.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times our approach with exit momentum is so rigorous and we're very dialed in with it that the feeling in the session room is just different.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: And when I hear, you know, we fired, you know, my very first client that I ever got, I was the fourth coach that they'd even tried.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: And we've been together for th over three years now.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's like that's the affirmation that I'm doing the right thing and that I'm a fit for what they do.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Do.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't the last time that I heard that.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, we we tried this or we tried that and it didn't work.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: The other one that we hear a lot is we tried to self-implement these things.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: I read this book and I tried to self-implement it, or we tried to do this.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, that works to an extent, but you're literally performing surgery on yourself.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's so hard to do that.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Number one, it's painful.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: The scar is gonna look terrible.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: And it's gonna take you a lot more time than if you just go to the emergency room, get stitched up, you know, like um, so yeah, I think that those are the moments when I look back over the last three years of doing this where I'm like, those are the things that make me proud of what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, because it's affirmation that I'm doing the right things and somebody else is not doing a service to them that they should be doing because they're getting paid to do it, you know.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: Right.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's good.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a really good word.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, dude, this has been awesome.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: I always like to ask guests two quick questions at the end.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: I find these are just fun questions.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: So if you had to go back to rookie wren with all the knowledge and experience that you have now, what advice would you give yourself?
45:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, I we kind of touched on it, but really, like your identity is not wrapped up in solving people's problems.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: Like when I even to this day I struggled when somebody tells me a problem, I instantly go to here's how I think you should fix that, like in my head.
45:30
SPEAKER_01: But you got to have that fail-safe where you're like, okay, how I think it should be fixed, number one, might be right, might be wrong.
45:37
SPEAKER_01: Number two, may matter and may not matter to them.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: So at the end of the day, I have to find a way to lead them to a solution, whatever that is.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: So what I think the solution should be, I start to ask questions to challenge my own assumption of what it should be, but I ask those questions to them.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: So it's like, what do you think the solution should be?
45:58
SPEAKER_01: Which is what I would ask myself.
46:00
SPEAKER_01: And then they tell me, and I'm like, what about what if this goes wrong?
46:03
SPEAKER_01: Have you thought about this?
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Because those are things that I'm internally asking myself.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Before I would ask myself those things, I would come to a conclusion and then I would hand that conclusion down to a client.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Now I just ask those things directly to them.
46:17
SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes they come up with a better solution or they think about something a little different than me because they're close to it.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: They know more about their business than I do.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: So who am I to give them a solve?
46:27
SPEAKER_01: What I should do is facilitate them through.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: So if I could go back, I'd say be disciplined, don't be an idiot, don't solve everybody's problems.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: You need to lead people to results, don't give them results.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that's so relevant for so many of our listeners and myself included.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you sharing that.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh second question I always like to ask is just make it, you know, that's a little bit more reflective.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: This brings it back to a little bit more current.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: What's a lesson that you're in the middle of learning in this current moment?
47:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, business development never stops.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Colin said it on his podcast, and I'm just gonna put an exclamation point and a stamp behind that.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: So many people think that um, you know, they've the Simon Sinek talks about infinite game, right?
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Coaching and getting clients, that is an infinite game.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: You will never help every client on the planet.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: You will never help every business on the planet.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: So you're literally paying playing an infinite game.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: So if you're playing a finite game with your business development and you're saying, I just got to get to 10 clients or 20 or 30 or whatever your number is, and then I can relax, you're already behind because jump starting business development, jump starting relationships is way more painful than creating new ones.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: So going back and saying, like, oh, now I gotta go find, you know, I just lost seven or eight clients because the economy or this or that or whatever excuse, now I got to go find seven or eight more.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, you're already behind.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: Like you should have been thinking about that before you lost them.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: You should be thinking, how am I and build in in if you're not doing yearly projections, sorry, this is a little bit of a rant, but if you're not doing yearly projections on your coaching practice and saying, I'm gonna have this many clients and this is the revenue, this is the profit.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're not doing what you're asking your clients to do, number one, shame on you as a coach.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: You should be doing that.
48:29
SPEAKER_01: You run a business and you're coaching businesses, you should know better.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: Number two is if you're not building in attrition into that model, that's second shame on you.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: Like you should just assume you're gonna lose a certain percentage of your practice every year, whether they graduate, they move on to greener pastures, they move on to browner pastures, wherever they move on to, you need to assume you're going to lose certain people.
48:53
SPEAKER_01: Build that into the model.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: So if you need 12 and you're at nine, you really need to go get 15 because you're probably gonna lose three, right?
49:01
SPEAKER_01: So it's like you got to be thinking that way.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, don't think I just got to get to 12 because it ain't gonna stop there.
49:07
SPEAKER_01: So sorry, a little bit of a rant.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: But that is that is I'm speaking to myself a little bit on that right now because I definitely I got to a number that I said when I first started doing this.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, if I could just get to this number, you know, I'd be happy.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: And then I got to that.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: And then it was the second set.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: That's the one that got me.
49:26
SPEAKER_01: If I could just get to this number now, I would feel good.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: Then I got to it, and now I'm kind of like, crap, I don't have the activity that I used to have.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: I need to start doing that.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: So this last, these last few weeks have just been like ramping up the activity and trying to like restart it, and it's a lot more painful than just doing it from the beginning, had I just kept it going.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: The best lessons learned are the hard ones, right?
49:51
SPEAKER_00: No, yeah.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and it was it was totally by accident too.
49:54
SPEAKER_01: It's not like I just said, like, I'm gonna get to this number and I'm gonna stop taking meetings.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: It just kind of happened.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: And then if you don't have, you know, your your finger on the trigger right away, you're like, oh man, I wish I would I wish I would have thought about this a month ago, but here we are, right?
50:11
SPEAKER_00: So man, I I will never forget.
50:14
SPEAKER_00: I distinctly remember when Cole and I sat down for his interview and he he it was we were talking about business development, and he said, you know, he was using an example.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, you know, I stopped doing business development because I got to a certain point, and he was like, Why'd you stop?
50:30
SPEAKER_00: Why'd you stop?
50:31
SPEAKER_00: It was like such, it's like instilled in my brain.
50:33
SPEAKER_00: It's so it's very much a flywheel.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really is, yeah.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: And it catches, and then at some point it's actually just running and you're doing the motions and you're getting it, and even if you are at capacity, you're still networking with people and you can start to deflect and put and like, okay, hey, I know somebody over here that would be a great fit for you, but you're still in those motions.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is such a lesson that all of us, myself included, have to learn because it's so easy to get comfortable and you're like, okay, I'm good.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: And then out of nowhere, you'll lose two clients and you're like, Well, you can also create the lazy flywheel where it's like I start filling my time with these other things, and the flywheel starts on that.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to stop that one to start to restart the business development one, right?
51:14
SPEAKER_01: So it's like you gotta be, you know, it's not all about starting one.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes it's I have to stop this one that's already moving to restart this one.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you gotta spend multiple plates at a time on that.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: You can't just spend one of them, right?
51:28
SPEAKER_00: Holly, that is so true, man.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: Dude, we could talk.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, that should be part two.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: Let's do a part two.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm in.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, dude, I would love that.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: We could talk all about business development, man.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: That is a I every coach I've ever talked to, that's like the number one focus.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's why we landed it as a competence C, but it was like, let me take a different turn because I always talk about business development the first season.
51:50
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, let's talk about like the stuff.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: But it's such a interesting, it's so interesting to me that that's the number one thing that coaches talk about because getting the client, once you get them, that's when the work starts.
52:02
SPEAKER_01: Right.
52:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, like it's not getting them is is is work, yes.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: But the real work starts when they say yes.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: And then now we got to go execute and we got to do it at a high level, right?
52:13
SPEAKER_01: So it's just so funny.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: Like it just seems like the brain is a little flipped on that.
52:17
SPEAKER_01: Like we should be spending more time saying, let's provide a world-class experience for who I have.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: That's your best business development, because then those people are gonna go tell everybody about you, you know, what you do and the experience that they have, right?
52:30
SPEAKER_01: So it's like sometimes, and I I'm speaking to myself on this, like sometimes we just get that flipped.
52:36
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we need to focus on what we have and leverage what we have instead of trying to, you know, all of a sudden create something out of nothing, right?
52:46
SPEAKER_01: And so many coaches, they talk about business development over and over and over again.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: I get it, that's how you make money.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: I sure somebody's got to say yes to you.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: You got to go find this somebody that's gonna say yes.
52:55
SPEAKER_01: But like if you're just active in the community, you create friendships, you have a small circle of people who are also fishing in the same pond as you, that know who you are and what you do.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: And if you can find a way to give them free value and get the experience of working with you, they're gonna go tell other people about it.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: It's not a complicated concept, it's very simple.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: It's not easy to do, right?
53:20
SPEAKER_01: So, but the concept's very simple.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: Just but a lot of people say, I gotta restart with a business development and then they're lazy and they don't go do anything.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like, well, you're gonna get a lazy result if you put in lazy behaviors, you know?
53:32
SPEAKER_00: That's so true.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's one thing that I've always loved about exit momentum is that you guys are the absolute opposite of that.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: And you've been highly intentional about creating a client experience that is number one memorable, but also impactful and leads to real results.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: And you're right, it does, it just spreads like wildfire because the proof is in the pudding, right?
53:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you go in and you execute.
53:56
SPEAKER_00: So, well, dude, Ren, this has been awesome, man.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming on and and sharing your wisdom.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: I I had high expectations and we've still exceeded them.
54:04
SPEAKER_00: So it was great, man.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, dude, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, like what's the best place to reach out to you?
54:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh you can email me directly at rent at exitmomentum.com.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: It's ex-it momentum uh dot com uh and it's ren R-E-N, not W-R-E-N.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: Most people make that mistake.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh, or you can go to the exit momentum uh webpage on the landing page.
54:27
SPEAKER_01: There's a coach's page.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: It takes you directly to my profile.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, take our assessment on there.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: If you're at all interested in coaching, before you make a decision about a coach, even if it's not with us, take our assessment.
54:39
SPEAKER_01: It'll at least tell you what's wrong, help you diagnose some things, give you some executionables without that for free without working with a coach.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: And we're not just gonna bombard the heck out of you with marketing.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: Like we put the survey out or the assessment out there for people to take, try to help businesses, um, even if they don't need our direct help.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: So please go to the website, take the assessment, um, select me as your coach, and I'm happy to connect with you.
55:02
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, otherwise, if you're in Greenville, you'll see my face around.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm usually out and about pretty frequently.
55:07
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you go yeah, you do your round.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: No, that's awesome.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: I'll link out to all that in the show notes so that way it makes it easy for people.
55:13
SPEAKER_00: But thanks again, Redman.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: I I appreciate our friendship and I'm glad our paths crossed.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, man, looking forward to keeping it going, man.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for tuning in.
55:23
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate all of uh you listening, and we've got plenty more episodes where this came from.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: Take care.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's episode of the ambitious coach lab.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: My hope is that something here helps you sharpen your craft and keep building a coaching practice you're proud of.
55:37
SPEAKER_00: Before we wrap, a quick thank you to our sponsor, 90.
55:41
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55:46
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55:51
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55:58
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56:05
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56:09
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's AC20 for 20% off.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hanging out with me today.
56:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm Cam.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: Journey on as you grow your ambitious coaching project.
56:18
SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.