Latest / The Ambitious Coach Lab / Stop Selling Your Time: How Coaches Build a Practice That Scales with Gil Gerretsen
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Ambitious Coaching Lab, powered by Nightmare.
- 0:04SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
- 0:05SPEAKER_00: Pam Lumber.
- 0:06SPEAKER_00: Each week we explore the real topics, tough conversations, and breakthrough moments that drive coaching system.
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: Let's jump into today's episode.
- 0:16SPEAKER_00: Hello, friends.
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: I am so excited to announce that we have the one, the only Gil Garrettson with us.
- 0:23SPEAKER_00: We were talking just before this started that you are the only Gil Garrettson in the world.
- 0:28SPEAKER_00: So that is a claim to fame.
- 0:30SPEAKER_00: But Gil is the founder of BizTrek.
- 0:33SPEAKER_00: And so we actually connected here in Greenville.
- 0:36SPEAKER_00: He is local to Greenville.
- 0:37SPEAKER_00: And so we just cross paths and have sparked a really fun, unique friendship and uh just companionship.
- 0:45SPEAKER_00: And I have learned so much from Gil over the years, and like many others, have also been influenced by his work and coaching.
- 0:53SPEAKER_00: And so when we were thinking about guests, I had multiple people recommend you to come on this podcast.
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: So it's like, we got to make this happen.
- 1:00SPEAKER_00: So welcome to the show, Gil.
- 1:01SPEAKER_00: Happy to have you, man.
- 1:02SPEAKER_00: Thank you for inviting me.
- 1:03SPEAKER_01: Look forward to our chat.
- 1:05SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's gonna be fun.
- 1:06SPEAKER_00: So for those of you that maybe don't know you as well, why don't you tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey into getting into launching BizTrek and how you got to that point?
- 1:16SPEAKER_01: Well, I uh I really started entrepreneurship young.
- 1:20SPEAKER_01: So uh some of the listeners may not know, but uh or back when I was in my teens, there was a program called Junior Achievement where we actually made a product and um I went out to sell that and I ended up being the top student salesman in in Canada.
- 1:35SPEAKER_01: I sold more of these what we made were the little triangle games.
- 1:39SPEAKER_01: If you've ever been to a cracker barrel restaurant with the little pigs, well, we developed those and uh and sold that and I sold them thousands of them door to door.
- 1:47SPEAKER_01: Uh actually maybe a little over a thousand, but um, so that kind of got me hooked on on business.
- 1:53SPEAKER_01: My brothers are uh once a dentist and one's a doctor, and I'm the business guy.
- 1:57SPEAKER_01: And um so that kind of made my got me the start.
- 2:01SPEAKER_01: So then uh I went uh through college and uh got a degree, um, double degree actually in marketing and in management, but I loved marketing.
- 2:10SPEAKER_01: And uh my first job um really while still in school was selling printing supplies, and I realized I was horrible.
- 2:16SPEAKER_01: I couldn't sell um business cards to anybody.
- 2:18SPEAKER_01: So I my dad was an engineer, and he said, you know, there's a there's a process to how you do this.
- 2:23SPEAKER_01: And he was a sales engineer, so I set out about how do you actually do this and started studying it, and uh turns out I got kind of good at it.
- 2:32SPEAKER_01: So um then my career kind of after I graduated, I turned I started doing uh corporate turnarounds.
- 2:37SPEAKER_01: I'd go in as uh as the fix it guy for uh for working for a board of directors, fix a company.
- 2:43SPEAKER_01: Uh did that for about a dozen years, then uh actually wrote some software and uh built a software company, uh built it and then sold it within three years.
- 2:52SPEAKER_01: So kind of at that point, uh we were my wife and I could kind of go where we wanted to, and we that's how we ended back here in Greenville.
- 3:00SPEAKER_01: I'd been through a little stint here and loved it here.
- 3:02SPEAKER_01: So did that, and after that, I had some friends from our church and who owned businesses that I kind of counseled and said, we love the system that you've developed.
- 3:11SPEAKER_01: You need to teach that to other people.
- 3:12SPEAKER_01: So in 1994, I launched BizTrek with the idea of teaching my system to other people, and have now worked with um, well, probably over a thousand different business CEOs uh who uh personally one-on-one.
- 3:26SPEAKER_01: Plus, we have I don't and I don't even know how many are using the system on on self-implementation, but so that's kind of been my journey for the for the last 32 years right now.
- 3:36SPEAKER_01: Uh I've been uh mentoring CEOs and founders one-on-one, as well as uh making the system available to other people.
- 3:44SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that's so cool.
- 3:45SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know some of that.
- 3:46SPEAKER_00: That's uh that's fascinating.
- 3:47SPEAKER_00: Also, I'm fas I well, my brain wants to dig into the little triangles at Cracker Barrel, because those are so addicting.
- 3:53SPEAKER_01: But that's the one.
- 3:56SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I need to pick your brain.
- 3:58SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've memorized the one that I can do every time, you know.
- 4:01SPEAKER_01: I think that's where I'm at now.
- 4:02SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 4:04SPEAKER_00: Uh but that's obviously not why we're here to talk about uh the little triangle game.
- 4:08SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I mean, that's that that's such a a cool representation of so many founders.
- 4:14SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a legacy over 30 plus years of influencing.
- 4:19SPEAKER_00: So when you started down that trek, it sounds like you had some people that were a little bit, you know, hey, you should teach other people this framework.
- 4:27SPEAKER_00: I mean, what did that look like when you first pulled the trigger getting into coaching into kind of launching, all right, I'm actually gonna start to build an offering uh for for this that will actually be attractive to other founders.
- 4:39SPEAKER_01: Well, it kind of, I mean, it was almost like when they said you got to do this, I had been teaching the system to them.
- 4:45SPEAKER_01: So when I built my software company, I kind of redefined the system as how am I gonna do this?
- 4:50SPEAKER_01: Because to me, if I if it's not a system, then you can't repeat it.
- 4:53SPEAKER_01: I that's what I learned from Peter Drucker, right?
- 4:55SPEAKER_01: And um, so I had kind of worked it out then.
- 4:58SPEAKER_01: So pretty much from the day I launched, uh, once I said I'm gonna do this, I had I I was pretty much full with clientele right off the beginning.
- 5:07SPEAKER_01: Um, and um it it really just taught the system.
- 5:10SPEAKER_01: So it's taken different forms over the years.
- 5:13SPEAKER_01: In the early years, I really started just one-on-one with uh some people here in in Greenville, and then um it just kind of expanded from that um over the years.
- 5:23SPEAKER_01: So I mean, I've worked with clients across the US, Canada, Europe, uh the Australia area.
- 5:28SPEAKER_01: So um it's kind of gone all over the place.
- 5:32SPEAKER_00: I love that.
- 5:33SPEAKER_00: No, that's yeah, that that checks out.
- 5:34SPEAKER_00: I feel like that's a very uh, especially over the course of years, you know, lots of time passes.
- 5:39SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be iterations and whatnot.
- 5:41SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I mean, you you've spent a lot of time working with founders, and and it a lot of times it is geared towards, okay, let's figure out why growth has stalled, right?
- 5:51SPEAKER_00: That's a lot, I mean, especially as a founder.
- 5:53SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is every founder's gonna go through that.
- 5:56SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be seasons of that.
- 5:58SPEAKER_00: So when someone walks into an engagement with you, I mean, when how often are they convinced that it's a marketing problem?
- 6:06SPEAKER_00: And we kind of start to unpack like, what is your process for really getting to the root of what truly is going on in a growth issue in a founder's brain?
- 6:15SPEAKER_00: Okay.
- 6:16SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a great question.
- 6:17SPEAKER_01: Um, by the time people actually come to see me, almost always they already know the marketing is the problem because they've either read one of my books or seen the online courses.
- 6:26SPEAKER_01: Uh, but in my book, uh Relaunch Code, I talk about a marking system.
- 6:31SPEAKER_01: I call it like the baseball diamond, where the for if you're on home plate, your first goal is to just have a reproducible product, reliable mechanics.
- 6:40SPEAKER_01: So I score somebody on, are they doing okay there?
- 6:43SPEAKER_01: Then the next one is money, and then the next one is the manpower.
- 6:46SPEAKER_01: What scores the runs is marketing.
- 6:48SPEAKER_01: But if there's anything off-kilter in the first three, then they're not ready to do marketing.
- 6:53SPEAKER_01: Because you certainly should not market a bad product or an unreliable product.
- 6:56SPEAKER_01: Or if you don't have the right people in the seat, so to say, then you got a problem there.
- 7:01SPEAKER_01: But by the time typically we're in conversation, we've they've either eliminated the other three and say, those are good.
- 7:07SPEAKER_01: My what's holding me back is my marketing, and I I just don't have a reliable system.
- 7:12SPEAKER_01: You know, there is there, there's the old story of throwing stuff at the wall and hoping enough of it sticks, and they realize that can only take them so far, and then they've kind of hit a flat line and uh realized they're ready to graduate to something a little bit more reliable.
- 7:24SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fascinating.
- 7:26SPEAKER_00: So, in that process, how does the diagnostic work?
- 7:30SPEAKER_00: I mean, is is there an assessment-based thing?
- 7:33SPEAKER_00: Is there, I mean, is that through conversation?
- 7:36SPEAKER_00: Can you walk through your process a little bit of how that works?
- 7:39SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not a process in the traditional sense that um uh that I'm sitting there diagnosing what their problem is because they're coming in saying, Bistrick, you've got a marketing method.
- 7:49SPEAKER_01: There are 12 triggers, and they realize they need to go from one through twelve in order.
- 7:54SPEAKER_01: If you and if you do it that way, then you can gr you can really scale any company.
- 7:59SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really matter what it is.
- 8:00SPEAKER_01: Once you know the process, uh so it's they're more interested in learning the process and then having it customized to their situation.
- 8:08SPEAKER_01: So whether they're self-implementing the courses and stuff, they can guide themselves.
- 8:11SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they want to work with a mentor as well, because sometimes as a mentor, I can I'll ask tougher questions or maybe have a different creative bent on it.
- 8:20SPEAKER_01: Um but once we kind of once they get the machine rolling, then the relationship after that, and that's typically about a six-month process, a couple times a month for an hour.
- 8:30SPEAKER_01: Um, after that, then it's just many of them just stick around, uh, say, hey, we want to keep working with you to keep the flywheel running, right?
- 8:36SPEAKER_01: And uh deal with because there's always something new, but the underlying operating system is the same thing for everybody.
- 8:43SPEAKER_01: I start with everybody and just kind of go, okay, let's start with trigger one, then trigger two, and we just every meeting we deal with one of the triggers and just start adding up and climbing the stairs to go.
- 8:52SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 8:53SPEAKER_00: So in this season, um, one of the things that we're trying to focus in on is we we called it stories from the session room.
- 9:01SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of a creative little marketing, you know, title, if you will.
- 9:04SPEAKER_00: Um, but I mean, is there a moment, you know, you have worked with thousands of founders.
- 9:09SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of stories, if you will.
- 9:12SPEAKER_00: Um, but is there a specific situation where, you know, you got into a client engagement?
- 9:19SPEAKER_00: You don't have to necessarily give any of the specific details away.
- 9:22SPEAKER_00: So, but um, where there was an unlock where you were working with a founder or a team, and whether it was a principal from the framework or a specific question that was framed, is there something that comes to mind of an example of a just an example where it unlocked the room, where it was just, wow, here's this breakthrough moment that opens up how we can move forward?
- 9:46SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that actually happens quite often uh because the the the very first trigger, the first and second trigger is is I call it the hive.
- 9:54SPEAKER_01: Trigger number one is who are you for?
- 9:56SPEAKER_01: And then the second one is you answer the why question, you know, the so what?
- 10:01SPEAKER_01: Um, before you start doing any tactics.
- 10:03SPEAKER_01: Um, so very often with uh people I'm working with, um, they realize that their brand positioning is not what they want.
- 10:12SPEAKER_01: It's not scalable, it's not the right messaging, it's just a jumbled thing.
- 10:16SPEAKER_01: And it, you know, most founders they can grow a company for a while just on sheer personality, some good ideas, but then almost ineff almost inevitably, every company hits a plateau where they reach the level of their skill.
- 10:28SPEAKER_01: And they're sitting there, and really from there, it's either you either go down or you go up, and you gotta hit that inflection point at some point.
- 10:36SPEAKER_01: So um where where things really where the light bulb goes off is real when they realize, oh, this is who I'm after, this is who I need to communicate.
- 10:46SPEAKER_01: I need to stop all these other people, and then I've craft, then they we craft a customized message for them and um um and and then help that well help them discover it on their own.
- 10:57SPEAKER_01: And uh once they've kind of got that uh trigger one and trigger two in their brand, it's like it things take off.
- 11:03SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm thinking of one client that I was talking with on Friday um that went through this and a year later, they've had 10 times the their revenues are 10 times what they were a year ago.
- 11:12SPEAKER_00: Wow.
- 11:13SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
- 11:14SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the it's a especially in those linear things where we start to build out, because I mean, this is really geared towards business coaches and consultants and fractional executives and advisors, right?
- 11:25SPEAKER_00: You know, we call it the ambitious coach lab just to simplify it.
- 11:29SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I think a lot of so a competency that we talk about a lot on here is business development, right?
- 11:35SPEAKER_00: Right as a coach.
- 11:36SPEAKER_00: So do you have any examples of whether it's coach, consultant, advisor?
- 11:41SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever worked with anybody in that that lane.
- 11:44SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was curious to dive into the hive thing because that's been something that I another guest actually recommended, Jamie Mullikan.
- 11:54SPEAKER_00: He referenced that.
- 11:56SPEAKER_00: And I will never forget when he called me his Queen Bee.
- 11:59SPEAKER_00: I was like, what are you talking about?
- 12:01SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, my term's getting out there quite a bit.
- 12:04SPEAKER_01: It is.
- 12:04SPEAKER_00: And so I would love for you to take a moment to just kind of explain that because it was an unlock for me as it was an unlock for Jamie, and I've had other people mention it.
- 12:14SPEAKER_00: And so, and I think it's highly relevant to a coach-specific audience because that is a critical part of the success.
- 12:22SPEAKER_00: So I want to tee that up for you to like talk a little bit about that hive.
- 12:26SPEAKER_01: I think, I think, yeah, that's uh I'll I'll try to keep it short because I'll just got a whole course on it.
- 12:31SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, but um the the core idea is in traditional marketing, um, back in school, they used the word niche and oh, you've got to find your marketing niche.
- 12:42SPEAKER_01: And I found that that was uh backwards um mentality.
- 12:46SPEAKER_01: For me, finding your niche is saying, this is where I decide I'm gonna hang out.
- 12:50SPEAKER_01: So I liken it to the spider, uh, where the spider says, I'm just gonna decide to build a web here and I'll try to catch something.
- 12:58SPEAKER_01: If something happens to land in my web, I'm just gonna suck a dry for all it's got.
- 13:02SPEAKER_01: And um, that's really not how the world works.
- 13:05SPEAKER_01: If you look at how people communicate with each other, likes hang out with likes.
- 13:10SPEAKER_01: They and they tend to be um close communities, closed-knit communities.
- 13:15SPEAKER_01: So to me, it was more like uh a community of the bees, where there's this whole thing to protect them from the outside world on one little way in, and there's some guards at that door to keep anybody that's not invited in.
- 13:27SPEAKER_01: So the idea of the hive is build, find a community that already exists.
- 13:32SPEAKER_01: Don't go trying to create one, but find out how the world actually that you can serve, how they communicate with each other, where they communicate with each other, and who has what roles.
- 13:42SPEAKER_01: So there's a Queen Bee, that's the power center, there's drones that are doing all the work inside, and then there's some that are scouts that are going out in the world to say, oh, here's good stuff, here's some honey, we need to bring it back, okay?
- 13:53SPEAKER_01: And the idea with the hive is you want to be one of the ones that are invited in.
- 13:57SPEAKER_01: And then once you're inside, then you're you're the sole provider of that knowledge in in the human world.
- 14:03SPEAKER_01: And everybody else just says, Oh, you do you know guild?
- 14:06SPEAKER_01: Do you know guild?
- 14:06SPEAKER_01: Do you know cam?
- 14:07SPEAKER_01: Do you know cam?
- 14:08SPEAKER_01: You've got to talk to so-and-so, right?
- 14:09SPEAKER_01: And everybody on the outside is is trying to figure out how to get in.
- 14:12SPEAKER_01: You're already there.
- 14:14SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that's so relevant for coaches.
- 14:17SPEAKER_00: Because, and then I also think it's it's such an important part to find that who.
- 14:22SPEAKER_00: Because I I distinctly remember when I first launched my fractional practice.
- 14:28SPEAKER_00: I had kind of paid, you know, put my flag down and had a ton of relational capital and reputation built in the EOS ecosystem.
- 14:38SPEAKER_00: And then I ended up taking a client on that was outside of that.
- 14:43SPEAKER_00: And it was so obvious that that was not my hive.
- 14:48SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.
- 14:50SPEAKER_00: And I think both sides felt it.
- 14:52SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
- 14:53SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't like neither either one of us was in the wrong.
- 14:56SPEAKER_00: It was just, it really, it just wasn't my the hive that I was supposed to be a part of.
- 15:01SPEAKER_00: And I took it just as a moment of where I just needed some cash flow.
- 15:06SPEAKER_00: And I realized very early on that that was the worst possible thing that I could do.
- 15:10SPEAKER_00: And and so, and I, as I as you were talking about that, it came as just crystallized in my brain of like, yeah, because that wasn't a hive that I was supposed to be in.
- 15:20SPEAKER_00: I wasn't necessarily really even welcomed in it.
- 15:23SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 15:23SPEAKER_01: Well, and and deeper side of that, you didn't do the really, that wasn't really doing the right thing by them.
- 15:27SPEAKER_01: I think as as business leaders, we all have a responsibility to do the best thing we can for the people.
- 15:32SPEAKER_01: And if we're not the right fit, then say I'm not the right fit, but do you know so-and-so, right?
- 15:37SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
- 15:40SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 15:40SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, and because a lot of coaches have built successful practices like through reputation and relationships and referrals, right?
- 15:51SPEAKER_00: Have you worked with somebody?
- 15:54SPEAKER_00: This could be a coach, this could be a founder, because I think it applies this, but it we can apply it broadly to to this audience specifically.
- 16:01SPEAKER_00: But have you ever worked with somebody who hit a ceiling with that approach?
- 16:06SPEAKER_00: Because you can only scale reputation and referrals and all that so much.
- 16:10SPEAKER_00: Like, what would be the next step in that iteration process?
- 16:14SPEAKER_00: Okay.
- 16:15SPEAKER_01: That's that's actually a great question.
- 16:16SPEAKER_01: And it's actually one of my critiques of traditional coaching and and consulting is uh it's called and it leads to the boom bust cycle.
- 16:24SPEAKER_01: It is they they coaches tend to have two, three, four, five clients at a time.
- 16:31SPEAKER_01: They don't design for scalability from the beginning.
- 16:34SPEAKER_01: Well, some of the best advice I got from my mentors when I was starting was think start thinking scalability.
- 16:40SPEAKER_01: Now, I they didn't encourage me in that direction enough, and later on I had to do more.
- 16:45SPEAKER_01: But if you're if a coach is just concentrating on a few clients, then you're then you've got a job just for a few people.
- 16:52SPEAKER_01: So there's a thing I call the 10% rule that if any one of your clients is more than 10% of your income, you've got a job because you're always fearful of that one major client going.
- 17:04SPEAKER_01: Now, sometimes as you're starting up, that is a reality that they're going to be a significant part.
- 17:09SPEAKER_01: But if you've got somebody who's a significant significant piece of your revenue, you want to make sure you diversify from that so that you you've at least got 10 clients with 10% of revenue, right?
- 17:20SPEAKER_01: So when I first started, I I was running 25, 30 clients just on my own.
- 17:25SPEAKER_01: Because when the time came that somebody was done or they were good or they sold the company more often than not, then they didn't need me anymore.
- 17:33SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, I mean, I've had some come back, they bought another company, said, kill, time again.
- 17:37SPEAKER_01: But here we go, run it again.
- 17:39SPEAKER_01: But that 10% rule is where freedom comes.
- 17:41SPEAKER_01: That's when you transition from a from a job um or a yeah, front to actually having a business.
- 17:48SPEAKER_01: And um, so a big part um not only did I apply that to Bistreck, I eventually had 20 locations around the country before some life events happened, but um, but that's where I see a lot of coaches get stuck and then they get so desperate that they're not actually serving the client's interest because they get so busy that you know they're taking care of all their clients, all of a sudden one leaves, and then all of a sudden that downward spiral comes, and then all of a sudden now I panic, and then I gotta build a then they go get some more clients, but they and their their wave tends to stay in the same range, and they're not really building something extraordinary.
- 18:21SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
- 18:22SPEAKER_00: So, what would be your uh guidance in getting them out of that that cycle, let's say?
- 18:30SPEAKER_00: I mean, what would be the the recommendations that you would give?
- 18:33SPEAKER_00: I don't want you have to give too many of your trade secrets away, but no, I think that that's important.
- 18:38SPEAKER_01: And I have worked with uh some coaches and consultants and stuff like that, is do what I did is build a system, figure out what your system is, and figure out how to out how to get it into other people's heads.
- 18:49SPEAKER_01: So my goal is with BizTrek is not to keep all that insight information in my head, but to teach other people how to use it and do it themselves.
- 18:57SPEAKER_01: And so if a good coach or consultant uh can create a system that um then they can work with more people, teach that to more people, and they create a system that then becomes super scalable.
- 19:11SPEAKER_01: Um and then you can start thinking about how do you serve 100, 200, 300, 400 companies?
- 19:17SPEAKER_01: That's the question you should be asking.
- 19:18SPEAKER_01: Could I do this?
- 19:19SPEAKER_01: If you think about world-class companies, they serve thousands and thousands of clients, okay?
- 19:25SPEAKER_01: And that's how you build wealth.
- 19:28SPEAKER_01: You you build you you build an income and some money with a few clients.
- 19:32SPEAKER_01: If you really want to build something great and a legacy, you you think in terms of how can I influence a lot of people all at a time.
- 19:38SPEAKER_01: And then you you work with the VIP.
- 19:41SPEAKER_01: So I've got a lot of different kinds of clients.
- 19:42SPEAKER_01: Some I've never met, they're buying, they're using the system.
- 19:45SPEAKER_01: I've got some VIP people that I work with one-on-one as CEOs, and they um so we have a personal relationship and uh sometimes a very long-standing relationship.
- 19:56SPEAKER_00: That's that's good.
- 19:57SPEAKER_00: Do you find I I had someone challenge me in a healthy way on this, um, because it was basically that similar premise.
- 20:05SPEAKER_00: And it was a good friend of mine, and he was like, Cam, you gotta stop selling your time for money.
- 20:12SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 20:14SPEAKER_00: Can you double click into that of what that means?
- 20:17SPEAKER_00: Of like how we scale beyond that.
- 20:19SPEAKER_00: Because I think most coaches, and myself included, I'm like, well, okay, uh, because I'm a fractional, you know, CRO, right?
- 20:25SPEAKER_00: That's by by trade, if you will.
- 20:27SPEAKER_00: And so I'm selling my time in comparison for the money that I'm getting from a retainer standpoint where I'm coming into a business for, say, a day at a time.
- 20:38SPEAKER_00: And so, and coaches often similar.
- 20:40SPEAKER_00: They're coming into a session, consultants, same thing.
- 20:42SPEAKER_00: Like, what does it mean for that type of audience to scale beyond themselves and get out of that time for money type of thing?
- 20:52SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 20:53SPEAKER_01: Well, first, uh I I gotta say is selling your time for money is not necessarily a bad thing because that's how most of the world does it, right?
- 21:01SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 21:01SPEAKER_01: Have one customer, they're their employer, right?
- 21:04SPEAKER_01: Um, sometimes uh consultants, uh advisors, you know, they'll they'll they'll sp split it out, they'll be fractional, they have three, four, five clients.
- 21:12SPEAKER_01: But the I I think if you somebody really wants to grow, then they have to focus on do I have a system or can I productize what I've got?
- 21:22SPEAKER_01: Um so in effect, can I put it in the hands of other people?
- 21:25SPEAKER_01: So I alluded a little bit ago that you know at one point I had 20 loc 20 f uh BizTech offices around the country.
- 21:32SPEAKER_01: Well, they they would each follow the system with their groups of clients and they could scale, but that uh that allowed me to have more people doing BizTreck.
- 21:42SPEAKER_01: Um I did have to end that uh in 2003, just as a side story, my wife at the time, my late wife now was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
- 21:52SPEAKER_01: And uh I really was at a choice of do I try to keep growing this stuff or just pull back.
- 21:56SPEAKER_01: So for four years, while she was doing that, I just said, okay, I I Just got to take care of her.
- 22:01SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 22:01SPEAKER_01: Um, by that time, really the internet had uh I was an early adopter of the internet, but that educational content really uh by 2007 could be delivered on the internet.
- 22:11SPEAKER_01: So I didn't need offices around the country.
- 22:13SPEAKER_01: So that's really where I started saying, okay, here's my courses, here's the resources, um, and you can you can do this yourself, okay?
- 22:21SPEAKER_01: So you can learn the system and deploy it.
- 22:23SPEAKER_01: Um, then if you need a little private advice, you can call and uh we we'll hook you up with somebody who can help you.
- 22:30SPEAKER_01: Um some of the people say, I really want to work with th with somebody one-on-one.
- 22:35SPEAKER_01: So there's two variables there is somebody can be totally self-implementated, not unlike EOS to some degree, right?
- 22:40SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 22:41SPEAKER_01: You know, you got 90% of the EOS companies are self-implementers, and then you get the few smarter ones who say, I want to work with somebody, okay?
- 22:49SPEAKER_01: Because I'm not good enough at this yet, or I might not hit the nail on the head.
- 22:54SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of where the the Bistrek uh mentor comes in, is some people, the CEO wants that one-on-one relationship.
- 23:01SPEAKER_01: And I got to clarify too, is I don't Bistrek, we don't do group.
- 23:05SPEAKER_01: We only work with the CEO or the founder of the company.
- 23:08SPEAKER_01: And then because we don't want them to lose their leadership position authority, we want their staff to wonder how they got so smart so fast.
- 23:16SPEAKER_00: I love that.
- 23:17SPEAKER_00: I love that distinction.
- 23:18SPEAKER_00: Uh that makes total sense.
- 23:21SPEAKER_00: Um, it's the the like speed pass, right?
- 23:24SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 23:26SPEAKER_00: Um so I want to I want to dive into something because I'm curious.
- 23:30SPEAKER_00: Um, so let's say there's a lot of content out there in today's world, right?
- 23:38SPEAKER_00: I mean, whether it's through, you know, content, through thought leaders.
- 23:42SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, everybody's a thought leader on LinkedIn right now, or through AI or through some, you know, strategy or tactic that's you know mentioned?
- 23:53SPEAKER_00: I mean, what what would you say to somebody, whether it's a CEO or a coach or whoever, a client, you know, they they come into the room excited about some LinkedIn strategy, a podcast, you know, start a new email chain or you know, thread, uh sequence that they went after.
- 24:12SPEAKER_00: I mean, what would you say that will help them kind of just all right, let's get out of the tactic world and actually think about what's ultimately best?
- 24:23SPEAKER_00: Because it's so easy to jump on fads nowadays of like, well, that worked for this person.
- 24:27SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start a podcast.
- 24:28SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you help people think through strategically what is best?
- 24:34SPEAKER_01: Well, that is actually uh unfortunately is a more common business prep uh problem in small business because they see somebody else doing this or that and they just automatically assume that that's what they should be doing at this or that, right?
- 24:46SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 24:47SPEAKER_01: And so that goes back to the throw stuff at the wall and hope if it sticks.
- 24:51SPEAKER_01: Um when they understand the hive and the hook and they realize who they're for, then the first question is where do your people hang out?
- 25:00SPEAKER_01: Which flowers do they go to?
- 25:02SPEAKER_01: What do they prefer?
- 25:04SPEAKER_01: And where are they, where are they?
- 25:06SPEAKER_01: They're not flying all over the place inefficiently.
- 25:08SPEAKER_01: No, they're going to specific communities to get the pollen, the nectar, bring it back.
- 25:13SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think that's that's a key thing.
- 25:16SPEAKER_01: Once somebody uh figures out who their hive is, then they go, where did they hang out?
- 25:21SPEAKER_01: Then you figure out how do they find out what's going on in the world around them?
- 25:26SPEAKER_01: Because everybody has to stay plugged into the world in one way or another, but they only look for relevant information.
- 25:31SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm frankly not too concerned about what's happening today on the island of Mauritius.
- 25:36SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 25:37SPEAKER_01: Don't need to know.
- 25:38SPEAKER_01: I know where it is, I know of it, I know something about it, but it's not relevant to me.
- 25:43SPEAKER_01: Um, so I don't need to go hang out marketing there.
- 25:46SPEAKER_01: So for some people, Instagram is a great place.
- 25:49SPEAKER_01: For some, it's it's totally wrong.
- 25:51SPEAKER_01: For LinkedIn is it right for some.
- 25:53SPEAKER_01: Um, some it's going to networking events, some it's not.
- 25:55SPEAKER_01: It just depends where your clients are on where they're hanging out.
- 25:58SPEAKER_00: And I bet it, I mean, a lot of it probably does depend.
- 26:00SPEAKER_00: And I'm speaking specifically to like a coach audience now, but dependent on their strengths and and giftings.
- 26:08SPEAKER_00: And I mean, some are great networkers and some are great up on stage, some are great on video, some the last thing you want them to do is get up on the stage, you know, like so.
- 26:16SPEAKER_00: I think you have to figure out that aspect.
- 26:18SPEAKER_00: But after being able to figure out where is my hive going, I love that the flower analogy of where are they going?
- 26:26SPEAKER_00: That's such that's such an open that opened my brain so much as you said that, because that makes perfect sense.
- 26:32SPEAKER_00: As you figure out who your hive is, then the next logical decision is where are they at?
- 26:37SPEAKER_00: Where are they going to?
- 26:38SPEAKER_00: Is it a trade show?
- 26:39SPEAKER_00: Is it, you know, and okay, maybe if that's it, then we need to start speaking, you know, and going to that trade show.
- 26:45SPEAKER_00: You start to build out the strategies and tactics from there.
- 26:48SPEAKER_01: Well, and it keeps it real simple, much easier because overall, I I have a list.
- 26:53SPEAKER_01: There's about 120 different ways of marketing with a million variations for everybody, right?
- 26:57SPEAKER_01: But about roughly about 120 different tools that we we actually provide on the courses.
- 27:01SPEAKER_01: Wow.
- 27:02SPEAKER_01: And um, but nobody can do 120 different things.
- 27:05SPEAKER_01: You know, you can maybe do five to seven well, um, but you need some ways to generate word of mouth, you need some ways to generate publicity, you need to advertise sometimes in the right place and do some direct promotion and some networking.
- 27:17SPEAKER_01: You need some activity in all those areas, but only in the right way, in the right places.
- 27:21SPEAKER_01: And then, so more often than not, we take stuff off the table and just kind of go, go do these things well and forget about all the other stuff.
- 27:28SPEAKER_01: Now, we certainly make a list of all the things they could do as part of the process, but uh then you kind of go, okay, now which ones these have good ROI, which ones produce the results, and which ones can you put, which ones can you automate as much as possible?
- 27:43SPEAKER_01: Because if you're constantly having to reinvent the wheel, again, you don't have a machine, you have a job.
- 27:48SPEAKER_00: I I would be remiss if I didn't ask this because I'm my brain is just like begging to ask this.
- 27:54SPEAKER_00: Given uh such a rich history of coaching with lots and lots of clients, I'm sure you have gotten relatively good now to figure out what are the the right green flags or green check marks versus red flags, not check marks as you're thinking through potential clients.
- 28:13SPEAKER_00: Can you talk a little bit about whether it's in the prospective preliminary calls of finding, okay, this would be someone that would be a worthwhile client that's gonna take it seriously, is gonna be the right fit versus maybe somebody that's giving you red flags or maybe a little bit of just some like uneasiness as far as I don't know if they're quite committed or if they're gonna be the right fit for me.
- 28:36SPEAKER_00: Can you talk through your process of how you identify that?
- 28:39SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 28:40SPEAKER_01: Well, the first- I mean, one of the first things uh is again, we I run to the bases and make sure that we're really talking in the marketing and that they they recognize that there's an issue there.
- 28:48SPEAKER_01: And I very much, I mean, I early on, but I sit down.
- 28:51SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're all about the process.
- 28:53SPEAKER_01: I want you to be learn you, I want you to be willing to learn the process.
- 28:57SPEAKER_01: Um, and but almost universally by the time somebody comes to us, they're already there, right?
- 29:02SPEAKER_01: Because they've had some friends say, you need to learn that process, right?
- 29:06SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
- 29:07SPEAKER_01: I forgot my train of thought there.
- 29:09SPEAKER_00: But uh, but uh the really kind of thinking through from just okay, I'm with a let's just we'll I'll frame it in this way.
- 29:19SPEAKER_00: There's a prospective client that you're sitting across from.
- 29:23SPEAKER_00: What's the mental checklist that you're going down that's like, okay, this is someone that I want to keep working with?
- 29:28SPEAKER_00: It sounds like it might be, you probably catch a lot of it up front, but let's say just as you're going through over the years, how have you been able to find the right fit client for you?
- 29:37SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a better way to frame it.
- 29:39SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, the the one of the key things I I look for is are they sitting on a plateau?
- 29:44SPEAKER_01: Like have they grown it and realized so they've kind of flatlined a little bit and they realize it, and they realized they've admitted to themselves that they've kind of reached the limit of their capacity.
- 29:54SPEAKER_01: Is it to take it further?
- 29:55SPEAKER_01: I need to learn something more.
- 29:56SPEAKER_01: So are they teachable?
- 29:58SPEAKER_01: Are they hungry enough to do something?
- 30:00SPEAKER_01: Are they willing to think differently?
- 30:02SPEAKER_01: Because I'm going to take their brain in places they probably haven't thought of because they don't know that, right?
- 30:07SPEAKER_01: So teachability and the plateau, I think, are one.
- 30:10SPEAKER_01: And and to degree, how hungry are there?
- 30:12SPEAKER_01: Some some people have a wish, some people have a need.
- 30:16SPEAKER_00: Open that up a little bit more, the wish versus the need.
- 30:20SPEAKER_00: Okay.
- 30:20SPEAKER_01: Well, if if you talk to most business owners, they all wish they could be 10 times bigger or twenty bigger, and uh that would be nice because everybody wishes to be to be rich, right?
- 30:31SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh actually doing the work and and being willing to think differently, sometimes that's uncomfortable.
- 30:38SPEAKER_01: It's like first time you're learning to drive a car, you're thinking of everything you're doing, right?
- 30:42SPEAKER_01: And all the steps.
- 30:43SPEAKER_01: You're you play guitar, you know, is you know, you you can do stuff automatically uh because you've done it so long.
- 30:50SPEAKER_01: If I would pick up a guitar, it's like, okay, here's the D and here's the C.
- 30:53SPEAKER_01: Oh, wait, I got a strum and and all this stuff, right?
- 30:56SPEAKER_01: Well, a business owner has to be willing to kind of go, I I need to do this and get good at it, and I need to learn it in the right order so that uh I can create the machine.
- 31:08SPEAKER_01: So I'm listening for that willingness to stop doing what they're doing and kind of go, I'm I'm ready to learn a new and better way.
- 31:16SPEAKER_01: And there's actually a lot of people who would just very candidly, they wish they could have more, but they're they're the business owners tend to be fairly egocentric and sometimes they don't like to uh uh drop their ego and admit to anybody else that they're not quite as sharp as they or as skilled in an area as they might like to pretend.
- 31:36SPEAKER_00: What are some of the common mistakes that you see founders or your clients that that are out there in in the wild that they continue to make over and over?
- 31:50SPEAKER_00: If you want to apply it to coaches and consultants to make it hyper-relevant for this audience, that would be appreciated.
- 31:56SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure there's a lot of crossover with just founders too.
- 31:59SPEAKER_01: So well, I I think the number one is they they keep trying to do today what they did yesterday, even though it didn't work.
- 32:07SPEAKER_01: Um so the is I think this is especially true of coaches and consultants is they were in a career and in a job and a company, and they saw how that company did stuff, and they tried to transport that over to their world when it's not necessarily transportable.
- 32:23SPEAKER_01: But they don't know anything else because that's the only way they've done it in their career.
- 32:27SPEAKER_01: So if I've been an engineer, if if I'd been an engineering firm, I'm gonna tend to do that.
- 32:32SPEAKER_01: They don't even understand or know all the other ways that they could do it, and that some are better than others, better options in other ways.
- 32:39SPEAKER_01: So I call up, you know, throw the shit at the wall mentality that uh just is so common in in business.
- 32:45SPEAKER_01: And coaches uh and mentors and consultants tend to do that.
- 32:49SPEAKER_01: They all do it the same way and they all look alike.
- 32:53SPEAKER_01: But if you really understand your audience, you realize they should be doing one guy may have an engineering audience and be really great in that, and you've had some guests, they're very they know their community and they know where they hang out, and they've infiltrated that community.
- 33:07SPEAKER_01: Whereas others who are less successful are trying a little bit of everything, hoping that magically something will work.
- 33:13SPEAKER_01: That, oh, I'm gonna just start posting every day on LinkedIn, but it's not relevant content and the right people aren't seeing it.
- 33:19SPEAKER_01: Or um or they're going to networking events where their people aren't.
- 33:24SPEAKER_01: I've been to networking events in town here where people who frankly can't afford me would love to meet with me.
- 33:29SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm sorry, you're not big enough.
- 33:30SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 33:31SPEAKER_01: And you're not on a plateau yet.
- 33:32SPEAKER_01: You're you're still in that first stage.
- 33:34SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 33:35SPEAKER_00: Man, that's good.
- 33:37SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I'm I'm so I think it's been an unlock for me as we've talked about this, is how framework and process driven your entire methodology is.
- 33:51SPEAKER_00: You're even the way that you're framing and and almost like gauging the where people are at is based in whether it's the bases or whether it's the you know, the 12 triggers or the plat.
- 34:04SPEAKER_00: Like you're thinking along this linear understanding of your framework that I think is such a an incredible picture of a seasoned coach because you're just filtering through something that already exists.
- 34:18SPEAKER_00: And I see a lot of newer coaches where it's almost just I'm grabbing tactics and I'm just trying to grab something that I've seen other people do that work.
- 34:27SPEAKER_00: Whereas yours is a very principled framework-based thing that probably has allowed you.
- 34:32SPEAKER_00: I think that's ultimately the takeaway for me is the scalability of a framework versus a fad or a tactic or just basing it off of my personality.
- 34:43SPEAKER_00: Would you agree with that?
- 34:44SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and I think you you've kind of nailed it because that is probably where a lot of new coaches or beginning coaches go wrong, is they have an expertise, they're very good at something.
- 34:55SPEAKER_01: Um, and so they sometimes instinctively know a good answer, but they don't necessarily facilitate the person that they're helping to understand that answer or to be able to continue their growth.
- 35:08SPEAKER_01: So it's an old criticism of consultants, right?
- 35:12SPEAKER_01: Is that the consultants will try to keep themselves in a job as long as possible because they had the knowledge, but they never found a way to transfer that knowledge.
- 35:20SPEAKER_01: If you look at more seasoned coaches, they they create a system.
- 35:24SPEAKER_01: If you look at even great companies, here's our product, here's what we do, let me get this out of my head and into yours.
- 35:31SPEAKER_01: Then you can use me to kind of keep you sharp.
- 35:34SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 35:35SPEAKER_01: So I don't need to meet with somebody as often once a month, once they've got the machine rolling, once a month just to keep the flywheel going, is good.
- 35:42SPEAKER_01: And they understand why they're doing what they're doing, because it's written down in their marketing action plan.
- 35:46SPEAKER_01: And we got a uh a blueprint for all that.
- 35:49SPEAKER_01: So, but a new coach will sit down, let's let's have a meeting and just kind of wing it.
- 35:55SPEAKER_01: And um, you lose trust over time, and your your longevity with the client is is lost over time because after a while they don't know what you're bringing to the table.
- 36:04SPEAKER_01: But if they see that you have a system and you're just helping them implement the system and keep it solid and then come up with improvements as you're going on, that that's a long-term relationship.
- 36:14SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've had a product that I've worked with personally for over 10 years.
- 36:18unknown: Wow.
- 36:18SPEAKER_00: That's that's a really good word.
- 36:20SPEAKER_00: I'm glad we went there.
- 36:22SPEAKER_00: What would you say um if you could look in your uh metaphorical crystal ball?
- 36:30SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you've been a coach for a long time and you've seen a lot of change in the industry over the years.
- 36:40SPEAKER_00: What would you say?
- 36:41SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have had had a new uh technological advancement here in the last few years called AI.
- 36:47SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 36:48SPEAKER_00: Um, what would you say, yeah.
- 36:51SPEAKER_00: Uh, what would you say is is the future of of coaching and and consulting?
- 36:57SPEAKER_00: Like what would if you had to, what what's the next five, 10 years gonna look like?
- 37:02unknown: Okay.
- 37:02SPEAKER_01: Well, the core rule in business is business is all about relationships.
- 37:07SPEAKER_01: So when the internet came along, people said, oh, this is going to change everything, and it did.
- 37:11SPEAKER_01: It changed how we did stuff.
- 37:13SPEAKER_01: AI is a wonderful tool to make us more efficient, but ultimately business is about relationships, right?
- 37:18SPEAKER_01: And that means people want to talk with people and understand what do I do with what's going on now?
- 37:25SPEAKER_01: So, okay, you got AI.
- 37:26SPEAKER_01: What do we do with it?
- 37:27SPEAKER_01: What does it mean for me?
- 37:28SPEAKER_01: How do I deploy that?
- 37:30SPEAKER_01: What's the tactical advantage?
- 37:31SPEAKER_01: Well, you you can the tools don't tell you how to use them best.
- 37:34SPEAKER_01: They just says, here I am.
- 37:36SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 37:36SPEAKER_01: So are we going to have more and better tools all the time?
- 37:39SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
- 37:40SPEAKER_01: That's that's the wonder of today's world.
- 37:42SPEAKER_01: But two brains together, you know, sitting down with a mentor, sitting with a CEO or a founder and say, okay, how do we work this to advantage?
- 37:49SPEAKER_01: How do we serve your hive more effectively?
- 37:52SPEAKER_01: How do we help them solve a problem?
- 37:54SPEAKER_01: Um, then you then that's where value is created.
- 37:57SPEAKER_01: If you look at people who create wealth and freedom, is they help other people figure out not just the information, but what do I do with it?
- 38:05SPEAKER_01: So, you know, businesses is uh is and relationships are about not only what are the things I need to do, but how do I do it?
- 38:13SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's sometimes the problem inside EOS is I know I need to fill the marketing seat, I need to uh get somebody to partner with, uh, I need a marketing plan, but how?
- 38:23SPEAKER_01: And then it's like, oh, I need to go work with somebody.
- 38:26SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the right answer, right?
- 38:28SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 38:28SPEAKER_01: Your implementer can help you or their implementer can take you to somebody.
- 38:32SPEAKER_01: That's and so that's really what coaches and uh can look for as well, is they're alongside their clients to help them figure out um what these innovations mean and how to use them to advantage and have experience in that.
- 38:46SPEAKER_01: That's never changed.
- 38:47SPEAKER_01: That's a human history.
- 38:48SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're you're right.
- 38:50SPEAKER_00: And that's not gonna change due to some insane technological advancement.
- 38:54SPEAKER_00: I've said that for years.
- 38:56SPEAKER_00: There dec tens of thousands of documented human history has been community-based.
- 39:03SPEAKER_00: It's been life on life, one-on-one.
- 39:06SPEAKER_01: And nobody's going to duplicate your brain nor mine.
- 39:09SPEAKER_01: And probably nobody wants to duplicate mine, but I'll throw my stuff in there too, yeah.
- 39:14SPEAKER_01: Um but uh so yeah, that's I I think when you understand that, then technology is a tool, and there's always new technology.
- 39:21SPEAKER_01: I'm not worried about AI.
- 39:23SPEAKER_01: I think uh it it it's it it can allow some gr great things, doesn't eliminate the need for coaching.
- 39:29SPEAKER_01: Perhaps it even increases it.
- 39:30SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's I love that.
- 39:32SPEAKER_00: Uh that's such a a great outlook on it.
- 39:35SPEAKER_00: I would look back, and all of the moments of my life that have had true transformational change have been the catalyst of that has been a one-on-one coaching type relationship, a life on a life.
- 39:51SPEAKER_00: And that's not necessarily me listening like to a podcast.
- 39:55SPEAKER_00: It's been me sitting down in someone's office or me sitting down with someone at Josie's check wagon and you know, drawing things out on a napkin and whatnot.
- 40:04SPEAKER_00: Of that's been where things have unlocked.
- 40:06SPEAKER_00: So I completely agree with you.
- 40:08SPEAKER_00: That is not going to go away.
- 40:10SPEAKER_00: There's something powerful and almost incredibly human about life on life, brain with brain, being able to unlock things.
- 40:21SPEAKER_00: And the really the art of dialogue, I think, is where that comes from.
- 40:25SPEAKER_00: And that's just not, you can, I mean, I you could call it a dialogue with AI, but it's just, I don't know.
- 40:30SPEAKER_00: There's something almost in the spiritual realm that happens when you're connecting with another human.
- 40:37SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's that's the way that we were designed from the start.
- 40:40SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
- 40:41SPEAKER_01: Well, it's the fundamental difference between um information and know-how versus creativity.
- 40:46SPEAKER_01: Two people putting their head together will be creative.
- 40:49SPEAKER_01: Um, you and me may come up with one set of solutions.
- 40:52SPEAKER_01: You and somebody else may have a different set of solutions, but there will be creative going on.
- 40:56SPEAKER_01: And that that's the power of it.
- 40:58SPEAKER_01: And then then you can brainstorm together and say, okay, does this fit the rules?
- 41:01SPEAKER_01: Does this fit the process?
- 41:02SPEAKER_01: And you kind of go from there.
- 41:04SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so true.
- 41:06SPEAKER_00: Well, Gil, man, this this is time has flown by.
- 41:09SPEAKER_00: Um I've enjoyed this so much.
- 41:12SPEAKER_00: Uh, I always like to ask guests, I'm kind of the tail end here, if you could go back to Rookie Gill, let's say, right when, you know, in what is it, 1994, when you're first setting out to start this coaching business.
- 41:28SPEAKER_00: With all the knowledge and experience that you have now, what advice would you give Rookie Gill?
- 41:35SPEAKER_01: I would say the the lesson or the thing going back is start with the super scale mindset right from the beginning.
- 41:41SPEAKER_01: So I started more or less with the one-on-one mindset, kind of saying, okay, this could be something, but if I had designed it for four or five hundred or a thousand people at the beginning, it might have been a little bit different.
- 41:54SPEAKER_01: Um and I mean the principles are the same, but it might have designed the business a little bit different.
- 41:59SPEAKER_01: Um, so I would probably say, I mean, I've had a mentor pretty much all my life, at least one, if not two.
- 42:05SPEAKER_01: But uh I would, if I were mentoring myself, I say, go back to super scale, create a machine um that doesn't necessarily mean you need you to be in every single meeting and every single discussion because there's only so much of you to go around.
- 42:16SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the compound uh impact of that is enormous.
- 42:22SPEAKER_00: Um that's a good word.
- 42:24SPEAKER_00: I think for especially for those coaches that are early on in their their you know, growth.
- 42:32SPEAKER_00: Um, that's really a great mindset to have.
- 42:36SPEAKER_00: How am I gonna scale this?
- 42:37SPEAKER_01: So that's a good that's I used actually the word superscale because it changes the mind.
- 42:42SPEAKER_01: Scale might mean I'm going from 10 to 15 or 20 or 100.
- 42:46SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 42:47SPEAKER_01: Think about what if it was a thousand or ten thousand?
- 42:49SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've when I had my software company in Seattle, I actually met Bill Gates.
- 42:53SPEAKER_01: Now, I will tell you he's a lot richer than I am.
- 42:55SPEAKER_01: Because what?
- 42:56SPEAKER_01: He figured out how to serve millions of people.
- 42:58SPEAKER_00: Super scale.
- 42:59SPEAKER_00: I like that.
- 43:00SPEAKER_00: That's a good clarification because I definitely said scale, and you're absolutely right.
- 43:04SPEAKER_00: There's a whole nother level of thinking with the superscale.
- 43:07SPEAKER_00: So that's good.
- 43:08SPEAKER_00: And even if you get to, you know, somewhere in between, you're still in a greater.
- 43:13SPEAKER_00: It's it's that thinking bigger, right?
- 43:15SPEAKER_00: Um, it's good.
- 43:17SPEAKER_00: Uh the second question I always like to ask is what's a lesson you're in the middle of learning in this current moment?
- 43:23SPEAKER_01: Well, it actually comes back to that original one is um really expanding BizTrek's ability to help people with self-implement implementation.
- 43:32SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've got my books and I'm writing more books to kind of expand that.
- 43:35SPEAKER_01: We've got the courses, um, but uh they need some updating.
- 43:39SPEAKER_01: I think uh it's you know, that's time to jazz them up a little bit more.
- 43:42SPEAKER_01: So rolling that over out over the next year or two will allow people to self-implement more effectively.
- 43:48SPEAKER_01: There will come a day where I'm no longer on this earth, but the people still need the system, right?
- 43:52SPEAKER_01: So um um that's kind of that's the next step.
- 43:55SPEAKER_01: I when you get to my age, you start thinking legacy and and maybe not working so hard.
- 44:00SPEAKER_01: But you know, I've got my clients, I love working with them, they're so much fun, but there's people out there who need to know this stuff, and there's um we need I Bistreck needs to do a slightly better job of of rolling that out.
- 44:12SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's good.
- 44:14SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's I appreciate your your opening up on that.
- 44:17SPEAKER_00: It's uh uh it's a powerful, powerful thing, and that legacy is something that, yeah, I can see that.
- 44:24SPEAKER_00: So um, well, Gil, this has been awesome.
- 44:27SPEAKER_00: Thank you for for taking the time to to chat.
- 44:30SPEAKER_00: Let's say somebody wants to get in touch with you and learn more about your your work or maybe pick your brain on something.
- 44:37SPEAKER_00: What's the best place to get in touch with you?
- 44:39SPEAKER_01: Well, the easiest, um, number one is the for me is the website, uh, because BizTrek is easier to easier to spell than my name.
- 44:45SPEAKER_01: So it's uh it's really like Star Trek uh but with a biz in front of it because we're all you know uh but BizTrek will take you everywhere.
- 44:51SPEAKER_01: It'll it there's a page in there to take you to my books um and the courses.
- 44:55SPEAKER_01: Uh there's links I'm on LinkedIn, but uh um so like you said, I'm the only Gil Garrison in the world.
- 45:01SPEAKER_01: Uh but sometimes just Google me, but sometimes Garretsen is a little hard to spell because it's I'm my name is all with ease on it.
- 45:09SPEAKER_01: So instead, um, but uh the website will take you there, it'll take you to my Twitter and all that kind of.
- 45:14SPEAKER_01: But if you go to Bistrek.com, B-I-Z-T-R-E-K dot com, you'll find everything and go from there.
- 45:21SPEAKER_00: I love it.
- 45:21SPEAKER_00: I'll link out to that in the show notes to make it super easy for people.
- 45:24SPEAKER_00: But Gil, I appreciate you coming on and and sharing your wisdom.
- 45:28SPEAKER_00: I have appreciated our friendship over the years.
- 45:31SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm glad we crossed paths.
- 45:33SPEAKER_00: And um, I just the amount of people you've impacted in the Greenville community, but way beyond that is remarkable.
- 45:42SPEAKER_00: And I I just I thank you for for the impact that you've had on my life.
- 45:46SPEAKER_00: Uh it means a lot.
- 45:47SPEAKER_00: And I I appreciate you taking the time to come in and talk on this show.
- 45:50SPEAKER_01: So thank you for inviting me.
- 45:51SPEAKER_01: It's been an absolute pleasure.
- 45:52SPEAKER_01: It went like you said, it went fast.
- 45:54SPEAKER_00: It did, it always does every single time.
- 45:56SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, it's we're coming up on an hour.
- 45:58SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
- 46:00SPEAKER_00: They were like originally, they were like, we'll try to make these 20, 30 minutes.
- 46:04SPEAKER_00: I was like, do you know me?
- 46:05SPEAKER_00: That's not as impossible.
- 46:08SPEAKER_00: So well, cool.
- 46:09SPEAKER_00: Well, Gil, thanks again, and thank you for tuning in.
- 46:12SPEAKER_00: We've got plenty more episodes where that came from.
- 46:14SPEAKER_00: Take care.
- 46:16SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's episode of the ambitious coach lab.
- 46:19SPEAKER_00: My hope is that something here helps you sharpen your craft and keep building a coaching practice you're proud of.
- 46:24SPEAKER_00: Before we wrap, a quick thank you to our sponsor, 90.
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- 46:59SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hanging out with me today.
- 47:01SPEAKER_00: I'm Cam.
- 47:02SPEAKER_00: Carry on as you grow your ambition coaching project.
- 47:05SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.