Grow Your Business | Coach David J. Greer

Welcome to my interview with Saul Edmonds on his Grow Your Business Podcast. Our conversation started with the prevalence of alcoholism and addiction in the general population and with entrepreneurs. I reminded Saul and his listeners that if you struggle with alcoholism or addiction, there is hope and that none of us get clean and sober alone.

Transcript

Announcer (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Grow Your Business podcast. Listen in as we discuss all things business growth and marketing with business owners, thought leaders and entrepreneurs. And now here’s your host, founder of Roundhouse, the creative agency, Saul Edmonds.

Saul (00:00:18):

Hi, welcome everyone to the Grow Your Business podcast. Today I’m speaking with David J. Greer. David, how are you today?

David (00:00:26):

I am fantastic. Having a great day here.

Saul (00:00:30):

I’m having a great day. Whereabouts are you in the world?

David (00:00:34):

I’m in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Saul (00:00:36):

Ah, right. What’s the weather like? This is the weather part of the chat?

David (00:00:42):

Well, it’s spring and it’s not a bad day. The sun has started to come out and the cherry blossoms are in full flow here in Vancouver and all the trees are starting to green up, so it’s really beautiful. Really pretty springtime right now.

Saul (00:00:56):

Oh, that’s lovely. I can see the sun streaming in through your window there for those people who obviously are just imagining this at the moment. So it’s really great to have you on the podcast. Thank you. Thanks for chatting to me. For those people who don’t know who you are, who haven’t had any experience, haven’t seen your website, haven’t spoken with you, could you give everyone just a little bit of an annotated overview of who you are and what you get up to?

David (00:01:25):

Sure. I’m a 40 plus year entrepreneur and for the last close to a decade I’ve been an entrepreneurial coach and a facilitator for strategic planning for entrepreneurs and for their teams. I focus on helping entrepreneurs who are stuck in their business or who want to grow their business faster. I especially focus on entrepreneurs who struggle with alcoholism or addiction. I’m an alcoholic who’s been just celebrated 15 years of sobriety, and I think there’s some special new, there’s extra difficulties in being an entrepreneur and being in recovery. It’s just the nature of being an entrepreneur running a business. I’ve both run businesses as an active alcoholic and I’ve run them in recovery, so that’s something different that I bring to the table.

Saul (00:02:23):

Yeah, sure. And so I imagine, I guess just as a segue from that then too, right at the start of our chat at, I know there’s probably no real accurate way or proper way to say how many people struggle generally, especially at a very high level in their business. I mean, I do everybody running a business or entrepreneurs, people in executive positions, there’s all sorts of different stresses and things that people struggle with, but in your experience in terms of how many people who use things like drinking or drugs or whatever to actually help them cope with those sort of stresses, what do you find with your work?

David (00:03:17):

I’ve done quite a bit of research. I’ve talked to actually some of the researchers who do this, and again, I’m a super high performing alcoholic and I certainly know other entrepreneurs who are super high performing, recovering alcoholics as well. And we just don’t, generally, there’s still so much stigma with alcoholism. We don’t answer surveys honestly. And so the researchers just say, because of that bias, they don’t really have a number separately for entrepreneurs. But here’s what I can tell you is generally around the world or in the western world, 10% of the population are alcoholics. There’s a good chance one of them is an alcoholic or addict. And there’s some anecdotal reason to think that as entrepreneurs in the high stresses that we take on, it’s not going to be lower, let’s put it that way, and probably going to be a higher percentage, but that’s still a lot of people. And then another rule of thumb is only, again, in the general adult population, only about 10% of people who are alcoholics will in turn try and do anything about their disease.

(00:04:39):

And it is a mental health disease. It is categorized as a mental health disease, alcohol use disorder or substance use disorder. And that’s sad. So part of my mission is to raise awareness that there is a lot of stigma, but you have a mental health disease. It’s not that you’re morally bankrupt or you need to put yourself up by the bootstraps. I mean, it’s the most powerful drug on the planet. And yet social, it’s completely accepted. If in the United States someone tried to take alcohol and get it approved with the FDA as a drug would never ever be allowed under. It’s amazing,

Saul (00:05:23):

Isn’t it? How things get normalized? Yeah, how things get normalized throughout for the decades or centuries, I suppose you could say too. It’s a part of culture really, isn’t it?

David (00:05:36):

And the other half of my message to entrepreneurs especially is there’s hope. If a drunk like me can get sober, then I promise you, you can get sober. But the one thing I believe deeply is you can’t do it alone. And it’s a disease of isolation and turning away from others and from help. And we all have to reach some point where, I mean, I was in denial for over 20 years. I was a daily drinker, but I wasn’t an alcoholic because for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean, we can dig deeper into that, but I also want to help your audience with other things that I spent a lot of time on in growing their business, especially since that’s the title of your podcast.

Saul (00:06:29):

It is. Growing your business.

David (00:06:30):

We can weave those things together.

Saul (00:06:33):

Yeah. Well, I should say too that as the title of the podcast started and then grew so to speak too, I realized that grow your business is also your business in terms of what makes your money and your life for a lot of people, but it’s also what your business is, what do you do, who you are, it’s all that too. Those things, as far as I’m concerned through my own experience too, is they’re very much interwoven. I think it’s very important. I think these sort of stories are integral to people’s business too. Which just leads me to next question too, which is that how do you find having that sort of area of specialty helps you help people who don’t have those sort of issues too? How does that inform your thinking at all?

David (00:07:32):

Sure. Yeah. I mean, because I only work with high performing people, that’s just the kind of people that I attract and that I want to work with, and I’ve got the energy level to match them. And an interesting question for an entrepreneur is why do you want to grow your business? Do you have the life that you want? Does the business have you pinned to the ground? Have you got the tiger by the tail or is it the other way around? And are you choosing? And I think that that is something, as we grow our business, it’s super easy to lose sight of that.

(00:08:16):

And to just become all encompassed. And as you said, a lot of who we are as a human being gets wrapped up in the business and wrapped up in our ego, which isn’t necessarily good for us. So for example, I use a model from my first coach that I worked with for nine years, coach Kevin Lawrence, who I think is a brilliant entrepreneur from his book Your Oxygen Mask First, and he says, let’s look at your life in three ways. First of all, we’re going to look at your business and what you want to do about your business, and then here’s your life, which is your relationships and your family. And what I find with high performing individuals and especially entrepreneurs, is they’re very passionate about both of those things. But what happens is that we squeeze ourselves out in the middle.

(00:09:13):

And so coach Kevin asked us to look at this third category, which is self. If you’re looking at your year and what you want your plan to be, it’s like what’s your passion ratio, which I consider to be like time, times, energy. What’s your passion ratio for the business? What’s it for yourself and what’s it for life? And if you want it to be 80, 10, 10, that’s okay. I mean, I’m just asking you to make a conscious choice for that and not to make yourself be zero. Because ultimately, if we put everything into our business and into our life at the end, we will burnout, crash. I mean, we see it as side effects like addictions and alcoholism. We see it as getting really sick. The universe will do something to to tell you, to tell you, right? But I’m saying for me, I’m a passionate sailor.

(00:10:12):

When I need renewal, when I need something that’s just for me is sometimes I just go out solo sailing. I mean it’s great with my wife too, and then I get some life stuff and we get some connection that way. But I’m okay just going out for a couple of weeks by myself and sailing the west coast here in Canada, and it builds my resiliency, and it causes me to reset and slows me down. And also when I’m sailing, I have very little control. We have entrepreneurs, high performing individuals and entrepreneurs in particular think that they have way more control of things than they actually do.

(00:10:53):

We only really control about 1% the things I believe all I have control of is how I react to an event. And actually I try not to react. I try and respond and what’s the next right step? I mean, yes, I have plans and yes, I know where I want to go, but really all I’ve got is my next step and that’s all I have control over. And anyways, so when I get into sailboat, you know what? The wind’s in control, the wave’s in control, the universe is in control. I can choose where I want to go, but if conditions aren’t right, I might not even get there. And there’s some strings to pull on how much sail is out and how much and what direction, and that’s it. But everything, it really reminds me I’m not in control. The universe is in control and I just get to adjust my sales to what’s happening and I can make it as easier or as hard for me as I want or I can stay.

Saul (00:11:52):

Yeah, I do like those metaphors I have to say. I was reading on your website and you’ve got that book and your Wind In Your Sails too. Is that right? That’s the correct title.

David (00:12:00):

Yeah, that’s correct.

Saul (00:12:02):

Yeah, so I do like those metaphors very much and I think that’s very apt. The idea I was going to actually ask in those series of metaphors, if you are going to tack into the wind, how would you translate that to that sort of process in sailing to something in business or in life in terms of how that relates to life? I was thinking, I’m not a sailor, but I do, I’ve always been fascinated, I’ve been sailing, but I’m not a sailor. But I’ve always been fascinated about the idea of hacking into the wind, utilizing it. So you could probably speak more to that, how that

David (00:12:53):

If you can go downwind, you can go a lot faster than if you actually are trying to go into the wind. Your expertise is marketing. I think that the sailing analogy has got kind of the deepest resonance in marketing, which is you can choose to go against a market or try and convince a market of something that they’re not completely convinced of. And sometimes in innovative new companies, it’s worth doing that. But I think a lot of growing a business successfully is figuring out which way is the wind blowing in your market, and then how do you tie into that in a way that differentiates from your competitors, but which goes with the flow of where the market’s going. And then sometimes your market’s going to run out. And a lot of my background is technology. Tech cycles go very fast, and you may come up with a product but may only the market may absorb those kinds of products over a two to four year period, and you’ll have sustained revenues, but you won’t be able to grow more because the it’s market’s figured out. And it’s moved to the next technical thing, which is really that’s where the tacking comes, which is when is your market going to run out and when are you going to go pursue another market? Or you’ve got your sales set and you’re doing really well in this market, so where’s another place you could be where similarly, the wind is blowing in a nice direction and it’s warm and it’s comfortable, and how could you stick your hand into that cash stream and extract your part of it,

Saul (00:14:37):

And then the destination too, I guess, how quickly is the wind going to get you to the destination you want to go to as well, I guess?

David (00:14:44):

Yeah, and so I do a lot of work with strategic planning and the process I use is I ask entrepreneurs to pause once every quarter, which is 13 weeks. So go 13 weeks with a plan, pause, see how you’re doing, and then plan the next 13 weeks. And the reason for that is most entrepreneurs get totally, especially when the business becomes more and more successful, they get entrenched in the next fire, the next employee, the next thing, the next trade show, the next event, and they’re basically looking down the path only far enough to not step on a big rock and they’re looking 10 feet ahead. And if you don’t pause every quarter and look up, maybe you’re on a path that’s just going in a circle or you are planning to go climb a mountain in North America, whereas really you’re aiming to go climb a mountain in Nepal, are you still aiming for the right destination? And if you don’t pause and do this strategic work? I call it working on the business instead of in the business.

(00:16:10):

And it’s really hard. Most entrepreneurs get totally consumed by their business and it’s super hard for them to step back. Part of my role as a coach is to just, even I do one-on-one coaching, which is typically structured like two calls a month. And sometimes it’s just those calls to just ask them, can you pause and tell me where are you aiming the business this year? And have you stopped and actually checked? Are you still aiming for the place you thought you were aiming for or has the data changed or you haven’t noticed or you haven’t been paying attention? And sometimes my work is just to get them to pause long enough to actually look at that they’re on the path that they want to be on and they’re aiming for the destination that they want to aim for.

Saul (00:17:05):

And I guess that’s really easy to get lost in your day to day.

Saul (00:17:10):

Yeah. Is it true to say as well, I guess how often does something like this happen where people are aiming for their destination, but then they realize because of that process that you’ve got to be able to pause that the destination is not quite right? Even that it’s slightly, maybe not a wholesale change, but a little shift. It might be like the island over.

David (00:17:38):

What I coach entrepreneurs who involve me in their strategic planning is come up with a short list of goals like four or five for a quarter, go like hell for weeks against those goals. And either you succeed or you don’t. And then at 13 weeks is long enough to get serious shit done, but it’s short enough that if you pause and look, you can course correct.

Saul (00:18:05):

Oh, Okay.

David (00:18:06):

That island is actually a hundred miles wide and we were aiming for the south end of it, but now we realize that all the gold is actually on the north end of it, and we have to course adjust to the north end, and we still got lots of runway to get us. We have enough time to get there. But if you don’t take these pauses and evaluate your successes and failures, then it’s really easy to miss that. That’s why a year goes by very fast, especially I consider high growth anything probably above 15 or 20% year over year revenue growth. And so if you have one or 2% revenue growth, maybe you can plan once a year because things don’t change that much. But if you’re 10, 15, 20% revenue growth, your whole pace is moving way faster. And so you need to plan, you need to take the pauses more often because you’re running at a much, much higher speed. And so it also means you’re going to get off course a lot faster because you’re going a lot faster.

Saul (00:19:15):

That’s right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then like you were saying before, these are the sort of things that I guess people who in business should obviously think about, but people who aren’t sailors don’t think about them. But that idea, just returning to that metaphor again about the wind, the wind takes you a certain way and then you have to, you were saying before you have to respond to it. You can’t really, is it true to say you can’t really react to it, you really have to respond to it, is that right? Well,

David (00:19:51):

Yeah, you have to respond. I mean, you have a lot of, I think also entrepreneurs forget the choices that they have if you’re close to an island, but at the wrong end of it, you can drop your anchor and rest in a bay and wait for the wind to change again. You can think, oh, I have to go to the other end of the island. That’s where the wind’s coming from, so I’m going to have to beat my brains out. That angle of attack in a sailboat is called beating for a good reason because you take a beating, but you have other options. What about happen if you paused and just wait? It looked at the weather. You could do things like look at the weather forecast and see if this is going to last. If it’s only going to last for the rest of the afternoon, then you could pause and do something. I mean, one of the chapters in my book, I actually start with a story about when my wife Karalee and I forgot to check the forecast before we left and how much grief that caused it, especially it was early on in our sailing career, and it really scared my wife and it really impacted her comfort on the boat for a long time. And if I had just listened to the forecast and knew what was coming, then we would’ve had much less sail up. We wouldn’t have been surprised. We would’ve been much better prepared.

(00:21:16):

And that’s kind of part of this planning. You can’t plan for everything and whether sometimes unexpected, sometimes weather forecasts are wrong, but if you don’t do any planning, then you’re just kind of going to get tossed around by the wind and waves because you weren’t expecting them

Saul (00:21:36):

Planning completely stranded. I remember actually when I was a kid, I had this very distinct memory when I was probably about, I was born in a place called Mount Isa, which is up in north of Queensland, and we were on this trip when I was probably about four or five, and we went out to a coral reef and there was on this little island, which was a reasonable sized little island. But then what actually happened was we got stranded and I had this distinct memory of the island actually literally becoming, it got engulfed by the sea because the people who were organizing the trip didn’t, obviously didn’t look at the weather, and all of a sudden the island was literally engulfed and it was about, I think it was probably about 10 meters across left in the island, and they saved us. That came and actually in a speedboat and goddess. But I always remember that as this very simple sort of memory I have of being on the sea and this happening seemingly magically it got swallowed up. But I think those, I love all those metaphors that you’ve weaved from your experience as a sailor. So in that, I’m just sort moving on to culture, say in a business too.

(00:23:03):

How would you say lead this on into another sort of area too, but how to use culture to drive performance, I guess too, and how that works in with entrepreneurs in the business does that?

David (00:23:22):

So my personal belief is to drive really high performance, you need to focus consciously on culture. So every company has a culture, typically a company has the culture of the founder and maybe the founder and the first couple key employees.

(00:23:41):

I see culture as more an act of discovery rather than an effort of trying to be nice people. There’s a lot of great companies who have been built that are built by assholes, and they have an asshole culture, but it’s okay if everybody is an asshole, they get along, but if you don’t fit that mold, you’re not going to do too well there. And so again, I don’t think it’s, you have to be altruistic. I think you have to be realistic about what your color is, what your culture is. And I have a few exercises that come from Jim Collins and Good to Great. None of this stuff is invented from scratch. We have a lot of resources to draw from, and my belief is that culture drives behaviors. Culture is just a way of really describing how people behave. And in my experience, if you’re hiring people, it’s virtually impossible to change someone’s behavior or it’s so much work, it’s just not worth it because our behaviors are defined by our early childhood family of origin, our early mentors, teachers, sports coaches.

(00:25:05):

That gets baked in really deep early too, would you say? Yeah, and very early. For most of us, it’s before five. And so I really coach people around hire for your culture first and skills second. People tend to do skills, right? Okay, I need a computer programmer. They need to know Perl, or they need to know PHP, and they need to have this framework and that framework, and they need to be able to demonstrate this dexterity with algorithms and data. I come from that background. Yeah, great. But I mean, are they a cultural fit if they can do this stuff, but if you’re a really team oriented organization, a very people oriented organization, and you expect people to be able to interact and solve their own problems, well, a brilliant computer programmer who you close the door and feed mushrooms and pizzas under the door, which, and I can joke about it, I’ve been that guy at times, I relate to that, yes, that is probably not going to fit in well, and in fact it’s going to cause more problems than they solve.

(00:26:23):

I believe you also want to hire, a’s want to hire aa’s and aa’s want to hire aaa’s because if a’s higher B’s, the higher C’s. And pretty soon you have Zs or Z we would say in Canadian, and nothing’s getting done. But the challenge is when we get a performer but they don’t fit in with the culture, they get things super lot done, but they do it by standing in other people’s shoulders and shoving them down. Or they do it by cutting corners everywhere so no one can follow up with what they did because they never documented anything.

(00:27:06):

And then they go on holidays and no one can actually figure out product delivery because nothing’s documented. We want to hire for culture first and skills second. I mean, you still are going to have a skills baseline for certain positions. I mean, if you need an experienced computer programmer developer, I mean that’s what you need, but make sure that they’re going to fit into your culture first. And I believe that we experience and communicate about culture by telling stories. I really encourage teams to at their weekly meeting, can you share one win for a team member or maybe challenge the group, share a win about a team member and a core value it demonstrated. We drive cultures through stories and then we drive business through data. And as an entrepreneur, I know I’m being guilty of hearing the last salesman say that I didn’t get that sale because the product didn’t have X, Y, and Z. And maybe that’s true, but that’s just one anecdotal story and it happens to be the most recent one that I heard. What’s the data about that? Are you losing a lot of sales about that? I mean what the

Saul (00:28:26):

Specific data?

David (00:28:29):

Yeah, specific data. I do a lot of work around KPIs, key productivity indicators, what are the key numbers that are driving the success of your business and let’s go focus on those. And again, financial metrics, which are always trailing. But again, it’s amazing how many entrepreneurs who I know or I’ve worked with who keep trying to grow the top line without really manically focusing on the bottom line. It’s like, yes, but are you deriving the profit from every increase, every dollar of revenue increase? Are you getting the profit margin you’re expecting?

Saul (00:29:05):

When you actually, just a quick question there too. When you’ve got culture in a business, where do you feel that when you’ve got a group of people, however many people they are, and you’ve got meetings and when people actually come together, that the element of relatability from one person to another, how important do you find that is? I know it’s sort of seems like a small point, but to me when there’s any group of people is how well individuals relate to each other and I guess where either team leader or the entrepreneur who’s running the meeting or steering things so to speak, the actual captain on the ship is steering things and how well people relate to each other overall. Where does that fit in terms of importance in this whole scheme of things?

David (00:30:03):

I think it’s really important, but again, it’s driven by the entrepreneur and if the entrepreneur is not really open to teamwork, open to delegation, I see this a lot where you get owner founders who start a business and by necessity they grow every single aspect of the business. So now you’re doing a couple million a year in revenue and it’s time for the entrepreneur to let go of some of these things because they can’t control all of it anymore. It’s got too big. But they think their way is the only way because they’ve figured it all out in order to get where they are.

(00:30:43):

And so sometimes people hire me because their senior executive team never listens to ’em. And the challenge isn’t that they never listen to them. It’s that the entrepreneur delegates to a senior team leader and then snatches back and tells ’em how to do it or berates ’em for not doing it his way or they haven’t truly delegated and trusted the person. So some of the work that I do is actually trust building. And I recently for facilitation, I did last week, I actually did an extra exercise the night before with the two founders and their two first reports who formed the core team, and we did a trust exercise for two and a half hours sharing our life stories with each other. It’s called the lifeline exercise. People could just look it up if you use an internet search engine and it’s basically you just have a graph which has kind of plus 10 to minus 10 of how satisfied or fulfilled you were in your life and time from zero to however old you are, and you do a personal line and you do a school/work line. And some people, I know it hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve talked to other coaches who’ve done the lifeline of people who have worked together for 20 years and they do the lifeline exercise and there are five things about someone they worked with for 20 years that they had no idea about.

(00:32:13):

And the exercise, you can only do it. It’s an exercise that can be very vulnerable. So it’s just really to the level that people are comfortable sharing with each other.

Saul (00:32:25):

I mean trust is, I would imagine just for me, trust is kind of at the heart of everything too. But because I suppose from my perspective, it is almost like the thing that facilitates opening or closing doors too really, isn’t it, to be able to go, because you could be a great communicator. I remember talking about there’s a person who’s a great communicator, but are they good at I facilitating people being relatable to each other? I guess it’s okay saying on one level be relatable or try to be more relatable to this other person, but if the person who’s the team leader, the captain or whatever, doesn’t help that process to open that door and then to trust other people to do the right thing, you’ve got to open that door at some point, don’t you?

David (00:33:27):

Well, and the entrepreneur themselves have to be open. That has to start with them being vulnerable and sharing things about themselves that there may be uncomfortable sharing to show the way. And I come back to trust because we look at the book, Patrick Lencioni’s book, the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It’s a fairly well-known book, and he has a pyramid about the dysfunctions of a team and the bottom of the pyramid, pyramid is trust. That’s his whole, you can’t start and then there’s being accountable to each other. But his point is you can’t be accountable to each other if you don’t trust each other because being accountable means saying when you did and didn’t do things, and you’re not going to be open to that if you don’t trust the other person to respect you when you’re failing.

Saul (00:34:24):

At the foundation of everything.

David (00:34:29):

It’s also in my facilitation, I don’t allow any personal attacks. Sometimes you see in teams there’s a lot of, and sometimes it’s kind of bro brother kind of thing, and they’re really disguised, sarcastic attacks on each other. And so you can say, I think that’s a terrible idea. You can’t say you’re a terrible person for having that idea. Now, people rarely say it so explicitly, but they often have language that implies that.

Saul (00:35:06):

Implicitly.

David (00:35:07):

Implicitly. And I catch that if I see it, I call it out in a session, no, that’s not allowed here. Right? Yes, you can totally disagree. I’m all for disagreement. I mean, if you’re going to put the smartest people in the room, I don’t want ’em saying yes to each other. I want ’em to really having serious debate about the ideas and where they’re going and what’s happening, but not about making it so you can have a very vigorous disagreement about the interpretation of the facts or where you think things are going or what’s happening. But it doesn’t make either of you wrong or bad.

Saul (00:35:47):

Yeah, no, exactly. It’s

David (00:35:48):

Just you have different perspectives on the same event or the same data, or sometimes I do that too. That’s an interesting story. What’s the data behind that?

Saul (00:36:01):

Yeah, that’s the cut through often, isn’t it? That’s the cut through on getting,

David (00:36:06):

Yeah, show me your financial statements and show me where that’s changing. Or show me the spreadsheet that demonstrates what you just said.

Saul (00:36:13):

Yeah, the magic of numbers.

David (00:36:15):

Oh, we don’t have that. Okay, well then you just think it’s just something you think, and I am at all for trusting intuition, but at some point, again, it gets back to running the business on the data. You can’t just think you have to go build a model and go fill it in and go find the data. And sometimes in a quarter, all you can do is set a goal to go start tracking the data and putting the data in, and then you can start making some decisions about it. And often of course, what happens is you go for a quarter and you get the data and then it tells a totally different story and not the one you thought.

Saul (00:36:53):

Yeah, yeah, of course. But then that’s also then once again, the good thing about the data is that it doesn’t really lie usually, unless of course the data’s wrong.

David (00:37:04):

Well, there’s still a lot of room in business for interpretation. Business is way more art science, although people may think otherwise. Right?

Saul (00:37:15):

Certainly

David (00:37:17):

It’s like when I am coaching people around financial statements and understanding financial statements, it’s not about the number, it’s about what the number means to your business. I was in a recent facilitation we were going through, they did some great improvements in some of their production and I said, great, who will pay you 10% more now that you’re this much better at this? No one can answer that. Yes, you’ve improved the process and yes, it’s better. Or how will you generate 10% more profit by being this much more efficient with the process?

Saul (00:38:00):

Sure.

David (00:38:01):

Because they were hyper-focused on the process and the outcome of the process and not hyper-focused on the business result. More sales, lower costs, higher profits that could result from this.

Saul (00:38:15):

Yeah, I guess that can also be a very exciting part too, especially when people feel that they’ve nailed something and that’s got its own merits then too. But you’re right. I mean it is then coming back to earth and finding out how that’s going to actually relate it and then once comes back to relatability, but in a different way, the same sort of thing. So how do you talk as well about X factor in the business too? Can you expand on that a little bit, I guess, David, and where or if the role of the entrepreneur in the business, the importance that they have in the business relates to that X factor and how important that is for a business?

David (00:39:14):

So let me prefaces this a little bit. That concept of the X factor I think is maybe described best. I work a lot with the guy Vern Harnish. It’s written two books, the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up. And part of his work as he’s come up with this one page strategic plan, and this is the template that I use for my work with clients. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who believe in it because a strategy binder that’s three inches thick is useless. If you can get everything that’s important about your business on a single piece of paper, then I think you got a chance. When we talk about an X factor, we really talk about marketing. And my belief is that the number one thing that A CEO should be focused on is marketing equals strategy. And I don’t necessarily mean the block and tackle and Marcom and branding and logos, I mean strategic marketing.

(00:40:18):

Who’s your ideal customer? Where are they located? What’s their role? How do you attract leads for them in the lowest cost possible way? And so what I’ve seen, for example in software, so I’ve done a lot of high-end software sales, if your solution is say four times better than the entrenched competitor, no one will give you the time of day because everyone knows the cost and disruption to the business of disrupting a major business process with a new piece of software. If it’s only four times better, why bother one quarter of the cost? It’s unproven. You don’t know if it’ll work for sure. That’s where we get 10 x. How can you be 10 times better than your competitors at some aspect of your industry? And I also caution people, we tend to get really focused on product features and product specific things. And I think Verne used this example from 20, 25 years ago, was actually an Australian based, I don’t remember which city they were based in lawn care company.

(00:41:40):

And at the time in the lawn care industry to do a quote, a person picked up the phone and called, it was the old days, you didn’t go to a website, fill out a form, you actually called a human, but you went and you booked an appointment for a salesperson to come out to your property and they would have a rolling tape measure and they would go around your property and they’d measure it, and then they’d go back to the office and they would figure out how many square footage you had, and then they would send you a quote. And the whole process took two, three weeks. Their X factor was that was a time when aerial photography, accurate aerial photography was being generated by the municipality. And they could go online and they could approximate. I mean it wasn’t perfect, but they could approximate how much lawn there was by looking at these aerial photographs and they could provide a quote over the telephone while the person was on the phone. And it wasn’t a hundred percent accurate, but when it was averaged, some people maybe get charged a little under and some a little over, but the variance was small enough, it wasn’t going to lose customers. And that was their X factor. Their X factor was they could quote instantly instead of in a three week turnaround. And that made them hugely successful,

Saul (00:43:07):

A big edge of their competitors.

David (00:43:09):

Yeah. Did they cut lawns better than other people? Probably. I mean they probably were good, but it’s not like they were 10 times better at cutting lawns. What they were 10 times better at was quoting and getting the customer on board. And so this is where I challenge entrepreneurs to it look at their industry. Another one is a local alarm company here in Vancouver, and the alarm business has a dirty secret. And that dirty secret is if an alarm goes off, nothing happens. What happens is usually there’s some huge massive call center that says, oh, there’s an alarm going off at Mr. Greer’s place. I’ll call him. Hello Mr. Greer. I see that an alarm is going off at your place. Meanwhile, I’m based in Vancouver, my house is in Vancouver, and last week I was in Toronto. So receiving a call from the alarm company that my alarm is going off is of absolutely no use to me. And so Mike Jagger, who I feature in my book, he founded an alarm company on the brand promise, five minutes to your door or your money back, and it’s bigger than 10 because it’s breaking the entire secret of the industry,

Saul (00:44:36):

Which is,

David (00:44:37):

Oh, there’s actually someone who’s going to come to your door and shine a flashlight and see if any windows are broken or doors or

Saul (00:44:45):

What you would expect usually.

David (00:44:47):

And in fact, they actually have a key to every house. They also alarm for if there’s water leakage and other things. And we had friends of ours 10 or more years ago who had a small leak in the feed to their toilet and it ran nonstop for three days and it caused over half a million dollars of damage.

(00:45:14):

So by the way, now whenever we leave the house, when we went to Toronto last week, we turn off the valves to the feed to all the toilets based on that experience. But again, this Providence Security, and they have a very interesting way how they track the keys so they can do it in a way that people don’t know whose key is whose, so that the security person can’t use the key to break in. That turns out to be part of their secret sauce as well. But someone can actually go into the house and check that everything is okay and that nothing seems to be disturbed. And so again, this is breaking an industry norm that no one likes to talk about. That that’s the kind of things I encourage people to think about. How can you disrupt in a whole industry by doing something different? It’s a very creative process. It’s very strategic.

Saul (00:46:14):

As a big element of trust. Well, in that particular circumstance too, but I guess in a lot of things like this, it gets back to trust again, doesn’t it? Well, especially there, because people then, in order for that to work in any event, there has to be a huge amount of trust, which in turn means that they have to have procedures to be able to instill that trust like we were talking about with those keys, because otherwise that trust potentially could erode even if nothing happens. But the question is there, and there’s probably a number of applications to different industries with similar sorts of things that I’m sure you would come across.

David (00:46:56):

If any listeners are curious, I really suggest they buy my book because I articulate in the book how Mike handles the key problem, and it is a very interesting solution. And essentially no guard can, I mean every guard in their car has every key to every house that they monitor, but they’re all in numbered envelopes and the guard has no idea which envelope has the key to the house to a house in question. He has to call back to the office and the office says, go to envelope 4 5 7 8 2 8 4, and that will be the key to the house. But then here’s the trick is one of their key productivity indicators is the number of opened envelopes. Essentially, once an envelope is opened, it has to be returned to the office and a new envelope with a different number must be issued.

Saul (00:47:55):

Right. Interesting. That’s good. That’s smart.

David (00:47:58):

It’s very smart. That’s smart. Mike is a really smart guy.

Saul (00:48:03):

That’s great. But it’s great. Then for people, is it true that customers then know that that is the procedure to instill that trust? They know how that works.

David (00:48:19):

I’ve never gone in enough depth with Mike to, I’m sure that his salespeople need to create trust from their prospects. Do they describe the process to build trust? I don’t know. I mean, I think a lot of their business is just referral.

Saul (00:48:40):

Yeah,

David (00:48:41):

Yeah, sure.

Saul (00:48:43):

Because some people want to know. You would know. Some people want to know and lots wouldn’t.

Saul (00:48:50):

Care. More untrustworthy. Yeah, and lots wouldn’t care. They’re just like, great, awesome. It’s all done.

David (00:48:56):

I’ve seen their cars all over. And he also is brilliant at branding and the colors he uses in every single security car for Providence Security, when you see it in the neighborhood and the brand promise is plastered right on the side.

Saul (00:49:11):

Yeah, no, interesting. So just moving on just to another question there too, between habits and goals, because we’ve been talking about goal setting and quarterly and then weekly and various things too, but what’s the difference explaining it for people listening from your perspective between habits and goals? How do you define those two things?

David (00:49:40):

Well, goals is a place that you are trying to get to.

(00:49:45):

A habit is a process that you execute on a regular basis. So for example, a big part of the Rockefeller habits, which is what this one page plan and this stuff from Verne Harnish is called meeting rhythm. And so for example, I said that part of the meeting rhythm is to meet offsite once a quarter to review your plan, look at the biggest challenge you have in front of you and come up with a new plan for the quarter. That’s the habit. The habit is once a quarter we get offsite and we meet. Another one is highly recommended in the Rockefeller habits is that the entrepreneur meets with his or senior leadership team once a week and there’s a very prescribed 60 minute agenda as to what you start with some wins or a core value that someone demonstrated. Then you debate and discuss where you are, what worked last week didn’t, where you’re stuck. And then the last half hour is filling out what is going to do what by when. Either in a tool like notion or I have a spreadsheet template that I share with people in my experience, like high performing businesses get really good at who, what, when, and they adopted. The habit is meeting weekly to debate and set your who, what, when for the next week.

(00:51:17):

And high growth companies that perform really well, they regularly execute their who, what, when, so they actually do get done what they say they’re going to do.

Saul (00:51:29):

Yeah, I think that seems like that particular point seems like the sort of almost like the secret sauce that if you don’t, that’s easy to say, but then is the thing that a lot of people don’t do because then it’s easy not to do seemingly little things, seemingly little sort of like in a habit. Would that be right? I would imagine you see that a lot, right?

David (00:51:57):

Well, and it’s also, it’s the trust in the accountability issue.

Saul (00:52:00):

Sure. Yeah,

David (00:52:01):

Right. Again, you have to trust each other that you’re putting the right things down, but then also you have to be willing to be accountable when you don’t deliver. And if someone’s not delivering on a regular basis, and it’s always excuses, I’m sorry, high performing teams deliver high performing businesses. If you said to your customers, I’m going to deliver our product, if you were 50% of the time you didn’t deliver to your customer when you said, how long would you stay in business? Very short period of time. So it’s the same with leadership teams. If you say you’re going to do this and only 50% of the time you do what you say you’re going to do, why would employees ever believe you? Why do you believe each other? High performing teams set goals and do the goals. Set the goals, do the goals. That’s the definition of high performance.

Saul (00:53:02):

Once again, returns to trust again, doesn’t it?

David (00:53:04):

Trust accountability. Yeah, trust being clarity of goals. A lot of people don’t set clear goals. Some of my work in facilitation is when people are coming up with their goals for the quarter. It’s like, when we meet 13 weeks from now, how will we absolutely know that you pass the finish line?

(00:53:25):

Be very, it’s like, well, we’re going to improve customer service. Great. How do you measure customer service today? Oh, we don’t. Okay. Well then maybe a reasonable goal for the next quarter is that you put a system in place to measure customer service and that you have measured it at least once, and that’s the finish line. Either you put a system in place and you measured it at least once or you did not. Then in the next quarter we could say, well, the next quarter might be just gather a minimum of X customer surveys or whatever process that you come up with. It’s like, do that process at least a thousand times in the next quarter. And then when you meet the quarter after, then now you can talk about, okay, this is what we learned. This is our average response time. This is how accurate we are. And then maybe you take one of those numbers and move them from X to Y. But remember a couple quarters ago people were saying, we want to improve customer service. Well look at what you had to put a lot in place so that you even had a hope of being able to do it. It’s not a finish line is my point. Right? It’s a dream. It’s a intention. It’s not a goal.

Saul (00:54:47):

And then the process is where would you say in the scale of if there’s a proper answer to this, I’m not sure, but in terms of the level of importance between reaching the goal and the process to get to the goal, is there any one of those two things that’s more important when you are Yes.

David (00:55:12):

Over time you’ve got to set and meet your goals. Otherwise you’re the point of getting offsite and meeting right now. Sometimes the spectacular failures are where the biggest learnings are,

(00:55:30):

I’m not saying it never happens and you definitely, if you’re not meeting your goals, you want to really explore that we’re not setting the right goals because we’re not staying focused on it because we didn’t put enough effort into it. That too take too long. It too big. Yeah. So yeah, I still help them dissect those and look at part of every strategic planning session is that I facilitate, I look at the last quarter’s goals and I do a percentage, what percentage of it did you do? And sometimes it’s like we got a halfway through the quarter and we realized that based on new data that we got and new information, the company we were going to get, we were looking at acquiring, it got acquired by someone else. So it made no sense to go focus anymore on the goal.

(00:56:23):

Of course, if there is really big new data, yes, that can be understandable, but it’s rarely that that happens. It’s much more a breakdown in not choosing the right goals, not staying focused on them, someone that’s accountable who doesn’t actually isn’t accountable. And in the Verne Harness stuff, we separate accountability from doing. Sometimes it’s actually helpful to have a senior member of the leadership team take on the accountability part for a goal that they’re not involved with, especially if a couple other people on the senior leadership team are heavily, heavily involved in the goal and don’t agree on a lot of things. And again, the accountability person is to check in with those individuals every week, get a gauge of where they are on achieving the goal and report at the weekly team meeting, the weekly team meeting, you should be reviewing each of your goals for the quarter and your progress and how close you are to achieving your progress. That’s also why I never allow more than four, five max goals per quarter. People set way too many goals rather than too few. And it’s brutal to set few goals, but it’s about focus. If you don’t focus, you just spin your wheels and it is like putting 10 people into a boat with oars and they all pull in the oars and there’s a lot of splashing and there’s a lot of action and the boat just sits there going in circles.

Saul (00:58:09):

Yeah, the uniform way moving forward, I guess, isn’t it? Yeah, in time

David (00:58:17):

It’s creating alignment. It’s creating alignment between the entrepreneur, the senior leadership team, and then equally important between the senior leadership team and all the way down the command and control. Like I’ve facilitated, maybe not at the moment, but for up to 150, 200 employees, how does the person who’s running the warehouse, how did they relate to the goals that we just set? Because if they don’t relate to them, then have we even got the right goals? Maybe they can’t relate to all five for the quarter, but there better be a couple where they see their part in making this happen. And there almost always is a part, it’s just you have to really think it through from that person’s point of view. But I mean, everyone needs to be aligned. Again, that idea of everyone is pulling on an or Jim Collins says it’s better. It’s about pushing on a flywheel in the same direction. And is it the hundredth push that gets it moving? Is it the thousands push? Is it the 50 thousandth push? Usually, you don’t know. But if everyone just doesn’t keep pushing on that flywheel in the same direction, as best they can with the effort that they can put into it, it won’t come free and it won’t start spinning.

Saul (00:59:36):

Yeah, well, moving in the right way. We were, my son and I were talking last night about we do a little bit of military strategy sort of interest and various things like that, and we were talking about the people marching, so saying Napoleonic sort of era when people used to march forward. And we were talking about the fact that things like that are actually a lot like the drilling that people being in sync and having a leader and marching forward, which when you look at it just at first glance, it looks really easy. It looks like there’s this group of people marching forward. And it was actually the first time, it was really funny. It was the first time I’d actually thought about it like this before. I was like, yeah, it looks pretty easy. They’re all moving forward in time. And then we were thinking about it and to actually do that, and we did little test ourselves of just doing it at the same time, even with two people, it’s surprisingly difficult actually to do that.

(01:00:40):

And I was thinking some of it has to do with the obvious use of drumming of music of sound. Some of it is just practice. Some of it is the orders from the person who’s in charge. And then some of it is because people can’t really look sideways and make sure that they’re actually in line. They have to use their side vision. Then there’s sound and there’s all these things. I was like, it’s actually kind of complicated. And when I thought it was a great example when we’re just talking then about a group of people, once again, that sort of metaphor of doing things enough times for a particular purpose and being willing to do it and having a purpose to do it, and then doing it lots of times until the person looking over the other side of the hill or the person looking at it on TV going, that kind of looks amazing. They’re all in sync, but not realizing how much work has gone into it.

David (01:01:44):

And you know what? When customers interact with our business, that should be their experience that it’s this perfectly smooth march and they should never have to know how much work went into making that come true. But they should have the fault. Our job is to put in all that work so they can have that experience so they can have a really smooth onboarding experience or really smooth ongoing experience with our products and services. And this takes a lot of time and effort and foresight and planning to pull off. And most businesses are pretty bad at it.

Saul (01:02:28):

Yeah, sure. I mean, it’s something I remember specifically in the making of Lord of the Rings un Lord the Rings movies, that one of their goals with the special effects was to be that it was so good that you wouldn’t really be thinking, highlighting in your mind that there were special effects there, that things would be seamless and would seem like this other world, that the illusion at the end of it was, it wouldn’t be highlighted that that is some creature. It was perfectly a part of the image and the story that was put forward that you would, same sort of idea. I think it is certainly something that when it happens, like you were saying, it’s seamless and perfect and it’s a great experience, but to get to that point, there’s so much blood, sweat, and tears. But it always makes for a great story then too, when people actually find out. That’s the part that I like too. When you go, what did you have to do to make that happen? That’s kind of incredible.

David (01:03:39):

It’s incredible. In many businesses It is absolutely incredible.

Saul (01:03:44):

Yeah. Yeah. I love hearing those parts about your realization whenever I’ve had them, like the marching thing when I just had this a bit of a light bulb moment, I was like marching. And especially then, because it was so, never thought about it before and then going, that’d be really difficult. But just on a, I guess a personal note, David, in your journey then too, what are some of the things that have really helped you in your own entrepreneurial journey, I guess the past in more recent times that have really helped you get through things? What are some of those things that you’d, I’m going to share with people that have really helped you?

David (01:04:37):

Certainly for me, on my 50th birthday, I hired this guy, coach Kevin, who a few months previously had made me more uncomfortable than I had been in a half a dozen years. Really uncomfortable. But he saw something in me and I saw something in him, and I mean, he had a massive impact in my life. In fact, he was the first person we worked together for. We worked together for nine years in total. But after we’d worked together for 18 months, we’d cleared everything off of the table except for the proverbial elephant in the room. And he was the first person I admitted I had a drinking problem, to which he had no idea and he wouldn’t because I didn’t drink till later on in the day. And our coaching calls were always during the day, and I’m a high performer. The thing I would ever let anyone know is that I had a drinking problem, but I admitted to him and he coached me to go to 12 step recovery.

(01:05:40):

And I feel that the universe put Kevin in my path to get me sober. And then he got me into a variety of gigs where I was helping entrepreneur friends of mine as a senior executive, but behind the scenes I was always working on strategy until I came out of my last of that, and then I decided that I wanted to give to the gifts to other entrepreneurs, the gifts that Kevin had given to me, which I just started on my coaching journey. That was August 9th, 2007 and we’re in 2024, the last 17, 18 years of my life. And after Kevin, he wasn’t going to do one-on-one coaching anymore. He wanted to focus exclusively on strategic planning and facilitation, so he turned me over to his coach, Nan O’Connor, who I still work with.

(01:06:41):

I think as entrepreneurs, again, it’s like trying to get sober. I think we try and do too much ourselves and I think whether you find a peer group that you meet with once a month or you join EO or you find through your local Chamber of Commerce or other ways to connect with other entrepreneurs or mentors because I’ve grown it by the seat of my pants in the hard way, and you’re welcome to do that. I wrote my book so you don’t have to wear all the scar tissue that I wore, that I earned. If you want to, you’re welcome to it, but if you want to earn some of your own scar tissue, why don’t you make it different than mine and the 45 entrepreneurs that I interviewed for the book.

Saul (01:07:34):

Yeah, it’ll probably happen of its own accord anyway without you having to, even if you try to avoid it, it’ll happen for sure. Yeah, I mean certainly I feel very much the same about having support too. I go and have for whatever it is, 13 or 14 years now networking groups and I’ve always viewed outside of the obvious leads or whatever, I’ve actually always very much viewed it in quite a sports sort of sense that I’ve always seen weekly training, well training in a range of respects, but also a default support group. It’s just a weekly reminder that people in completely different industries that do completely different things to what I do are actually, there’s this constant reminder every single week that there’s way more similarities to things that I’m doing than there are differences. And that still kind of surprises me. I know I probably shouldn’t anymore, but it still does that. I’m like, wow, people are really similar and people and most people are actually really nice and actually really want to help. That’s what I think. Anyway, I actually really,

David (01:08:56):

No, I think you’re right.

Saul (01:08:59):

I really think it’s true because the evidence is if you want to talk about the numbers or the evidence that’s there, because I’ve been doing it for this many years and that’s been my overwhelming experience, has been a tiny percentage, very small percentage that haven’t been like that. Admittedly, people are there to do that as well. You’re there in that environment to do that, but even not there with clients and other people are nice and they generally want the help. And then having people like yourself and then your coach and other people there as that support too. I think it’s wonderful. And I think I really like, I know I said it before, but I really like your whole story as a sailor and those metaphors. I think that even for people, it quite resonated with me for and for whatever reason, it just seemed like a really accurate, great way to describe particular things in business. And I haven’t even been a sailor, but actually it may have helped. It have helped actually, David, that I’ve been listening to these Hornblower books about, I’m not sure whether you’ve heard of them.

David (01:10:20):

Yeah, I have. I know of them. Yeah. Probably had one or two. Yeah.

Saul (01:10:24):

Yeah. And it’s been a little bit, my son was reading them and then he sort of said he encouraged me and I was listening to them on audio book and they’re fantastic. And so I’ve got this real flavor of navigation and the sea and seafaring sort of life in that era. Then iconic era, so that probably informed me a little bit. I’m a bit more, I’m that way inclined. But we’ve run through a range of different things. But have you got any other particular points that you’d really like to share with everybody listening that you feel we haven’t quite covered off on as yet?

David (01:11:07):

I feel like I think there’s more than enough here for people to digest, so I wouldn’t want to introduce anything more. Sure. My parting thoughts is back to that model of business and life and yourself. It is like I would really challenge listeners to say, what have you got booked in your schedule over the next couple months for things that really renew you and build your resiliency? Like things that you do just for yourself, which still might be with other people, but whether it’s go ride a motorbike, go on a ski trip, it’s just whatever it is that really builds your resiliency. Have you actually got that in your schedule?

(01:12:00):

And or have you got a daily practice? I still, with all of my clients, are you eating well? Did you sleep enough? Are you exercising? Sorry folks. But if you’re not doing those three things to look after yourself, you’re going to crash and burn probably sooner rather than later. And we just always have to go back to the basics. We all have busy lives and we all have a lot going on, and those are just three of the core resiliency things that we need to do for ourselves and make sure don’t get squeezed out by other things that are going on. So if in doubt, go back to basics.

Saul (01:12:44):

And make sure you drink plenty of water.

David (01:12:46):

That too.

Saul (01:12:49):

Make sure you drink water, everyone.

David (01:12:50):

Yeah.

Saul (01:12:52):

Pop tip for the day. Is that also give us a fantastic quote as well. David, have you got one? Have you got one that you want to share with everyone?

David (01:13:06):

Yeah, it’s my own slow down here. It is. Slow Down to Speed Up.

Saul (01:13:14):

Ah, yeah. Nice. I like it. Nice and simple.

David (01:13:18):

Yep.

Saul (01:13:19):

Slow down

David (01:13:21):

And we’d all forget.

Saul (01:13:24):

Yeah, very true. And also we’ll have these links too on the podcast, but what are the best ways for people to find out more about you online about you, but then also the under book as well?

David (01:13:42):

My website, coachdjgreer.com, so that’s coach D as in David, J as in James Greer.com. My phone number and my email address is on every single page on my website, so you have no excuse not to contact me if you want. And I do want to let listeners know that I am always open to offering one hour of free coaching if there’s something you’re really stuck on to book a call with me and we’ll work through it. And I guarantee that after an hour with me, you’ll have at least three ideas to accelerate your business in the next 90 days.

Saul (01:14:25):

How do you feel about working with Australians? David?

David (01:14:30):

I’m open for that actually. The time zones are not totally crazy.

Saul (01:14:34):

They’re not too bad. Yeah, not too, it’s

David (01:14:36):

Harder to work with people in the uk. Yes.

Saul (01:14:40):

Yeah, no, that’s true

David (01:14:41):

From Vancouver. I just got to keep remembering that it’s Monday afternoon here, but it’s Tuesday morning for you. I always got to remember, don’t book a call with an Australian on Friday unless they’re working on the weekend.

Saul (01:14:56):

Yeah, you do have to, because I’ve been having probably more calls and more podcasts in the UK, so they’re always, I very nicely later at night when I’m in the morning because it’s kind of like, it’s quarter past eight now, but sort of usually start at seven. But anyway, thank you so much for sharing all those things we were discussing. I think all these sorts of topics of very valuable at any point in time for entrepreneurs and business owners and anyone listening, and it’s been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I really appreciate it.

David (01:15:37):

Thank you. Thanks so much for being here and thanks to all your listeners.

Saul (01:15:41):

Thank you. Thanks everyone. See you later and have a great week and say goodbye, David.

David (01:15:46):

So long bye now.

Saul (01:15:48):

Bye.

Announcer (01:15:50):

Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode of Grow Your Business. Have a great day and we’ll see you next time here at the Grow Your Business podcast.

Transcript

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