In this episode of the Small Business, Big Moves Podcast, host Tom Bennett interviews me as I share my personal journey of overcoming alcoholism and how it has influenced my coaching approach. We also cover these topics:
- The importance of setting a small number of clear 3-year, 1-year, and quarterly goals for the business.
- Meeting weekly to create a who, what, when list that the entrepreneur and the senior executive team will keep other accountable to for the next week.
- Why identifying your ideal customers is critical to maximizing the success of your business.
- The difference between goals and habits.
We wrap up with a discussion on the stigma surrounding alcoholism and the importance of seeking help and support if you suffer from Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) or Substance Use Disorder (SUS). Learn more by giving a listen to the episode:
Spotfiy: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1eGzHi0Snb0VUifJB2Ue6y
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2280390/15299230-episode-32-becoming-a-high-performing-company-with-david-greer
Transcript
Tom (00:03):
Welcome to Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. I’m your host Tom Bennett, and we’ll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. Today’s guest will be David Greer. David, I’ll let you introduce yourself.
David (00:26):
Hi everyone. I am coach David J. Greer. I’m a 40 plus year entrepreneur and for the last decade I’ve been a professional business coach working pretty much exclusively with entrepreneurs doing one-on-one coaching, and I also do a lot of work in facilitating strategic planning with entrepreneurs and their senior leadership team. The other thing that makes me a little different is that I specialize in working with entrepreneurs challenged with alcoholism or addiction because that’s part of my story. I have 15 years of recovery and I know what it’s like to be active and sober and trying to run a business. That’s something extra I bring to the table if that’s something you’re challenged with or want to talk about.
Tom (01:13):
I love it. I’m glad you shared that. I know it’s something that I think a lot of business owners might struggle, so I appreciate the transparency and sharing that upfront For sure, and congratulations on what you’ve been through and appreciate you sharing that. Then I wanted you to also give a quick background on where you started and getting into business and what got you to where you are today. I know you mentioned 40 plus year entrepreneur. I know that’s exciting stuff. I’m sure there was plenty of ups and downs throughout the past. If you can walk us through where you started and what got you to where you are today.
David (01:49):
Okay, I’ll try and how to make this succinct. When I was in grade nine, two things happened. I got taken for a tour of the Edmonton government buildings where I grew up and I saw through the window a big computer room and spinning tape drives, and the same year I was taught octal arithmetic. I was always a geek nerd and I don’t know, from then I just had this idea I wanted to combine business and computers and eventually I got my computer science degree and when I was still in fourth year, I joined a young software startup as the first employee after the two founders, it was named Robelle because the founders were Robert and Annabelle and the name of the company is concatenation of their two names, which means it’s a made up name and it Googles well and it’s quite unique. I liked the place I stayed 20 years.
(02:39):
I built it into a global powerhouse about 10 years in Annabelle wanted to retire and I had a chance to buy out her shares and I had the money for down payment, but I was going to borrow the money from her and it was fairly onerous payback terms it seemed to me at the time. I had a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, and I remember coming out of an accountants meeting planning this, and literally tears were coming down my face from the stress and just the whole experience. I was probably just 34 years old. If listeners, if you sometimes feel overwhelmed or you feel really emotional about your business or an aspect of it, that’s part of the journey. And I’m not saying it’s comfortable, but it’s part of the journey. And fast forward 10 years later, my former partner Bob Green, and I only had one disagreement, but it was one hell of a doozy and it ended in divorce, so he ended up buying me out.
(03:45):
We had two very different visions for the future of the company and the strategy and I think both were viable, but they were not complimentary. And someone smarter than me sat me down and said, your kids will never be 11 nine and four again, or 11, nine and six. My wife and I hatched a plan to commission a sailboat in the south of France and we took our three kids and homeschooled them for two years. We’re sailing more than 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean basin. Yeah. And you know what, if I hadn’t got bought out, I wouldn’t have lived that dream. I wouldn’t have known how big that dream really was. It was a dream was buried inside me that I didn’t know I’d had for at least a decade. And being released from the company, let that dream come up. And of course being kind of the high performing person I am.
(04:32):
So once the vision was realized, then I just set about executing it and making it happen. Three years of angel investing, which turned out to be really unfulfilling, although I learned a hell of a lot looking at a hundred deals a year, met an amazing coach, hired him and we started working together and after 18 months, he was the first person I admitted I had a drinking problem to, and he coached me to go to 12 step recovery and he coached me to reestablish my career and I did a bunch of executive gigs. And then about a decade ago in 2014, after I came out of the last of those, I decided I wanted to give to entrepreneurs what Kevin had given to me. I made the decision to become a coach and took my coach training with the coach training institute and released my book Wind In Your Sails. And I’ve been helping high performing entrepreneurs ever since. There we go, 40 plus years. I didn’t time it, but in a few minutes.
Tom (05:31):
Fantastic. No, I appreciate you sharing that. I think that’s always important. I think everyone likes to hear about the other backgrounds and what got people to where they are today. I know we see all the wins and successes all over social media, but obviously everyone likes to hear about the ups and downs as well, so I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah,
David (05:50):
I didn’t know how deeply unfulfilled I was until I met Coach Kevin and he made me more uncomfortable in five minutes in a short conversation that I’d been in a number of years and just revealed how deep that discomfort was. So again, for listeners, it is just part of the journey, the up and the down and the emotions and trying to find a way to embrace it, which is easier said than done.
Tom (06:20):
It certainly is. Absolutely. Yeah. And then I wanted to really jump right into it and go into what you think makes the biggest difference in high performing companies compared to some companies that maybe just getting by or maybe struggling to stay in business.
David (06:39):
Sure. So, the classic problem we see with entrepreneurs, especially who’ve started a business from the ground up, built some success and they’re now operating the business. The next challenge, the next email can be all consuming and it can be very hard for entrepreneurs to step back and what we say work on the business, think about it strategically to get out of that day-to-day operational flow and think bigger picture about why did you start the business? You still living that right, or have you just got consumed by your business? That’s kind of the first part. The other is I’m a big believer in coming up with a plan and I use a framework from a guy, Vern Harnish. His book is Scaling Up and he has this thing called the one page strategic plan. And the thing, the first time I got training from Vern Harnish on his framework, I was kind of blown away.
(07:36):
We had built Robelle, the software company, kind of traditional way most entrepreneurs do, which is every year we kind of look at what we’ve done, and we try to incrementally make it a little better than the year before. And Vern presented this idea, which is the core of his concept, which is start with where you want to be in three to five years, where do you want to aim your business? Where do you want to end up? Figure that out and figure four, maybe no more than five key things that need to happen in that timeframe. Then work back to what needs to happen this year so you can get there in three years’ time. And again, what I see is entrepreneurs have no goals or they have 25 and both are equally unhelpful. So, when I work with clients, I really help them brainstorm and come up.
(08:28):
We might come up with 50 ideas, but then we narrow it down to what are the four maybe five things you’re going to achieve this year? What are the five most important strategic things that’ll really move the business ahead? And then on a quarterly basis, step back and look and what are the four or five things you need to achieve in the quarter? If a senior executive team can achieve five things in a quarter, I think they’re doing incredibly well. And again, entrepreneurs resist this sort of planning, partly because entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs, I’ll just speak for myself, I like to have maximum freedom of movement. And once I have written it down on a piece of paper, my movement suddenly is restricted. But if I want to actually enlist other people and collaborate with them and have them do a lot of, or even all or most of the work, they have to know where we’re waiting the ship and where we want it to go and what needs to get done. And when that’s written down, it’s much, much more likely that it’s going to happen and everybody around you is just so much clearer on what they need to go focus on. Otherwise, they just make it up as they go along because they don’t have the entrepreneur’s not telling them. That’s kind of the core, I think if you want to really accelerate is this three year, one year quarterly plan and a very limited set of goals.
Tom (09:52):
Absolutely. And I love that reverse engineer approach where like you said, look at three years down the road and then work backwards on what you need to get done this year and over the next few years. And like you said, that four to five critical areas to focus on. Like you said, if you can do that, I think you’re doing pretty well for yourself. I agree with that for sure. And then walk us through too, I know I think you and I have a similar opinion on this as well, but walk us through the ideal customer or target customer and why that’s so crucial to a small business owner really dialing that in.
David (10:34):
Sure. In the Vern Harnish world and in my world, strategy equals marketing at its core. What is the pain point in the marketplace you’re trying to solve and how does your pain pill your product or your service, how does it solve that pain point that the client has? And the bigger the pain and the better your pain pill, the more you can charge. I just kind of boil it away that that’s the essence. Now most entrepreneurs when they start a business, it’s because they detected something that was bothering them or it was a pain that they determined in the marketplace and they found a solution for it and they started selling it. And then a few years goes by. And when you’re first in business, you basically sell to anyone who will buy I, you got to pay bills, you got to meet payroll, you got to pay yourself a little, hopefully.
(11:33):
So you kind of take on anything. But as you grow, it’s very helpful for you to figure out. So again, it’s the 80/20 rule. You’re probably making 80% of your profit from 20% of your customers. So who are they? And the way I describe it is if that customer who’s making you most of the money, if she or he walked through the door today, what’s everything you could tell me about them? How old are they? How tall are they wearing blue underwear or pink? I mean, maybe that doesn’t matter, but there’s things that we can tell about them when they walk through the door and there’s things that we need to discover about them and their business. We can only find out by asking them, by interacting and building a lead and deciding whether there’s a fit. And again, we trying to find those people who are the best fit for the product, they have the most pain and so are the best fit for the product and service that we’re offering.
(12:40):
And the more characteristics we can identify the better. And then it’s very hard to market to the entire world. I hear that a lot from entrepreneurs. Anybody can use my product. Well that’s okay. Have you got a billion dollars to market it? Because to get anybody’s attention, that’s probably what it will cost. Whereas to get a hundred people’s attention, if they’re the same tribe, the same group, if they hang out in the same places, that can be very cost effective. You can go to a trade show, you can show up at the right place and you can capture a significant portion of that market. I talk about segmentation, so what is the industry or the geography that your particular market is really where you can really find those ideal best customers. And best customers are the ones who are easier to close, you make more money from and have a lot less complaints. And if I’m running a business, I want customers like that.
Tom (13:41):
Absolutely. And going back to what we talked about earlier as well is I know we talked about you get that three year plan and really dial in three to five years down the road where you want the business to go. Obviously set up a plan to get there or make steps in the right direction this year. And then when we really break it down, how can entrepreneurs or business owners plan their week out for maximum impact, really making sure that they’re getting the best use and best time out of each week?
David (14:16):
Alright, so I’m going to fall back again to scaling up in the Rockefeller habits. The stuff that Vern harness has invented. I mean he didn’t invent a lot of it. He put a lot of ideas together from different people that I think are incredibly powerful and a lot of the Rockefeller habits are based around rhythm. I talk about do an annual planning session where you get offsite and you look at your three years from now and what you need to do this year and what you need to do this quarter. Once a quarter, get offsite, half a day or a day plan, look up your progress, what’s working, what’s not working, where do you need to go in the next quarter to achieve yearly goals. Then the other rhythms are a weekly meeting with you and your senior executive team to, and again, this is the most expensive people in your company, so you don’t want to just go in and say, yeah, things are okay.
(15:08):
Yeah, let’s look at this report. Yes, go in and celebrate a couple wins, set some positive energy for the meeting and you should be able to do this in 60 to 90 minutes. Then you need to have a debate about what needs to happen this week. And this is the place, it’s not the place to just say yes to each other. If you need to have a vigorous debate, you should have it there, but that should be less than half the meeting. And out of that should then come what we call who, what, when which is a list of for that senior executive team, including the entrepreneur who is going to do what by when that week and then holding each other accountable to actually achieving that. And I will say that having worked with a lot of teams on this, there’s an art, like I say, don’t put something down on the what when list for the whole team unless most of the team are going to be impacted or need to know about it.
(16:06):
If it’s just a couple members of a five person team, that probably doesn’t mean it should be on their calendars and they should figure out when they should go meet and talk about it, but it’s like you don’t need to report back to everyone next week necessarily on that. So again, it’s getting that kind of level of granularity and the really top high performers when they leave that meeting. Then the next thing would be to meet with each of their sub-teams, like if we’re talking about the divisions of the business and decide what they’re going to do, what has to happen based on the goals for the group for the next week and come up with the when for the people that report to you and then you spend 10 minutes and everything comes off those lists and into your calendar. If it’s not in your calendar, it probably doesn’t get done.
(16:57):
I’ve worked the two principle ways are to build the list then work off the list throughout the week. I’ve done it that way quite successfully, but it’s easy to drop something, it’s something for not strategic. And I’ve moved much more to, okay, these are the things that have to get done. When am I going to do them? And I actually just stick in my calendar. This is the time I’m going to go write this article. This is the time I’m going to go think about strategy. And then the discipline in all of this, the Rockefeller habits are all about building a discipline is to honor your calendar. That’s the hard part as an individual, right? Oh, I said at 10 o’clock on Thursday morning I was going to go write the next blog post here it’s 10 o’clock Thursday morning, I’m not writing the blog post.
(17:40):
And part of my one-on-one coaching with entrepreneurs is helping them figure out why are you not doing that? It’s the right thing. That’s what you need to do. For example, if I’m going to write a blog post, I go to Starbucks because I never write them successfully in my home office. And if I go to Starbucks and get a coffee, it gets done in no time. I’ve just learned if I need to go write a blog post, go to Starbucks and just budget the time to get there and back in your calendar. But what works for you is what works for you. You got to find out the things that work for you individually and they’ll probably be completely different than what works for me
Tom (18:21):
100%. No, and I can relate to that a lot too. I use to use the lists and go off the list and different formats of that and it worked, but then I might, like you said, jump into something else or get caught up in something else. And then I agree with you, I switched over to the calendar and just living and dying by that calendar. And I think that at the end of the day, I think no matter what we listen to or what we do to get motivated, I think probably the easiest way for a business owner or entrepreneur to stay focused and actually hold themselves accountable is really just living by that calendar. I think that’s the best way to make sure things get done and actually align for that correctly. But like you said, it’s definitely easier said than done. I still getting used to it.
David (19:13):
The other thing I suggest is have difficult conversations first thing in the day. It is so, so easy to put off that difficult conversation. It doesn’t get easier. The situation that created the difficult conversation is not getting any better, nothing’s get resolved. I’m also really suggest to people that that’s something you get that really uncomfortable piece, which for most of us is still uncomfortable to have a very difficult conversation, whether it’s talking to someone about a behavior or holding someone accountable for their performance, it can be very uncomfortable. I really suggest you book those meetings and you have those conversations like first thing in the day and then you can move on from that. I’ve definitely had cases where, I mean I’m an avoider of difficult conversations, and so I don’t do it in the morning and then the afternoon goes by and then it’s like four o’clock I still haven’t had the conversation. And then another day goes by and then pretty soon a week’s gone by and then now it’s so far from when the event happens, it’s like there’s no point even having the conversation, but the behavior continues. That’s another suggestion I have for any senior leader, but especially entrepreneurs.
Tom (20:36):
That’s great. Yeah, no, that’s spot on. And then going back a little bit too, I know we touched on goals a little bit, right? And I agree with what have no goals or never really wrote down and actually looked at their goals, and then other people might go down that rabbit hole and next thing you know they get 25 goals down. So what do you say the differences between habits and goals and why would you say both of those are important for a business owner or entrepreneur these days?
David (21:10):
I get asked this question a lot actually. And a goal is something that you are aiming to achieve and it has a clear finish line. That’s a lot of my work in strategic planning is actually helping people actually define a finish line because people tend to do very wishy-washy things and you meet three months later and it’s like, did you do it? Well? Yeah, we sort of but we didn’t like, no, I need definitive yes or no. So goals, outcomes, you achieve them or you don’t. Habits to me are more the process that gets you to your goals. There’s something that you do on a daily or a weekly basis that builds resiliency or builds a process or some kind of mechanism that increases the chances you achieve your goals. So like a weekly meeting is a habit, a weekly team meeting with your senior executive leaders, having good debate about that, coming out with solid who, what, when, and every week in and week out holding each other accountable to that who, what when. To me, that’s a habit.
(22:16):
You got to build that meeting rhythm, that discipline for anyone that struggles with habits. I’m a big fan of James Clear in the book Atomic Habits. He asserts that we as humans are habit making machines and if we want to do more focus on your habits, and he has a lot of great ideas for how you can build on your habits, start habits, stop habits. I’m a big fan of that. So again, habits are the things you do on a regular basis daily or weekly that gets you to the goals that you want to achieve. That’s the difference that I articulate.
Tom (22:54):
Absolutely. Yeah. I’m finishing up Tiny Habits right now, which I think was just a similar version or a different version of Atomic Habits. I still going to go through Atomic Habits as well, but I know we’ve touched on it a few times today and I think that mastering the Rockefeller, what you mentioned from Vern Harnish, I think that’s now at the coming up on the top of the list. I still haven’t gotten my hands on that. I think I’m going to order that on Amazon today and get going on it because I know that I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. And I think you just cemented the point of how valuable that is. Today,
David (23:27):
Verne has two books. He has the Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, which was his first book, and he has a second book Scaling Up. Some people actually, even though his first book is a little old and some of the case studies are maybe a little bit dated, some people actually find it quite a bit easier to understand the concepts from his first book. I’ll just put that out there. Your mileage may vary. Obviously I’ve read both multiple times, but the first one I did read was mastering the Rockefeller Habits. For what it’s worth, I’ll just put it out there so people are looking. Don’t be surprised that there’s actually two books.
Tom (24:01):
Definitely. I appreciate that. And I know we threw a lot at him today. I know you and I could probably talk all day about everything that you’ve been through and some of the value you can provide, but anything we might have left out or not covered today that you want to leave the listeners with
David (24:17):
For all of your listeners. If you are stuck on a hard business problem, I offer free one hour coaching to anyone that wants it. And if you just come to my website, my email and my phone number are on the top of every page of my website. I try and make it easy for you to contact me. If you’ve related to something or you’ve heard a struggle or you’re struggling with something that we’ve talked about today, I’d be happy to work with you, work through an issue, and usually over the course of an hour I can give you clear direction on where to go. I do want to let your listeners know that that offer out there.
Tom (24:54):
Fantastic. Yeah, I appreciate that. I know a lot of people will be interested in that as well, so that’s great. And yeah, one last thing too. I want to actually give you a few more minutes to touch on it. I know we talked a few times about overcoming alcoholism, and I think you mentioned you’ve been sober for 15 years now, which is incredible. I wanted you to walk through that journey. I know you mentioned talking to a coach and that’s where you first opened up about it, but I’m sure there were kind of signs before you realized, Hey, I should really figure something out here.
David (25:28):
Yeah, yes and no. My story of my alcoholism is over 20 years as a daily drinker. I’m a super high performing alcoholic, which is actually, I think the majority of alcoholics, they keep a job and keep a home, and on the outside they kind of look like things are together. But I can tell you on the inside, I was really broken. But the other part of being addicted to alcohol or drugs is the incredible denial your brain is capable of. Because I wasn’t suffering really many consequences. It took a long time until I finally got to the point where I just was so sick and tired of being sick and tired that I just couldn’t take it anymore. And I just got so sick of being beholden to the alcohol and it got so I’ll never drink before five, then I’ll never drink before four, I’ll never drink before. It’s three. I’ll never drink and drive, and then I’ll never have a drink while I’m driving. And then I’m going to the beach and I’m having three beers before I go home to kind of preload and just all those red lines, which eventually got to a point where I was willing to admit to another human. The thing I worked with 18 months with Kevin Lawrence and we’d built a trust relationship. When I admitted to him I had a problem, I knew he would never let me off the hook.
(27:01):
I knew that letting the secret out of the bag to him, he would just find a way to keep me focused on that. And he coached me to go to 12 Step recovery. And he’d fortunately had people in his life, Kevin’s not an alcoholic, but he’d had people who’d been very active in AA. He had long conversations with them, so he knew what to do. And that was a Tuesday. And I promised to go to a meeting by that Friday and that Tuesday there was a networking event downtown here in Vancouver that ended at eight. And I looked online and lo and behold, there’s going to be a meeting at eight 30. There was going to be a quarter of a block off the road, I would be driving down to go home. So being the overachiever that I am that night, it was Tuesday afternoon, I had the call with Coach Kevin.
(27:45):
I went to that meeting and a couple of weeks later I made up my home group meeting and I was there last night every Tuesday night at eight 30. And that’s kind of a gross simplification. What I really want your listeners to take away, just a couple things. Alcohol is a mental health disease and drug addiction is a mental health disease. It’s alcohol use disorder or substance use disorder. And many of us have both pulling up your bootstraps, smarten up, that’s never going to get you clean and sober. You have to treat it. It has to be treated as a disease, I don’t believe. Part of my goal is to reduce the stigmatism of alcoholism. It’s okay, you have a mental health disease, you need help. And the second piece is, I don’t believe we can get sober or clean and sober alone. The brain that got me to be an alcoholic is not the brain that can get me clean and sober.
(28:45):
I need someone else. And my solution was 12 step recovery, which put me right in the middle of the pack of people. That’s what I was coached on early on in 12 Step recovery is get in the middle, surround yourself with people who’ve got time in this program. And I did, and I learned from them. And knock on wood, since that first meeting, I’ve never had to pick up another drink. I just want to reduce the stigmatism around drug addiction and alcoholism. And I just want you to know if you’re struggling with it, there is hope and find someone who can help you.
Tom (29:25):
Absolutely. I appreciate sharing that. Thank you. And then, yeah, that’s going to be a wrap on this episode of Small Business Big Moves. If you got value out of this or know someone that would, if you can like and share the podcast as well. And you can find me on all social media at Thomas Bennett, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
