Improve and grow your business today using the concrete actions Wesley Paul and I discuss on his Respect My Business Podcast. Key topics we covered.
- My journey to becoming an entrepreneur.
- Create value by creating amazing solutions to massive problems your market must solve.
- How you can get sober like I did.
- Concrete solutions to staying clean and sober, even when alcohol is involved in your business.
- To build a successful business do these four things:
- Step back from your business at least once a quarter.
- Figure out where you want the business to be three years from now.
- Have crystal clear goals, but no more than five, for the year and quarter.
- Get a mentor or coach to help you.
Give it a listen now.
Transcript
Announcer (00:02):
This conversation about building up your blueprint, it’s time to take it because time is wasted. Go grind and chase it. Don’t lose it. This generation need integration with information to move with an inclination that is abide in entertaining improvement.
Wesley Paul (00:16):
Hey, what’s going on? Blueprints. I hope you guys are having an amazing day today because listen, I am and my guest on today’s show. I’m super excited for today’s guest. Guys, I’ve brought someone absolutely special for you. I know we haven’t had a guest on the platform for quite some time, but I did some digging and I did some work and I had to hunt, lift up some rocks and everything. But I found someone special for you guys, and I think you’re going to appreciate today’s guest. I have not only, he’s a sailor, he’s an author, okay? 45 years in the game. Ladies and gentlemen, as you guys know, I’m a baby, this young man here, young man, I want to emphasize that this young man here has 45 years of entrepreneurship experience. He’s going to share with you guys the importance as well as the journey when it comes to strategically planning your business. I know when it comes to 2025, this is going to be a very, very important topic for everyone. I’m excited for today’s guest. I want to go ahead and make sure I roll out the red carpet, and I’m not going to give any further ado. I want to go ahead and welcome coach David J. Greer on the platform and on the respect my blueprint show. How you doing today, brother?
David Greer (01:33):
I’m doing fantastic, Wesley. Thanks so much for having me here.
Wesley Paul (01:38):
Absolutely, man, we’ve been able to link up. We’ve been able to go ahead and make this happen. Thanks for making this happen and everything. And just to let you know about the show, which we already discussed, this show, we like to go ahead and give our viewers the blueprint to success. Okay? All of our viewers, most of our viewers, they’re aspiring or they’re just starting out in their entrepreneurship journey. With that being said, I want you to go ahead and qualify yourself or just share with the audience a little bit about yourself, not qualify, share with the audience about yourself as I’ve tried to roll out the red carpet for you, but go ahead and let the audience know who you are and what does Coach David J. Greer does?
David Greer (02:27):
Well, let, I’ll try and give the super short version of my first business. When I was very young, I knew I wanted to take computers and business and put it together. And to that end, I went and got my computer science degree. And while I was in getting my degree, I had a part-time job where I met a consultant who I ended up working with on a project and he had just founded a software company.
Wesley Paul (02:55):
I saw it.
David Greer (02:56):
And in fourth year at the University of British Columbia, I joined that software company as the first employee after the founders, and it was named Robelle for the two founders, Robert and Annabelle, that’s where it comes from. Google’s really well because it’s a made up name. And a condition of my employment was I had to write an abstract of a technical paper, come up with an idea for a technical paper, write an abstract and submit it to the 1980 Hewlett Packard International User Group convention, which I did,
(03:34):
And it was accepted. Then I had to go write the paper, and while I was still in fourth year at UBC, I went to my professors and let them know I was taking a week off so I could fly to San Jose, so I could go to this conference. And I gave my first technical presentation, and I was 22 standing up on the San Jose convention floor telling a bunch of computer geeks about this cool software and what it could do for them. And a decade or two later, I found out that’s kind of the essence of marketing and sales,
Wesley Paul (04:09):
Right? Okay.
David Greer (04:10):
But I’m really, I wouldn’t say accidental entrepreneur, but I was just having fun, just solving problems for this computer geeks in this particular market that used this very popular mini computer from Hewlett Packard. And we specialized in that and we became world thought leaders. My former partner, Bob Green and I for 20 years, we wrote a new paper every year, each one of us. And then we traveled the planet giving presentations both to technical and management audiences, creating belief in this obscure Canadian based software company that you’re going to trust your whole business to.
Wesley Paul (04:48):
Oh my God. I mean, that’s a huge task right there, right? Come on.
David Greer (04:52):
And this computer was used by a lot of Fortune 500 divisions and private companies in the kind of a hundred million to 250 million a year kind of range would be the size of company. And they used the computer for boring things like tracking orders, what needed to get billed today, tracking customers like kind of the nuts and the bolts of the business. And we had two very successful, well, we invented a whole bunch of software products, but we had two that were home run, hit it out of the park successes, and I liked the place. I stayed 20 years and built it into a global powerhouse
Wesley Paul (05:30):
20 years. So man, going from the first employee to now spending 20 years to having to be one of the major forces in the computer software game.
David Greer (05:43):
And eventually halfway through that I bought out Annabelle and became partners with Bob, and we also had other corporate organizations in that period. Yeah. So as I like to remind young and roles stage entrepreneurs, maybe not in age, but people who are starting their first business, there are no overnight successes, right? Absolutely. Robelle was a typical
Wesley Paul (06:11):
Overnight
David Greer (06:12):
Success.
Wesley Paul (06:13):
There’s no such thing. Oh my goodness, yes. Preach.
David Greer (06:18):
There was just a lot of sweat and blood and a lot of it, I mean, we read some very impactful business books In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters, which most of your listeners probably have never heard of, but in the eighties, that was a very seminal book and actually featured HP is one of the case studies in the book. We just grew it by the seat of our pants and we figured it out and we’re really tremendously successful. That’s my startup early stage, how I became an entrepreneur journey
Wesley Paul (06:58):
Really. And it’s funny because ultimately I’m pretty sure, and because I want to go ahead and give a reference to that, like Steve Balmer and Microsoft, right? Steve Balmer will end up becoming Microsoft number two as far as with Bill Gates and everything, which Steve Balmer, he ended up spending decades with Microsoft, end up becoming a trusted C-suite executive with the company, and he reached to the heights of level of success where most people are not aware, he’s the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers
(07:44):
Buying the basketball team for a couple billion dollars. And I use him as a reference because again, you has have that same approach where you wasn’t the owner, the founder of the company, but you end up believing in the vision, believing in the dream, putting the time in, and you end up with actually, like you said, you end up buying out Annabelle and achieving great success. I wanted to see if you could highlight how you somewhat don’t have to be the founder, but you can be an entrepreneur and still reach levels of success as well too.
David Greer (08:26):
Yeah. In fact, for me, I am now a professional business coach, and I actually prefer working with entrepreneurs who’ve got farther along the path or who’ve bought out from an original entrepreneur. I think that’s where I add more value is when you’ve got a million in revenue and you’ve got 10, 20, maybe 200 employees,
(08:51):
And I’m not as good in that startup phase. That’s not, no, seriously, I’m more in the scaling stage. Oh, got it. Okay. But I did want to share, because you introed me about, I do a lot of work around strategic planning. I want to contrast kind of how we planned at Robelle versus how I help clients today do strategic planning. So at Robelle, we were very classic entrepreneurs, which was, we took what we did last year and kind of looked at it and saw if we could do a little bit better next year, or let’s do 5% better next year kind of approach.
Wesley Paul (09:33):
And
David Greer (09:35):
I now work with entrepreneurs, and I take a different approach. It comes from a book called Scaling Up, a guy by the name of Verne Harnish who invented this thing called a one page strategic plan, which I highly recommend. I use this framework with all of my facilitation clients, but in the Verne Harnish world, you pick a future point that is like three or five years out. You have to decide what makes sense to you and your market and your industry and your business, but at least three years out. We’re just coming up to the beginning of 2025. So 2025, 2026, 2027. If you were planning your business, I’d say what’s the business going to look like on December 31st, 2027? And what do you think the markets are going to be that you’re going to be serving then? You have a vision of where you are now,
(10:30):
But where do you think you’ll need to grow to and where do you think that growth? It is a complete shift of thinking when you start outward with where you want to end up three years away. And then I’ve come from the tech industry, while some parts of the tech industry, let’s say AI, in three years from now, AI is going to look, take over, be whatever business plan you have today, three years from now, you still got to pick an endpoint though you still got to say in three years, I think this is where the market’s going to go. And every year you’ve got a core suggests with data from where the market is actually going. So again, is your market still going to exist in three years? Is it going to be bigger? Is it going to be smaller? I think the core of marketing and successful entrepreneurship is like strategy equals marketing. First and foremost, you need to understand marketing. And the simplest way I’ve found to describe marketing is what is the pain point that your prospects are in and is it keeping them awake at night? And how good is your pain pill to solve their pain? And the worse their pain and the better your paying pill, the more value
Wesley Paul (11:58):
That is the formula right there, essentially. Pretty much,
David Greer (12:01):
Right? It is a lot of people, I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who start businesses who are trying to just solve problems for people, for things they want. People rarely, I’m not saying, I mean there’s lots of examples in retail, but a lot of times people won’t pay much money for things they want. They pay money
(12:20):
For things unnecessary, but they pay money for things they need for a problem that’s keeping them awake at night. To me, that whole, where you end up in three years is what are the pain points that you’re going to be solving in three years and are they different than what you think you’re going to solve today? Figure out that kind of maybe three, four maximum, five key thrusts or capabilities that you need to build in order to get where you need to go in three years time, then work backwards. So now you’ve got, I know some companies, it’s like they need to acquire a VP that specializes in their industry in the third year if they’re going to get the revenues that they want. That’s like a capability; I’m going to need this really capable person if I’m going to grow the business the way I want. And a thrust might be, my initial market is Vancouver, BC, Canada, where I live, but in three years I need to be covering Washington, Oregon, and California.
Wesley Paul (13:29):
I see what you’re saying.
David Greer (13:30):
That’s the thrust. The thrust is in three years time now, it may be that in 2025, I’m not going to do anything to approach those markets. I want to be there by the end of January 31st, 2027.
Wesley Paul (13:46):
- Right. Okay.
David Greer (13:48):
But it’s like, so what do I need to do in 2025 to set myself up? Because you probably need to start doing something about it in 2026.
Wesley Paul (13:57):
Oh, I see what you’re saying, right. That’s working backwards approach comes.
David Greer (14:01):
That’s the working backwards. And again, my experience as entrepreneurs set too many goals, not too few.
Paul Wesley (14:10):
Too many.
David Greer (14:11):
Too many. It’s actually in planning sessions that I facilitate. It gets brutal towards the end when I’m forcing people to make decisions. But that’s what I do. That’s what they pay me for, is to force them to make that decision. And for example, for a yearly set of goals, I’m not let them choose more than five.
Wesley Paul (14:30):
No more than five yearly set yearly goals.
David Greer (14:33):
Correct.
Wesley Paul (14:34):
I like that. I definitely want to take that end of mind there.
David Greer (14:38):
And they need to be crystal clear goals. A lot of people pick goals, but it’s like a year from now if we get together, how will we know definitively whether we crossed the finish line and succeeded to this goal or not? So people will say, my goal is in a year to improve customer support or customer service.
Wesley Paul (14:57):
Right? Okay,
David Greer (14:58):
Okay. Well, that’s a meaningless goal. How are you?
Wesley Paul (15:04):
And it’s vague. It’s not those substance behind that.
David Greer (15:07):
Right. Then my usual question is how do you measure customer service today? Oh, we don’t. Oh, okay. So maybe a realistic goal for the year is that you have a system in place that consistently measures customer service, and that system has been in place for at least one quarter by the time we get to the end of the year.
Wesley Paul (15:30):
Got it. Okay.
David Greer (15:33):
Now we can get a year from now, we can say, did we put a system in place to solicit feedback from our customers and survey or whatever system we come up with, and did we in the last quarter, did we measure it and actually have the data in our hand? That’s definitive because either those things came true or they did not. It’s binary,
Wesley Paul (15:57):
Which let me ask you a question, and I work with entrepreneurs as well too. And you’re right, the marketplace, they react better to a product or service in a space of need versus luxury.
(16:14):
And I could appreciate that because me being in a personal finance, we are in a space of need in order for any individual to achieve any type of success, whether it’s personal or professionally, they need to be able to have their personal finance, their credit, and things of that nature. So my question to you is why do most entrepreneurs, just entrepreneurs struggle into three to five year planning phase? And that’s also a pain point I’ve also noticed a lot about, because usually my first question when I do coaching and consulting and my mentorship is, where do you see yourself five years from now? Or what is it that, and they usually struggle to answer because they’ll even give me one or two answers, a very vague answer or a very generalized answer. Oh, I want to make a hundred million dollars, I want to do this, but that’s very
David Greer (17:13):
Generalized. I want to dominate the world.
Wesley Paul (17:17):
Why do entrepreneurs struggle when it comes to that right there? Mainly,
David Greer (17:22):
I think there’s a variety of reasons. One is they don’t have any practice in business planning and creating business plan. I think there’s just a core knowledge gap. And I think also there’s the vision of where you want to go and world dominance, which I’m totally willing to buy into if that’s what you want to do. I’m on board, so what’s your path to get there? That’s great.
Wesley Paul (17:52):
That’s where we struggled there.
David Greer (17:54):
What’s your goals to do that? And then additionally, entrepreneurs are really loath to write it down. Part of what I do is I get people in a room at the same time, that’s probably half of what people pay me for. I work with uber high performing entrepreneurs and teams and businesses. When do quarterly, we do a planning session every quarter.
Wesley Paul (18:19):
You galvanize them and bringing them all in?
David Greer (18:21):
Well, I lock it in the calendar and I get a room booked and I double check, and then when we lock it in, it’s like, you better be there.
Wesley Paul (18:29):
Let’s make it happen. Okay.
David Greer (18:33):
And that accountability piece. So let me just finish. We have the three year five things you want to key thrust and capabilities you want to build. There’s the one year crystal clear goals, no more than five, and then every quarter, I really recommend that you come up with the set of goals for the quarter to get you to the set of goals that you have for the year.
(18:56):
And the basic thesis of scaling up is that there’s 13 weeks in a quarter. You make your decision, you start really going hard against those goals for the quarter. And in the worst case, you totally blew it. You totally chose the wrong goals, new information shows up. Well, you only went for 13 weeks and you’ve still got the rest of the year to catch up. It’s eminently recoverable, recoverable. Whereas if you go a whole year without reviewing it, you could be in serious shape or hemorrhaging cashflow. That’s why a lot of this is about that meeting rhythm and the planning rhythm. And then also, so this thing has this one page strategic plan. So again, the thing is to get all of this stuff and some other really critical core aspects of your business written down, and again, it’s written down.
Wesley Paul (19:52):
See, that’s the key.
David Greer (19:53):
That’s the key. So here’s the deal. It’s entrepreneurs like I’ve, every entrepreneur I’ve ever met, and every super high performing person that I’ve ever met suffers from the shiny red ball syndrome,
Wesley Paul (20:04):
The shiny red ball syndrome. Yeah,
David Greer (20:06):
Yeah. Oh look,
Wesley Paul (20:07):
A shiny red ball over there and their eyes just automatically follow the ball, right?
David Greer (20:14):
Our business, we should go do that. We should go start building a product for that just totally abandoned
Wesley Paul (20:20):
Ship of what you’ve been working on. And then, yes.
David Greer (20:24):
That’s one thing.
Wesley Paul (20:25):
And sorry to interrupt, what kills that right there? The word of serial entrepreneurship instead of just hyper focusing in on one, building that out, people want to go ahead and think the word serial entrepreneur to mean they could explore each and every toy that comes before them. But yeah, go ahead.
David Greer (20:42):
Well, and if you have enough bandwidth, and I think when you have a couple of businesses under your belt, you can do that, but then you become chairman of the board of each of the businesses that are pursuing that, not the CEO, like your core to the strategy and where you’re going and monitoring and keeping people accountable. But you can’t do five businesses as CEO. Not super high growth, high performing businesses. It’s not possible. So shiny red ball is one problem. Then the second is entrepreneurs. Most of us went into business to start a business to maximize our freedom of movement,
Wesley Paul (21:18):
Maximize our freedom of movement
David Greer (21:20):
We can choose where to go and how hard to work and what our schedule looks like.
(21:28):
And that’s a big part of the appeal, and I get it because I’ve been that way for a long time. When we write things down and we commit to it, I restricted my movement and I can’t change my mind four weeks in. And I have had a lot of conversations with people who work for entrepreneurs who say, my single biggest struggle is the entrepreneur doesn’t choose a set of goals and then stick to it. And so I’m over here pursuing this set of goals on the right, and then four weeks later, the entrepreneur shows up in a meeting, says, oh, no, no, we’re going to go over here. And all that stuff. I just got barely building some momentum on it gets killed off because now we’re heading off to the left. That is part of the, but that discipline to me is what you need if you want to build a successful business. That discipline to stay on track and not zig and zag no. If some brutal fact, if you try and sell your brains out for six weeks and absolutely you cannot sell this product, maybe you need to pause and figure out why not
Wesley Paul (22:44):
Calibrate
David Greer (22:45):
And recalibrate. But again, that’s why I suggest if you do it every three months, you can incorporate that new, that’s enough time to give it a good shot and short enough that you can take the new data in and come up with a new plan
Wesley Paul (23:01):
And pivot if necessary.
David Greer (23:02):
Pretty much correct. But it’s interesting, COVID came, so I met with all the clients I met with that I facilitate for, not one changed their three year plan, not one, even in the midst of COVID, correct. Their long-term three years where they were going didn’t change. And for most of them, three of their five goals for the year did not change.
Wesley Paul (23:34):
That shows how locked in they were, that pretty
David Greer (23:37):
Right, and that we had done the right work to go figure out the right things to go focus on. Now, there were obviously a lot of adjustments and a lot of things that had to happen. And over probably two quarters, everything got blown up and everything revised and reprioritized, the new goals chosen. But the longer most of that year, and certainly the year after and the year after that, they had the right plan. They just had to course suggest for what COVID threw at them directionally, they were still in the right direction. And it was just a question of managing through this crisis. We all were. And I thought that was really interesting, and that was across the board of all my facilitation clients were the same, no exception.
Wesley Paul (24:30):
That’s a huge testament to your method as well too, because you’re talking about a world changing event, which not only was it a world changing event, COVID ruined a lot of business and business models. COVID caused a lot of people, it forced individuals to pivot, which another huge example I want to mention is ai, right? AI has now come in and has been introduced to the world. It has completely rocked things such as academics and technology and everything like that, which I want to ask you because without going into your, obviously you’re your old school because of your experience, let’s put it like that. You’re experiencing wisdom, but you see such a game changer like AI come. How have you been able to adapt, and what are your thoughts on having ai, although you mentioned covid, your methodology has been able to keep your students on track. How are you able to go ahead and replicate that with now the introduction of something like ai?
David Greer (25:41):
So as part of the framework and part of the annual planning session, we do a piece of the agenda where we look at strengths, weaknesses, and trends,
Wesley Paul (25:49):
Strength, weaknesses and trends.
David Greer (25:52):
I survey people ahead of time of what the trends they see impacting the next four or five years. And so in my facilitation clients for the plans for 2024, I think AI was in the top three for most of them. But it was a trend. It wasn’t like we’re going to fundamentally change the way we do things or it’s going to fundamentally change our business. And one of my clients is a very successful private equity firm. They in turn own several operating companies. And again, in none of their operating companies, they’re watching the trend and they’re seeing how they might apply it, but it’s not game changing.
Wesley Paul (26:38):
Right. Okay.
David Greer (26:41):
On a personal level, I find AI so far for me to be nothing but crap.
Paul Wesley (26:47):
No, say what? No, I’m
David Greer (26:51):
Telling you that the use cases I give it produce really, really bad stuff.
Wesley Paul (26:57):
Yeah. Well, it is infancy. Do you see an explosion on it? Do you see it maturing or anything like that?
David Greer (27:05):
I don’t know. Honestly, I really don’t know. I mean, I know a lot of people are using it successfully. They say I also see a lot of really, really bad marketing images really bad. You think that’s professional. And I’ve been a VP of Marketing of a 35 million a year publicly traded company, so maybe I’m a little biased. Let’s just say I have very high standards,
Wesley Paul (27:34):
High standards, which is fine.
David Greer (27:37):
What I think we should be projecting with our brands and our businesses. Yeah. So anyways, and I just, I was at a social media conference last week in Vancouver with probably some of the top social media people in Western Canada. And again, none of those people said they were successful using AI to generate content like actual copy.
Wesley Paul (28:04):
I see what you’re saying.
David Greer (28:05):
Yes. Consensus seemed to be, it was best used to brainstorm ideas and come up with maybe ideas that no one would think of, or it’s just more
Wesley Paul (28:15):
Of a smart plug just to go ahead and spark some, right.
David Greer (28:19):
But even that is still a very small set of data points. But again, for most of my clients and my one-on-one coaching clients, AI is not fundamentally changed how they think about the business, how they operate the business. It’s something they’re watching and seeing how it might be applied, but it’s not yet for them being a huge game changer.
Wesley Paul (28:45):
Which now I want to ask you because we had a brief conversation about our backstory and everything like that, and the audience know this, and I’ve shared an elevator pitch with you how my journey in entrepreneurship has its trials and tribulations. I’ve went through nearly a decade of imprisonment, and I was able to get out in late 2019. And between then and now, I’ve made leaps and bounds as far as starting up my own tech companies, not to the level of success I would want to where, but you have to start somewhere.
David Greer (29:25):
You bet.
Wesley Paul (29:27):
And I’m still going through the trials of tribulations and everything, and you shared with me, which I’m hoping you could share with the audience. You’ve also went through your trials or tribulations and everything. I wanted to see if you could share with the audience how hard entrepreneurship is. Like you mentioned earlier, there’s no such thing as overnight success, right? Entrepreneurship is a constantly evolving and growing journey and everything. If you could share some of the roadblocks you have to encounter, then you had to overcome to be able to achieve the level of success you have. Level.
David Greer (30:00):
Yeah. I gave you the story of my entrepreneurship for the first 20 years in my early forties, but let’s roll that tape forward for just a couple minutes.
Wesley Paul (30:11):
Okay.
David Greer (30:12):
In 2001, I’m on the street. I haven’t noticed the.com meltdown. We were kind of insulated from that. And I’m busy chasing tech deals, not noticing this is a terrible time to be getting involved in anything you get involved in anything dot com. And someone smarter than me said, “David, your kids will never be 11, nine and five again. Do you need to work right away?” And I’m like, no, I’m not done for life. But I got a really good check in my jeans from exiting out of Robelle. So my wife and I hatched this plan where we commissioned a sailboat in the south of France and we took our three kids and we homeschooled them for two years while sailing more than 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean. You mentioned the opening that I’m a sailor, so that’s part of my tie it all in, right? Sailing story. And then I came back from that and I did three years of Angel investing. I’ve looked at, over that time I was looking at at least a hundred deals a year, investing in kind of one being a director, working for options.
And just before my 50th birthday, I was at an event, actually a training event for this Scaling Up Verne Harnish stuff. I took one of my young CEOs that I was invested in to this event, and at the back of the room were two coaches. And one of those coaches talked to me for about two minutes and made me more uncomfortable than I had been in probably five years. And what he made me, I had tears in the corner of my eyes. And what he made me realize was how completely unfulfilled I was in what I’d been doing for the previous three years.
And it was kind of filling time, but it was in no way engaging me, really fulfilling my need to contribute to the business community. And it was simple. There was like a hundred people at this event and he kind of waved his hand and he said, look, there’s a hundred people here and I’m pretty certain, and almost every single one of them needs your help. And I’d been trying to work for three years to find somebody who wanted my help.
I took Coach Kevin’s card, that’s coach Kevin Lawrence. He’s a brilliant entrepreneurial coach. And that card sat next to my phone for a good three weeks, and once a week I thought about picking up the phone and calling him, and the phone weighed at least 10,000 pounds. And then finally after about three weeks, he called me and he said, Hey,
Wesley Paul (32:53):
Oh, he called you okay.
David Greer (32:53):
He said, “Hey, this is Kevin Lawrence.” He said, “Do you remember our conversation”? And I’m like, yes. Didn’t say, I haven’t really thought about much else for Right, exactly. Right. And I hired coach Kevin, and we did our first coaching session on my 50th birthday. And Coach Kevin is my kind of guy, you’re all in or you’re all out. And so the first coaching session I had with Kevin was two eight hour days.
Wesley Paul (33:20):
Two eight hour days. That’s a full day right there.
David Greer (33:23):
No, that’s two full days. Yeah, exactly. I started working with Kevin and I started finding entrepreneurs to work with and reestablishing my career. And we cleared off all the clutter that was on the table until 18 months later. There was the elephant in the room. And on January 27th, 2009, I had a coaching call with Kevin and I told Kevin I had a drinking problem. And that would be an understatement because actually I’m an alcoholic. And Kevin in his background, he doesn’t have a challenge with alcohol. And in his background, he had met over time several members of aa, and he’s a very curious guy. So he had long conversations with them.
He kind of knew a bit about the program and how it works. And so he coached me to go to 12 step recovery, and I had a terrible aversion to it. Still to this day, I have no idea where that aversion came from. I didn’t even think I’d heard about it before then. So he coached me through that and I committed, that was a Tuesday. I committed to go to a meeting by that Friday. And that afternoon, that evening, I knew I had an event downtown, a networking event I was going to, it would finish at eight. So before I left, I googled meetings in Vancouver, and lo and behold, there was going to be a meeting at 8:30, a quarter of a block off the road I would be driving down to go back to my home. I went to that meeting that [evening] again, all in or all out. And that was my first 12 step meeting. And I’d been a daily drinker for 20 years up to that point.
Wesley Paul (35:18):
Was life changing? This was hard at the beginning, obviously.
David Greer (35:22):
Oh, I mean, it took me probably five years to admit to anyone how fricking scared I was to go to that first meeting.
Wesley Paul (35:28):
Damn.
David Greer (35:31):
And anyways, it was a big meeting. There was probably 70 or 80 people there. Two young women came of the, I hung out at the back and tried to hide, and two members of the group came out, two young woman Frostine [and Esme], and I still remember them. I still remember them just coming out and how approachable they were and welcoming. And they welcomed me to the meeting, asked me if it was my first meeting, which people in 12 step recovery, you can kind of recognize someone who’s pretty new
(36:02):
Because we’re kind of jumping out of our skin. And eventually, about three or four weeks later, I made that what’s called a home group, which is a group you commit to go to every week and to be of service there. And that’s been my home group for 15 years and 10 months. And I was there a couple days ago, Tuesday at 8:30, and I sat next to two gentlemen who this week on Tuesday, I sat next to two gentlemen who 15 years and 10 months ago were taking a seat the night that I walked in for the first time the same time. And they remember coming in for the first time and they have been part of my sobriety over that whole time. Getting sober is the single biggest achievement of my life
Wesley Paul (36:57):
Personally and professionally, obviously.
David Greer (36:59):
Obviously mean. And the thing about alcoholism and addiction is that every morning I have to get up and I have to achieve again the biggest achievement of my life.
Wesley Paul (37:10):
It’s like you’re hitting the reset button every single day in a way,
David Greer (37:13):
Every day. That’s what we talk about. It’s the One Day at a Time program. But I have a whole set of habits and routines and prayers and journaling that I do every morning before I do anything else to keep me on track and remind me of what the number one thing for the day is, which is to stay sober. I mean, in some ways it simplified my life because every day I know what the number one thing is.
Wesley Paul (37:40):
It’s a goal, it’s a daily goal,
David Greer (37:42):
Boom. It’s daily. And I still will walk down a street and see, maybe go on holiday in Mexico and walk down the street and see a whole bunch of people drinking beer. And literally my brain is like, oh, we should go sit at a table and order one of those beers. Boy, that looks good. And I now catch that very fast,
Wesley Paul (38:07):
That trigger, right?
David Greer (38:09):
But I mean, even 15 years in, it still happens to me. And I’ve now trained my brain is, yeah, you’re going to go drink poison, you’re going to go sit at a bar and drink rat poison. How is that a good idea?
Wesley Paul (38:21):
Exactly, exactly.
David Greer (38:23):
But I just want,
Wesley Paul (38:24):
I’m assuming you’ve been able to transform that into your teachings as well as your approach when it comes to business planning and facilitating as well.
David Greer (38:33):
I specialize in working with entrepreneurs that are challenged with alcoholism and or addiction. And I have lots that don’t, but it’s just I can talk to business to entrepreneurs that are different level. And oftentimes in business, there’s networking events. There’s often a lot of events where social drinking is expected.
Wesley Paul (39:02):
Is it a cultural thing in entrepreneurship? For instance, you know how stockbrokers, I’m not sure if you’ve seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, right?
David Greer (39:13):
Again, there’s that stereotype, which I think
Wesley Paul (39:14):
Is right, that culture that made their own Coke. And is it more of a culture thing with entrepreneurship that maybe because you’re always driven, you’re always high speed and Uber trying to get to that goal that maybe you need that thing to take the edge off a little bit something, or
David Greer (39:33):
There’s that part of it. But also a lot of people want access to entrepreneurs, a lot of service providers. There’s often networking events for entrepreneurs. And I can tell you when you go to those events, generally the booze is free because people who want to sell services to the entrepreneur, they sponsor the event.
Now, it might be put on by the local technology association, but just, and if you go to galas and you’re an entrepreneur, again, there’s just so much booze. And in high-end sales, complicated sales situations, typically the CEO has to fly down and have a big dinner with the VP of finance and the boss’s boss, and along with all the people who are involved in the deal. There might be couple people from your company including you and five or 10 people from the company you’re trying to prospect or close the sale with. And I had one of my clients who’s not an alcoholic, but his business was that kind. And he came back from one of those and he said, everybody had a couple drinks before the dinner and then we had a bottle of wine each.
Wesley Paul (40:48):
Oh Man. Talk about not in the mood.
David Greer (40:49):
And he said, is that alcoholic? And I said, well, I don’t know if anyone at the table is an alcoholic, but I can tell you that by definitions of both the Canadian health authorities and the American health authorities, that’s alcoholic drinking,
Which would be for a man more than five drinks in a single session, and especially five drinks without taking a break with a non-alcoholic drink. In between.
Wesley Paul (41:15):
In between. Makes sense. Okay.
David Greer (41:18):
And yet for him, that’s total expectation. No. Right.
(41:25):
I mean he felt uncomfortable turning down the drink because it was so entrenched in this is how we business in this kind of, there’s lots of businesses where that’s true and there’s lots that’s not. But the thing I can bring to entrepreneurs is I can help coach them through what do you do in situations like that? How do you go to a networking event? I have three or four things that come out of 12 step recovery. They’re not things I’ve invented, but I can remind them if you go to a networking event and if you go to some like a gala with your spouse, have you talked to your spouse about an escape plan? What if you get overwhelmed and triggered? Are you going to just go in the car and drive home and leave your wife there five breaks and leave your wife there to take a taxi home? That’s a valid plan. But you want to make sure with your spouse ahead of time that that’s the plan. She’s okay with.
Wesley Paul (42:23):
Exactly.
David Greer (42:24):
Is your spouse going to support you? And if you get triggered, the two of you just say, oh, I have a headache, it’s just not working. I need to go home. And both of you leave. But it’s like whatever you do, make sure you’ve got an escape plan and hopefully you don’t get triggered. You have a good time, you’re there for the whole night. But if you have an escape plan, then if you do get triggered, then immediately what to do?
Wesley Paul (42:48):
What to do,
David Greer (42:49):
Because you pre-planned it ahead of time. And when everyone is gathering ahead of time and having drinks, make sure you have a drink in your hand, whether it’s water, whether it’s cranberry and soda, whatever, non-alcoholic drink, because people will come up and offer to, if you don’t have a drink, people, oh, let me get you a drink. Lemme get Yeah, right. You look a little dry over there, lemme go ahead and help you out. Right? Yeah, exactly. And they’re kind of well-meaning, or they’re alcoholics, and if you have a drink in your hand, it’s much less likely you’ll get asked.
Wesley Paul (43:25):
That makes sense.
David Greer (43:28):
I just always make sure I have a glass that’s got at least water in it and then I make sure it gets topped up. Then I don’t get asked. I mean, someone in recovery has to deal with this. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or not, it’s just my experience as entrepreneurs are more likely to run into these situations. And also if you were an alcoholic and built your business around Friday afternoon booze ups, and now you’re just getting sober, how
Wesley Paul (44:00):
Effective can you really be? Right.
David Greer (44:02):
Well, what do you do in that situation? And we’ll talk it through and some ideas and how much you want to share. But for your listeners, I guess more than anything else is just I want them to know that no matter what you’re struggling with in business, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s drugs, there is help. And my belief is it’s impossible for us to solve this alone. You need to reach out to someone else.
Wesley Paul (44:34):
Which I want to highlight something here, and I want your opinion because before you met got with Kevin, you’ve already had 20 years in business,
(44:45):
Alright? Even at that stage when you got under the mentorship of Kevin, I want to get your opinion on the importance of mentorship because I feel that’s another thing entrepreneurs really overlook is they’re either scared, afraid, or maybe stand in their own way when it comes to mentorship. So again, you could have easily went through 20 years and say, you know what? I know it all already. I got under my belt. I’ve already did a successful exit. I’ve cashed out, sailed the seas with my kids and my family. What do I need to get with a mentor? But it wasn’t until that life rocking moment you had with Kevin, you said, you know what? If I want your opinion, how important is mentorship when it comes into entrepreneurship as well?
David Greer (45:38):
I think no entrepreneurs should try and do it alone.
Wesley Paul (45:41):
Wow.
David Greer (45:42):
And my experience is entrepreneurs, part of the personality you need in order to go start a business, you got to be half crazy. Don’t say that you’re scaring everybody well, like crazy, like a fox, right? Okay. You’re different. And most of us are like self-powered, why we started a business, which the flip side of that is we’re terrible at asking for help.
Wesley Paul (46:14):
We’re
David Greer (46:15):
Really bad.
Wesley Paul (46:16):
Your own Superman, right? Pretty Much. Right?
David Greer (46:18):
Exactly. And my experience is that the number one thing in the way of the growth of a business is the entrepreneur. The business grows as fast as the entrepreneur, him or herself is able to grow themselves emotionally, mentally, knowledge wise. And there’s a variety of ways you can grow. But one of the easiest ways is to start off with a mentor who’s been there, done that ahead of you and actually listen to them. There’s actually two parts to that.
Wesley Paul (46:52):
There’s two point, right? The mentor, but listen to them as well too. Right? There you go.
David Greer (46:56):
And be willing to grow and be willing. I worked with Kevin for nine years. I was a wet behind the years entrepreneur compared to what I learned after nine years with Kevin. And also looking at 300 different business plans as an Angel and getting involved in these Angel businesses and startups. And I mean, I had a lot to learn and I still learn. I still learn from my clients today.
Wesley Paul (47:25):
You’re always evolving. And that’s why I like you really emphasizing and you highlight that because it doesn’t matter where you at in entrepreneurship, whether you’re at year one or 100, you always have to evolve and grow with as being an entrepreneur, right?
David Greer (47:41):
Yes, I believe you do. And there’s always more to learn,
Wesley Paul (47:46):
Always, right? The classroom never ends in other words, right?
David Greer (47:50):
Yes, correct.
Wesley Paul (47:52):
Okay. Which now I want to, as we’re getting ready to wrap up the show, if you could give the audience some real gems and some value in everything, what is your strongest recommendation for, although I know you deal more with entrepreneurs that are ready to scale their business, you really don’t deal with the startups and the bootstrap or you really get them to that next phase. So for those that are ready to go to that next phase, what are the initial steps or what are the best advice you would give to an entrepreneur ready to get to that next level?
David Greer (48:38):
One? I’ve already, I mean, mostly things I’ve talked about,
Wesley Paul (48:41):
Right?
David Greer (48:41):
In coaching, we know that if you write down your goals, you have a 50% higher probability of achieving them, even if you never look at them again.
Wesley Paul (48:52):
So just by writing them down, that’s half the battle. You’re pretty,
David Greer (48:55):
That’s half. And if you share them with someone else, then that goes to like 65%.
Wesley Paul (49:03):
Writing it down and sharing it with someone is a bulk of what it is right there.
David Greer (49:09):
That already moves you way ahead.
Wesley Paul (49:15):
Interesting. Very Interesting.
David Greer (49:15):
So rather than just have it in your head, I am a big believer in writing it down, and I’m a big believer in no matter which stage of your business is you’ve got to build up your financial literacy. I find that’s a big gap for a lot of my clients. And you’ve got to get someone or build your ability to build a spreadsheet that at a high level models your business,
Sell this many units for this much money. This is going to be my total revenue. This is going to be what it costs to produce each the service or the good, whatever it is. And you have a financial model. And then as you roll it out, you actually measure your actual financials against what you put in the model. You see what’s working and what’s not,
Wesley Paul (50:07):
What’s not, right? Okay.
David Greer (50:08):
That also is a fundamental part of the writing down piece. You write down these, again, short list of goals, where you want to go in three years, the markets that you’re going to serve and to do all of this. I think a lot of us who’ve been around the block a bit, and a lot of us in coaching, we talk about to be working in the business or working on the business, on the business when we’re in our nose is pressed so hard into the tree that we can’t even tell you what kind of bark is causing us. And we take one step back, at least we might be able to tell you the tree, and if we took 30 steps back, maybe we could tell you a little bit about the forest.
Wesley Paul (50:52):
We’re in the forest, right? Makes sense.
David Greer (50:54):
And we get so much into the next fire and it’s part of what that adrenaline hit from all of that and solving that problem. That’s a lot of what makes this go. It takes a very conscious effort to do the step back. And as I’ve suggested in this call and our interview today, that I think that pulse point should be at least once a quarter. Once a quarter, not
Wesley Paul (51:23):
Once per year, not two, three years, once every quarter, four
David Greer (51:27):
Times once every quarter. And even if it’s, you go to a coffee shop and you dust off the plan that you wrote down three months ago and you spend a couple hours and you strategically think about your business and what it is you want to achieve for the next quarter, and then as you grow and you have other team members, I think it’s important you try and involve them because your collective wisdom is probably better than your individual wisdom,
Wesley Paul (51:50):
Obviously, right? That’s where it goes into sharing it with someone else, in other words, well too,
David Greer (51:56):
Right? Yeah. And once you do start having employees, then I think it’s part of the thing of making this successful is that you actually share those goals with them so they know where you’re going and you stick to them. You stick to them for at least a quarter, right? Exactly. Those are overreaching, I think. And then thirdly, don’t do it alone. Find someone else. Write it down, have a financial model and some financial literacy once a quarter step out of the business so you can see the bigger picture you’re doing and try and involve someone else in helping you to be a better entrepreneur. Those are my four big suggestions for people who were starting new businesses or getting their business off the ground.
Wesley Paul (52:45):
Awesome. And which I definitely agree with you on the last point, because I always have this saying, you can make a million dollars for yourself. You can’t make it by yourself. You’re going to,
(52:57):
So even the most hyper successful individuals from where you want to go to Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison, they all was able to galvanize, inspire, and collectively build a team in order for them to reach the goal. And everybody has to be aligned with that vision. It’s the main, one person can be in charge of the vision, but you still need the team to be able to help implement it and build it as well too. But Coach David, man, this has been an honor. You have brought a lot of jam and a lot of value to our viewers here. Again, it’s not often I’m able to have a guest as someone with your expertise, wisdom, and experience, man, you have definitely brought a lot to the table. So before we wrap up the show, is there anything that you got up and coming for 2025 you want to share with the audience? I know you have a book if you want to highlight everything as well,
David Greer (53:58):
I’ll highlight something else. If people want to contact me, my website’s the easiest way coachdjgreer.com, so coach D as in David, J as in James Greer.com. The top left corner of every page on my website has my email and my phone number. Reach out and I want your listeners to know that I have an offer of one free hour of coaching to anyone who is feeling stuck, wants help in their business. Take me up on my offer and just again, visit the website and reach out to me. Give me a call, send me, it’s probably easier to send me an email and we’ll set that up.
Wesley Paul (54:44):
Awesome. Awesome guys. I’m definitely going to include the link in the description guys. If you’re looking to scale your business, obviously if you’ve stayed to this part of the show, you’ve already heard David’s story. You know the experience he has. He usually don’t even deal with startup businesses. He deals with businesses that are ready to take to the next level. But if you’re looking to take your business to the next level, if you prepared to do so, I highly encourage you to take advantage of his offer. He charges quite a penny to be able to get that one hour mentorship. To him providing that gem, I want to thank you for providing that to the audience. I hope 2025 is a year of another level of growth for you, brother, and I’m hoping we can do this again as well too. I had a great time. I hope you had a great time as
David Greer (55:37):
Well. I had a great time. Thanks so much for having me here, Wesley.
Wesley Paul (55:41):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well listen guys, thanks for tapping in. Again, you can check out an episode every Tuesday and Friday. It also, guys, holidays are right around the corner. I do want to encourage everybody to be safe. Please, please stay consistent on your entrepreneurship journey. And again, last but not least, tap in with Coach David Greer here so he can help you get to the next level. Guys, have a blessed day. Smiles are free. Give him away. Have a blessed day, and we going to catch you on the flip side. Take care guys. Bye-bye. Peace Blueprint, blueprint,
Announcer (56:17):
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