Thom Stimpel and Tom Fleury are successful entrepreneurs that host The Entrepreneurs’ Guild podcast. Listen as the three of us discuss these topics:
- How I became an entrepreneur.
- How for years I never thought of myself that way.
- Hiring my own coach and the impact he had on me, including coaching me to 12-step recovery when I admitted I had a drinking problem.
- Why I became a coach and how I approach coaching with new clients.
- Using listening skills and suspending judgment to work with people from their point of view and not yours.
Give our interview a listen:
https://entrepreneursguild.libsyn.com/website/the-entrepreneurs-guild-ep-098-with-david-greer
Are you feeling stuck in your business? Are you an entrepreneur who deals with alcohol or drug issues? I specialize in helping entrepreneurs with business and/or addiction issues. My own experience is that I had to realize that I couldn’t do it any more on my own. If that’s you, please Contact Me or call me at +1 (604) 721-5732. I’ve been there and no what it’s like to run a business fueled by substances and how to run a business in recovery. Call today.
Audio
Transcript
Thom Stimpel:
Greetings and welcome to the Entrepreneurs Guild. My name is Thom Stimpel. I’m your host. And I’m joined today by my co-host, Tom Fleury.
Tom Fleury:
How you doing, Tom? Glad to be here.
Thom Stimpel:
Great to have you here, as always. And in the spotlight today is David J. Greer. David is an entrepreneurial coach, author and facilitator. He is the catalyst who gets you to fully live your dreams now. Spend one hour reading his book, Wind in Your Sales, attend a one hour talk with him, or get one hour of one-to-one coaching, and you’ll have three concrete action items that will shift and accelerate your business within 90 days. David also specializes in working with entrepreneurs challenged with alcoholism or addiction. He and his wife Karalee are committed to each other and their three children, spending time supporting them in the many ways and variety of activities they’re involved with. They live in Vancouver, Connecticut. Vancouver, Connecticut. I’m all right. Vancouver, Canada’s, the other C.
David Greer:
The other Connecticut.
Thanks for the intro, Thom.
Thom Stimpel:
You’re welcome. So Dave, it’s great to have you here. We’d like to start the program by asking the same question, and that is when were you very first smitten by the entrepreneurial bug?
David Greer:
Well, when I was in grade eight or nine, I learned octal arithmetic and I got taken of a tour of the information technology area of the provincial government of Alberta. I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, which is the provincial capital. And I knew I wanted to combine computers and business from then on.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah, interesting.
David Greer:
I just had this vision and ended up in Vancouver. I got my computer science degree from the University of British Columbia, and I had a part-time job with the largest cable supplier, TV cable supplier, which was using a very modern, one of the newest minicomputers in the world to run their operations. And there I met what would later become my partner, Bob Green, who specialized in this computer platform. And before I graduated, he ended up hiring me as the first employee after he and his wife who were the founders.
And I just thought I was a computer programmer. But as a requirement of my getting the job, I had to submit an abstract to the Hewlett Packard International User Group convention, which was accepted, and I had to write my first paper. And I took a week off of course here at UBC to fly to San Jose where I gave my first technical talk. And I was standing on the San Jose convention floor telling a bunch of computer geeks about this cool stuff and what it could do for them. And later, I learned that’s the essence of marketing and sales.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah.
David Greer:
I’m truly an accidental entrepreneur. I mean, I stayed with Robelle for 20 years. I ended up, Robelle is named for Robert and Annabelle, that’s the two members. Ten years in, I bought out Annabelle, became partners with Bob, and towards the end of my tenure there, I brought in some outside consultants. And if I flew to England to go give a talk on your customs form, it said, what do you do? And I’d write computer programmer, like that’s still my mental model. I brought these outsiders in and I said, what are you? And I’m a computer programmer and they’d like symbolically hold up this card in the mirror saying, no, entrepreneur. And then I’d say, no, no, you don’t get it. I’m a computer programmer. Entrepreneur.
I had actually been an entrepreneur for decades, but didn’t really think of myself as that. Even though I was just this computer geek who was really good at what he does. And my former partner and I in this particular market space, we were world experts. Our strategy was we wrote a new paper each every year and traveled the globe giving presentations to technical and managerial audiences to create belief in this small Canadian based obscure software company you were going to trust your whole business to.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah.
David Greer:
And it worked. And a lot of people trusted us.
Thom Stimpel:
That’s good. That’s a good thing.
David Greer:
That’s my principal entrepreneur journey. And then we took a break after I sold out. Bob and I had a major disagreement about the future of the company and we solved it by him buying me out. I’m in, it’s 2001, I’m not even noticing the .com meltdown. Not a good time to be trying to do new things in tech. Someone’s smarter than me, suggested I do something completely different. My wife and I commissioned a sailboat in the south of France and took our three kids and homeschooled them while sailing more than 5,000 nautical miles in the Mediterranean.
Thom Stimpel:
Wow. Nice.
David Greer:
Over a two year period. Really one of the most important events of our life and a legacy we still draw from. And I’ve been an angel investor. I’ve been a senior executive working one-on-one with entrepreneur friends of mine. And then since 2015, I’ve been an entrepreneurial coach.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah, that’s great.
David Greer:
And had various businesses, brought the boat back from Europe. Ran it as a charter business. When you become a business person, you don’t really think about it. Let’s start another business. Yeah. Okay, I know how to do this. I’ve done this before.
Tom Fleury:
So David, from a real technical background, and then you started to get the toes into the entrepreneurial pool, how’d you get to become a coach. How did that develop?
David Greer:
I think you’ve got to go back to my time at Robelle where we engendered a culture and a development of people. I’ve always been very people oriented. I just didn’t necessarily realize it. Also, even though I was this deeply technical person, by the time I was 24 or 25. I joined Robelle when I was 22, and by the time I was 24 or 25, I was probably at a trade show giving 80% of the demos because I was really good at listening to people and getting them to describe to me their problems for four or five minutes. And then we had, think of Microsoft Word. It’s a tool that can apply to any business. We had two product lines that were a bit like that. It didn’t matter what your actual business was, if you used this computing platform, potentially we were a solution. But I’d listened for five minutes and then I’d show you 5% of the product that applied just to you. And This ability to listen, to respond appropriately, not make it all about me, although I was pretty egotistical back then, I’ve got a little better over the years.
These were all part of the path to becoming a coach. But ultimately in 2007, I was at a conference with a fellow, Vern Harnish, he’s famous for, called the Rockefeller Habits and something called the one-page strategic plan.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah.
David Greer:
And I was at a training event for him with one of my angel investment young CEOs. And at the back of the room were two certified scaling up coaches. And I talked to both of them and one of them made me more uncomfortable than I had been in half a dozen years.
Thom Stimpel:
Really?
David Greer:
I had tears in the corner of my eyes just from two minutes of him asking me some questions. And his card sat next to my phone for three weeks, and the phone must have weighed at least 10,000 pounds.
Thom Stimpel:
As most phones do.
David Greer:
As most phones do. And then Kevin called me and he said, “Hey, I thought there was really a little spark that day when we had our conversation and do you want to talk about working together?” And I said, yes.
On my 50th birthday, August 9th, 2007, I had my first coaching session with Kevin. And at that time to work with Kevin, your first coaching session was two eight hour days. He’s my kind of guy. He’s like, you’re all in or all out. There’s no halfway point. And we started working together and slowly we removed all the clutter from the table and kind of everything. Eighteen months later, it’s like the elephant in the room was on the table. And on January 26th, 2009, I sent an email message to Kevin about 10:30 at night. I finished my last beer and I said, Kevin, the topic for tomorrow’s coaching call is my drinking. And Tuesday, January 27th, 2009, we had that conversation and Kevin coached me to go to my first AA meeting.
Thom Stimpel:
Interesting.
David Greer:
It turns out that at his summer place down in Washington State is kind of a group communal place where there’s like group fireplaces and stuff. And for years, he’d been sitting around the fireplace talking to someone that had 20 or 30 years in AA. Kevin didn’t have a problem, but he talked to someone who did and who knew what the solution was. When Kevin was fully prepared for what to do.
And I committed, that was Tuesday. I committed to go to a meeting by Friday. And then being the overachiever I am, I had a networking event downtown that entered at 8:00. And I went online and I looked up the meeting directory and lo and behold, literally on the road I would be driving on to go home, half a block off that road was a meeting at 8:30. And That night I went to my first meeting, which is the Kitsilano group meeting, and I’ve been going to that meeting every Tuesday that I’m in town since January 27th, 2009. It’s still my home group. I’m still part of that group. And God willing and one day at a time, I’ll take my 14 year cake in the first Tuesday of February.
Thom Stimpel:
Well, congratulations. Yeah, that’s great.
Tom Fleury:
Congratulations for your achievement too. Congratulations. And thank you seriously for sharing that because I know how difficult it’s for many people to do that. I had a client when I first met her, I didn’t realize it, but she had been an AA for 15 years. She didn’t tell me until two years later when she celebrated her 17th. She religiously goes back and contributes and helps others, which obviously helps themself. I think that’s great.
Because it was interesting, as you were going down that path and I had no idea you were going down that path. I’m going, Hey, we were going to ask you a bunch of other questions. Boy, you’re a pretty successful guy, I don’t think you really had any issues. And then all of a sudden, whoa, well, there’s one.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah.
David Greer:
Well, and just my struggle as an angel investor and being a director, it was completely unfulfilling. That’s what Kevin keyed off of was I had so much to offer and yet I couldn’t find anyone who wanted my help That was a real struggle.
I didn’t totally answer your question, why did I become a coach. When I came out of my last executive gig in 2014, in my mid fifties. I’d worked as hard as I’ve ever worked in my life and I just made the decision, I don’t need to work hard and prove it to anyone again. There was that piece. And then the other piece was I wanted to give to other entrepreneurs the gifts that Kevin had given to me. And that was kind of the impetus to start my coaching practice. And then I did do coach training with CTI, which also was really instrumental and really helped my personal growth. And then I’d done a lot of work with the oone-page strategic plan, and I’ve used it internally in companies and I’d done some coaching around it. And I also started a facilitation practice, which is all around the Rockefeller Habits and the oone-page plan.
Tom Fleury:
Is most of your practice use of, I’ll call them preexisting tools and things that you’ve learned or have you woven some, let’s say David Greer specifics and sort of learnings into that?
David Greer:
I think like any coach, I have a really big toolkit and that toolkit is things I’ve learned from others, things I’ve learned from myself. I’m sure I combine lots of them together based on my experience, strength, and hope. What I do is, I do a lot of one-on-one coaching and some of them want, like coach Kevin, he has a great book, Your Oxygen Mask First, and he has his master plan, which has a lot of boxes on it. You’ve got to be really committed if you want to use his plan. I mean, it looks intimidating. You can actually do it in a couple hours. So for some of my clients, I do that. For other clients, I just go with really simplified kind of plan. Can you just tell me one thing you want for yourself, for your life and your business this year?
Tom Fleury:
Yeah.
David Greer:
I meet the client where they’re at, and then I suggest the tools and whatever to go work on that seems to fit where they’re at. And again, I’m a coach now, It’s always up to the client. Do you want to work on a plan for 2023? No. Okay. Next. What do you want to do? Right?
Tom Fleury:
You know what? Second round of applause to you. Because I’ve also worked with a lot of coaches, a lot of first starters, to speak, and they have a model and they voice that upon everyone because you got to do it this way. And you’re one of the first people that Thom and I have met, not only on the show, but in person and then the people we help that actually takes that approach, which is, whoa, you know what? You’re not going to do it that way. So which way do you want to do it? Or what do you want to do? And if you can get them to do what they want to do and obviously steer them in the right direction, it’s amazing how far they can go. I think that’s a great model you have.
David Greer:
It’s fascinating. Coach Kevin and the other coach whose name I can’t remember right now that I met at that Verne Harsh event in 2007. They both told me, we’re going to suggest things, but it’s your life and your business and you’re going to choose what to do. And it’s been our experience that typically ends up in some big potholes, like you still can do whatever you want to do. And if you fall in a big pothole, we’re here to help you clean it up after.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah. Yeah.
David Greer:
Right? We’re in your corner, either way. And I do offer my experience and suggest that in my experience, this is kind of what happens when you try those sort of things and your experience may be different.
Tom Fleury:
I’ve seen commercials that say that.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah. Right.
David Greer:
So again, it’s your life. I mean, the thing that I’m a bit prescriptive about is my intake. I don’t coach a client without first doing a one-hour coaching call. And some people after an hour, I don’t offer to coach them. I’m like, do you know the next thing you need to do? Right? And it’s like, because I don’t think I can work with them.
Tom Fleury:
Yeah. Good point.
David Greer:
And then I have an intake form which includes, like I want to see at least one goal for six months, 12 months and 18 months. And then I ask some questions, like 12 months from now when you look back, how will you know that you made a good decision by hiring a coach. Not just me. These are open-ended questions. What’s the one thing you want in a coach? What’s the one thing you don’t want in a coach? And I would say 25% of the time I send my intake form, which is only two pages long, and they don’t turn it back. Right? And so, okay, you’re not ready to be coached.
Tom Fleury:
Solved that problem.
David Greer:
Yeah. Well, it’s you’re not ready to be coached. And I also tell people, “Hey, go have coaching sessions with four or five coaches. I only want to be your coach if you really think that there’s a fit and you really want me to be your coach.” I’m not just chasing business. I really truly in my heart of hearts want to find the right people that I can help.
Tom Fleury:
Oh, that’s a great story. Thanks, David. Because a lot of people who were in, let’s say our field, small business advisors, coaching, etcetera, a lot of them don’t look at it that way. They’re pressing for business and you got to do it this way or it’s not going to work. And that’s unfortunate because a lot of people could be very easily and readily helped if they would just exchange some really basic information and allow things to go where they should go and not where someone one side or the other wants them to go.
David Greer:
Yeah.
Thom Stimpel:
Well, just like everyone learns differently, everyone makes decisions differently. So you have to tailor the approach you take to the individuals you’re dealing with. And when you do that, obviously they’re much more susceptible to listening to what you have to say as well. So. Yeah.
David Greer:
One other thing I insist on for anyone who wants to become my client is that they do Strength Finders 2.0 and that identifies your top five strengths out of this book’s 40 some odd strengths. And usually early on one of the coaching sessions I go over those, at least the top three. And for most of us, those strengths get us very far in life, but we tend to bring it into everything. I’ve got a couple clients where competitiveness is their number one strength. That’s fantastic. And do you want to compete with your wife? Seriously. And I point that out to them and they’re like, you can actually see the light bulb or hear the light bulb on the phone kind of going off that, oh, it’s just their default. It is their strength.
So every single thing in their life, they’re competitive about. And any strengths taken to the Nth degree turns around and bites us and is a weakness. So some of the insight and the personal growth is saying, okay, there is my strength, but is there a time when it’s not helping me?
Thom Stimpel:
Right. Good point.
Tom Fleury:
Hey, David, we only have a couple minutes left. And normally I ask a certain last question, but because you’ve shared so much with us today, the last question is sort of boring, but I think coming from you, it’s going to be very important to our listeners. And that is what sage piece of advice, one piece, would you give to a new entrepreneur given what’s going on today?
David Greer:
You don’t have to learn it all yourself.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah, good.
Tom Fleury:
Well said. And that was succinct.
David Greer:
Yeah.
Tom Fleury:
I mean, that’s a good point.
David Greer:
And a lot of entrepreneurs new or old are not open to help.
Tom Fleury:
Yeah, good point.
David Greer:
It’s part of what makes us entrepreneurs. If we weren’t so driven then we wouldn’t be successful. But again, it’s like that’s one of those double edged strengths. We’re super hyper driven, but it really makes it hard to get help. And there are a lot of people who will mentor for free. A lot of business owners who got extra time, they like helping young entrepreneurs. I think when you pay for it like through a professional relation relationship with someone like me, I think you actually take it more seriously.
Tom Fleury:
Totally agree. Yep.
David Greer:
Right.
Tom Fleury:
Absolutely.
David Greer:
But you don’t have to, and there’s help out there. I guess that’s the other thing to know is not only ask for help, but know that it is out there.
Tom Fleury:
Oh, great. What’s the best way for people to get ahold of you if they’re interested in your help?
David Greer:
My website, coachdjgreer.com. And it’s coach, D as in David, J as in James, greer.com. And my phone number and the email address is right there on every single page. Text me, call me, fill out the contact form. My thing is let’s start a conversation and we’ll see where it goes.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah.
David Greer:
No obligation. Well, let’s just start the conversation.
Thom Stimpel:
Yeah, it’s the best way to get to know someone and get comfortable with working with them or not, as you said before.
David Greer:
Well, yeah. Exactly.
Thom Stimpel:
Definitely. Well, David, thanks for being on the program today. This has really been good. Very interesting.
Tom Fleury:
Totally agree.
Thom Stimpel:
And I greatly appreciate your focus and the method you use and the approach you use. It’s brilliant, very good, very strong.
David Greer:
Thanks so much.
Thom Stimpel:
We also want to thank our listeners today and remind you to like us on whatever media you use to listen to our program. Make sure and tell your friends and business contacts about the program too. We invite you to go to our website, which is www.flawlesslaunch.com. There you can click on the podcast button and you can see dozens and dozens and dozens of other programs very similar to this, where we have interviewed successful entrepreneurs, to hear stories about their path, to get their advice and feedback on matters that will help your business thrive. And you can also join the Entrepreneurs Guild, which is a Facebook community of entrepreneurs who gather together to ask questions, get answers, share their expertise. Tom and I use it as a platform to send out blogs and interesting articles and information, plus to keep people up to speed on who we’re having on this program.
And later this year, we’ll be talking about some programs that we’re launching, some training programs we’re launching that’ll be very interesting, primarily to aspiring entrepreneurs. So again, that’s at www.flawlesslaunch.com.
Thanks again for listening today. And remember, if you want your business to thrive, so do we.
