210: Todd Palmer — The Power of Asking for Help

Well, I imagine if you're like most people, you're really busy trying to figure out how to navigate this time. What to do, where to pivot, where to evolve, how to deal with the lack of business or the too much business. But in a time of change, there's things to do. And if you're a listener to this show, you're thinking about what tools to use and what new approaches and what new way of thinking about your business and your world. But do you know what to do with yourself? Are you thinking about and looking in the mirror and thinking about how you need to evolve and what the change is with you? This show is all about that. We're talking with an advisor and a coach here who works with people on their personal evolution in a time of they work with leaders. So listen in as we talk with Todd Palmer about the work on you that and how it impacts the business. This show is all about how to scale and grow your business no matter what the economy looks like, no matter what industry or what part of the world you're in. You can also find hundreds of other episodes on leadership and Scaling up at our website, scalingcoach.com our website also has downloads of all the tools that we talk about and we'll even send you a free copy of the international best selling book Scaling up right there@scalingcoach.com if you just pay the shipping and handling. Also in this time, we are doing workshops online on how to move from surviving to thriving, how to lead the recovery that we're going through. So go to scalingcoach.com, find out about our next workshop, get a copy of the book and find all the back episodes. Listen in now to this week's episode. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach, Bill Gallagher. So joining me now is Todd Palme. Guys, Todd is an entrepreneur and an advisor and he's gonna tell the story of how he was struggling with massive debt and how he hired a coach and grew and evolved and all that made the inc List a number of times. And he wrote a book and today he advises folks. And I think what's really great is you're gonna talk about the kind of the whole inside out world of coaching that I often see people struggle with. It's like we've got all these tools and that kind of thing. And yet then there's the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle, right? The person in your seat, you know.

Bill, that's a great way to Put it looking back, I was definitely the bottleneck in the top of my business bottle. And it was, I was the greatest cause and the greatest problems within my business. And thankfully, because I did hire a coach, I got unstuck and I was able to turn things around.

Yeah. Todd's also written a book about the job search process, really for the job searcher, how to find and land a great job. And with record unemployment, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of demand and interest in that as people start to get out of their homes and businesses start to pull themselves back up again. As we get into the core idea here, I think it'd be really useful for you to talk about your background, the evolution. Where did you begin, begin to be an entrepreneur or realize that you are afflicted with this disease and how has it progressed, like over time? And guys, you should know that Todd learned the scaling up framework originally we talked about as the Rockefeller habits back in the old Birthing of Giants program with Vern way back in the day. So he's been around our world for a long time and he does a particular area of advisory. But Todd, tell us your background.

Well, Bill, you know, and I have, I feel like I've been around forever even though I try to consider myself a young person. But yeah, going back to the Birthing of Giants days with Vern and all the wonderful things that I learned and being around such an amazing group of entrepreneurs that, you know, those conversations in those hallways really took me back to essentially when I was 5 years old and how I realized at 5 years old that the only person I could rely upon myself or rely upon in the world was myself. Which made entrepreneurship a very clear path for me to take as a career. So when I was five years old, my father passed away at a very early age. Suddenly my mom was my stay at home caregiver. She went to work, my older brother got an athletic scholarship, went off to university out of state. And my older sister was in the process of getting married, planning her wedding when my dad passed away. She followed through and moved out of state as well. So within about a 90 day period, all of my caregivers were gone. And you know, I think of it as both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was I became very self reliant. I became my own entertainment. And as an entrepreneur I realized that hey, I can do anything if I put my mind to it because it worked for me when I was a kid. The flip side is my business started to grow and scale up by being so self reliant, my business got very paralyzed. But again, as you talked about, I was the bottleneck at the top of the bottle. My main business that I started back in the late 90s was a staffing company. And our pivot was we wanted to solve problems in the metro trade area that other staffing companies weren't solving because at the time the world was at full employment. It was about 3 1/2% unemployment. There were a lot more jobs than there were people. And the people during the late 90s were, could not get to the jobs they needed to get to out in the suburbs because we didn't have public transportation in Detroit. So I started a staffing company that provided people options to get to work. We own vans, we would drive people to and from locations, drop them off and it became very much a headcount type of business. We would run 24, seven, we had depots to deliver people. And that model worked for a while. Ended up hiring, you know, having three locations, hiring a bunch of people. I thought I was really doing the right things because I was chasing the revenue number, I wasn't chasing the profit number. And I learned quickly after going to birthing of giants that maybe I was chasing the wrong number by that point. Flash forward nine years in, you know, I'd gotten the business into quite a bad shape because I didn't have the financial literacy that I needed to be successful because I always relied upon myself going back to childhood. So I was terrible at asking for help. I didn't surround myself with the proper advisors to help me get an understanding and a flavor for what I was missing. In nine years in I got $600,000 into debt. I was, yeah, as I was really shocked because I didn't know because I was the top line was always growing, but our days outstanding were getting longer and longer because during that frame so many companies were treating staffing companies like their bank.

You know, it's funny you talk about it. So if you're a founder, owner, operator, bootstrap kind of a person, and no matter what stage you got your business into at where you're at right now, there can be a mindset that's common that limits it somewhat by the resources and the perspective. Like you can go about things being a little too self reliant. By the same token, you would think then that somebody starts from an architect mindset or a corporate background, putting pieces together and that kind of thing, raising outside money and that might be a little bit better. But sometimes they make mistakes of waste and inefficiency by just throwing stuff at that because they have, they don't have to roll up their sleeves and do things so they don't fully appreciate the problems. And that definitely does happen. But there is a place in between where, where we learn either that that person learns to be scrappy or the entrepreneur learns to scale and work on the business and something shifts. Right. But there you are, you're substantially in debt, you're very self reliant, you're doing stuff, you've worked on bank finance, but now you're in trouble.

Yeah, I really was. I was factoring my receivables. So my bank owned me. I was two months away from running out of all of my money and I kept thinking, what am I doing wrong? And my imposter syndrome and the itty bitty negative committee in my head was really playing games with me and I didn't know where to go and I didn't know who to ask. So finally I hired a coach and I reached out into the staffing industry. I hired a staffing industry veteran who had grown and scaled staffing companies and he took a shot on me and I paid for him literally on a credit card because I didn't have the money to pay for him. But, but my self reliance was so strong that I just, I couldn't quit and I couldn't fail. And I'm having this conversation with my then 10, 11 year old son. You know, I was a single dad at the time, so I'm putting my family at risk. I mean, the pressure's mounting, the negativity's mounting. And my son says to me, well, why don't you just file bankruptcy? I heard from my buddy's dad that that's what you can do. I said, because I told you that you can't quit anything you start until you've done everything possible to be successful. So I'm hiring this coach because this is kind of my last ditch effort before I get there because I really, I owe this bank money. They trusted me, my vendors trusted me. I go, people are going to trust us through life. We can't let them down. So in a lot of ways it was anchoring in my parenting as well as reaching out to help that really helped me turn that business around.

Yeah, it's interesting that asking for help I think is really hard for, for all of us at some point in some area of life. Right?

Well, for me it was. I had been doing everything by myself and I played baseball. It was kind of an Individualistic team sport. And it always had served me well because by not relying upon other people going back to childhood, they couldn't abandon me, they couldn't leave me. And I quickly realized once I did hire a coach, oh my gosh, how much I really could benefit from that kind of assistance. And we took a look at the numbers. He said, hey, I think there's a way out of this debt. It's going to take a long time, but let's start working on it. Let's start working on your people issues because you got some massive people problems. Well, I had massive people problems because I wasn't dealing with the people because I was so immersed in my self pity, in my imposter syndrome that I wouldn't go into work for a week or two. So I was again going back to your original statement. I was the problem in the organization. He called me out on it in a very kind way. We realized that needed to make staff changes, let the entire company go in one day, freed up the cash, pulled the ship out of the Merc and we then started learning to hire things like how to hire people, replace them. Hire for DNA, not for resume. Don't have to just hire people who have staffing industry experience. Go after a different segment of the marketplace, get very clear on our pricing, look at our days outstanding. Stop being the bank. So all those different pieces that I know you talk about as a scaling up coach all came into play that helped me turn that business around.

It's funny, you know, that business of I've worked with a couple staffing companies who struggled with hiring well and hiring smart. They were so used to filling jobs for other people, which is really just about a search criteria and going out and finding and getting the successful candidate in front of them. But the ideas of designing a job and thinking about what the nature of the job is, is a different skill set in, in work, in working on your own business. So maybe once you have that you could fill it. Although sometimes in filling your own business, you are not used to filling that particular role. If you are filling a labor a little bit more manual labor, blue collar, gray collar jobs and then you have very white collar and the other, you might not have the right skill set and somebody who says nice things sounds right to you. Right. But that's different than designing the job, thinking about the different roles and the different KPIs, that kind of thing.

Absolutely. I, you know, it looked at the roles. I also looked at our core values as an organization. We went through that exercise and we recognized that for our clients we figured out a tipping point in the manufacturing sector where there's an increased demand and a diminished supply of skilled trades professionals around the United States. You know, welding, cnc, machining, plant management, those guys were all getting more, they're more from that generation of baby boomers. And they were leaving the workforce then as they are now. We can figure out how to get that inflection point, figure out the key next generation of workforce and we own that workforce, we relationship with that workforce. We can then, then charge more, get paid quicker and get out of this debt situation. But I couldn't do that with people who came from the recruiting or HR space because they're already pre programmed. So what we did instead is we came up with a list of here's our core values. We need to hire against these core values. We need to get people who are good people. We can teach them to be good recruiters, but we can't teach them to match our core values. So we came up with diagnostics again, higher for DNA, not, not for resume. My number one producer came from the medical space. My number two producer came from Olive Garden of all places. But I took chances on these people based upon again who they were and their core values which again for me just changed everything that we did.

Yeah, it's funny, I obviously know a lot about core values. I've used core values to run and grow companies. But I make mistakes with core values all the time. And even after all years of doing that stuff as a coach, I recently hired someone a couple of years ago. I hired, hired someone who didn't have one of our top core values. It all sounded good. I shared the core values, but I didn't test and inspect them in the ways I'd gotten casual and complacent about it. And our number one core value is courageous authenticity. Right. Sharing yourself, being open, telling the real truth about what's going on. It's not normal or common that people do that and not everybody's going to do. I don't expect every employee to do it in the same way that I do it, which is really developed over a lot of time and that kind of thing to, to really be open, but to have a capacity anyway. I hired somebody who didn't. I hired somebody who was a bit of a perfectionist. Always trying to put on the good face and put it forward and that kind of thing. And, and then when that individual failed in that role and essentially said I'm out of here, it like was really abrupt. It Just, it finally kind of came up and my wife is like, well, I could have told you that. Just the way that person, you know, did their makeup. Like you could tell that they didn't have your.

The wives always know, don't they?

What's that?

So the wives always know, don't they?

Your wife, your mom, your husband. Like our partners, the people closest to us often know us better because they can see what we can't see. We're always a little bit delusional. Right. You look at yourself just a little bit of a different way and you still think you're that cool young guy who played baseball and like that, but you're not. You're like older and, and you're hopefully wiser and lots of things like that, but you're just not. Your kids see that you're like a middle aged guy.

Yeah, it's, it's one of those situations and it's, it's important, I think, for people listening today to recognize, you know, that it's, it's every, for me, every part of business, whether it's this cash, the strategy, the execution of the staff, it's all controlled by people. Whether it's leaders like you and I who are at the top of the organization, every, every decision is a people driven decision. Even when we're looking at, you know, the KPIs that are put in place for the team, we would modify those, we would try those, we would give people flexibility and freedom within the framework of the KPI to try some different things. And we had some people. The best idea I had for a decade came from an intern who was with me for four months because he loved the fact that every day he could try something new. And it was part of our fail forward. Fail forward was one of our core values and he embraced it on a daily basis, but came up with different quicker ways to do things. So I think for me it was always about how do I work with the people where they are, they have the right DNA. We would measure against where the organization was going. And like we talk about as coaches, the core value only really matters if you're willing to hire and fire by it and if you're not. And I've been there too, where I've kept people too long, where I've hired. I do a speech where I talk about people hiring out of desperation just because it's on someone's to do list, which is the worst way to hire somebody. So yeah, I can empathize and sympathize where people have Been. And the great thing is, I think people like you and I are testaments of, you know, you can change, you can evolve, and, you know, old dogs can learn new tricks.

Yeah. So true. And I think that that revel like fail forward is. Sounds good. It sounds really good. But it's much harder to do in practice because I think each of us says fail forward. We think that that's great and it makes. But then in reality, a person fails at something and you're like, okay, are they the right person in the job or not? Did they like, what. How do they fail? Why fail? What do we need to change? How do we. How should we make this different? We start second guessing all of that thing and there isn't a ton of room to say, no, wait, this person is. And there's something for them to learn, but there's something also for us to learn. Are we actually learning from it? And failing is the forward part there, in addition to the failure. And that's a much harder thing to see. Right.

Well, you know, I've learned a lot from my clients that are in the tech space and they really, they live the fail forward piece. So what they've taught me is if if you tried something and quote, unquote, failed and you've learned from it and you don't make the same mistake over and over again, especially when you're building out a software or building out a process, then that's okay. It's the. It's. Here's where failure in their world doesn't seem to resonate really well. And it makes a lot of sense to me where someone tries something and then they defend the failure and they justify the choices and they want to live and die with those things, and they're not willing to go beyond that, that mistake or that choice they made. Because if we're failing and we're learning something and we're growing from it, and we're not making those same mistakes again. That's really where I've seen fail forward work.

Yeah. So how do you shift that? It seems to me that you want to ask a question like, well, what would you do differently next time?

What I teach my clients is to start with, what's your intention? You can't have an expectation that they're going to get it right. What is your intention? I use a story that I heard from Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank. She talks about when she was in the real estate space in New York City. She was out there hustling and she thought, I want to Open up the New York City space to the world. How can I do that? This is back in the days with videotapes. And she bought a bunch of videotape equipment, duplicating equipment, and she hired a crew to go around and film stuff. And people would call her and she'd mail out the videos. And by the time they got out to California, for example, you know, it's seven to ten days later, it's New York, New York state real estate. It's gone, the apartment's gone, the house is gone. It's not going to be on the market forever. In which she pivoted instead and say, well, what's my intention? My intention is I want to open up the world, New York to the world, and vice versa. Where else could I put my content? She threw it up online. She does this great story. She said, I posted something on Wednesday. By Friday, I got a wire transfer, somebody I had never talked to, who put a deposit on an apartment they'd only seen online, and boom. That told me that sticking to my intention of opening up the New York space to everyone, using the Internet as the delivery mechanism, not the US Mail, not videotape, was the way to go. And if she had just quit and she'd been, or worse yet, had been so stubborn to think the only way I can do this is through videotape mailings or videotape duplication, she would have failed at it. But instead she stuck to her intentions. So, like when I work with my clients, we get them to focus on what your intention is, what do you want it to be, and if it doesn't work, are you strong enough? Do you have enough conviction around that intention that we can try something new?

Yeah. Yeah. So your work, this is the core of your work, right? You're where we work with the whole team and the scaling up tool set and that kind of thing. You're doing a lot of work with the leaders evolution. Talk to us about that or maybe tell us about one of the leaders you've worked with.

Yeah, so it really is. It's about the leadership evolution. It's so much of the work that you and I have heard about or experienced with Vern during birthing of giants in those time frames are now with gathering of titans. It's inside out work, working with the leader, where they are today and where do they want to go tomorrow to create a life by design with entrepreneurship being a big part of it, but not being all of it. So I had a client of mine, he recently just gave me this wonderful testimonial video. And in the video, he talks about that in the year he worked with me, his revenue grew 70%, his profits grew 500%, and he now loves what he does. And the part I'm most excited about it is putting all the financial success aside is now he loves what he does. And to get him to figure out how to love what he does is he had to stand up in a room with his leadership team and own what he wanted. And what he wanted was his business to not control him. What he wanted was to spend more time with his family. And what he wanted is he wanted his leaders to rise up, work differently. Well, the interesting part of the story is those leaders he had at that time couldn't do that. They wouldn't do that. They refused to do it. So he leaned into the uncomfortable choice, and he let some of his leaders go and replace them. He got leaders who bought in, who were focused on the things that he wanted, saw the business much more in alignment with his core values, with his purpose and passion. And that's why the business grew 70%, and that's why his profits grew 500%, because he increased his prices. He took a look at how to scale the business differently to different sectors versus the doubting Thomases who had been on his leadership team previously. So the only way he was able to get all that was to, again, what's holding me back? And for him, it was having those uncomfortable conversations. And for him, it was not previously standing up for what he really believed in and what he wanted. And we gave him the tools to do that.

Yeah. What was in the way there, do you think, for him?

Oh, childhood stuff. It usually goes back to core beliefs, core experiences. So for him, where he was at in his life, he was always in his family of origin. He was always the person who tried to keep everybody happy. And so because I want to keep everybody happy, I can't have conflict with you. So what I taught him was a lot of things that I had to learn was to lean into those uncomfortable moments. And he goes, well, I can't fire anybody. So. Well, what if you reframe what firing means to you? Because you're seeing firing as a win, lose, and someone's going to suffer. What if you free somebody up to go do a job they really should be doing? Because statistically, employees will ride out a terrible job that they hate because they don't want to upset their home life. And he's like, wow, I hadn't really thought about it. So, yeah, let's talk through. And he had an employee, he was like, yeah, so and so has got to go. All right, well, let's talk about what that would be like. And we actually role played out all the scenarios. And because he'd role played out all the scenarios, and then at the end of that scenario, I taught him, hey, lay out a plan for him to then springboard into his next career and talk to him about how you will help him get there. Because the decision's made. You're not staying on our team. But that doesn't mean you couldn't be a great player on someone else's team. Let's figure out what that can look like for you and create that possibility. And the guy was. The guy had a job within a week and a half because this client of mine helped him out, believed in what. And he's just a bad fit. That's okay, Pete. Like you said, people make mistakes.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting when I think about the people that fail our work, our process, where they end up, like, subverting it, you know, sabotaging it.

Oh, sure, absolutely.

Undermining it or putting a lid on it. It's a personal development kind of a thing that's out there. So they do something to limit it because they're uncomfortable with what that represents. Well, the company that you have right now is a company that you built that's perfectly matched to your strengths and weaknesses, that's easily fit to your idiosyncrasies. Unfortunately, as Marshall Goldsmith taught us, that what got you here won't get you there. You've got to this point, and for whatever reason, it just sort of. Now it's plateaued, and it's time to bring in new tools, new approaches. But you've got to work on yourself as much as the other, because you're the one who created this mess without even realizing it. And I love what you said about that. It's always childhood stuff. Like, if you think about it, all of your relationship patterns and your survival moves, you could say your winning formula, your strengths are all an evolution of things that you did that got you to this point. And it's really great. It's really helpful. Except at some point, in different areas, at many points, it kind of plateaus. And in order for you to move to the next space, you've got to evolve yourself and your approaches. But if you don't think that all of these things started with your mom and your dad, that the person in your family that you loved and the person that you really struggled with the teacher, the friends, all of those early patterns, then everybody else and every other situation that we see in life, we encounter and we look at through those filters and lenses. Right. And then we keep responding in kind of new versions of the same old thing. Right. That you talked about, that guy in the conflict approach was what he learned as a kid. Conflict is good, conflict is bad. You have to raise your voice. You can't raise your voice. Whatever it is. You're like, we're all locked into this pattern until you stop and go, oh, wait, I could try a new approach. I don't have to be limited to that.

And that's what a coach does. The coach is the pattern interrupt. And I'm sure you've got dozens of stories how you've interrupted people's patterns, but that, you know, the reality is those behaviors work for us. And until they don't. And if they help us, you know, in fight or flight modes, well, if we're, you know, 45, 50 years old and our companies are doing well and we're still acting like the whole world is our enemy, for example, or like in my case, I can't ask for help. Asking for help is a weakness. I can't ask for help because as soon as I ask for help, all the people that are important to me are going to leave me. Well, that's not really true anymore. But our brain doesn't always understand that. Those are embedded, deep rooted memories. A coach will come in and say, well, let's take a look at this from a different perspective. There's a way to reframe that. There's a way to get you exactly what you want. And going back to this client who didn't want to be the bad guy and didn't want to deliver tough conversations, he also thought a lot of what he wanted was selfish. And I said, well, let's reframe what selfish looks like. Where did it come from? And it came from childhood and it came from an adolescent. It came from first marriages and all those different, you know, wherever we go, there we are. Our baggage comes with us. And it's work life integration. It's not work life balance. That's a myth. And helping him get over the fact that there's nothing wrong with wanting to have a profitable company. There's nothing wrong with being able to build out great jobs for other people. But just because someone's on the team now doesn't mean they deserve the right to be on the team in a year from now if they're underperforming. There's a lot of different things. And then I put in the scaling up tools to help him. Okay, work on this, work on this. Let's manage cash this way. Let's do that. But until he got unstuck, the tools would have been absolutely worthless to him.

Yeah. The hard thing about the hard things, they're hard things. They're hard. But that notion of like all of those things, I mean, you referenced a half a dozen there, like our stories about money, right? Think about the notion that you have about money is good or money is bad, profit is good, profit is bad. You have to take care of people, you have to protect people. All of that stuff you have. Each of us has a childhood experience that relates to each of those things, for sure. That forms really strong.

Well, look at how companies. And I'm sure you've run into this where. Okay, well, Bob's been with us for 15 years, so we should just move him into management. And I've had clients say. I said, well, let's, let's take a look at this from a sports perspective where you are paid to perform. I said, now we can have Mike Trout, who's been in the league for five years or seven years and he's your best player, and we can hit him fourth. Or we can take some guy, some journeyman who's been on the roster for 15 years and hit him fourth based upon, you know, seniority, which is better for the team. Well, clearly hitting Mike Trout in the cleanup spot is much better than hitting some guy who's been around forever just because he's been hanging on. He's got enough skills and talents and abilities to play the game, but he's not a superstar. We have to look at individuals, organizations in the individuals that work there individually, and what are their strengths? Just because someone's. I'm sure you've seen this. Oh, well, Bob's the greatest salesperson we have. He should be the sales manager. How often does that not work?

A lot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because we find ourselves here in this point, right? A turning point. And it's useful to look at this right. Have you always struggled with people? Do you have a hang up about profit or. Less of our listeners do, but maybe some of your team does. Do you have a profit about using outside money? Do you have a problem with giving up ownership or taking on too much debt? Each of these things likely has some early childhood thing. There's a time when debt is brilliant and a smart thing to use. And a time when taking in equity is great, a time when letting somebody go is great. But making key changes around people is a common thing that people really struggle with. I see many leaders on many of the teams that we work with that just are so paralyzed to fire people, even when it's abundantly clear. We just keep hoping, well, maybe if I, like, understand them better, like, no, they don't fit your values. You guys are a total mismatch. Move on.

I couldn't agree with you more. And it's those people who can move on. It's those people who can learn to get through those. It's not even the uncomfortable conversation that I find they are really stressed about. It's the psychological baggage and the psychological stories they tell themselves prior to the conversation. I mean, once they have the conversation, they feel a whole lot better. And I say, well, what was worse, the conversation or the imposter syndrome? The itty bitty negative comedy in your head that met before you had the conversation? Oh, it's always worse before I have the conversation. I said, well, what if you just choose to limit that conversation? Or what if you just choose not to have that conversation with yourself? You've made the decision, I'm going to free Johnny up to go work elsewhere. And then you just lean in, let them go through the six stages of grief that they go through in about 20 minutes and then build out a plan for them so they can leave knowing that you cared about them as a human being, but you weren't going to sacrifice the health of the organization just to keep them around as dead weight.

Totally. Well, it's such a good thing to think about. So, you know, as this recording comes out, we're in the middle of some massive, global, unprecedented crisis. And a crisis is a turning point. And in this time, though, there will be opportunities. I mean, some companies, some businesses are just zooming up and that'll continue to shift as we move through the stages of this thing. So what is it that's going to let you do it? Well, we've been talking about a variety of things for, for moving companies from surviving to thriving. Now, that's been an ongoing theme for over a month of this show now. But the. In all of it, there's you and who you've always been and the limits and boundaries to what you've always done. So if you're not taking the time to stop and look in the mirror and to solicit some 360 feedback from your people, to ask your wife, your mom, your husband, your Partners, your kids. What is it about you to take a long, hard look in the mirror and see what there is to level up in yourself? You'll miss a huge opportunity now. It's a great time to reinvent your business in the category and the way you've done things, your relationships with your partners, your customers, your suppliers, even your bankers. But you got to also look in the mirror.

You've got to look. And that's where it all starts. It all begins and ends with us as the leaders, as the entrepreneurs, as the CEOs. And it's, I mean, there's such a absence of leadership right now within our, our politics, within our companies, within our society. People who are able to stand up, be accountable, have the tough conversations. It's all the Stockdale Paradox. If we recognize this is our brutal reality and we are going to get through it and we're going to try a lot of different things. I mean, I'm reinventing my coaching practice. My whole model was based upon Speak from Stage. Well, those stages don't exist right now, but I said, but I'm going to anchor in on what is my mission. I worked, you know, through the, through the gathering of titans. I met Simon Sinek. I worked with Simon and he helped me figure out my two words are improve lives. How can I improve lives from my home? And you know, I saw that you'd posted out there on Social that you were volunteering and helping others. I did the same thing. And those conversations have been super soul filling for me. I've helped other people because I can't speak from stage. I mean, I'm so blessed and so fortunate to be on your show today to be able to talk to others through this medium. Well, maybe this is my new norm. Maybe my new norm is podcasts and websites. Or I can stick on the, you know, I can sit around and eat or eat carbs, not exercise, watch a lot of TV and just wait to be able to go speak from stage again. Well, that's, to me, that's a bad strategy and I'm just not going to do it. I'm sure if Bill Gallagher was my coach, he'd be in my ear saying, hmm, you think that's a really good idea? You think that, can you prove that out for me that that's going to be there in six months or 12 months. What can you do today to get yourself unstuck today so tomorrow you can make an impact?

Well, I, you know, I, I volunteered. I did all kinds of stuff, as you noted. And what did that do? Well, you know, I, it didn't make me a lot of money, almost any money. The initial stuff that I did, it did increase my exposure by thousands of people within the first two weeks. So as the stay at home orders started to hit, I started to increase stuff. So, and that gave me maybe a first mover thing, but I got a lot of attention. I've had call out from people saying thank you for moving quickly and for responding, but it was just all like energy. Like, okay, the current work is all I'd heard from a couple of clients who were freaking out and I'm like, okay, it's not just them that need me. It's like everybody. And this should be a time when I'm, I'm like of more use than ever, but nobody necessarily can pay me. So I increased my exposure and my mind share in that timeframe and I started to develop stories which were immediately then useful to other people. Like, okay, this company did that and that company did this, and all of those stories were super then helpful in helping other people to extrapolate stuff. And, and then that continued to build. So my world has grown quite a bit. And although even some clients have been impacted and I, the ones that have hard hit, I took deferral. You know, like, they can pay me when they get to the other side of this thing and come out of it. And I did some creative things with some other people, but the net result of that is that I'm as busy now as when I was on the road, right? And, and some listeners will know and some friends and followers will know that, like just before the lockdown occurred, I was across seven countries in one month.

Oh my gosh.

Right. And I mean that unlike some coaches, my work is, is, has been very, very international for the last seven years. So that all stopped. But in some ways, like I do a workshop next week with a group in Asia. And you know, so it's just. But it has moved online, right? The creativity, the pivot, that kind of thing. But I think we have to keep asking ourselves, how do we need to evolve? What is it that I need to do? Where do I need to be more creative, not be stuck in my ways and approaches and thinking and that kind of thing. Ask myself, look in the mirror, Right?

Well, and when I look in the mirror, what I ask myself is, how can I be a better servant leader to others? Like you talked about, it's so, so powerful to reach out to members in the EO community, the YPO community, the different organizations, the Vistages, you know, I had a conversation with a gentleman and he sent me a thank you note. I mean who sends thank you notes nowadays? And you know, I actually just pulled it up and I wanted to share it with you. So your coaching and your support has meant the world to me. This has been the hardest week of my life. Without the conversation I had with you, I would be lost. You're an awesome human being with immense gratitude. Shame now that it just warms my heart. It's that ability to impact others and I didn't get paid for it. But I'm going to believe that if people like you, who I follow and watch and people like me who I hope others will learn from, can go out there and give abundantly to the world and not worry about how we're going to be paid back, then I think good stuff will come to us in a very karmic way. And to know that someone thinks so highly of the impact I was able to have on them in a moment of immense pain, fear and self doubt, that's really why, at least that's why.

I coach well, you know, I noticed something interesting. So in the initial thing of giving things away, it was really good and appropriate, helped people, it grew the exposure, that kind of thing. And I gave a ton away for a little while. But then I started to notice after a few weeks that some of the people who were getting things for free, they had a real need. Like, you know, I'm like, okay, show up on this webinar, I'll give certain number of scholarships of away and that kind of thing. But I noticed that the people who were getting things for free weren't valuing them or using them to the degree that the people who were getting a discounted version are. So I am, I am stopping doing the for free except in extreme cases and by request. But I'm not prompting it anymore after the, the immediate emergency is gone. And I mean well, I have like the show is free, right? So there are certain things that I do for free standardly. But the, a lot of the extra free stuff I've now started to limit because like fine, pay 10 bucks or pay whatever, but I think there's a different engagement. If it's valuable, it's valuable. If it's not, it's not. It was interesting to me at one of the webinars that we did or it wasn't really where it was a workshop, but it was just done remotely. So it was highly interactive. But quite a few of the people who'd asked for and gotten free tickets, didn't show up.

Really? That's just, oh, that's not cool.

Yeah. But it's not surprising because we don't value it. There's little at risk. It's why it's valuable. Sometimes I tell people, they're like, oh, that's a shtick thing. I'm like, you should pay me a lot up front.

Well.

Because it helps to commit you. Now, I like your money, but it's more the value for you to be aware of is that you really, by being at stake, by being really committed to committed, you engage something differently. You push yourself into a different, more comfortable place. Right.

I couldn't agree with you more. It's funny, I've going off of some of the freebie things that I did that were similar in the space that you were in. You know, I had people reach out, hey, can I have another call? I said, sure, but the first 30 minutes, you know, I did you a 30 minute solid. I'm happy to help you out. Give back. You know, this is, this is how I make a living. And I found that people will, will put, put the, you know, again, the value of it is what they put into it. And I started pivoting and say, well, what do you, what can you afford to pay me? Send me 10 bucks on PayPal or better yet, buy a gift card and take it to a local space for your, your first responders or take it to a hospital. Give something, don't give it to me, but do something because I'm, I'm giving. And so if you can't pay, do the little drummer boy thing. Give me the skill you got and go execute. And I found people were just, well, I can't pay anything, but I need what you can do. I was $600,000 in debt. I was going to lose my house and my kid and I were going to be homeless. And I found a way to pay for a coach. I have a friend of mine who's a great Hollywood actor and he tells a story. When he didn't have any money and he was a waiter, he still found money to pay for an acting coach. And now he's glad he did because he was that committed. So when you're that committed, people will resonate with you. And when you're that committed to getting out of the debt or getting on stage or making your business grow, you'll find a way.

Yeah, it's really good finding a way and doing that. Years ago, long before I was married and in between other businesses, I. I found myself in a tough spot and I was trying to make a go of a business. I was paying my rent, waiting tables at night, and at a time in life where I found that embarrassing. And so keeping a secret and doing all of that. And I hit a breaking point where I realized what I was doing wasn't working. And I needed a coach and I needed some new experiences, new stimulus, that kind of thing. I needed new thinking. So I knew I remembered something that worked for me and so on. And I'm like, okay, I need to go back and do something like that again. But I didn't have the money for it. And I was thinking about it in the background, trying to figure out a way. And then I went out and I got in my car at the end of the day of not winning too much on the business, and then I was going to go wait tables again. That night I encountered this broken windscreen on my car that I'd broken a couple weeks before and I didn't have. And I just was like, this is pathetic. I'm losing in the one thing I'm doing, this thing that is not consistent with who I am and what I'm capable of in the world, the waiting tables thing. And I can't even fix my damn window. And I realized it was time to commit myself. So I went back inside. I found a coach and a group and an experience and a workshop series that I thought was going to be what I needed. And I called him up and I put the money up and I put the money up for my rent that month. Wow. And I called in sick to work. I don't know what this is going to do, but I am all in on a breakthrough now.

It's a great story. I have a client who's. There's three partners and they're all in 12 step recovery programs. And they talk about hitting bottom. And when I hear you share that kind of story, Bill, it sounds like you hit your business bottom. It's a little.

Yeah, it was like a business personal bottom. I mean, it wasn't desperate. I had a house over my head. I had food, I had all kind, you know, I had a car and things like that. It wasn't like I was on street and strung out or anything like that, but it was truly like a business bottom. And I was like, my mindset was enough. This changes now. So I call in sick to work. I put my rent money up to do this experience and coaching and that kind of thing. And within two weeks, within two weeks, I'D shifted it. I had produced real sales results, real income. Within I was like six weeks, I had converted my restaurant employer into a business client and started to move out of it. Within the year, my business was launched, I'd settled my debts, I moved off to things. I actually sold out of the business in like an Aqua Hire kind of thing and got bought out by our largest client, a strategic partner. And then I was primed then to get engaged. And now suddenly this woman that I met before that was interesting was like, look at this guy, man. He actually makes some stuff happen. And that was when Laurie and I got engaged.

That is a great story. I've never heard that story and I've known you guys quite a while, so that's awesome. Thanks for sharing that.

It was like 26, 27 years ago, right? It's a long time ago, but I think it's really useful this thing of like, don't waste this time. This is a time no matter the stakes and position you're in, you your business is on the ropes, you're worried about your business or your business is slammed with stuff and you're worried about fulfilling on all wherever you're at. This is a time to reflect and I love what you're doing. If you want to know more about Todd's work, helping you develop yourself in the process, this is a great time to think about that. Extraordinary Advisors.com Todd it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. And guys, go find Todd. And if you want to know more, well, if this show helped you, you can do something for us by giving us a review, rating the show and that kind of thing, and subscribing all of that wherever you get your podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, etc. Spotify wherever you get it and then listen up. Subscribe. Please also tell somebody else about the show that can make a big difference for us and for your friends. You can send us an email with any feedback deck, Good, bad, whatever you'd like to hear. Info scalingcoach.com I want to give special thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework and the original Rockefeller Habits. This show was produced by Lucy Summers. The audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions and the show notes are compiled by Ein Codina with proofreading by Tim McGowan. Thanks again for listening. Keep scaling up. Sam.