Are You Coachable?

Business brain episode 582 for Casual Friday, September 13th programmers day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we crunch them, we use them to help tune our business brains every single time we get together as usual here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

Hey. And I'm still out in Lafayette, California. I'm Shannon Jean. I really enjoyed our Wednesday episode with Dan Magazou from Ride the Wave.

Yeah, that was Wednesday, September 11th. I did want to talk about Programmers Day because I like the fact that we are on the 256th day of the year and that's why it was chosen as Programmers Day, because that's a multiple a answer. Right. 256 is an important number. It's a factor of two.

Interesting. Yeah.

Or two is a factor, but yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's pretty cool. I love that.

256Th day of the year.

Programmers are important. Yeah.

Yep. But yeah, Dan, very cool. Daniel Magazoo's business there. Ride the Wave. I'm curious to see. It's interesting and smart that he has built it as quickly and scaled it as quickly as he has. I think that's really important. That's a mistake. Not scaling a business that quickly is a mistake I've made before, thinking, oh, we're making plenty of money, we can just do it ourselves. Right. You know that he's got other people in there. I think that's really smart. I wonder if that's a generational thing. I see. People of our generation, you mean? Yeah, just the, you know, I mean, they're taught in school, like scale, scale, scale. Whereas I don't know that that was a thing that I certainly wasn't ever taught that in the way that it's taught now.

I would say when we were younger, it was more like steady.

Yeah.

Find a steady.

Protect, protect, protect.

Yeah, yeah.

Very different.

Very different.

Yeah.

What I, what I love about it and my, the biggest takeaway and probably one of the reasons I wanted to have Dan on is so much of what he's learned is portable. Right. And the skills that he's acquired from identifying the opportunity. Right.

Yes. Oh, yes.

This helped me build my, my mulching business, my landscape business. I wonder if other people would like it, you know, testing it out, offering it essentially for free in the beginning.

Well, commission based.

There's no, no risk.

I like, I, I don't want to call that essentially for free.

Yeah, no, it's not. It's commission. You're Right.

Because paper for performance. Right, Paper for performance. But what a great way to ensure that you're not just giving it away. Yeah, right. There. There is.

Yeah.

And, you know, I've seen people start businesses that way, and then a year or two down the road, the client says, wait, whoa, I need to renegotiate with you. You're. I'm paying you too much. Right. You know, I want to go stuff.

Yeah.

Can I go on a monthly retainer now, please? You know.

Yeah, that's right. You're right. So, yeah, I think the salesperson's dilemma.

It's a salesperson's right. It's always the salesperson's dilemma. A good sales salesperson.

Yeah. Then they make too much and you're like, holy smokes.

Yeah, I gotta pay you less now. Yeah.

Yeah. But the. The. And the fact that he gets it, he understands the weaknesses, the strength. He scaled it up. He learned how to bring on, you know, offshore talent and. And acquire those. Those folks and interview and all that stuff, man, it's just the next iteration of Dan, what he does next is going to have all those skills already under his belt, and his confidence level will just be so much higher. And, you know, the future is bright, man, when you understand that. Because I. I work with a lot of people that don't take those steps in their 20s, and they're in their 30s or 40s, and now they're talking about, okay, now I want to go work for myself. How do I do it? And that's a. It's another. It's a whole different animal in. Because your responsibilities, your monthly overhead, all these things, we. We become accustomed to, it's. It's a longer process, and maybe you can't take as much risk, maybe you can't scale it as fast as. As Dan did, and that kind of stuff. So some great lessons there. If you didn't hear that episode, go back and. And listen to it.

Yeah. 581 from. From Wednesday. So it's interesting that you're saying this, right, because you're talking about once you've developed some habits, it's hard to change them. But also once your life has certain demands on you, it's theoretically, it's emotionally harder to convince yourself to take risks, and you're trying to help these people, you're trying to coach these people. And a topic that you and I have been kind of throwing around a lot behind the scenes here that we're going to talk about today is are you coachable? And I think it's important to ask ourselves, are we coachable?

Yeah.

What does it take?

I don't think I am.

I know that I'm not. I think I know that I have a tendency to operate solo, which is not a coachable person, and also a tendency to convince myself that my current way of doing things is the best way of doing things or at least the right way. So if somebody tells me, ah, you're doing this wrong, I, I'm. It's, it's not. I don't know. In business especially, I have trouble with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think of it a little different in the sense like I, I have that same, a similar thing where. Oh yeah, you're doing it wrong. I'm not. You sure? Especially if you've had.

You don't know what I know. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Especially if you've had success. But when I'm thinking coachable, like if I don't know how to do something, am I open to someone showing me how to do it right? Am I open to someone putting action items in front of me and then holding me accountable? I'll bet you I think you are.

I think you are better at that than me in that it seems to me you are more readily willing to accept. I don't know anything about that. Teach me.

Yeah, I, I definitely, I think that about tons of stuff I know. So like I hired a coach when I wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just my, my default coaches my whole life.

My def. Right. And that's the difference. My default is. I'm going to teach it to myself. I'll figure this out on my own.

Yeah.

And, and that has good work.

That's, that's, that's good.

That's the thing is like neither of these things is bad, but.

No.

Neither one should be taken to an extreme either. Right. There is a good blend. I think I err too much on the side of I'm going to do it myself and I, I. And it, it slows me down sometimes.

But other times I would say not. Yeah. And I've been there. I understand. I want to learn some new tool and this versus I don't want to go hire anybody. But if, if they're going to teach me a system that I don't understand. Like I hired a guy for to coach me in social media because I didn't really know a ton about it. I wanted to learn. It was probably, I realized after I got going it was probably a little too early for me to hire someone like that because I Wasn't ready. And he was pushing me to do certain things that I was like, what? Why would I do that? You know, And. And I was just kind of started where now I get it now. Like, oh, I got. Now I see it. And. But what it did teach me, it expanded the possibilities. Is what it did okay, worth every penny? Because I did not see all those possibilities. And especially when I had my mind kind of closed to when we're talking about the X platform and Twitter and David always talked about, yeah, you should try it out, it's this. And I'd be like, oh, it's terrible. It's a cesspool or whatever. But once I learned, you taught me part of the system to make it better for myself, which was night and day. And then this coach taught me a bunch of other stuff about how to connect and grow and everything. But I think like, especially with the taking it beyond us hiring people that are coachable, if you can. I mean, you. I think you just get a better, better employee, a better contractor, a better whoever, because you're not. I mean. Well, that's good. Let me couch that in. Are you hiring someone that already has some expertise? Like, hey, we're hiring a biz dev person.

Sure.

So I'm not going to coach them.

How to do biz dev or a social media person. Right.

You know, social media person.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. But maybe, you know, are they coachable in the sense of, are they going to be open to learning about how I want it done for my business, how what our culture is, how like taking a, you know, like a company like Dan's Ride the Wave. As a business owner, can you explain, like, hey, man, this has to be really authentic. And I, I'm. This is who I am. It's my name, it's my. We're not just grinding stuff out, which they don't do there.

But, I mean, no, but that, that's an important lesson for someone who say is in the copywriting role. It's in general. It's an important lesson for Dan's company from their clients. Right. Like, hey, if you're writing content on with my name on it, I have to coach. Yes.

Business.

Yeah. You have to kind of set up a platform where you are being coached. Yes.

Yeah. It's like trying to, you know, create content. Just relying on AI. It's not your voice, you know. Now it, it can help you with a lot of stuff. But if you're, if you're trying to, you know, just dump out content, that's not Authentic. It, it won't be successful. Just, just not going to be successful unless it's. So keep going.

No, it's. So how, what, what are the ways of identifying during the interviewing process? Yeah, what are the ways of identifying whether or not someone is coachable?

I like to ask them what they don't know. Oh, what don't you know? Because it's. I ask them about my business. Right. Hey, what do you know about this, my business? You're here to get a job. I hope you looked at our website. I hope you did. Whatever, a little bit of that. But then I like to ask, what don't you know and what are you interested in knowing and see how they respond to that. Because some people don't know how to respond to that.

But yeah, that's it. That's a question that's gonna, that's gonna take people for a little bit of a loop. Yeah.

Yeah. What don't you know and what would you like to know? Because if they're part of being coachable is having interest.

Yes.

Something you don't know. So if, if you don't have any questions or you think you know it all. No, I look at your website, I know everything about your business. Now. That's not an answer that. Yeah, I'm not, Yeah, I want to, I want to go, well, where do you guys get all your stuff? Or how do you process things so quickly? How do you do this and who fixes what? I mean, I don't know. You could just come up with all kinds of responses. But I think that's a good place to start is know, what don't you know? And what would you like to know and see how they question what they come. And then I also think you kind of have to be self aware. Right. And this is very, I think, difficult to test for, I don't know the right questions. But if you're self aware of things you're good at, things you're bad at or whatever, that helps you. Because then you go, wow, man, if I could learn how to do this, it would really help me because I know I'm weak in this area. Yeah, right. Like I, I, I, I try to be self aware. I suck at accounting. Right. So I'm constantly trying to find people to help me with accounting. I, I know how to sell anything. I can solve most problems with more sales, but I don't, I'm not good at the bottom line. So I, you got to be self aware. Try to find somebody that can take over those weaknesses.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say that self aware people are generally more coachable or at least. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say that. I mean I too prioritize self awareness and I'm not coachable so maybe that's something that I need to ruminate on. But yeah, in terms of sorting out whether or not a potential hire has an interest in self awareness is. I don't, I don't know what one sort of question would be that you could ask, but I think you can suss it out over the course of, you know, if you're talking to somebody, you know, you do a few 20 minute interviews or whatever it is.

Yeah.

You're going to like be on the lookout for that and yeah.

Your terms and the way they talk.

The way they talk and they. Everybody's going to make a mistake about something. See. Watch how they react to it. Is it like. Oh yeah, I know like these things happen and I, you know, it's like you can see are they trying to cover it up or are they trying to just accept it and it's a thing and it happens and it's okay. Those, you know, there, there are tells as to whether someone has some self awareness or not. And generally self aware people are more comfortable. You, I feel more comfortable speaking to someone who is self aware because there, yeah. So you know, look at how you're reacting to them. Try to be self aware about you and that will tell you how they are. I think that's one way. Yeah.

Yeah. I have two more. One is accountability. If are you comfortable taking, being accountable for your own mistakes and maybe even a little bit of others or do you lean towards being accountable and taking responsibility? I think people that do that are more coachable. Definitely.

It's funny because I, I chose Programmers Day as the day for the, you know, the holiday or whatever you want to call it for today.

Yep.

The second one on my list was National Blame Someone Else Day, which is also today. Like, you know, we all know how to do this. I'm not sure I'm happy that there's a day for it, but maybe the silver lining to that is we just do it for one day and then we stop doing it.

Yeah, then you stop.

But yeah, but you're right. Yeah. Are you willing to just accept that? Yes, I, I screwed this up.

Suck it up.

It's. Suck it up, it's okay.

Or, or even if you're not sure, you know, you're like, well, it could have started with me. Maybe the way I said this. Maybe they misinterpreted this. Yep. Maybe, you know, I was, we were smoking ribs on my smoker and I had to go run somewhere and I wrote some instructions out for my super awesome smart wife. And she, and when I got back, I was like, why, why are these things not cooking? And I, you know, because they were supposed to almost be done. And I went, I looked at the temperature and I was like, oh man, the temperatures got turned down by half. And I, I went. And I was like, renee, what happened? Why'd this get turned on? She's like, well, you told me to turn it down. And I, I was like, well, let me look at this instructions. Because maybe it started with me.

Yeah.

Sure enough, the way I wrote it, you could easily have interpreted once you do these next steps, the temperatures, this. And so I, it's like, it's like.

The Ed Asner skit on SNL about the nuclear reactor, right? He's like the boss of the nuclear reactor.

And right.

And he leaves on vacation. He says, remember, you can never add too much water to a nuclear reactor. And he leaves, right. But he gave them several instructions like that. And then they spent the whole time while he was gone, like, well, did he mean this or did he mean that? And they went back and forth. And finally, of course at the end, the punchline is they blew up the reactor.

So yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think accountability and the other one is optimism. I think if you're an optimist and I think there's ways to test mainly having discussions about, with people, optimists, I think are more coachable because they're more expecting a positive outcome. And I think that, like, if I'm going to spend money on a book, a course, a coach, I'm expecting a positive outcome, man, and I'm going to make it because I'm expecting that positive outcome. I'm going to work hard to be coachable to make it positive. So it's almost like a self fulfilling, you know, prophecy thing where you're like, oh, I'm buying this coach or I'm buying this hiring this coach or I'm buying this book or whatever.

Yeah, you, you have to believe that it's going to work for you, otherwise you wouldn't buy it, you wouldn't do it.

Of course, yeah. If you look on, if you look on like X, there's lots of people that talk about courses and guides and I'll bet you dollars to donuts, the people that just rip them apart and tell them they don't work, they're pessimists.

Yes.

And of course, they're not going to work for them. Yes. That's just a thought process. So, optimism, accountability. I forget the other ones, but you can listen to the show. You can listen to them when we get started. You can rewind. But anyway, I think being coachable at every level of your life or your career is the way to go. And whether it's relationships or at work.

There'S always something to learn. It's part of why, with one of my other podcasts is Matt Geek Gab, where we're answering people's questions, sharing tips for Apple users. And we start the show by saying the goal is for each of us, hosts included, to learn at least five new things.

I like that.

And I started saying it so that we, the coaches, the hosts, would set the mindset so that we were. It was okay for us to learn, because I know we're going to model what's going to happen for our listeners if we say, well, I knew that, or I knew that well, then when they say, well, I didn't know that, those guys are effectively calling me stupid. No.

Right.

Like, we're all in this together.

And do you have a little bell that you ring and idea. There's number one. Ding.

We actually do. We. We play. We play this bell. That's the one.

There you go. See? That's awesome. I love that It's.

I had to shift to my different cart system because I have one for this show and it's not in that because we don't use that.

That's cool.

A little signal.

Great idea.

When we learn something. Yeah.

Because it's really cool.

And it. What I have found, though, is by saying that week after week, it has programmed me to be more open to learning new things and.

Yeah, that's right.

And not only is that good in general, but for that show, now I'm more aware of. Wait a minute. That's a cool thing there. I'm going to put it on the agenda to teach our audience. Yeah.

Yeah. You're more coachable than you think, Mr. Hamilton.

I think you're probably right. I'm trying to be better about it. I don't know.

Yeah.

Just.

Good.

So, hey, what I'm aware of are the times when I have not been coachable. Right. Like, that's the part. Because I know I want to be.

Yeah.

So I just beat myself up for the times when. When I failed that. Yeah.

When you're not. Yeah, I get it. So, yeah. If you're listening or like, so we have 215 people on the live stream right now. If half of you went to your podcast app that's on your phone or on your desktop and subscribed and followed us, it would make me very happy. Do you want to be in the optimistic half that wants to continue to learn and be coached, or do you want to be in the other half that's like, nah, I'm just going to click and move forward. You get to make the choice. Feedbackusbrain Show Tell us what you think, and thanks for hanging out.

Yeah, thanks so much, everybody. What a. What an absolute blast. Not a bass. That's not a word in our language.

No.

Feedbackusbrain show thanks for hanging out. Have a great weekend. And do me a favor. Keep on living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.