Become a go-to expert by narrowing down your focus; with Thomas Gelmi

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Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today we are going all the way to Zurich to meet Thomas Gelmi, like as in gelato, one of the world's leading B2B business coaches. Thomas, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Jim. It's a pleasure.

It's gonna be my pleasure because you've built an amazing business and we're gonna talk about how you've built a great personal coaching brand. You're one of the top coaches to come out of Switzerland. You've got global clients including people like Siemens and the WTO, but also you have managed to conquer some issues about personal branding, but also about scaling and virtualization of your business and also about building credibility through association. So Thomas, Welcome to the show. Tell us first of all how you've built the brand and got noticed for your coaching business.

Well, 2 things. First, from scratch. Second, step by step. So that does the magic, right? Well, you know, it's 13 years ago, I made my first attempts starting with first clients and trying to promote my business. And of course, social media wasn't that big at that time yet. It was there, it was available. I was on LinkedIn already. And I was almost in a shy way, trying to make myself visible. Always with this feeling of, yeah, but I don't want to bother people. You know, I don't want to overload them with information and I don't want to be too much. And then I luckily started working with a personal branding and marketing agency right across the border here in Germany. And they helped me to build not just my business strategy, but mostly my communication strategy. And with their help, I went about increasing my visibility, of course, in a much more systematic and professional way. So what we did, for example, was to publish PR messages on a regular basis, on a monthly basis, writing blogs, publishing them, etc., etc., and also bringing more of a systematic approach into serving the various social media channels. And so I increased the pace, I increased the volume, and I started getting positive feedback from my clients, from potential clients, from my contacts saying, oh, it's so valuable what you're posting. I'm really happy to read what you're posting. And that, of course, confirmed, okay, it's not too much. You can maybe even do a bit more. And today, this is all fully automated. So I'm using add-on applications. One of them is called Buffer that really acts as a buffer. So whenever I see an interesting article that could be interesting for my target group, I put it in the Buffer and then of course it piles up. I have plenty of articles in there and then in Buffer you set a schedule, a posting schedule, and for the time being it's 3 posts per week on LinkedIn, for example. And it's always third-party articles. So sometimes every now and then I post something regarding myself, something I have written, for example. But that's a smaller part of it. I'm posting information from Harvard Business Review or other channels, you know, with this sharing is caring mindset. And because I'm posting third-party content, I'm not putting myself directly in the spotlight saying, look how great I am. Because this for many can be a turnoff, right? So what I'm doing is I'm providing value. I'm providing value through the articles and information I post, and I'm not doing it, you know, in a bragging style.

That's very interesting. So you're curating content from others using Buffer and the positioning that you had with the agency. Just tell us, how did you articulate that? Because there's a lot of talk about personal branding, but I'd love to hear, you know, I see on your LinkedIn you've got sort of act human, be human. Just talk us through how you arrived at what would be, if you like, your brand positioning, because as a person, that's often hard to self-reflect, isn't it?

Yes, yes. And I made the classical beginner's mistake that I wanted to offer everything. I can do coaching, I can do training, I can do team development, etc., etc. Because by offering many, many different things, I may reach a bigger potential target audience, which is a mistake.

Why?

Because if you're looking for someone who can do a team development process or workshop with you and your team, Would you rather go looking for someone who also does that among many other things? Or would you rather be drawn to someone who says, I'm the go-to person for team development, period? So, it was about zooming in, narrowing down, and focusing on a very specific thing. That was one of the success factors. And it took me some, you know, overcoming some inner resistance because, well, if I only zoom in on one thing, then I might lose potential or not win potential customers that are interested in some of the other things I could do, right?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I guess the difference by going to a general practitioner as a doctor versus going to a specialist when you have an ailment, right, that you need to be able to focus on that. From when you made that decision to when you got some results, how did you communicate that?

Well, by coming up with cases, talking about concrete successes, by talking about aspects of that particular branding strategy and putting those forward. So I was very much zooming in on developing interpersonal competence for my clients. And interpersonal with a capital P in the middle, which if you look at the word, it looks like a mistake, but it isn't. Because what I'm saying with that is that a crucial part of interpersonal skills is personal competence. And so, these two go hand in hand. In order for you to be able to effectively lead other people and collaborate with other people or be effectively in touch with your customers, wherever people interact, the prerequisite for it is that you yourself are in a good relationship with yourself, in a good balance, that you can be authentic and show yourself with your true colors for who you are, which requires that you've done the work. with yourself. And so that was at the heart of my position.

I love that, Thomas. And I love this, you know, this focus on being authentic and being focused on a particular skill set. But what you've also done, as I see, for example, with the Forbes Council, is that you've got specific in your own area of competence, but you've also allied yourselves to some major brands that then extend the reach for you. Could you just explain how that has worked as part of your strategy?

Yes. So the mechanism behind that is that you look for a brand that's aligned with your branding, that serves a similar or the same target group, which is bigger than you, which has more reach, which has more visibility because it's just stronger. and it's well established in the market. And then you associate yourself with that brand. So, the first time I did that was with Marshall Goldsmith. He's a top US executive coach, a very well-known name and brand in the coaching industry. And I got certified. So, I am a certified Marshall Goldsmith executive coach. I did that more than 10 years ago. And besides some other values I got from that, the main value was really to be granted the right to use his brand in association with my brand and therefore leverage on that visibility. So I was associated with a well-known brand in the industry, which increased, of course, my visibility and credibility.

Thomas, that's fantastic. Now, Marshall Goldsmith, I'm obviously familiar with him. He's a guru in the industry. How does that work? Do you approach someone like Marshall Goldsmith or the Forbes, for example, Council, or do they approach you? Just from a practical perspective, how can people get that to happen?

I think both can happen, right? So with Marshall Goldsmith, I saw an offering online. I saw an offering to become certified as a Marshall Goldsmith coach. And at that time, it didn't even occur to me that I could use the brand to leverage my own brand, etc. It was more an interest in broadening my repertoire as a coach, my toolbox. And only through that, I became aware that, oh, there's an additional added value comes from that. So that was with Marshall Goldsmith. Now, today I'm not associating myself anymore with him because it's not necessary anymore because my own brand has become so strong that it would actually blur the clarity of my own brand if I had another strong brand that's in the same industry. as mine. Right. And therefore, I became a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, which is a membership that comes by invitation only. So I was approached by Forbes. And I was asked whether I would be interested in joining. Now, of course, I felt very honored. And it's very nice. Right. And I thought, yes, of course. I might. And I did, of course, eventually. And today, this is the main brand I am associating myself with in my personal branding strategy. Yes.

Yeah. Okay, Tom. And that's great. So I mean, kudos to you and fabulous that, you know, who would say no to Forbes, really? But it's great that you're part of that elite group. So you've got the sort of credibility of your own, but also by association as a kind of a strategy. Now, As you're growing the business from your base in Switzerland, you've got clients around the world in B2B markets, and I saw you've got finance and heavy industry and so on. How are you going to scale your business? Because an occupational hazard for anybody in consulting businesses, obviously you can get bigger and bigger fees per day, but at some stage that starts to top out maybe. What about scaling, Thomas? What's your approach to that?

Yeah, that is a big question and a big challenge for many in my industry and also in other industries. I reckon that if I talk to a potential customer who's interested in working with me and buying my services, who do they want then when they work with me? Of course, they want me. So over the years, I have become the bottleneck for scaling the business. Right? Because I only have so much capacity. Of course, yes, I can increase my rates. But still, there's only so many days in the year and only 24 hours in a day. So what happened was that luckily, quote unquote, the pandemic hit. And the pandemic, as you all know, forced us not only into slowing down, but also into virtualizing many aspects of our businesses. So, Of course, initially many of my planned programs and workshops, etc., etc., were cancelled. But then I actively approached my clients and said, okay guys, let's virtualize. Trust me, this works. Let's try. And we did. And I completely focused on virtualizing my work. And it still is almost fully virtualized. I almost exclusively work virtually with my clients. I have a few days a month where I go on-site to see clients in person, mostly here in Central Europe, but the rest can be done virtually very easily. And in the course of this virtualization, I did, finally did something I have been carrying on my mind for many years, and that was to build an e-learning because I'm not only coaching, I'm also delivering a lot of input and consulting. And impulses, right? I'm giving impulses for people to be inspired and understand how they can lead more effectively, work more effectively with others and with their customers. So, this pushed me over the edge of, okay, now I'm gonna do it. And long story short, it gave me the opportunity to now tell my customers, okay, You see, you've still got me personally. All the content is delivered by me and all my experience is in there. It just comes as a self-service e-learning platform. And then it's combined with some individual one-on-one coaching and some transfer workshops that the cohorts of participants attending my leadership programs go through together. And those transfer workshops and the individual coaching can be done by someone else because it's not about giving input anymore, but it's about facilitating the learning process. And this opened up the stage for scaling.

Yeah. So virtualization is, if you like, phase 1. And could we then say, Thomas, productization is phase 2 in the scaling? And What about the conversations you have with clients? You've mentioned about the moment where they'll say, but I'm still getting Thomas, right? How have you handled that conversation?

Yes.

To reassure them that they're still going to get the value rather than just an off-the-shelf. And I think you use Thinkific as a platform, right?

Yes, I use Thinkific as a platform because it's really state-of-the-art. It's very good and very user-friendly. What I'm not doing is I'm not promoting or selling online courses or e-learning per se. I am only promoting and selling comprehensive development programs of which the e-learning part is one aspect. Another crucial aspect is the exchange about the content, the discussion of the takeaways, and the discussion of best practices in practically applying applying all of that. And for that, a coach is required, a facilitator is required. And as I said, up to a while ago, it was me only. Now it's a team of licensed coaches that support me in that. And to come back to your question, I always attend at least the kickoff of such a program personally. So I'm there, I'm present. So that's The participants get a feeling for who I am. They feel me, they hear me, they can sense who I am like you can now in our live conversation that we're having here. And that's a crucial aspect for building trust. Because, you know, maybe you know this quote by American author Maya Angelou. She said, people will forget what you said. They will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel or how they felt in your presence. And so that's why I'm always still with one foot in involved. I get to know the people, they get an experience of me and with me, and then I step back. So this experience, giving people an experience is key.

Yeah. And I think that's really powerful though, because also what you've done from an entrepreneur's point of view is you started to through productization create assets that can be scaled and eventually can be sold, right? It starts to become a service that other people can have and around the world. Thomas, tell me, I have to pronounce it correctly because you said you obviously one half of your parents is Italian. So for those that can see, we're gesticulating here a little bit. For those of you that can't see, we have a little bit of— he can't tie his hands beside his back. But Thomas, you built a great practice over a great many years with some really big blue-chip brands that would be the envy of many of the big consulting firms, the big consulting training companies. So congratulations on that. If there's one tip, or more than one tip, for my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs on how to get noticed— you've shared some of the things you've done in the early days, but what would you say would be an overarching tip that you can give us?

Well, an overarching tip is to Really be yourself. I mentioned this before. With all of these strategies and all of these things we discussed that you can do, the crucial question is who you are while you're doing. So do the work on yourself, develop your personality because this will shine through in everything you do. Everything you do, every conversation you're having, every connection, every initial contact you're having with anyone is influenced by that. So be genuine, be authentic, show up for who you are. This might take some work and it might take some courage, but it definitely pays off. And if I may add one more.

Please do. I mean, you're one of the world's best coaches. We're blessed to have you on the mic. Share.

9 out of 10 new projects I win come through recommendation. They don't come through social media and other marketing channels. They come through person-to-person recommendation, word of mouth. And you can just let this happen and hope that this will happen. But hope is not a strategy. Or you can actively ask people, happy, pleased customers, satisfied customers who would have an interest in talking to you. So it's called active promotion. And this has been a key for me in retrospect and keeps being a key. So just use the happy clients and the satisfied clients as your extended sales force, so to speak.

But that does take some courage because all of us, myself included, you know, I've run businesses for 25 years. Asking people for positive feedback and recommendations is always that moment where you're worried that someone might not give you that. So it does take some courage. And self-belief, though, doesn't it, Thomas?

It does. And initially, it did require me to also overcome a little bit of an inner resistance. Can I really ask for that? Is that ethical? Is it not too much to ask for? And my experience has shown, no, it isn't. People are actually happy to help when they had a good experience with you.

Thomas Jelmy in Zurich, I have had a fabulous experience with you. Thank you so much for coming on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Podcast with me.

Thank you.

So as always, I will include the details of my guest today, Thomas Chelmy, in Zurich, joining us, explaining all about how he's built his consulting business by managing his personal brand, building that out, and then through virtualization, then productization, and then association and credibility, and finally asking for some recommendations. I found it really useful. I hope you have too. If you have found it useful, please do share this with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. We're on a mission to get more people to learn from their peers. And if you've got a chance to review the show, that would be wonderful on the player. Remember, the conversation is one of many I've had with entrepreneurs. 50 of them have come out in the Unnoticed Entrepreneur book, now available on Amazon, published by Wiley. So until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thanks for joining me. Now I'd just like to mention our sponsor for this show, the Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast is sponsored by a company called Prowly. Prowly is an all-in-one software for leveraging your public relations activities. You can boost the media relations game for your business, find media contacts, send out press releases, and get more coverage while saving time and money on everyday tasks. Check it out, prowly.com.