Your Dream Business: 6 Steps to Building a Coaching Business You Love - Part 2

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on Earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:41 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. Yo, dude. What's going on? All right. Resuming. Previously on the Coaching Equation Podcast. Last week, we left you with a cliffhanger. And we talked about how you want to work with people. And really, this is getting back to designing your business the way that you want it, the way that it feels great to you. With all that said, let's not waste any more time resuming our regularly scheduled program today. Number two is really just deciding what is the lifestyle that you want to live.

1:28 And you and I have had a really interesting experience with this because we had a bit of a clash early on with one of our partners. And why don't you tell that story? And we'll talk a little bit about that because I think it's a great illustration. Yeah. Yeah. So there's this dynamic of what, what is our day, our week, our month look like, and what do we have as far as our vision of, of what that would involve. And it really comes back to the business style that you want to play. Um, so yeah, we had a business partner and, you know, and again, so this is, this is the dynamics of it and not, none of us was right or wrong. It was just different desires around how we wanted to play.

2:11 So he wanted Mondays and And then so that meant every week. And again, it was love. The idea was awesome. Right. Being able to have a four day weekend every single week. Heck, yeah. Who wouldn't want that? But then when it got down to it, for us, it was more of a nice to have versus for him. It was a must have. Well, that radically, you know, six months in, it was like, hey, we've got clients that need help. Well, I don't work Mondays and Fridays. Well, we need to be able to work Mondays and Fridays to be able to help clients. Like, yeah, three years from now, five years from now, when we got everything in play and we got all our staff here, like totally makes sense. But for him, it was a non-negotiable, whereas for us, it was negotiable.

2:54 And when we were looking at the lifestyles we wanted, you and I were more in that, that zone of like, okay, we can bend on this for a window of time and then ultimately get there. That wasn't the case for him. So we had, we ultimately had to part ways because it just, it didn't drive. Yeah. And I think this is this is one. I mean, certainly this is one where as partners, if you have a partner in the deal, you definitely need to be clear on this. And I think the other piece of the puzzle is that when there is no partner, you just need to make sure that you decide what you really want. So here's the deal. Yeah. If he had been running his own business and each of us was running our own business, we could have just decided in a vacuum the way that we wanted it.

3:40 And if he wanted to run a business that was, hey, I don't work on Monday and I don't work on Friday, like more power to you, dude. Go do that thing. But... If that's not the way that you want it, you have to kind of decide what your priorities are. Now, I do think that when it comes down to lifestyle and deciding how you want things to be, I do think that you need to look through the lens of ultimately what you want for your business when you look at your lifestyle because you're going to go through seasons on this is the way that I like to explain it. If you're at ground zero and you say to yourself, it's like, I want a $5 million business and I know why, and it's really important to me to get there, you not working Mondays and Fridays is not going to be the fast track to your $5 million business, right?

4:37 Now, if you say, hey, you know what? I'd be happy as a clam if I just made $1.25 a year and had a few clients and took Mondays and Fridays off and kind of hung out with my kids. And I like, that's awesome. You have to decide how you want it. But then also, you know, be willing to look through the lens of having seasons in your life and in your business. So case in point, you know, for at the very beginning, of Empire, Brooke and I, there was no like, we're gonna take certain days off. It was just like, we're gonna go. And that's what we needed to do. Initially, there was so much hands-on work that we were doing.

5:18 We had no team. We didn't have any support. There was none of that. So we fulfilled on all the things for the clients. But in addition to that, we were also out there, pounding the pavement, so to speak, and nurturing relationships and talking to people every day and all of that kind of stuff. It also got to a point where I felt very strongly for me that I was not I didn't have enough time to ideate and build things that were going to benefit us at some point. And so I did. This was it was partially about lifestyle, but really more so about like. making sure that I had the days to do the right things where I went, okay, like Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm not taking meetings unless it's an absolute emergency because I need those days to actually get some work done to ideate, to create, to build, that kind of thing.

6:14 Um, that's a different season. Now there's going to come some season at some point down the road where we may go, Hey, you know what? We're just not going to work on Fridays. We don't feel like it. Um, You know, and at that point, that'll be wonderful. So I think just allowing for seasons, but being very intentional that if you have certain non-negotiables, make sure you set it up so that you can win. Yeah, I was just going to stack within that. Look at things as seasons, right? Like you mentioned that word a moment ago. Like there was a window in time. So totally separate scenario. When I was working for Tony, I knew Rain and I were going to be having a child coming.

6:56 So this was before Bodhi was born. So my goal was I wanted to make sure I had the time available when Bodhi was born. I wanted to be able to be there for both my wife. I wanted to be able to spend time with him, but I knew I had that, you know, nine month runway. So I spent that nine months going, okay, I'm going to basically bend all of my rules for this season so that I can work part time when the baby came. Yeah. And so it was just being mindful of like where I'm at, where's what's coming ahead. And guess what? I knew there was going to be a tipping point where I wasn't going to be required or needed as much, or I needed to kind of flip flop back the other direction. But I really got clear on that lifestyle piece and I restructured my world and I had to make a sacrifice on the front end to be able to get to the other side of the, the, uh, you know, that next season that was coming.

7:42 Yeah, I love that. And I think that's a great way to say it. It's like if you're intentional about this, you can design it in a way where you know you're going to need or want to make a lifestyle shift at a certain point. And so you front load it and you do some extra stuff or whatever. I can pretty much come and go as I please where I don't have a significant amount of meetings. And, you know, I don't have like several different, you know, calls and things like that that I have to show up with every week.

8:26 Well, part of that boils down to then how many clients do you want, which is number three. Step three is figuring out how many clients do you want. And that ties directly back to number two. Because... we know a lot of people, for example, we work with, you know, some amazing coaches that are single moms. And, you know, they've got kids, they've got things that have to be done, and they're the only one to get it done. And so they go, okay, you know what, like, I'm not trying to get 100 clients right now. I want like 10 of the right ones at the right price point because that's the only way it really works for my lifestyle. I can't afford to be on calls all day long because otherwise I would have to sacrifice for my children and I'm not willing to do that.

9:13 So what are your thoughts on kind of figuring out and dialing in the number of clients that we want? Yeah. So the first piece is, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Like, what is my lifestyle? How many? So part of what that comes into, right, by the way, is like when you're if we're really getting down to brass tacks, how many hours a week or how many hours per day do I really actually want to be working? Yeah, because when we go into how many clients do you want? There's an undercurrent of that of how many clients don't want to actually be engaging with. How many clients, prospective clients do I need to be talking to on the regular in order to be having that many on my client load? Meaning how many sales calls, again, depending on your model.

9:53 But like, do you want to be taking sales calls if you're like, hey, I need to have 10 clients. But every couple months I lose one. Well, guess what? You've got to also factor in time for generating new clients, taking those sales calls, following up. You've got to weave those activities in. Yeah. If you're like, hey, I want to have a thousand clients. Well, guess what? Now you've got to look at a whole different world around the lead gen and sales team. Or are you going to be doing different strategies to be able to go for that kind of volume? So there's I think there's two different pieces. One is. If you have, we all have a mission in terms of what the work we're doing, but having a mission driven team. So I'll give you, give you context. Tony Robbins is a very mission driven person.

10:35 He's probably worth well over a billion dollars. Now he's got 114 companies. He's not looking at his world going, I only want to work six hours a day. That is not how he functions. Nope. He's looking at it going, I am on a mission to reach millions and millions of people, whatever it takes. Even if that means I don't only have to sleep two hours a night. Like, so be it. He has a very different approach. for many of our people, they'd go, heck no, I don't want to live a life like that. I'm not doing that. Yeah. But they still want to have an effect and impact other people. So when we're looking at our numbers, you want to be really realistic around like, what do you want your day and your week and your month to look like? How many clients do you need to have in order to play that? Does it line up with your mission?

11:17 I want to reach a million people, but I only want to work two hours a week. That's not going to map out very well. It ain't going to work. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think the other part of this, you know, we talked a little bit about this in part one of this two-part series, this two-part miniseries. Um, and we talked a little bit about like, okay, how do you, we talked about some of the metrics that we see thrown around all the time. And we talked about impact and how it's like, oh, I've got an impact, you know, X number of thousands of people, whatever. And we actually use Tony as a great example of that. He is driven to do that. And one of the things that I think is really important in the context of deciding how many clients you want is, do I want to, do I want to go deep?

12:02 Um, with just a few clients? Or do I want to go wide and impact as many lives as is humanly possible? And here's the thing. As we said, there's no right or wrong answer to this. It's what resonates most with you. Do you like being like the guru? for four or five people and you just go super deep and you give them, you know, everything that you got, or is it really, really, really important to you to, to touch as many lives as is humanly possible. No right or wrong. Yeah. There's a really important undercurrent of that one, right? I just, I'm interrupting it on purpose.

12:43 You can have both because I know there's going to be somebody that's going to go that binary question drives me nuts and I want it. I want both. You can have both. But what I will tell you is to have both and be that person solo. If you want to be a solopreneur and have both, that's going to be tough. To go deep and wide is really, really tough. You can do it, but you're going to have to have a team. So then that opens up another loop of do I want a team? And that's another piece I know we're going to hit. I know. I didn't need a future pace. Don't you do it. Just because you guys heard that. Don't end the podcast. Stay with us. Don't you do it. Stay here. No, I agree with that. 100%. Yeah. Trying to do that. Trying to do that as a solopreneur is very, very, very difficult.

13:25 We've seen people do it. I tried to do that. It did not go well at all. It was that was that was very difficult. All right. Number four, how much revenue do you want? How much revenue do you want? And really, we should change this ever so slightly to say, essentially, what we're talking... We're saying the word revenue, guys. But what we're really talking about is how much do you want to be able to bring home every month, okay? Which is a totally different number than revenue, to be specific. But this is really an important one. It's like when you think about – Brooke, you talked about this last episode when you kind of talked about that number and backing into the number, right?

14:12 Well, so now all of these things are starting to tie together by step four. And when we decide how much revenue we want, we got to look at like – Okay, what's the lifestyle that we really want to be living? Does it matter to us to live on a two-acre lot in a 5,000-square-foot home? Does it matter to us to live in a very affluent area? Do we care about... you know, being able to travel or, you know, like, what are your priorities? One of the things that I would highly encourage, one person that I respect very deeply on this subject is Ramit Sethi.

14:58 And he talks a lot about your money dials. And I love this concept, because he really goes deep on like, look, you don't need to apologize for the things that you really love to spend money on. You should, no one should have to apologize for that, but you do need to be cognizant of what those things are so that you can actually put your money towards the things that you do care about and that you don't spend it frivolously on shit that you don't care about. And I think, first of all, I'd highly suggest checking his stuff out. I will teach you to be rich is a great book. And he's, he's got a nice program on it as well, but yeah.

15:40 At bare minimum, decide like what matters to me from a money perspective. And by the way, I think it's not just the material things or the way that you want to live in the moment. What do you want long term? Do you have kids? Do you care about building a financial legacy for those kids? Do you want to be able to stop working at some point or another and be able to maintain a certain lifestyle? All of these things play a part in deciding how much revenue or more importantly, how much take home you really want or need to have to be happy.

16:20 Yeah, dude, there was a, many, many years ago, Brian Buffini, there was a process that they took us through that was so profound and eye-opening for me because me being more kinesthetic, like the accounting and the mathing side of it, it's like, okay, cool. Like, here's how much things cost. Here's how much I have to earn. Here's what, you know, there's, we can get to the number that way. Brian took us through a process that really just reshaped the way that I looked at the mathing of it all. And so he did basically a Maslow's approach. So he had everybody draw a pyramid. I know there's gonna be Simon and Vanessa are gonna be giving me crap for the pyramid sentiment. He loves pyramids. This guy wasn't my pyramid.

17:01 It wasn't me. Don't shoot the messenger. All right. So the, the base of the pyramid was the word survival. The next word up was stability. The third one up was success. And the highest was significance. Okay. So there's survival, stability, success, and significance. And the thing that was interesting is he goes, okay, I want you to write down the number next to each of those four levels that gives you that feeling. And so being the kinesthetic, I'm like, ooh, well, this is the number that would allow me to feel like I could survive. Right? So I put down the number. Okay, this is the number that would make me feel stable. This is the number that would make me feel successful. And then this is the number that would make me feel significant.

17:42 And that just helped me rewire the way I looked at the math because a lot of times when we're building our business, we get into it and we go, I need to be that significance level. And that is the only number that's there. And that's the scoreboard I'm going to gauge myself off of. I'm not hitting that number. I'm not good enough. My business is a failure. We saw that. Dude, we've seen this. How many times have we seen this with people? Because when you get into a mastermind too, you start to compare. Yeah. especially the ladies. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yep. Right. Fellas do it too, but the ladies do it a lot more. And it's not, it's this piece of like, well, they're making that much money. So I should be able to make that much money. Cause I'm just as smart and good looking as they are. And we get into this like whole like spin out of what we should or shouldn't be making.

18:26 And that becomes Now go back, go back to your own definitions. Like what are your numbers for each of those four levels? And like, what's going to allow you to feel that way? And then make that your scoreboard and make that your decision-making matrix and make the numbers based on the lifestyle you want, based on the clients that you want. it'll open up Pandora's box in a completely different way. And you'll give yourself grace and you'll be like, Oh shit, I'm actually crushing it based on my definition, not based on somebody else's. Yes. A hundred percent. And here's the other thing. Like, let's circle back to let's circle back to seasons again. Um, What would what would crushing it financially look like in this season that you are in?

19:08 Your own timeline, your own season. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because here's the thing, like, you know, you if you ask Brooke and I like like what would feel really good financially to us right this very moment, you know, we'd give you one answer. And then if you asked us in the same breath, like, okay, what's going to feel financially really good, like three years from now, I guarantee, I guarantee both of us are going to give a totally different answer. But that's also because of the fact that it's important to us to, you know, to continue to build and grow financially. We're not trying to build something that we just build up to a level and then we just set and forget it and everything's cool.

19:53 So I think there's that component to it as well. And I agree with you 100%, man, about the comparison game. It is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous game to play. And you really do need to ask yourself what's important to you. When I first started making some money in my oil and gas career, it was the first time I'd really made any kind of real money. I mean, anything to speak of probably any more than like, I don't know, 50 grand in a year or something like that.

20:34 And so I remember as I did that. And I went through this period of time where I had some people around me that quite literally made me feel guilty for wanting things that cost money from the money that I was making. You shouldn't want that. I know you can afford it. You shouldn't want a Mercedes. You shouldn't want a BMW. You know, you shouldn't want to go get that house. You shouldn't want to go be a member of, you know, a private golf club. And literally, it got me to a point where It didn't always. Sometimes it stopped me from making a decision.

21:16 In a lot of cases, it didn't stop me from making the decision. But dude, if I had a nickel for the number of times that I went and made a decision that I wanted to make and literally as I'm doing it, I feel like shit. I'm like making myself feel guilty because of someone else's opinion of how I should or shouldn't be spending my money. It was awful. And I allowed that to go on for the better part of, oh my gosh, almost 20 years. And it took me a really long time to even recognize that, that I had allowed it to happen and that it was driving my, you know, decision-making. And so just keep that in mind, make sure that your decisions around money and what you really want are your own.

22:03 Obviously you got to own them one way or the other, but yeah, own it decide what you want own it and then you know do what's necessary to get there so this dovetails perfectly into the next one which is what is your price point number five is deciding what is our price point let's walk us through how we want to start breaking that down and thinking about that especially in the context of the previous two that we just talked about So the two things that we hear probably most often from, from people in our world is what's my ideal client. And then they get spun out on that. The second thing that usually comes right behind that is what should I charge?

22:45 And it's like, no, this is bass backwards. That's why I love the fact that it's, it's this far down the road and in this, uh, the segment we're doing. If you start with your price point, you're going to get upside down and how you build your business. And then you're very quickly going to feel like you're out of alignment with it. So I love the fact that you've laid it out in this way where it's like, first, let's get really clear of like... How do I want to work in my given day? What do I want my life to look like? How many clients do I actually want to be working with? How much do I want to earn? Because now you've got a math formula. If you know how many hours, you know how many clients, and you know how much you want to earn. Well, cool. You can just do the little division symbol in there. Figure out, I want this many clients, this many hours.

23:27 This is how much I want to make. Voila. This should give you your pricing. This is one way at least. Now, again, that's assuming you only have one channel of clients and you have them coming in and there's a bunch of different ways you can look at this. But to figure out that price point, that's one way you can back into that number. The next piece of that is then you can do a little bit of market research and go, are there other people that are charging that much for that amount of time to work with them in that capacity? Would you feel really good emotionally earning that? So kinesthetic, sorry, I'm bringing it back. But would you feel really good if you go, oh, I got paid that much to deliver that level of service and that window of time that feels like a really good exchange. I can go to bed feeling like I'm in integrity.

24:09 And I can also feel like I can stand in that spot of, I am sure as shit worth this dollar amount. Yes. Because guess what? You come up with this bloated number. And again, your bloated number might be a small number for somebody else. If it feels like a bloated number for you and you have to go sell your services, if you're not aligned, you're going to have a lot of problems. But as far as because I know you math into these things in a different way, too. So what's your approach and your take on it? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think a couple things. I agree with you in terms of the first approach is a very simple and logical way to go about it. I also think that...

24:49 I think there's an interesting nuance. We have certainly been in plenty of rooms where we hear people saying things like, well, you need to charge based on the value of the outcome and not just on your time, which we agree to or we agree with to a certain extent. Here's the kicker. A couple of things that I do want to mention that I think are really important to factor in here, and this is just reality. We know people who would argue this until the end of the day. That, oh, it doesn't matter the service that you're providing.

25:31 That has nothing to do with it. You just charge however much you want to charge. And if they'll pay X, then they'll pay Y. Here's one thing that I want to break to you. And I know I'm going to break a heart or two right now when I say this. But here's the reality in the coaching industry. We don't we just guys we don't want to give you bullshit. And the truth is that if you have a business offer where there is a very, very clear ROI, meaning that if I give you a dollar and I do all the things that you tell me to do, you are enough of an expert that I can see 10 in return of that. Yeah.

26:11 It is easier. Again, this isn't about possible, not possible. Okay. But it is easier to charge a higher price point for a business offer that has a very clear ROI. It just is. And we've seen this time and time and time again where we've worked with people who are absolutely phenomenal at what they do in something that is a softer offer. It's relationships, you know, or something like that. It's some kind of inner healing or something like that. And the reality is just that it is easier when you can clearly on paper go, you give me X and do what I tell you to do.

26:51 I will get you to Y. So that's one thing that I want to mention on that. Do you have any thoughts on that, by the way? Do you think I'm wrong about that? Totally wrong. No, not at all. You're spot on. It's a, you know, we, and this is kind of opening up Pandora's box of sales, but you've got emotional reasons to buy and logical reasons to buy. Yeah. You know, we, we've both heard so many times of like emotion, emotion, emotion, emotion. Yes. Yes. On the emotion. But if you don't have logic. Yeah. If you've got next to no logic in your offering, guess what? Ain't nobody going to buy it. So your offer has to be a logical thing. Now what you want to make sure is you don't lopside it. So this goes into that pricing piece, right? If you, why those ROI offers work is just logically, it just makes so much sense that you'd be a moron and not move forward with it.

27:39 then yeah. Now you also have to be careful on those too. Cause if you have an ROI type offer and your numbers go cattywampus, that can make it tough as well. But yeah, I think when I think of pricing on stuff, there's gotta be this piece of, you know, Back to what is it that I believe the value of this thing is? Whatever you believe the value of it is. And then again, there's value in market research too. Market research is not always going and running things through chat GPT or going and hiring a service to do market research. Market research is also going and selling your services and taking that feedback and really looking at where's my buyer pool? What are they willing to spend on these things?

28:19 And what do I believe the value is? And finding that apex where it makes sense. I completely agree. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I also think that when you think about your pricing, so for example, let's just say that you have a relationship offer and you're really, really good at what you do. And you go at the end of the day, it would feel really good to me if I charged... you know, 5k for my, you know, 12 week program, whatever it is, it would feel good to me. But, and, and I feel that it's definitely worth the, like the value I'm providing is definitely solid based on a 5k investment at the end of the day.

29:00 But like I'd, you know, I'd really like to I really wish I could get to 10. Here's one thing that I want to mention about your pricing is that you may find we don't ever discourage people from from attempting to raise their prices ever. Ever. But you also have... Going back to market research, you also have to recognize how people respond to it. Because we have seen people where in the past... We have seen people raise their prices to a certain amount... And then, you know, they feel super good about it. Like there's not the mindset aspect of, oh, my God, I just raised my price and I'm scared.

29:42 They were feeling super good, super confident about it. And the marketplace basically just told them, we're not going to pay that, you know, as often as we would pay the other amount. Yeah. And so I think that if you decide you want to raise your price, do it, but then pay attention to what the market is telling you, as long as you are really coming into your sales calls with a lot of confidence. The other thing that I want to mention on this is that I think that... there are, let's just say, to use an example, let's say I've got this relationship offer. I feel good about my 5K. People are saying yes at 5K, but I really want to get to 10.

30:25 And so I decide that I'm going to raise my price from 5 to 8. And the market is not biting at 8. So I might go, okay, let me roll this back to six and see what happens there. Ooh, now my market likes six. Okay, eight, no. Six, yes. Now here's the other piece that we can do. And we could go down a rabbit hole on this, which I don't want to do. But just keep in mind with regard to your pricing that if you happen to hit a bit of a ceiling with your pricing, you have other methods by which to create... Recurring revenue, back-end programs, front-end offers.

31:05 We've talked about this before. Creating JVs. There are lots of other ways to create additional revenue. It's not purely your price point. At the end of the day, when I'm calculating, one of the things that I factor in, Brooke, too, is like, OK, going back to that idea of how many clients I really want. If I say I want a business where it's just me, I have no team maybe other than like a virtual assistant and I just want to work with five people. Yeah. Well, in that situation, if I'm truly going to pour in, I'm going to be guru to these five people.

31:46 In my mind, the more of my time somebody gets, the more that price tag goes up. And so, you know, that's one other thing that I would just consider is that if you're truly going to be the fulfiller, and I know a lot of people who run businesses this way, and they love it. And I know some who are like, Nope, that's not for me. But if it does sound like it's for you. the more of your time that's involved as the expert, if you're going to totally go be somebody's guru, you need to make sure that your price point really accounts for the amount of personal time that you're putting in. And when you move into a bit more of a group or a hybrid based format, and the less personal time that you have to put in, that's when you're going to probably need to dial back a little bit with regard to your price point.

32:37 Yeah. Just saying similar sentiments, right? We pay for proximity. So, and this just is kind of how it goes. If it's a straight content program, guess what? You're not going to be able to charge nearly as much as you would for something that's a one-on-one that's with you as the guru. But if you go, as soon as you move into a, I want to have a mastermind. Well, now guess what? You're getting more proximity. So that's why the price goes up. Well, I want one-on-one. You're paying for more proximity. Well, I want you as the expert. Now you're paying for more proximity. So really when you're putting those price points together, think in terms of you pay more for proximity. Yeah, I agree with that.

33:18 All right. Well, bringing us home here, my brother. Number six. This is the big one that Brooke teased just a minute ago. Almost broke the episode, but he did. I'm so close. Rolled it back. And the killer is... Go ahead. No, you go. No, you. No, you. All right. So number six is, do you really actually want a team? All right. So this actually goes back to something we were talking about earlier. We were talking about one of our business partners, you know, didn't want Mondays, didn't want Fridays. Totally cool. But there was another piece of that puzzle too. Didn't want to manage other people. So whereas you and I, we've been in the game of having teams, large, huge teams, multiple teams, divisions, right?

33:59 Like we've overseen multiple companies. So for you and I, there was no major resistance there. We're like, yeah, heck yeah, we're going to have people because we wanted leverage and we wanted to grow and expand and create culture and community and all the things. But for this other person that was our business partner, and again, no fault to him. It was just he didn't want to have to oversee and manage people. Part of his, his model. So that led to again, more of like, Oh, we're going to have some disalignment here or misalignment disalignment. Ask Ryan's mom. I got to Google it. Ryan's mom says misalignment. Yeah. Okay. I knew that one was at least right. I just didn't know if disalignment could play in, but yeah, we're going to, we're going to run with it. We made a word. It's a thing.

34:40 I need a word. Dis-alignment. Dis-space alignment. See, now that's how it works. They're both the wrong word. I don't even know what the hell I'm talking about now. I don't either. But do you want to run a team? Are you going to want to manage people? This actually came up this week too, by the way, because these are things you have to factor in. Like Vanessa, she was looking at my world and she's like, Brooke, your calendar is a little bit crazy and it has been now for about four months. We should probably find some help, get you an assistant, somebody who can support that. by the way it was more like your calendar is a fucking dumpster fire she actually called me a crackhead is what she called me but i was trying to paint her in a positive light But within that, so here she goes, hey, we got to get you help.

35:24 Whereas I had to, I gave a little bit of pushback, not that I didn't want the help, but I had to factor in, hey, to bring on help also means I have to stack on hours to train the new person. Right. So, yes, it's that short term sacrifice for the long term gain. But for me, it was never a matter of do I want to. Do I want to have somebody that I have to manage or somebody that's on my team or somebody I have to meet with or any of that? For a lot of people who are in this space, like really think this through. And actually, my mom, jump on a soapbox for a moment. My mom is a coach in her space. She's actually one of our coaches, not because she's my mom, but because she's actually a badass coach. She is a badass. 18 months ago, if you had asked her, hey, what kind of business do you want?

36:04 She's like, I want a $10 million business. I want thousands of clients in my world. I want to, you know, I want to have a team of people that, you know, that I'm overseeing. Fast forward 18 months later, she had a moment where she sat with these exact six questions, by the way. And she went, wait a minute. I actually want to have like 20 clients that I can go deep with that I can have, you know, that I'm earning X amount of dollars where I get to have impact and show up in a different way. And I don't want to have to manage anybody. Like I want a clean, simple business that allows me to live my lifestyle at this X level. So, yeah. And I know you and I are very aligned in this. That's why it jives. But what are your thoughts? Because you've run both too.

36:46 I have. Yeah. You know what? And this is where I do think you just got to figure out what you want. For me personally, going back to the previous partner, there was such discord there for me, mainly because... I don't thrive on managing other people because it's some sort of a power trip for me or because I want to feel superior. There's like a significance factor there. I actually believe wholeheartedly. And I have, I would say, since I mean, for as long as I can remember... Because of many experiences that I had and because I was in a space where I was able to look around and see before I got into business for myself, how many people are miserable at the places that they work and how many people are miserable working for tyrants and assholes and shitty managers.

37:43 Because I've studied leadership for so long, I truly believe that part of my impact, it wasn't just about how many clients can I impact. I have believed from a relatively early age that part of my purpose in this life is to create an environment where people absolutely love to come to work. In my previous company, we... I was so proud of the culture that we had created and how much people love to work for us and how they'd even sit on the sidelines and wait for a new job to, you know, to come up if something ended instead of going to work for another company because of how much they love to work for us.

38:28 For me, not building a team, that was a non-negotiable. When that came out internally, I was like, nope. I have to have that team, not for significance, because I believe it's part of my purpose. And I also believe that when we think about the ripple effect, and by the way, I'm not trying to sell you on wanting a team. I'm simply saying, like, these are my thoughts on it. I also believe that when I think about the ripple effect, I believe that if I can create a culture and an environment and a team of badass people that love what they're doing and are totally aligned on a mission, all the things that you and I and Vanessa, Deepika, Colleen want to be able to go out and create in the world, well, now we've got an army of people alongside us to help go do that.

39:21 And every single person that they interact with, whether it's a client or not, they can have an impact and an effect on their life. You know, and so that's a big part of it. But I also think that when it comes to a team, you also have to decide if you decide you want one. Again, I'm going to keep banging this drum, but go back to the season that you're in right now. You might be like me where you're like, man, I really feel like I got this purpose. Like for me, I'm like, give me more rock stars on my bus. Let's go. Only thing is... You got to be careful about going down that road because here's the deal. If you go from I have no team to like three months later, you got 10 people on your team.

40:03 Guess what? You got 10 mouths to feed. You got 10 bills to pay. You got 10 people that you got to train up and you got to get them rolling. You know, so make sure that you understand the season. And I think sort of just like money at the end of the day, I see people change their mind on teams a lot. I've seen people who are like, I don't want a team. They get like three or four people. It's awesome. They realize they want to grow. They want to expand. They need more. They've gotten enough of a flavor. Okay. You know what? I'll have 10. and then I've seen people I don't know about you but I've seen people who build teams and they're fucking miserable they're like oh my gosh I thought this was what I wanted I don't want it I don't want all these people I don't want all the mess and they hack and slash and Six months later, it's them and a VA and they're back to the beginning.

41:00 So I think there's learning involved and I think there are also seasons that are involved in deciding if you want a team and do you want small and do you want large and when do you want those things, if at all. I think there's a deeper question within that, within the team dynamic. And that's, do you want to build a company or do you want to provide a service? Yeah. And neither of those, by the way, there's not like, this is a 50, 50 split. Like there's no fight in the game. Like we, we know what we want to create. Right. But for anyone who's, who's really looking at this or having this come to Jesus moment where they're like, well, shoot, I thought I really wanted to build a company, right?

41:40 But I'm feeling like I really want to provide a service there. There's no harm in that. But you want to be really freaking clear which one you're doing, because both of those come with very different decisions, with very different moves, with very different expectations. And again, if you want to build a company of one. Awesome. But you've also got to be, you've got to understand either a, you're going to have to do all of the things or you're going to be outsourcing to other teams elsewhere, other companies to get those things done, or they're not going to happen, which is going to make things very tough. So you do need to think, do I want to export all of these activities or do I want to import all these activities? Right.

42:20 Cause that changes the dynamic and there's benefits to both, right? Cause to your point, One bad hire can completely grenade your psychology around wanting to have a team. One good hire can completely fuck up thinking you're thinking that everybody I bring on my team is going to be an angel and they're going to be golden. And it's this is just going to be kumbaya. So, yeah, just be really, really realistic with do you want a team? Do you want a small team? Do you want a big team? Do you want a medium sized team? Like what what is it that you really are going after? Yep. I would give one last little caveat before we, before we land this plane, uh, uh, finally today. And I would just say this, as you're thinking about a team, the one thing I want to beg of you right now is that if you think you want a team, even if you think you want one person, even if you think you just want a virtual assistant, the minute you think it's going to go anywhere beyond yourself, please prepare yourself to show up as a servant.

43:18 Because too often, people, and we have seen this time and time again, with clients, with people that we just observe, with companies that we walk into, someone goes, okay, I need a who. Okay. And that who is now they work for me. They are here to do something for me. And that's the way they run the relationship. And it is awful to watch. It's kind of like this. If you are a shitty parent, please don't go fucking adopt a child. All right. And it's the same thing here.

43:58 Like just being real. If you just want somebody to come and do shit for you. Please don't hire anyone, please, because you're literally doing the opposite of what I was talking about earlier, which is bringing people on so that you can make their lives better. Here's what I do want to tell you that if you do want to do this and you want to do it right. Start by coming from a place of serving the person that you're hiring. How do I bring this person on and make their life absolutely incredible? How do I bring this person on and help them level up and get more exposure and more expertise and become even better at what they're doing?

44:40 How do I make them an even better servant to... our clients. How do I put them in a position where they're inspired to come to work? I know recently, I was talking... I can't remember if it's just the last one or the one before where I was talking a little bit about Leaders Eat Last, the book I'm just about finished with, with Simon Sinek. And towards the end of the book, he talks a lot about millennials. And I'm not going to go totally down the rabbit hole with millennials. I know there are plenty of them listening to this podcast right now. But one of the things that he did talk about is he talked about how...

45:20 how much more important it was for millennials, and I think this goes for the generations beyond millennials as well, how much more important it was for them to believe that they were a part of something. And they don't, So generationally, there is a gap between the, I go to work and I just bust ass because that's what I'm supposed to do. Most of the younger generations, you guys, and some of you may be this, I don't know, but haven't grown up that way. Don't have that belief. And so being a part of something and bringing people along on a mission and truly cultivating a team atmosphere where you are serving your team and you don't believe that they're just there to serve you at the end of the day.

46:13 That's what will inspire people. That's what will create incredible teams. That's what will create incredible results at the end of the day. So I would just ask that if you decide you want to do it, start with that in mind. Well said, man. Yeah. Now they're there. If you're going to bring somebody on, the kiss of death is because you're busy. You think you need to hire somebody, right? Cause for that first 90 days, it's going to be more work for you. So if you, so case in point, use me as an example. I waited too long to go get my assistant, right? Now that I've got her on deck, by the way, oh my God, am I grateful, but yeah, If you go, I'm so busy, I need to go hire somebody, you're going to grenade their world.

46:56 You're going to grenade your own world. And again, if it's not, if it's not hinged around the business that you truly desire to build, you're going to bring them in with the wrong expectations. So I just, I love just a recap actually on, on all these pieces. So the first one is really, how do you want to work with, with people? How do you want to work with clientele? How do you want to work with team members? Right? Like that's the first precipice of this thing. What is the lifestyle you want? That's the second. Really be honest. If you want to work your tail off or if you don't, have that real honest conversation. How many clients do you actually want to be working with? To Ryan's deep and wide, deep and... I wanted to sing earlier, but I had to seize the moment.

47:37 It's the only reason I'm doing this recap is I wanted that, just that, yeah, whatever. How much revenue do you actually, how much money do you really want to be earning? What are your four levels, right? Be, be real about it. Don't get sideways on it. Also make sure that your scoreboard is not one single number that you've got some flex in there. What do you want to be pricing things at? And then the last piece there is, is what kind of company do you want? Solopreneur? Do you want to have a mega team? Do you want to have a micro team? Do you want to have like, what does your world look like where you feel like that this would really serve you and this experience you get to have where you get to expand, make sure you weave some growth in there. So you're not just building a world of complete comfort that you just get totally sedentary in, but have these honest conversations, really dig into these pieces and see what comes up.

48:28 Cause we always find it fascinating every time we do. I love that. I totally agree. And I would also just say, you know, one more time, I'm going to drop the seasons in there. I would love if you go through this exercise and you go through these six steps. And please, by the way, go back and re-listen to this and actually journal it out. Sit down with a piece of paper or on your computer, however you prefer to do it, and journal this out. But I would encourage you to actually go as far as right now your mind and your heart will allow you to go. Like, go as far as you can. This is what I would really want. Because then you can reverse engineer and you can say, okay, ultimately, this is what I really want.

49:10 Now, right now in this season, this is how it is. But this is how I'm going to start taking steps towards it. And I'm going to build step by step to what I really, really want. Maybe a lot of that is already available to you. Maybe it's not. But the one other thing that I want to say is, is if you are right now, you are right in the midst of your business. You're making a fair living right now. You're serving people. You're enjoying your work. But for whatever reason, you look around and you go through these six questions and you realize it doesn't really fit what you want. You realize that you really built something according to somebody else's expectations.

49:51 Please don't be afraid to break it. Don't do it. Like we have such a... Yeah, we have such an opportunity as business owners and entrepreneurs to have it our way. And when we build businesses that we don't love, we just put ourselves in a different kind of prison. It's just another fancy way to give ourselves a job, basically, at the end of the day. So don't be afraid to break it. And I would just say that if you find that you, in order to get what you really want, that you do need to break it, please also don't go grenade your whole world tomorrow. Hey, Brooke and Ryan told me to just quit my business. And yeah, just go fucking commando on the whole thing with a flamethrower.

50:35 Go to Mexico. Yeah. Please don't do that. You can't go to Mexico if you want. That's fine. But don't set fire to your business tomorrow. Do this intelligently. So, dude, this was a great episode. I hope that... I hope that you got value out of this episode. Please do the work. Don't just listen to this one, whether you're just starting out, whether you're midway through, whether you're good ways down the road. Put your business or the business that you want through these six questions and promise you that you will have the opportunity to create anything that you want. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts because this is part of our successful business.

51:17 This is this wonderful podcast and all of you people listening. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Until next time, be well. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.