In this highly insightful episode Steve Smith, Owner of GrowthSource Coaching, shares the paradoxical method he used to help thousands of business scale!
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach. And that is Mr. Steve Smith. Steve is a new friend of mine. We’re meeting here for the first time, but he’s the owner of growth source coaching in Orange County, California based business and executive coaching company that specializes in helping business professionals become extraordinary leaders, savvy business owners and confident marketing strategists. Steve’s sole mission is to help business professionals to develop clarity, confidence and operating performance so they can play at their highest potential. I absolutely love that. I’m excited about our conversation. Steve, I’m so thankful to have you on the show. I’d love to just start and open up with your story. Tell us a little bit about who you are, and how you got into coaching and why?
Steve Smith
Well, Scott, thanks first, thanks for having me on. I’m really looking forward to this. The short story on my entire evolution through business is that I worked for 30 years in the consumer products manufacturing industry, for large corporations, all top of their game had a lot of great experiences. But you know, when 2008 came around, I’d kind of had enough. And I was really looking for something that I could take everything that I had learned and repurpose it. So I could feel a whole lot better about what I was doing, you know, have have have a meaning to all this, as opposed to just kind of following, you know, the big corporate, you know, guidelines and where they want to go and stockholders and all that kind of good stuff. So I ventured out and ran into coaching. And it was interesting, because I didn’t know this. I mean, I knew coaching was around, I had heard about people that had executive coaches, but I didn’t realize it had just grown at the levels that it is today. And I was introduced to, you know, to the whole coaching arena. And I ended up buying a small franchise. And it was a startup company, I fell in love with their whole methodology. I mean, they just had a philosophy about this that really spoke to me. Things were going along really good. But two and a half years in the company folded, they went out of business. And so what do you do with a franchise when the mother company decides to go bankrupt? So you know, I’m sitting here, I can remember the day and the time, this is one of those things where you just never forget the phone call that tells you it’s all over with. Yeah. And so after I got done kind of like crying in my soup, you know? And my wife even said, Well, look, you’re always telling me that clients stay with you way beyond the contract, because they like working with you. So why don’t you just do your own thing? You know, and that’s when that light bulb moment hit. And I took everything and repurposed it. And quite honestly, the way I springboarded myself from that disaster, to what I have today, was I contacted the IT guy that was inside the company. And I said, Is there any way I can get some of this material because you know, you guys are going out? Nobody, everybody’s running, nobody’s going to hang around to repurpose this thing. So he gave me access to the IT system. And I downloaded the client list. And I started calling people. And I must have called almost 100 people. And I got people that no thanks. And oh, yeah, let’s do it. And some people were just threatening with lawsuits like I had anything to do with this. But I ended up with about 40 clients, some that I basically help them figure, you know, get through their program, they had already paid in advance, and they were out the money. So I helped a few of those, I split my fee with a couple others. And so over the course of about the next year and a half, that’s what got me started. And after that, I realized what the what the franchise had offered me was was all about mindset about getting your head in the game, and really knowing what lane to play in and how to operate from a mental standpoint, what they didn’t have, which is what 80% of my businesses today was leadership and management. And that’s what I brought in from my 30 years in consumer products. Because one thing about that industry, they do an unbelievable job of training people as they’re bringing them up, you know, up the ladder. And so I had all this in depth skill. And I thought okay, there’s other, you know, the small businesses or executives who are rising up and in their, you know, in their in their careers, they’ve never had any formal training. And so I just started marketing that and you know, the floodgates opened. So that’s kind of how I got where I am today, and it was a fluke, but it was the best thing that ever happened.
Scott Ritzheimer
Amazing. I’d love to explore that for just a second because it’s remarkable how many successful even founders have that story right? You said the phone call that tells you it’s all over. And and I want to it wasn’t really on the map or on the radar but I’d like to pause here for just a second and and hear like, how do you having processed through that. What would you tell somebody listening who just got that phone call this morning, right? And is sitting in that, you know that first day, two days, three days and thinking it’s over? Yeah. What would you say to them right now?
Steve Smith
All right, here’s what I would tell them. And this is pretty much what happened to me. The first thing I thought was, which anybody is going to, you know, after you hang the phone up, and you decompress a little bit, you know, the first thing you think about is what am I going to do? And over the next week or two, what I had found out was everybody else that had come into that franchise, you know, the franchising is an interesting world, because until you get to a critical mass, the franchise itself is kind of always at risk. And I think we got to maybe 2428 franchises in major cities around the country, which is puny, you know, for a franchise, but it was growing. Alright. So what I found out was everybody else that was in the franchise basically left the coaching arena and went back to the occupation they had before they fell in love with coaching. And I said, you know, what, there’s no way back for me, I’m not going back in that direction, I decided, I mean, I put about 100 grand into this whole thing. I said, this is the only direction I have going forward. So the next question was, alright, I can either just language in a language in my own misery, or I can figure out what a company would look like that has my stamp on it. And I spent the next 30 days with everything I learned from them, because they were real big in marketing, just sitting down and figuring out, okay, what does it look like now, you know, obviously, I can’t use their name because it was kind of tarnished. But I came up with my own name, my own philosophy, the what people could expect, if they decided to come to me, because that’s one of the things I learned in marketing is, you have to be really, really clear about your promise. And you have to execute every single time with every single person you work with. That’s how you get the reputation about there that you’re the real deal. Yeah, and so I built this whole model with like, 70 modules on various aspects. Because the other thing I realized was, a lot of our competitors, big ass companies had programs, you know, they’d put people through the front, then run them through the whole end, didn’t matter whether you need it all or not you bought into the program, that’s what you were gonna get. I took my whole system, from, you know, people, I’m dating myself now, but from Reader’s Digest, you know, short little modules that can help people develop strategies and get over the humps that were holding you back, right. And I put all these things together for management, leadership, and marketing. And that’s how I did it. And once I started getting into the, you know, the traction of putting together stuff and seeing it all come together, at least on paper, that’s what gave me the motivation to keep going. Right, I had a purpose. And I really felt good. Even though I was making zero money at that time. I really felt good about where I was going.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s, it’s such a great point. Like, I think the question that comes is like, if you can go back, like then, then that’s, that’s a valid route, right? If you can’t go back, if you’re not gonna go back, you just have to burn the bridge. Right? Like, if you’re not going to go back, the biggest thing that I think folks get get stuck with, especially in times of crisis, or doesn’t go the way that you want, is we get stuck in the middle, right? We can’t get back to the thing that we want it maybe it never existed in the first place, right. And we we lose the opportunity to move forward, because you’re still hanging on to this old thing. Right?
Steve Smith
And, you know, here’s the other thing that I ran into, and I see this today, people go into coaching, because they have some love affair with what it’s all about, quite honestly. And I’ve sat down with numerous people over the years who have asked me, you know, how do you do this? How do you get into it? And the first thing I tell them is, this is not an easy way to make a living, you can be successful at it. And you can have great fun at it, which I do. But it’s a hard road. And there’s like coaches littering the sidewalks everywhere. They’re all over the place. But many of them don’t get into it for the right reasons. And the ones that don’t, when when you know, when you hit that wall, that’s when they start going back and saying well, gee, you know, what I was doing before actually wasn’t that bad, you know, and then they tend to go backwards. And this, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re gonna do this for the for the long haul, you’ve got to really know in your head, this is the only reason you’re out here to do this.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. And I think for someone listening who’s like, Hey, I’m not going to be a coach. You know, I’ve no intention of that. But what can they gain from this conversation? I think it’s new coaches aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Right? Right. But one of the things you have to be cautious of and conscientious of if you’re looking to hire a new coach, you have to make sure that they are in it for the right reason, right. You have to make sure that they’re going to help you get through to the end of the thing that the challenge that you’re facing at the moment Right. And and that’s where I’ve found a lot of folks get in trouble is they just kind of assume a business coach is a business coach, right. I’ll take the cheaper One. Again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s lots of new coaches out there who are wonderful people who don’t charge crazy rates, right? Those aren’t bad people, they’re not going to give you a bad service. But you also, you know, there is a Darwinian process in the coaching professional, no question make it or you don’t.
Steve Smith
You have to be willing to endure the journey. And that certain margin of fallout. Yeah, and as I meet with, and sometimes I’ll mentor people are trying to get into coaching, the first thing I see that I can tell is going to be a struggle for them is they’re more interested in telling you what they know that helping you figure out what you know. And until you make that mental shift in, it doesn’t matter who you’re working with. I mean, if you go to my website, I’ve got 40, or 50 different industries that I work in. So I’m kind of industry agnostic. But what I’ve learned in every one of them is it’s not about what I know, it’s about what I can help them realize that they already know and figure out a way to put to application to do something with as opposed to just kind of hunkering down and staying in the weeds and waiting for the, you know, the storm to blow over. You can’t do that. You’ve got to persevere through it, and use your strengths, and figure out what weaknesses are getting in your way, so that you can stay clear about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right. Another thing that you mentioned earlier on in the conversation, just to kind of bring it back was this idea of a program, right, here’s my program, here’s this the steps, here’s the you know, and, and I would say the the great coaches that I’ve worked with all have a program, right, but they also break the program routinely, right, like, there’s a, there’s, there’s you know, and so I think one of the challenges that we have is when you look at, you know, a lot, especially the bigger coaching programs and how they work really well there’s a, there’s a simplicity about it, if you follow these steps, you get these results. And there’s a bit of like a magic promise baked into that. But But what you find out is like, whatever it is that you’re getting into, you’ve got to live with that, right, if you’re buying a car, you’re gonna keep driving that car for the next, you know, X number of years, you hire a coach, even if the coaching relationship is six months, or 12 months, whatever the systems they are that they help you put in place, whatever the tools that are that they give you, you’re going to be living with those for quite a while. You know, it may be a six month investment, but it is not a six month investment,
Steve Smith
no, and the only thing you can that will actually make that investment worthwhile is if you lock on to what you learn. And you figure out how to how to make it your own. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of different programs, you’ve seen Tony Robbins program, I’ve seen this one called Traction that’s by Eos, big bay organization out there. And they’re all really good. They’ve got a lot of good stuff in them. But nobody ever follows it. 1,000% soup to nuts, right? Eventually you figure out what things work for you really well, which you can adopt based on your own personality, your own style. But as long as you just run with that, and make that a new part of who you are and how you show up in your business. You’ve got what you came for.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And I think the very best systems have that presumption built in, right? There’s no, there’s no idea that you’re going to implement 100% of this 100% of the way that you know, the next person has a previous person. But these are a set of tools that can work for you. How can we which ones are the ones that you need most, and how can we best, we best get those incorporated into what it is that you’d write as fascinating. So it kind of in light of that tell me a little bit about what what you would say some of the most important work that you’re doing with your clients right now.
Steve Smith
Most all of them require a significant amount of mindset change. And it’s because depending on how long they’ve been in their role, or depending on where they are in the role, because you know, I have some right now that are moving into executive level roles had never been there before. They’ve never had any formal training or experience in that. And what they do is they carry the previous tactical mindset into a role that’s really more strategy in nature. And if you don’t help them see that and the importance of that, and why they need to work hard to change how they view things around them, you know, how they communicate with their people, how they look at the business. If you don’t, if you’re not successful at that, they now have an executive level role and they’re operating like a manager. And everybody else is going to pick up on that really quick the last person in line to see that is them. So part of my job is to almost shock the conscience and get them to realize, you know, if you want your folks to follow you to be loyal to even when they don’t like what you’re telling them, they’re gonna do it. They have to respect that you know what you’re doing and it starts with what’s going on in your head. Right. So for business owners for startups, it’s not about where you are now is our Are you thinking about where you’re going to be a few years from now? And are you willing to put your arms around that and wear that?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And I think that it’s so true, right? We looking for tips and tactics, but at the end of the day, it’s how are you thinking about this problem, right? And what are the beliefs that are driving your actual behaviors, one of the things that you picked up on that I want to dig into a little bit more is, you know, we kind of kind of get stepping into a new set of shoes, right? We may kind of carry lessons too far right? You know, lessons from the past the strategies from the past, we carry those too far. But I find it’s pretty easy. Once somebody shines a light on that, you know, someone who’s willing to learn, it’s pretty easy for them to recognize, okay, I can see the difference. One of the places that I see is a bigger challenge for someone is someone who’s been in a role for a long time. Right? Yeah, what are the types of mindset changes that you see for folks that have, that aren’t necessarily in a new role, but they’ve been in a role for quite a period of time.
Steve Smith
Alright, so there’s a couple of things that I typically run into. And one of them has to do with someone who’s in a senior role. They’ve been there for a while. And one day they wake up and realize that most of the people under them may not be their direct contact, you know, circle their, their executive team, but it may be a couple of levers below. One day, they wake up, and they realize, I don’t know most of these people, their younger generation, they think differently. They come in, they’re highly educated to start with, but what they’re lacking is just general business acumen, that experience of knowing how to work in a business environment. Okay. And so you almost feel like you’re outside the storefront window looking in, like, You’re not an integral part of your own company anymore, because so much has changed. And so I work with people in ways to help kind of reorient them to their own business. Because if you leave executives, especially, you know, the, the the owners, the CEOs, if the business is running, well, if you leave them in that role for too long, what the next thing that happens is what I call mental drift. Now, they spend most of their time thinking about stuff outside the business, you know, gee, maybe I should start looking around for a second home, you know, in a lake, or, you know, or I’ve got this hobby, you know, I like going fishing, I’m going to buy a boat, I mean, all kinds of things can get in the way that caused them to now spend a greater appreciation of their mental focus, doing stuff that’s non business related. And you have to pull them out of that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t enjoy the rest of their life. But they have to recognize that eventually, if that goes on long enough, the business will start to deteriorate. Or another phenomenon will take place, which is when you have an executive underneath you maybe in the C level, or the VP level role will go rogue on you. I got, I got a client right now that that’s happening. And the guy is a good guy. But he’s drifted from the business so much, that one of his his lieutenants, has now decided to take over. And they’re having a real difficult time wrestling that business back. But the door was wide open. And this young guy is like, well, you know, nobody’s calling the shots, I’m going to do it. And so that’s the kind of thing that can happen. If you don’t constantly look around you and say, what’s changed? You know, am I still relevant? Do I need to get involved in certain things that are going to keep me not in the weeds, but in that director guidance level part of the business?
Scott Ritzheimer
And I think that’s so true, because we tend to see the world as Boolean black or white, true or false, in or out, right. And the reality of it is great leadership is is messy, it’s inherently messy. It’s, it’s getting in it, it’s pulling back out of it. It’s, you know, it’s like, if you’re in a flight, you got to you’re at ground level, and you’re 30,000 feet, right and you go up your Donnie everything in between, you can’t just stay at 30,000 feet, he can’t just stay at ground level. And I think that’s a trick. So for a leader who’s who’s maybe wrestling with that kind of in versus out mindset or struggling to find that natural balance or maybe the the appropriate tension, what what kind of quick piece of advice would you give to them and in wrestling that down?
Steve Smith
The thing I tell people is very strategically reorient yourself to the people in your business. You know, find out if you have new players at the senior level that are reporting directly to you find out who they are, you know, is their philosophy supporting the company’s philosophy or is that starting to separate? You know, figure out what they’re doing? Don’t go in with the idea of telling them what they’re doing right and wrong. Go into them and find out what can I do as the CEO to support you and make your department the area that you have domain over better? Because one of the critic Go Allen’s of being a top of the list is to run interference to remove the blockages. So the people you’ve hired to do more of the executional work are unencumbered and can do that, you know. So find legitimate ways to reconnect. And it doesn’t mean you have to run in there with guns blazing and have weekly meetings with them. But just gradually get back in the pool, go out, you know, one of the other things was highly successful for this guy was he would pick people once a month. And he would have like a multi department, team lunch, none of the none of the supervisors there was just kind of the technician level. And he would just take them out to lunch and just say, Look, you know, if there’s anything you want to know about me or the company, this is the time to ask, you know, free free time, you know, nothing, no questions bad. And he developed really good. Now he would go back to the managers and say, Okay, here’s what we talked about, you know, these you got some sharp people, here’s what I’m going to do to help you help them. So you really have to go at it almost from a servant leadership perspective. And if you do that people won’t see you as somebody getting in the way, or somebody trying to force fit themselves. They’ll actually see you as somebody who’s there to try to guide and help the company be successful for everybody in the company.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Excellent, excellent, excellent advice. So this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. I’m always excited to get to this point in the podcast, because it’s where I get the big, the best and brightest to give their biggest secrets. So I’d love to ask you, what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret? What is that one thing that you wish everybody listening today? Knew? Without a shadow of a doubt?
Steve Smith
Well okay, so, this this term has been used before, I didn’t invent it. But I’ll tell you why in a minute, why wish everybody respected this a little more, especially in our high tech world, okay. The secret of what I do that I think causes most people to to, you know, to come my way, is that I’m high touch and low tech. I use technology, I don’t care if it’s the latest and greatest, it just functionally has to do what is supposed to do. So that I can take up my capacity for doing menial things, you know, and in coordinating and planning and getting staying in front of all the stuff, but still deliver it in a way that people know there’s a human on the other end of the communication, yes. Because you know, we’ve got all this API stuff out there. And look, it’s got its place. But at some point, when you realize your entire day of communication is talking to robots, you know, that can get a little disconcerting. And anytime you get an email that’s constructed that looks like a human actually wrote it for you, you’d be amazed how fast you get responses back, you don’t get just blown off, it doesn’t fall into the junk folder on Google. Right, you actually get meaningful responses. So that’s my secret. I mean, I maintain a high touch relationship. But I also use the right amount of technology to facilitate just the arduous day to day stuff that keeps it going and keeps it consistent. Because that’s the other big thing that a lot of businesses fall out of favor with is they start going off in different channels, they get a new bunch of new people in and all of a sudden, the consistency of what they’re doing starts to wane. And customers will see that quickly. So if you can maintain the consistency, use the technology where it’s going to help you be more efficient, but still maintain a high touch approach. People will love you for it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. It’s definitely a way to stand out, especially in today’s today’s world. Now, another question I have for you here is I’ve worked with enough coaches to know they have a knack for spending all of their best energy, their most creative capacity, their best problem solving on their clients and can often forget to do the same thing on their own business. So I’d love for you to take your coach hat off for a moment, put your CEO hat on with the rest of us and talk to us a little bit about what the next phase of growth looks like for you and your business.
Steve Smith
All right, I when I got into this thing, I I had thoughts about you know, gee, what kind of a company can I build out of this with people involved and things like that, because that’s where I came from, in my private sector work. And as I got through this, what I realized was, there’s a certain level and size that I really enjoy working with because it doesn’t stress me out and stuff like that. So what I have endeavored to do is earn my way up the quality client ladder. Bring on higher profile clients, more complicated ones, they will invite me in instead of me just doing one, I’m doing five. So that’s been my growth goal is to get better quality, more intricate types of clients, because what happens they stay longer. Yeah. And that’s the nature of coaching. I mean, look, I know a lot of great coaches that sell packages in you know, four sessions, eight sessions, 12 sessions. I don’t do any of that stuff, but You got to be with me six months, and then it goes month to month you stay as long as you want you tell me when you want to tap out, yeah, people will stay a year and a half, two years, I have some clients been around for years. But I know half their management team, because I’ve been working with them along the way. And that kind of consistency is what makes this type of profession worthwhile. So that’s my goal. That’s also my struggle. But you know, to me, it’s worth it because it fulfills what I do. And it makes this you know, the kind of, you know, this is the kind of profession you could do for a long time, you don’t, you know, have to go out at 65, or whatever you can do it as long as you’d have the mental clarity and the stamina to keep doing it.
Scott Ritzheimer
As a great coach is not a quick fix, there will be early wins, right? Like there will be early wins. More often than not, not all the time, but more often than not, but the real value of the relationship is in longevity. And that’s not just selling Hey, you gotta get into a forever coaching relationship, because you definitely don’t want to get stuck in one where you’re giving more than you’re getting as a client like that. That’s just the worst possible outcome. But if we rewind the tape a little bit, it’s making sure that you’re signing up with somebody that can carry you for a little while, right? If you go into saying, Hey, we just need this one thing, well, okay, maybe you can get help with the one thing, but what is it? What’s that? What’s what’s sitting right behind that one? Right, right. And maybe you can’t see it right, depending on on how big the challenges are right? Now, you may not be able to see past that. But try and find the person who can write, try and find a coach who can see past that challenge and take you beyond?
Steve Smith
Well, here’s another interesting thing that I learned along the way, because the original franchise that I bought into, you know, those back in 2008. And zoom wasn’t really around at that point, or they weren’t fully formed. And so everything we did was on the phone. And to this day, probably a simple majority of my clients still opt for that. And I’ll tell you, the biggest benefit is for me helping them it shuts down every sensory perception channel, except you’re listening. And so all you do is listen, you know, if you’re on Zoom, you’re listening, and you’re watching, if you’re in the room, you’re listening, you’re watching, you’re experiencing the coming and going of everything going on around you, it can get distracting. But when you’re in that audio mode, only, you pick up things that you probably would have missed before. And the playback is what the clients paying you for. Yeah, tell me what I you know, I’m going to tell you what I just heard, that probably doesn’t sound the same as what was going on inside your head before you said it. That’s where people say, Ah, yeah, once you get to the off stage, and you get enough of those, now they start taking control of the sessions. Now they’re showing up saying, This is what I need to get get past, then I love it. I said, Look, you guys get in the driver’s seat as fast as you can. My job is not to drive the train for you. My job is to drive it until you’re comfortable taking the wheel.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s excellent. So I know that some folks are listening and just resonating with everything that you’ve said right that maybe they’ve stepped into a new role and they’re feeling the weight of it, maybe they’re in that seat have been in this role for a long time. And I’m feeling the way that the disconnect, right? And that’s really hitting home. So how can folks connect with you and learn more.
Steve Smith
There’s two things you can do. The best way is just to go to my website, www.GrowthSourceCoaching.com, I have my email, I have my phone on there, the best thing to do is just use one of those little CAPTCHA box, sign up for a consult. My consults are so anti-sales it’s amazing. I’m there to help them figure out if coaching is going to help them solve their problem. And if me of the coach is going to be a good match for them. Not everybody is. But that’s the whole reason for doing that to give them some understanding as to is this the best professional development vehicle for you? Do that. Some people just send me email straight out? Hey, Ken, when can we talk? So that’s the best way if you want to go on LinkedIn, go on LinkedIn, you can see a bunch of stuff on there. You can see articles, videos, things that I publish. And that’ll give you a good sense as to how I think about this. And if that resonates with you, that’s a good start. If it doesn’t, then there’s other coaches out there you can look at.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, Steve, thank you so much for sharing. Again, that’s www.GrowthSourceCoaching.com. We will stick it in the show notes for everybody. Reach out to him. You are in good hands with Steve. So again, yeah, thank you so much for being here for everyone listening. your time and attention just mean the world to us. We’re honored to share this time with you. I hope you got as much out of the conversation as I did, and I can’t wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Steve Smith
Steve Smith is the owner of GrowthSource Coaching, an Orange County, CA based business and executive coaching company that specializes in helping business professionals become extraordinary leaders, savvy business owners and confident marketing strategists.
Steve’s sole mission is to help business professionals develop their clarity, confidence and operating performance so they can play at their highest potential.
As a business and executive coach, Steve’s clients consider him their ‘Catalyst for Change’. He works with senior level professionals to upgrade their thinking, demeanor, skills, confidence and desire for action so they can have greater impact.
Steve also co-hosts the only father/son duo podcast, ‘The Business Wingmen Show’ with his son Travis Smith.
You can learn more about Steve and his work at www.GrowthSourceCoaching.com or check out the Business Wingmen podcast at https://www.businesswingmen.com/