BCS 276 – The Power of Documentation and Processes in Business Coaching

Business Coaching Secrets with Karl Bryan

Exciting New Episode Alert! 

Episode 276 of “Business Coaching Secrets” is live, and this is one you definitely don’t want to miss! Our host, Karl Bryan, sits down with the incredible Dr. Alan Gatlin to delve deep into the secrets of building a profitable coaching practice and attracting high-end clients.

Dr. Gatlin, with his extensive background in organizational psychology and sales executive management, brings a wealth of knowledge that will undoubtedly elevate your coaching game. Here are three key takeaways from our engaging conversation:

Relationship Selling:

Dr. Gatlin emphasizes the power of genuine connections in generating new client leads. By focusing on relationship selling, you can position yourself as a trusted go-to expert who provides comprehensive solutions, even if it involves sourcing external resources.

Thorough Preparation:

Success in client conversion starts with understanding your potential clients’ industries, pain points, and competition. Dr. Gatlin underscores the importance of detailed preparation before client meetings. This includes spending significant time learning about the client’s challenges and industry landscape.

Value of Financial Acumen:

Karl discusses why coaches should have a foundational understanding of financial statements. Proper financial analysis can reveal crucial insights for business growth and profitability. This involves comparing financials over periods, identifying significant trends, and ensuring data integrity for accurate assessment.

For more insightful strategies and actionable advice, tune into Episode 276 of “Business Coaching Secrets” and let us know your thoughts. Your path to a more profitable coaching practice starts here! 

Tune in to hear more about Karl’s journey, key entrepreneurial lessons, and practical strategies for achieving business growth. Plus, Karl shares a unique job experience from his backpacking days that shaped his public speaking skills!

Karl Bryan helps business coaches get clients. Period.

For more magic on how you can grow a coaching business by attracting small business owners, filling local live events, and closing more high-end coaching clients… go to focused.com

For a free subscription to my magazine, The Six-Figure Coach go to thesixfigurecoach.com/get-it

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Episode 276 Transcription

Intro [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Business Coaching Secrets with Karl Bryan. If you want to attract new high end coaching clients, fill live events and build a wildly profitable coaching practice where business owners pay, stay and refer, you’ve come to the right place. In this podcast, Karl provides his keys to the kingdom for finding and signing high paying clients and building the coaching business of your dream dreams. Here we go.

Karl Bryan [00:00:38]:
Hey, hey, hey. Hope everybody’s doing good. Another edition of Business Coaching Secrets. This week I have got a special treat for you with one of our clients and an absolute legend in the business coaching world. I’m not sure if he’d be happy to be described that way, but I can tell you that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it all day long. He has got a doctorate in organizational psychology with a focus on how companies function or dysfunction. That makes him Dr. Alan Gatlin.

Karl Bryan [00:01:08]:
He’s an accountant, practiced as a certified fraud examiner and expert witness. In 2023, he was published in Coaching Champions, Empowering Executives for success. He has 30 years of experience in sales executive management for Fortune 50 companies through startups, primarily in the technology sector. He’s a professional speaker and he’s a professor of business with Windsor University, currently teaching in their MBA program. This term, the subject is entrepreneurship. So there we go. The best person to introduce Dr. Alan Gatlin is Dr.

Karl Bryan [00:01:42]:
Alan Gatlin himself. So with pleasure. Alan, how is it going?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:01:48]:
Karl, thank you very much for the invitation to be on the show today.

Karl Bryan [00:01:51]:
You bet, you bet. So we get a lot of business coaches of all shapes and sizes with different experiences listening and I kind of wanted to get into it. I wanted to, if we could, I’d like to start with lead generation. And I know that referrals is a big thing for you. Like that’s where you, you spend a lot of focus. So could you describe your approach to generating new client leads through professional referrals and like, what strategies have you found to be the most effective? And could you elaborate on that?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:02:17]:
Absolutely, Karl. From my approach, I guess I have to be me. And I think that is one of the key things. If you try to be something you’re not, I just have not found that to be a successful approach. So for my years of sales, the approach that I found the most successful was relationship selling. In other words, you get to know people, they get to know you. There comes an understanding of how you can provide for them in terms of their needs and actually vice versa. So what I would do based on solution selling is I would look for being able to provide Them a complete solution.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:03:00]:
Even if I didn’t have that in my pocket, I would go out and find that and bring it to the table such that I was seen as a person who could help them in providing in a variety of areas, not just one area.

Karl Bryan [00:03:15]:
Nice folks. I hope you heard what he just said. Solution selling. So that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is a takeaway, a writer downer for sure. Would you agree with that? Solution selling the way you see?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:03:29]:
Absolutely.

Karl Bryan [00:03:30]:
You provide, you find a problem and then you solve it. Whether you’re capable or not. You go and find the solution. You solve the problem.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:03:37]:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And I think then people start seeing you as a go to expert. And positioning yourself as a go to expert is, I think in the area that you indeed are is one of the most important things you can do to establish yourself, to be seen as that.

Karl Bryan [00:03:54]:
Nice. Okay, so, okay, so one step past that. So now what we’ve done, we’ve con, you know, we created some leads and some referrals and we’ve got in front of some folks. I want to talk about converting those leads into clients. Right. So once you’ve got the lead, what steps do you take to convert the prospect into a paying client? A balance.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:04:15]:
The first and foremost is research, research, research. Understand everything you can, not only about the individual, the company and the industry, but also the pain points. And look at their competitors doing a complete analysis so that you hopefully won’t ask a question you already don’t know the answer to. When you finally do get them in a zoom call, in a face to face or whatever format’s appropriate is that you have information that makes you confident that indeed you can address the any issue that they raise.

Karl Bryan [00:04:52]:
Nice. Okay. You started that with something. I always say preparation can be a superpower for a business coach. So prior to sitting down with the client you have spent, how much time would you spend you research, research, research. What kind of, what kind of time would that take you to fulfill that research?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:05:10]:
It really depends how well I know the industry. Again, my focus is technology companies. I worked for and worked with technology companies over the years. If it was a sector or a niche that I was really familiar with, it may only take an hour to prepare. But I’ve had times when it was a upcoming technology that I wasn’t as familiar with that I spent three or four hours looking at them, looking at the industry, looking at the competitors. It was an investment of time because I look at that, I’m investing in the client as Much as they’re investing in me.

Karl Bryan [00:05:47]:
So I want you to think of Alan’s background and he spends three to four hours researching before sitting down with the individual. Again, a writer downer right there, folks. Okay, so what about building professional relationships for the referrals, your primary form of lead gen? Right. So how do you cultivate and maintain relationships with other professionals to encourage ongoing referrals? Could you provide a few examples? And what do you describe as a professional? Are we talking about accountants, that sort of thing? How do you.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:06:20]:
For me, yes. For me, the biggest source is in terms of commercial lenders, commercial insurers, accountants, and I just say bookkeeping firms. There are many professional bookkeeping firms that go far beyond the person sitting with the blind behind a desk just doing things. They’re out there and engaged and really that’s kind of the key. You have to be out there. I write a twice a month newsletter that I circulate to my mailing list. I take every speaking opportunity and actively seek speaking opportunities in the local area, but also regionally and nationally. When I was working in the industry, I was a regular speaker at professional summits, at collection of those meetings and associations.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:07:17]:
And I really sought that out because I wanted to be seen as a subject matter expert. And the more that people see you not as someone trying to sell them something, but as a source of solutions, that they really will come knocking on your door. And you have to do that on a constant basis. It’s not just a one and done. I’ve got right now newsletters planned out, all for the first half of 2025. I’ve also lined up additional speaking engagements both locally and regionally, and not just podcasts. Podcasts is kind of the newer twist in rather than in person speaking, but I think you find where you’re most comfortable and you find the people that you really either want to develop or in essence, can become your clients as well. Gotta go to them.

Karl Bryan [00:08:10]:
Yeah. So what kind of content? So you’re writing a regular article and you’ve got this ready again, once again prepared.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:08:16]:
Yes.

Karl Bryan [00:08:17]:
For the coming year, what kind of things would you be writing about? Could you give me an example?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:08:21]:
Oh, I did one for one of my clients. An offshoot of some of the issues they were facing in terms of rejection by their customers. How do you overcome objections? How do you turn a negative conversation into a positive conversation and really just manage a relationship that had started out poorly or evolved into something that was not where you wanted to go? So everything in terms of how to act as an individual that’s in the best interest of your client and really of you and being again looking at those types of problems, of relationship problems, of financial problems, of organizational problems. My master’s is actually in clinical counseling. So I tell people I work with numbers, I work with people and I work with processes. And one of those three is likely to where an issue is going to be found. And often it’s the second one, it’s the people. Either a leader not listening, someone not hearing what their employees or what their customers saying.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:09:29]:
And sometimes you have to kind of be the Dutch uncle to come up and say, well you know, maybe these people do have a point. Maybe it’s time to look at a different perspective. And of course you can’t just blast someone. You have to have some degree of relationship with them and confidence that they trust you, that you’re looking at their best interests, acting as a fiduciary for them.

Karl Bryan [00:09:55]:
Nice. So can I go back to your doctorate in organizational psychology and it’s focused on how companies function and dysfunction. Could you, could you give me like the highest level, like the kind of needle movers around that in your opinion, how companies are functioning successfully and then where the dysfunction maybe comes from? Could you talk to me about the foundation of that?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:10:18]:
There’s a company that I’m, I’m very aware of in the property management industry, managing housing, and it will remain unnamed because it really isn’t important. Their leader was someone who was not from the industry, did not come up through the industry, it was from actually retail environment. And he tried to apply retail theories and practices into a very specific niche of property management. It was an utter failure, matter of fact, worse than a failure. Not only did they lose business, lose money and lose people, they just lost their direction. And organizational management is really of looking at the succeeding personality that is developed because or from the leader or leadership team. As I say, sometimes the problem is not financial, sometimes it’s not organizational, sometimes it’s just a leadership problem. And helping to understand that and helping to say, okay, now what do we do? Not just blast them, but to say, okay, here’s some constructive steps that we start to turn the ship around.

Karl Bryan [00:11:29]:
Yeah, what about, okay, so going to go on the other end of the spectrum. So now you’re teaching the students that you teach, what age and qualifications would they be on?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:11:40]:
The average age is 40, they’re mid career working professionals. They’re not people with no work experience or just coming up through academia. These are working professionals that are doing it either to enhance their own career or quite frankly to branch out on their own for their own business opportunities. So it’s a very, very unique environment.

Karl Bryan [00:12:02]:
So, okay, so assume that I am a 40 year old student of yours and I’m taking entrepreneurship through your course. Give me your best advice and I’m ramped up. I want to leave my job, I want to go on my own. What are some of the things that you would do, what are some of the things that you’d recommend that I do to go out on my own and start a company?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:12:26]:
Well, the first thing is to have a solid business plan. Really know what are you going to do and how are you going to do it. A business plan, the way that I’ve, it has evolved for me is something that’s more than just marketing, it’s more than just finances. It’s more than just even what is the product or service you’re offering. It’s really a complete package of what need are you going to meet, what problem is it going to solve?

Karl Bryan [00:12:52]:
Yes.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:12:52]:
And how are you going to differentiate yourself from everybody else?

Karl Bryan [00:12:56]:
Nice, nice. I just, again, I was waiting for that one. I was sure it was going to come. But look, if I’m advising anybody, it’s you got to look for a problem to solve and the bigger the problem, the bigger the potential for the company. If you just look at Elon Musk, right, He’s just solving very big problems and he’s building very big companies. Right.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:13:16]:
Well, in the. And the interesting thing I found too is often the identified problem because I’ll ask him, what, Mr. Ms. Client, what, what do you think the issue is here or issues are? And it’s often the case that what they think it is is symptomatic of a deeper issue. And it’s a discovery process, a very fine tuned discovery process to be able to really understand and hear them and see, well, not just treat the symptoms, but really start looking for the cause and really start. And acting against that cause and making changes there so the symptoms disappear.

Karl Bryan [00:13:54]:
Yeah, I love it. So again, you’re looking for the root of the tree as opposed to looking at the branches, right? You gotta go.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:13:59]:
Exactly.

Karl Bryan [00:14:00]:
I love it. I love it. Okay, okay. So let’s talk about delivering maximum value for coaching and consulting clients.

Karl Bryan [00:14:08]:
Right?

Karl Bryan [00:14:08]:
Like what methods do you employ during your coaching consulting engagements to ensure your clients get the most from you, your services and what you’re delivering?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:14:18]:
Well, communication is number one, that I meet with them at least weekly. But I also have a practice that I will travel to them if they’re not local, on a quarterly basis for a face to face. There’s also another advantage to that in that it allows me to put eyes on the organization itself because often what’s communicated to us is filtered. We all have filters based upon our experience, life experience and otherwise. And to have. For me to be able then to put eyes on the situation, look at the office, talk to the employees, see the dynamics and experience, it often provides additional insight. So communicate. The second is really to document, to be able to lay a game plan on the table, document the success or the failure of that game plan, and then modify as necessary.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:15:16]:
And that’s why I think looking at financial statements, not just monthly. Yes, you do, but it’s really quarterly, quarter over quarter that we start seeing that either things are changing or frankly, things are not changing. Because sometimes a client will say, well, I did this, that and the other. But you find out honestly they didn’t do it or they didn’t implement it entirely or correctly. So you’ve got to capture that information. And the third is to keep asking questions. So I communicate, I document, and I continue to inquire. Sometimes it’s a matter that external factors are responsible for the situation they’re in, but more often than not, it’s internal issues that have developed this.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:16:03]:
And if they, if you hear more about the blame game about, well, it’s not my fault, it’s this, that or the other, that’s. That’s a diversion and a distraction. So I keep asking questions to get back to, you know, what’s going on. Not saying that you’ve done something wrong, but just understanding what happened and what can we do to really affect meaningful change today.

Karl Bryan [00:16:30]:
Yeah. When you’re working with your clients, what, what kind of a framework do you have? So actually make sure I. The bit you’re speaking to, the business coach wants to do everything virtually and over the phone and on Zoom. What? You just said that. Look, packing your bags, jumping in the car or in an airplane, where the case may be there’s huge value and feet on the system, understand the dynamics of the office and whatnot. There’s nothing quite like that.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:16:55]:
There is. Yes. Well, and it’s just like even having the Zoom meetings. I use the AI function note taking within Zoom to capture the outline and the actionable items which I then send to the client. But it’s also historic information for me to be able to compare with. I also use the documentation available through Focus to be able to track information, to have action items and expected results and Then provide that as a checklist of saying okay, within this quarter, within this topic area, these are the things that we needed to do. These are the expected results we will get from that. So it’s just organ, it’s organization.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:17:43]:
Awesome methodology.

Karl Bryan [00:17:44]:
You mentioned you’re an accountant and you mentioned financial statements. Talk to me about your use of financial statements with your clients. How much do they or do they not factor into your relationship?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:17:58]:
They’re symptomatic of other issues. When I’ve I will ask the client for the last year’s financial statements. And the interesting thing is almost never are they represented in terms of percentages. They usually are just stated in terms of numbers. It’s hard to see significant change or even sometimes minor changes when you’re looking at raw numbers. But if you look at a 3% to 5 to 9 to 12% change of an expense category from total expenses, that starts to make me ask, well, why did that change? And I certainly will ask the client. The other thing I do, and you can use AI for this, but you have to verify AI is not always accurate, is to take the numbers, strip out any identifying information and ask AI to compare the financial statements, particularly the income statement for industry standards for a $5 million business located in Ohio in the we’ll call it the manufacturing industry and compare these financial statements to industry standards. It’s amazing the information you get that you have to check it and make sure.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:19:19]:
But you’ll get more than just gross profit and net profit. You’ll start looking, it’ll start breaking down depending on how much you’ve broken it down. The expense categories like the cost of goods sold, what’s representative, or for advertising and marketing, what are the averages within the industry. So I try to use automation as much as I can to do the analysis. Then I become a fact checker more than an originator of that information.

Karl Bryan [00:19:45]:
Love it. So what I’d like to know what your opinion of this is but when I teach people how to read financial statements, there’s three things that they need. One, you just said in spades, comparables. Okay. If you don’t have last quarter, last year, etc, then it’s like we jumping on the scale. If you weigh 200 pounds, if you were 256 months ago, you’re doing great. If you were 176 months ago, you’re not doing so good. So number one is comparables.

Karl Bryan [00:20:10]:
One financial statement won’t get it done.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:20:12]:
Yes.

Karl Bryan [00:20:13]:
The second thing is relationships. Okay, so rent is five grand a month percentage wise, what A common size. I literally wrote an email about this just a few days ago. Like, the second most powerful thing you can do with an income statement is common size.

Karl Bryan [00:20:27]:
It.

Karl Bryan [00:20:28]:
So that’s Basically rent is 10% of gross revenues. Okay, that’s important. If that number gets too big or that number’s too low, maybe they need a bigger space, but more to the point, too high. So relationships. And then the third one is trends, which is the obvious one, but it’s what are revenues doing? Are they trending up? Are they trending down? Are they?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:20:51]:
Why? Yeah, the other thing that I think is an important factor that comes off the financial statements is policies and procedures. Well, are the financial statements being done by a third party, reputable individual, or is it done by Uncle John or Aunt Susie and who may or may not be even categorizing things correctly. So what are the office procedures in terms of how do they collect their information, how do they categorize or how do they capture their information? Is this something that’s consistently done the same way? And often we find that it is not.

Karl Bryan [00:21:28]:
Right. Cool bananas. Love it. So the bottom line, if you’re speaking to a business coach trying to get to the next level and whatnot, they don’t need to become an accountant by any stretch of the imagination. But a basic understanding of financials is a bit of a needle mover for them. So they might be a little bit intimidated by it, but it’s just not that complicated. Would you agree with that?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:21:49]:
It really isn’t. And once you break it down into what we’ll call the fundamentals of what we’re talking about, of ratios, of trends, a trend analysis of categorization, it’s not all that hard. That’s why it’s so important that if you’re working with a client, work with those at first, at least those who in an industry you really understand. Because then you’ll see things pop out that through your past experiences, you won’t have to work as hard for or might miss otherwise.

Karl Bryan [00:22:25]:
Yeah, because at the end of the day, business coaching is. It’s about providing. Look, everybody wants to build a profitable business and then they want it to be more profitable. It’s like that’s why, you know, you see Warren Buffett get interviewed. What does he say? Dollar cost average, the S P 500.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:22:40]:
Yes.

Karl Bryan [00:22:41]:
And it worked. He’s worked for 100 years and it’s going to work for another 100. Because the top five companies all want to do two things. They want to grow and they want to become More profitable and they’re answerable to shareholders to do so. So he’s very comfortable that you made the stock market might decline, but that just means you’re going to buy better when you dollar cost average, right?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:22:59]:
Yep.

Karl Bryan [00:22:59]:
So.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:23:00]:
Yep.

Karl Bryan [00:23:00]:
Business owners, same idea. Do you like this?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:23:03]:
Yeah.

Karl Bryan [00:23:03]:
A lot of businesses, they’re trying to get big so that they can get rich and it doesn’t. If you’re not watching this.

Karl Bryan [00:23:11]:
Okay.

Karl Bryan [00:23:12]:
How it is.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:23:13]:
Oh boy.

Karl Bryan [00:23:14]:
In a meaningful way here.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:23:15]:
Yeah. Well, I, you know, I would rather have half the revenues and twice the profit. Boom. I mean, let’s work smart, let’s not work hard. And I think that’s really the key thing is that even as coaches, as a matter of fact, I reframe that. I’m their consultant, I’m their business consultant. That gives me a broader scope and it’s a relationship, not just a hit and run that I’m working with them, but I want them to work, as I say, smarter rather than harder to eke out more profit per revenue dollars and to spend their money wisely.

Karl Bryan [00:23:57]:
Yeah. And if they don’t have a scoreboard, if you went to a football game and it didn’t have a scoreboard, you don’t know the winners from the losers. And the coach wouldn’t know when to, you know, take an e, take a time out, etc.

Karl Bryan [00:24:08]:
Right.

Karl Bryan [00:24:08]:
You need a scoreboard. And financial statements. Proper financial statements are scoreboards. So.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:24:14]:
Well, and that’s the important thing. Just because you have QuickBooks and QuickBooks is a great program, it can be used very effectively. However, if the information is not categorized correctly, if the right accounts aren’t set up. The old adage from the computer days, garbage in, garbage out. It is only as good as the information that is put into it in a correct format or what we’ll call a best practices format. And you don’t do books for taxes, you do books for management. And you.

Karl Bryan [00:24:48]:
Another writer. Downer. Right there, right there. Okay. Doing great. Okay. So I want to talk next about what about like measuring and demonstrating value to your clients.

Karl Bryan [00:25:00]:
Right.

Karl Bryan [00:25:00]:
Like how do you assess and demonstrate the value you’re providing clients through your coaching and consulting? Could you share a situation where you knocked it out of the park, you moved the needle, where you’re significantly impacted a client’s business.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:25:12]:
Well, and again, my, my practice is a little different than probably many others. One thing that I helped them with, they were outsourcing their human resources for this one customer, one client. And they were not doing a good job in the outsourcing so what I did is they have a key hire they need to make. I rewrote the job description, I set up the ad, and then I did the initial screening for the hire. And that person has turned out to be gold. And that made as much or more of an impact on the client than anything else I’ve done. And it didn’t take a lot of time. It was more that I knew what to do because I understood the role that they were playing and the role that they needed and the job that had to be done.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:26:04]:
And the HR company were generalists. They just didn’t understand the intricacies of what that position required. So, you know, you can add value in a lot of different ways and you want. And that was a very meaningful way that will pay out financially. But to the client, that was gold because they were frustrated in terms of their hiring. And yet that’s something we as a consultant, as a coach you might not do. As a consultant you probably would do. And so that’s why I reframe that word.

Karl Bryan [00:26:35]:
Yeah. You agree that coaching and consulting, it’s a hybrid. And you need to do some coaching. The Jedi mind tricks. And you need to. You motivate an idiot. They do stupid things quicker, I often say. So you don’t.

Karl Bryan [00:26:46]:
You gotta make sure you provide the ABCs and the 1, 2, 30s. And then you gotta provide a bit of the Jedi mind tricks to get them out of their way so they can do it confidently.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:26:53]:
It is. You just may not want to use coaching in certain industry sectors. Like in technology, they’re used to hiring consultants, they’re not used to hiring coaches. Or they think of a coach as being someone that is a lifestyle coach or a fashion coach or. Or something other than their. Their business needs. So you, you talk their language.

Karl Bryan [00:27:12]:
Yeah.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:27:13]:
Whatever that is.

Karl Bryan [00:27:14]:
So what I think you just said is that one, I always say if you introduce me to an eight figure business, I want you introduce you to an HR company.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:27:24]:
Yeah.

Karl Bryan [00:27:24]:
Hiring. Right. So one, we’ll call them an A grade player or her an a grade player. 1. A grade player can be worth 9B graders. You agree with that?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:27:36]:
Absolutely. And it won’t show up immediately in the financials, but it shows up in terms of overall productivity that plays out in the coming quarters. And they can see it immediately because they see a higher level of person in the position than what they saw in the past.

Karl Bryan [00:27:54]:
Yeah. And high tides rises. All boats.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:27:58]:
That’s right.

Karl Bryan [00:27:59]:
That is why I like to use Herschel Walker kind of showing my age here a little bit. But Herschel Walker, I mean, they traded almost half a team, it felt like, for Herschel Walker back in the day. And the reason was that Herschel Walker is just that good. And he just, you know, you get an elite. They normally say in a trade in football or any sport, the team that won the trade is the team that got the best player. And the reason is that player will bring the others up. And then if you have a great player with the work ethic, you’re really onto something. You want to be been last out.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:28:30]:
And, you know, that’s. I think that’s an important point as well. I. There may be a misconception in many people’s minds that a business coach, a business consultant is someone who doesn’t work hard. And I really don’t. I don’t believe that. I believe that you get the results of the effort that you put in. If you put in the hours, smart hours.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:28:53]:
You know, they say, what’s that? Good practice makes for good results, bad practice does not get you good results. So you, you have to be able to put in the right amount of time and with the right effort, but you just let. To put in the time. And it’s not something that’s just going to. You’re going to open your door, put up your shingle and have the door have be flooded with inquiries. There’s just too many people out there saying a lot of the same things, just unable to produce them. So you have to differentiate yourself, which means you really need to do a marketing plan, a whole business plan on yourself and take the tools focused and do it on yourself to make sure that you have milestones, that you have expectations, that you have all the pieces in place to be successful.

Karl Bryan [00:29:41]:
Yeah. So if I translated what you just said, if you were going to build the golf course without a plan, we probably don’t need to see the golf course, no matter how talented you are, that you would have a little bit of a mess and the same thing would go for a house. You do not build a house without a plan. And the plans can deviate a little bit and they can adjust. But the plan that. I think it’s Winston Churchill who says, the magic is not in the plan, it’s in the planning.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:30:06]:
Yes.

Karl Bryan [00:30:07]:
Right. And then actually then there’s another one like Mike Tyson. What does he say? Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the mouth. Right. But if you’ve done the planning, translation, training for boxing, then you can get punched in the mouth and you can Kind of turn it around and come back. Right. But you got to create the plan. Otherwise you probably not going to end up, you know, you’re probably going to end up where you don’t want to go.

Karl Bryan [00:30:28]:
Real simple.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:30:29]:
You know, the interesting thing in terms of my higher education experience, I think the one key lesson it taught me is not that you’re probably ever going to have the perfect plan, but what you can have is a perfect process to acquire that plan so that you, you’re able to chuck and jive and move and change with all the inevitable things that life will throw at you. All the unknowns. The unknowns then are not scary. All they are is opportunities to solve a problem. But you got to know how to solve problems.

Karl Bryan [00:31:02]:
Yeah, I think he just said something really important I want to pull out of you. Like, talk to me about process, which is something that, again, you’re incredibly in tune with. What? Give me a couple needle. Needle movers for the business coaches and consultants listening around, developing a good process, in your opinion?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:31:18]:
Well, process is much more than just documentation. It has to have an end, a beginning, a middle and an end. In other words, you can have a payroll process, you can have a manufacturing process, you can have an inventory process. But at the end of the day, it’s really more about what are you gaining by having this process. Are you seeing that it’s providing you with efficiencies? Are you seeing the places that you can change as your external environment changes or the people change? Some are more gifted in one area than another. So you alter the process to adapt to the resources you have at hand. And I think that’s the most important thing to having that type of documentation is you know then where to go to make it more successful.

Karl Bryan [00:32:09]:
So pull another one out of you. What I think you just said, like what I say. So somebody asked me, should I go to college? And I say, why do you want to go to college? Yeah, should I start a company? I say, why do you want to start a company? So if you’re going to create a process, you need to know why you’re creating the process before you create it. And that’s probably going to get. That’s going to get you a little further faster. Not necessarily home run, but it’s going to get you further faster as a fraud.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:32:34]:
And I agree. And for most people or most organizations, they have processes and procedures. Are they consistent? Probably not. Are they documented? Unlikely that they are so capturing that information so that you can improve it and again, adapt as you’re as your life or the work environment changes, as the people change. But you got to have something to be able to start with. So if you, if you’ve got a warehouse inventory like you said, what are you trying to do with that? Are you trying to be more efficient? Are you trying to reduce shrinkage stuff walking out the back door? What’s your plan going to at first, at least have as a primary goal? And then as you develop it, you start to see it accomplishes many other things.

Karl Bryan [00:33:25]:
Like it’s the domino that knocks over others.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:33:27]:
It is, it is. And it’s a lot of writing. It’s a lot of capturing of information. And sometimes, I mean, the processes are there, they’re just undocumented. And the more that you can capture those that then you can start fine tuning them to find ways to improve them and make. Save money or make money. That’s the only thing we’re doing here. It’s like, I know I’ve heard you said we either spend a dollar to get a client or we spend a dollar to keep a client.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:33:53]:
Same way with these types of things. We’re looking to find how we can either spend where we can spend a dollar or where we can save a dollar to improve the profitability of the company through its process and procedures.

Karl Bryan [00:34:06]:
Warren, it reminded me, it’s not totally consistent, but a little bit. Warren Buffett says a business that he wants to invest in is one that something he can buy for. He wants something he can buy for a penny, he can sell for a dollar. And that is habit forming.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:34:24]:
So there you go.

Karl Bryan [00:34:26]:
Yeah. None other than Mr. Warren Buffett. Okay, cool banana. So what I would like to do, so I want you to talk, there’s a business coach, business consultant thinking about getting going or his airplane is just, you know, he’s, he’s cruising along the tarmac trying to get liftoff. Speak to him a little bit maybe in an inspiration, I don’t know, you inspire him to get going. What would you say to that? Business coaching, that business coach, looking for a little bit of inspiration from Dr. Alan Gatlin to get him rocking?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:34:56]:
Well, I think, I think the first thing I would ask a modification of what you’ve already said, the Simon Sinek, what’s his. Why. Why are you doing this? Is it to make a dollar? Is it to write a book? Is it why are you doing this? And if you’ve got that, then how can we improve that so that you are ultra successful in it? I think the other thing too is not all good ideas get you to your goal, which implies that you have a goal. One thing that I found that consultants and coaches starting out are often have the shiny object syndrome. You know, like squirrel over there. Somebody throws out a shiny thing and off they go. You develop a plan, you implement the plan and critique the plan, but you stay on the plan. And maybe the plan needs to be modified, but only after careful consideration because it was the plan you started with.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:35:57]:
And don’t get distracted by everything that’s going on around you. Yes, the economy is going to go up and down. Yes, stocks are going to. Interest rates are going to go up and down. Yes, there’s a possibility of a recession or inflation. So what? Move on and continue work, working your plan and being that subject matter expert, providing solutions and real help to your clients. And then you will not lack.

Karl Bryan [00:36:25]:
Yeah, I love it. Okay, last question. So now I want to talk to the coach consultant who’s got liftoff and they’re at 10,000ft and they’ve got their, they’ve got 12 clients and they’re making a couple, couple hundred grand a year, but they want to elevate. What would you say as advice to that individual with that’s at 10,000ft?

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:36:47]:
Well, you know, when we, when we, and you’ve used this expression, when we trade dollars for hours, there is a limit to what can be done.

Karl Bryan [00:36:55]:
Yep.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:36:56]:
So at that point you have a choice. Do you like to work with people in a supervisory role or in a mentor role? If so, you may want to look to adding coaches under you. You can also look at providing other streams of income by having employees. Now, an employee is not my model. That’s not something I enjoy doing. I can be a mentor, I can be an assistant, I can be a help, but I don’t want to have employees. But having employees that then you provide the clients for and then supervise their work is another way to have a multiplier effect. And that’s, that’s, I think when you get to that, that point, you really have to have a hard talk with yourself.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:37:43]:
Or more importantly, I’m a firm believer that every coach needs a coach and that you need to have an unbiased third party help you and ask you those questions and then work through that process because until you find out what it is you want to do, what you enjoy doing, what you’re going to be successful at, then all you’re going to be is frustrated and money isn’t the end game. Yes, you obviously want to have a comfortable lifestyle, whatever that is for you, but it’s more about job satisfaction and making a difference for most of us. And again, understanding what that means for you is a process.

Karl Bryan [00:38:25]:
Yeah. So you gotta go again. The. I think we’re coming back to our. It’s you got to create a plan and then the magic is in the planning as opposed to the plan. So. And I think so somebody with, with liftoff and they’re at 10,000ft, look, they need leverage and that’s going to be people, it’s going to be systems, it’s going to be processes. Right.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:38:43]:
Yes, that’s it is.

Karl Bryan [00:38:45]:
Look for some leverage and, and then decide what model do you, you know, if you, you’re willing to manage one to 10 staff, then that’s the way you do it.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:38:53]:
And that’s okay. It’s there. Whatever works for you and is within. Whatever, whatever. When you get up in the morning, you’re excited about going to work rather than dreading going to work. That’s the key.

Karl Bryan [00:39:06]:
Yeah. I love it. So again, so as they’re thinking, let’s just assume they’re at 200 grand and the goal was seven figures. I think that question would be why? Why do you want to go from two to a million? And if that’s the case and you’re willing to do the hard work and manage the people and manage the systems and acquire that leverage, then you’ll be good. But why, why, why? Awesome.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:39:28]:
And you know, anything else and it’s not that. Well, I was just going to say it’s not that hard to do. It just means that you have to know what you’re doing. And that sounds trite, but it’s more true than not is that sometimes we doubt ourselves, we doubt our plan, we lose hope and faith. And that’s where I think having a community of people that can, a mastermind or something, at least a coach that can call you out and say, okay, pity party’s over, pull your boots up and let’s go. Sometimes it just takes that.

Karl Bryan [00:40:07]:
I love it. Dr. Alan Gatlin, I knew you were going to perform. You overperformed today. Thank you so much, boss.

Dr. Alan Gatlin [00:40:14]:
Thank you.

Karl Bryan [00:40:15]:
You bet. Okay. God bless, man. Have a great one.

Outro [00:40:18]:
Karl Bryan built Profit Acceleration Software 2.0. So as a business coach, you’ll never again have to worry about working with business owners that can’t afford your high end coaching fees. Check us out@focused.com.