In this Expert Insight Interview, Lee Chaix McDonough discusses creating a sustainable coaching business. Lee Chaix McDonough is the CEO and founder of Coach with Clarity, a training and education company for life and business coaches. She is also the host of Coach with Clarity Podcast and author of the #1 best-selling book Act on Your Business: Braving the Storms of Entrepreneurship and Creating Success Through Meaning, Mindset, and Mindfulness.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Why do we avoid seeking support in our respective fields of expertise
• The prevalence of change in our lives and why we must always be prepared for it
• Some of the qualities that make a good coach

Seeking Support

We are willing to invest so much money in our hobbies, getting coaches, and paying for professional guidance, but we refuse to do the same for the thing that puts bread on our table. On some level, this must have to do with the assumption that we should just be good at what we do inherently.

Seeking support from someone else in our field of expertise might have been interpreted as a weakness once upon a time. However, we are seeing a paradigm shift and the fact that really strong business owners need a team of people to support them, including a coach.

Expecting Change

One thing is certain, and that is change. Regardless of what we have going on at any given time, we’re guaranteed to have some kind of change waiting around the corner. Trying to go through these changes alone is a very isolating experience.

Surrounding yourself with people who have your back and who you can trust will help you navigate the uncertainties that come with any kind of transition. That is one of the many reasons business and life coaches are such a smart investment for high-performing professionals.

Finding a Balance

There may be many people out there who would make fantastic coaches but don’t realize it, simply because we don’t all inherently understand what it takes to be a good coach. The truth is that there are qualities that can be honed to take somebody from being a good coach to being a great one.  For instance, there are good coaching apps that can improve your professional practice greatly. Adding them to your business model can help you scale, while still delivering practice-branded, personalized solutions.

One thing that Lee Chaix McDonough always looks for in people is their ability to balance their internal voice with the need to really focus their attention on their client and what they’re communicating both verbally and non-verbally.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Blair Singer discusses personal development and change. Blair Singer is a best-selling author, Rich Dad Advisor, one-of-a-kind teacher, and founder of the Blair Singer Training Academy and Blair Singer Apex System, which train and certify the best change agents in the world. He has worked extensively with companies like Singapore Airlines and L’Oréal.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The importance of personal development
• How the pandemic has shifted our perspective
• The reason empathy is crucial in all human interaction, including sales

Personal Development

We often think about change and impact from an external point of view, neglecting to focus on our personal development journeys. Although a shift in this perspective began before the pandemic, the lockdown has challenged people to start looking at themselves, what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it.

The whole concept of personal development used to be an afterthought considered something you may or may not choose to do, but now we realize it is necessary.

Eliminating Distractions

Many people were forced to spend a little time with themselves and reflect on these past couple of years. We live in a world where we’re surrounded by so much distraction, with our smartphones and other gadgets offering us a way to avoid our thoughts in any situation.

Now is the time for people to start putting these distractions aside and figuring out where they want to go with their lives. The moment you eliminate distractions, you’re left alone with yourself, and that can be a crazy conversation if you’ve never had it before.

Empathy

The one thing we’ve learned out of this whole pandemic situation is that we are all creatures of connection. We need to connect with other people, whether in person or digitally, and communicate, stay connected, while at the same time resolving who we are and being ourselves.

A little bit of empathy can go a long way. We all need to learn to relate to other human beings, knowing that they’re going through their problems. Many people don’t realize that the selling process has changed since the pandemic. It has turned from trying to heap more value onto the offer into giving the prospect insurance that they’re taking a smart risk.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Benson Agbortogo discusses overcoming fear in business. Benson Agbortogo is an investor, author, and founder at Consistent Profit Tree. He is the author of The Business System that Never Fails.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The fear of rejection and how to overcome it
• How to respond to rejection and look at it as an opportunity
• Shifting your mindset as a salesperson

Fear of Rejection

One of the most notable fears seen in sales and business, in general, is the fear of rejection. People are afraid that they will be rejected if they present their product or service to a prospective client. Since many people are so scared of being rejected, they don’t even try to go out there and talk about their product or service.

The fear of rejection is part of sales. The best salespeople look at a “no” as an opportunity rather than a rejection. The late great Zig Ziglar used to say that when you talk to people about your product or service, and they say “no,” you should interpret that to mean that they don’t know enough.

A “No” Can Be an Opportunity

It is your job to educate your prospects to get to a place where they can say “yes” to your proposal. This is the case if the people you talk to are qualified to use your product or service.

Sometimes, it is good to get a “no” from some people. Some people are not qualified to use your product or service, so by saying “no,” they are saving you a lot of time, energy, and money. This enables you to move on and look for the right people. Sometimes we stick with the wrong customer profile for too long, which can be a tremendous problem.

Shifting Your Mindset

So how can salespeople start to address the fear of rejection? This is a big fear inherent to the sales profession, and it is constantly there. The problem is that many salespeople have the wrong mindset, thinking about sales as a manipulative practice, so they resist their own profession.

Selling is not about manipulating people to get money from them. Instead, it is the distribution of solutions. People have problems, and you have an answer, so you should be proud and enthusiastic to go out there and distribute that solution if you care about your customers.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Allan Grant discusses where you should focus and how you can cut out extraneous things. Allan Grant is an ActionEdge business coach, food service specialist, MBA candidate helping owners achieve their vision at Stand Fast Consulting.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• How to overcome the struggle of what to focus on as an entrepreneur
• Setting aside the time to work on your business and committing to it
• Focusing on the things that will make the most significant difference in your business

The Struggle with Focus

Entrepreneurs, small business owners, even people running departments in larger companies constantly struggle with what to focus on. This is particularly true of entrepreneurs and small business owners, of course.

Small business owners often feel like they should have a little more control over their time. That is why many of them start their own businesses in the first place. To achieve this is to focus more on what you know you need to do to move the business forward.

Setting Aside the Time

Business owners often know what they need to do in their heads, but they don’t take the time to focus on these things.

This is essentially what Allan Grant helps business owners do — focus on the things that make the most significant difference, make sure they put these things into their calendars, and commit to spending a certain amount of time every week working on the business and not just in the business.

Default Calendars and Protected Time

You probably care about your business more than anybody in the world; therefore, you always feel you have to take care of things, put out the fires, etc. However, if you don’t set aside time, you will never get that time organically. You will never suddenly get a moment to work on the business.

This means that you need to have the discipline to set aside that time and stick to it. Think about your “default calendar.” This calendar shows what you would be spending your time on in a perfect world. If there is a time that you can set aside to work just on your business, that time should be protected. No matter what happens, who emails you or calls you, short of the building falling on your head, you must commit to doing what you set out to do.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In this Expert Insight Interview, John Mitchell discusses applying the science of success to leverage yourself, have an extraordinary life, and make the money you want to make. John Mitchell is from Think It, Be It, and the essence of his story is this: he turned 50 and decided that he wasn’t where he wanted to be in terms of life goals, so he set about achieving those and creating his system for achieving goals that he now shares with other people.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Making your own luck and forging a path to success
• The importance of “automatic discipline”
• How to reprogram your brain to be more productive and creative

Making Your Own Luck

There are probably many people out there who feel they are simply unlucky to be stuck where they are in life. John Mitchell disagrees with this notion and believes that everyone makes their luck.

When he turned 50, he realized that if he was to have an extraordinary life that he always wanted, he had to net over $1 million a year. He found the book Think and Grow Rich, read it, and discovered its problem: it only shares half of the secrets to success. After moping around for a couple of days, he woke up one morning and decided to find the courage and figure out the rest of the secrets.

Automatic Discipline

Today discipline is almost like a dirty word. Nobody mentions it because today’s culture focuses on “living your best life” and striving always to be happy. Think and Grow Rich is based on a straightforward idea, which is that 95% of your daily actions are unconscious. If that is true, the only way you can have a higher level of success is to influence those unconscious daily actions by proactively influencing the subconscious mind.

Your success does come down to discipline, but the ability to reprogram your autopilot so that discipline happens automatically is the true game-changer.

Reprograming Your Autopilot

All of the inputs that we put into our minds on a daily basis fuel our subconscious minds with a lot of negativity and things that do not serve us. We all have a fundamental problem that we have to overcome: we are wired for survival.

When you factor that in with the fact that 95% of our daily actions are unconscious, you realize that your autopilot is innately wired to be fear-based, reactive, and negative. This is the exact opposite of how you want to be if you’re going to be productive and creative.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Stuart Leo discusses the use of technology to scale and grow businesses more quickly and effectively. Stuart Leo is the founder and CEO of Waymaker, intelligent business-strategy software that helps you dynamically manage business growth and goals in the 21st century.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Why scaling is the biggest issue in the management consulting game
• The idea behind the Waymaker software tool
• How intelligent software can help businesses grow

The Issue of Scaling

Many people are getting into the consulting game, with coaches, management consultants, and trainers seemingly popping up every corner. Some of these people build big companies, while others are solopreneurs, but scaling is always the most significant challenge with management consulting.

When you find customers, you have to spend your time working with them, which means your prospecting and your pipeline dip, so once you’re finished with a customer, you don’t have one lined up.

Waymaker

Waymaker is an intelligent business management platform that gives you the power of intelligent algorithms and diagnostic tools. This way, you’re getting the equivalent of a management consultant coming in, diagnosing your business, and figuring out where the growth opportunities are every quarter.

The real advantage of the tool is that it can do in five to fifteen minutes what might take an expensive six-figure consultant four to six weeks. This gives businesses great insight into where they are, what they need to improve, and how to make these improvements.

Technology as a Tool for Growth

Doing things like diagnostics, and trying to understand your audience or customer base, can be quite time-consuming and often very “manual.” Technology is a great enabler in this process, and we should use it to surface insights and kick into the right actions. This is primarily what the team at Waymaker is trying to put into people’s hands.

All that being said, Stuart Leo urges business owners and marketers to have a coach or consultant on board when they look at these insights. There’s nothing like having a third-party objective view to help you find a breakthrough in your business.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Stephanie Klein discusses how the disruption of our mindset, whether intentional or unintentional, can help us build resilience and perspective to shift to next-level leadership and optimize our potential. Stephanie Klein is a three-time Chief Marketing Officer in Fortune 500 firms and the founder of Mindfire Mastery.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• How to use Disruption to our Advantage
• Practical ways to Lower Stress and Increase Resilience
• The #1 Skill for Creating High-Performance Teams

Disruption eats Control for Breakfast

The pandemic was a massive disrupter for everyone globally, with businesses, educational institutions, and pretty much everything else shifting on a dime. The topic of mindset disruption came to Stephanie’s head because she was a high-achieving controller, probably like many of this podcast’s viewers, who realized her biggest growth came from disruptive experiences.

Her personality type and mindset had worked out for her. She was successful, climbing up the corporate ladder, feeling like she could maintain control of all aspects of her life. Disruptions, such as the pandemic, are there to tell Stephanie, and all of us, that it is not, in fact, possible to maintain control at all times.

Release Stress through Acceptance

Man plans, and God laughs. We think we have control, but we don’t, and when we realize that, we get stressed out. This happens when we try to hold on to what we want life to be, but things aren’t working out as expected. As Jack Walsh once put it, it is best to “face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it to be.”

Unless we can do this, we will never be happy. No matter how hard you work, how much you keep pushing, there will never be enough hours in the day for us to create a perfect reality.

Increase Control by Disrupting your Mindset Intentionally

We’re all at odds with disruptions, especially at work. We try to put everything in neat boxes, which is just not how the world works.

Stephanie helps her clients understand that disruption is an inevitable part of life and how to deal with these unexpected disruptions. That said, she also teaches people how to create disruptions intentionally on their own timetable because, as she says, “then, the world is your oyster.”

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Paul Huszar discusses how to convert military culture, norms, and values into a brand that pops. Paul Huszar is the president and CEO of VetCor LLC, staffed by veterans of the US Military, providing services to consumers, insurance agencies, and insurance companies across the county, specializing in water mitigation and other insurance-related services.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The state of the US military and the myths perpetuated by a lack of understanding
• What veterans have to offer in the private sector
• The attitude that veterans bring to any business environment

Military vs. Private Sector

Often people think that you need to change the way things are done in the military to bring them into the corporate or private sector. They believe that the military is very rigid while the private sector is pretty fluid, which isn’t entirely true.

The US is at a point in its history where only about 7% of the population has ever served in the military, while less than 0.5% actively serve. The military is downsizing, so these numbers are now dropping even further. Veterans are an increasingly older population; World War II and Korean War veterans are dying, so we’re getting farther and farther apart from those we have sought to protect and defend our culture.

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Myths About Soldiers

Many myths about the military are perpetuated, and things will only worsen over time if we don’t do something about it. People see military personnel in movies, and they think these people follow orders by rote. While soldiers follow orders, they do so in a way where they’re inspired by the leadership and understand their purpose, manner, and intent.

So, soldiers follow orders, but they make them better by using their initiative. This is why the US Military is the greatest in the world — because of the initiative of the small-unit leader. If you think about it, there’s quite a lot of rigidity in the private sector, and less initiative is allowed down the ranks.

Value of Working with Veterans

Paul Huszar cautions aspiring veteran entrepreneurs against having the fact that they are veterans as their sales pitch. If you do that, you’re asking for a handout.

Instead, talk about what your customers have to gain from working with veterans, such as timely, high-quality and reliable service. Veterans show up early because early is on time and on time is late. That’s what customers want.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.