[00:00:00] Kevin Stafford: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the conversations with coaches podcast. I’m your host, Kevin, and I, actually, this is the first time I’ve met Hank and Sharon Newlof, and, but they’ve been on the show before, back when it was hosted by somebody else, and I gotta say, I’m already the energy, it’s just light, and bubbly is maybe not the right word, but it’s kinda how I’m feeling, so I’m just gonna go with it.
[00:00:21] Hank Yuloff: Just cause we made you stop, start. A moment late so I could send an email to a client.
[00:00:27] Kevin Stafford: It just gave you more time to charm me. So consider me thoroughly charmed. But let me reintroduce you to our podcast audience if they’ve listened to the episode previous, which at this point now has got to be maybe a year and a half ago or so.
We’ve been going for a little while. Sharon and Hank Ulof are business coaches, as you might imagine, authors of a growing number of best selling books, which we’ll get to in a moment, and hold small business breakthrough boot camps several times a year, and have hosted hundreds of episodes of a weekly radio show.
They focus primarily on marketing, sales, Back office systems and human resources. The four areas where most business owners say they struggle. Welcome. Thank you for sharing some time with me. We’re recording this in early December. So a lot of us are all in our like sort of year end wrap, getting all of our Happy Valentine’s Day,
[00:01:11] Hank Yuloff: everybody.
Pretty much. And happy 4th of July. Let’s get, let’s all get all caught up in. Happy Halloween and how was that Labor Day weekend?
[00:01:21] Kevin Stafford: It would be hilarious if we’re just like, so how was 2024 for everyone?
[00:01:25] Hank Yuloff: Depending on when you’re listening to this.
[00:01:29] Kevin Stafford: We’re the prophets of nostalgia. We’re looking back and forward at the same time.
Woo Schrodinger’s
[00:01:34] Hank Yuloff: podcast. If you’re listening, you are going to want to keep that in mind, because we’re going to give you guys something free at the end, but that’s your tease as to what you’re going to have to do in order to get the free stuff.
[00:01:48] Kevin Stafford: We love a good tease. So getting away from the teasing, getting back into the meat of it.
First of all, congratulations on another new bestselling book. Thank you. Let me just open up the floor to you. Talk about it. What’s the book about? What was the impetus for writing it and getting it out there? I open the floor to you. Begin and go wherever you would like. I’ll follow
[00:02:06] Hank Yuloff: along. Okay. So book number eight in a continuing series.
Actually, the book number eight was supposed to be the physics of marketing. Which has been on the whiteboard now for six years, but I passed high school physics by the skin of my teeth, and I think I got a C because I made Dr. Paley laugh but I always wanted to write a book, still do, still writing it, on how the laws of physics apply to marketing, and we have a co author, but, Thank you.
He’s busy. We, our last book was Partners in Everything, which is written for, it’s your couple’s guide to running a successful business without ruining your life. And that was the first book that had a topic. Yeah, we’ve done one on social media and HR and marketing tips.
Failed. And we thought, thank you, I forgot that one. And we said, okay, if we’re not going to get the physics book out and we need to do a book in 23, what are we going to do? And we looked at our client base. And just like you’re supposed to do when you’re putting together a marketing plan, everyone, you look at your target audience and our target audience are overwhelmed over thinkers.
[00:03:22] Kevin Stafford: oh, okay. Yep. So me, there you go.
[00:03:25] Hank Yuloff: So we went through all of our content and we started pulling out logs. We had written before that had to do with overwhelm and overthinking and how to get around all this and we had enough. For about half a book, like that much. So we wrote the other half and we came up with the marketing checklist for your guide for overwhelmed and overthinking entrepreneurs.
So this is one, this is for all of those. Oh God, I want to do this, but. Or what if I do this or what if I do, Before I do that, I got to do this first. Yeah, I know Yeah before I open my business. I have to have a logo and a website and a functioning social media program and And a note from my mom Yeah, go get that first client or customer.
So this book is designed, it’s your, leave this on your desk and if you’re having a day, open it to whatever page for example, you were supposed to read. Yes. Most small business owners ask about branding. Oh, wow. That’s very, that’s a cool chapter. Overthinking in your business. What causes it?
That’s this book and. And it went
[00:04:37] Sharyn Yuloff: bestseller on
[00:04:38] Hank Yuloff: October 6th. Yes, which was, would have been my mom’s 96th birthday. We’ve had good luck. We have launched. Three books on what would have been my mom’s birthdays, and we launched two books on our anniversary. So that’s where we’re, where we go.
We have a theme.
[00:04:55] Sharyn Yuloff: Yeah. It depends on when it gets launched. Where is it in the cycle during the
[00:04:59] Hank Yuloff: year? Yeah and we decided in June. Okay, time for a new book. July is too fast. No, can’t get, I’m sorry, babe. It’s not fast. Cause, we have a We’re a coaching team and we have a very definite split of, yeah, some of you said duty.
Anyway,
[00:05:22] Kevin Stafford: we can bleep it out if you’d like.
[00:05:23] Hank Yuloff: When the defecation is the rotary operator, you got to know where to go. And when it comes to books, that kind of tends to sit on my desk over there instead of Sharon’s desk over there. I design the covers and pull all the content together and Sharon gets to do the first edit through.
So it’s and before we send it to our editor who’s done all eight of our books, and she’s our good luck charm. She made me a much better writer, too. That’s how it works. It came out, mom’s birthday. Best sellers on that. Happy birthday, mom.
[00:06:01] Kevin Stafford: Yeah, happy birthday, mom. And I really do in my heart of hearts, I just Perked up when you said that it was like, the way you said mom’s birthday and your anniversary.
I was like that’s the kind of stuff I try to do. I’ve learned to try and do in my life all over in my life is just to align the things that I’m doing with just honoring someone or celebrating someone or something. Just that little bits of alignment. They really do. I find that they just make everything else better.
They’re just like the perfect spice, the perfect sauce to just elevating everything that I’m up to.
[00:06:29] Hank Yuloff: The hard part about launching on our anniversary when we do it is that’s one of those days we take off and it’s very difficult to send out those three, four, Hey, this is the day to buy the book.
Remember to buy the book, remember, and check Amazon to see what we’re doing and how we’re doing. Yeah. It’s really difficult to do that when we’re off. We were in, let’s see, which book it was, the Marketing Checklist two. We were in Winslow, Arizona, because where else do you go on your 25th wedding anniversary, but standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona?
[00:07:02] Kevin Stafford: The
[00:07:05] Sharyn Yuloff: street from that corner is a fabulous little diner. Yeah. And that’s actually where we were when it hit bestseller.
[00:07:13] Hank Yuloff: It was really nice, but yeah, that one, early enough in the day that it was like, okay, good, I can just put my phone away. Yeah. So it’s, and it, honestly, the marketing tip is, it gives you another reason to sell it, it’s another, it’s a reason to celebrate.
We’re publishing a book and we’re celebrating it.
[00:07:32] Kevin Stafford: And that’s, yeah it’s it’s not either or, it’s both and, it’s not just alignment with your personal and professional lives in a way that sort of celebrates and honors, and it’s also just a really good way for people to connect, which is, again, that’s more or less what marketing is, just like putting people together, it’s what business is, putting people together, and so having that one more open door for people to be like oh, that’s so sweet, and then all of For
[00:07:59] Hank Yuloff: partners and everything.
I wanted that to go out on what would have been my parents anniversary, which was June 10th, but as it turns out, I needed the extra month for July 21st. So we,
[00:08:09] Kevin Stafford: stuff happens.
[00:08:10] Hank Yuloff: Life happens. Yeah. Of course.
[00:08:13] Kevin Stafford: Speaking of life happening I really, why, it’s, I’m still I don’t want to get too far away from the most recent book because I obviously, I responded very strongly to that combination of, oh, words, oh my, overwhelm, overthink, that’s typically, overthinking is so frequently how I’ve gotten myself into trouble, maybe not overthinking, but an overly too great of an emphasis on thinking about things on getting stuff in the quote unquote right order, which I’m going to put gigantic air quotes around that phrase because the right order is the one that gets things off the ground.
[00:08:45] Hank Yuloff: Kevin you never laid awake at night. Making a list, a checklist, and you decided, oh, what the heck, and you rolled over, clicked on the phone, and made, and wrote it all down? You’ve never done that, have you?
[00:08:58] Kevin Stafford: Of course not. I’ve had to actually remove the phone from the bedroom, which is just generally a really good, smart thing for me anyway, because it’s just the temp, if it’s right, if it’s within reach.
I’m probably, in a weaker moment, gonna grab for it, and then I’ll start building that bad habit. So I like, I leave the pen, I leave the paper, I leave that stuff away from the bed, and that’s, honestly, that little trick right there has helped me so much, just on a personal level, because then I just, I remove one more invitation for me to give in to my lesser angels.
I like to think about things, but they
[00:09:29] Sharyn Yuloff: don’t. So the, we have the opposite view. No, I totally understand the moving the phone away. We don’t do it, but I told
[00:09:39] Hank Yuloff: you, if you’re not going
[00:09:42] Sharyn Yuloff: to have your phone, which is totally fine, blue light, all of those things, we do always have pen and paper. And we talk to our clients about that too, because too many.
Entrepreneurs, too many people, entrepreneurs or not, too many people, wake up in the middle of the night, oh my goodness, did I do, I have to remember to do that, and rather than getting stuck in your head of oh my goodness, I have to remember, oh I have to remember, oh I have to remember, just write it down and then go back to sleep.
Because if you’re stuck, I gotta remember, I gotta remember you’re not sleeping.
[00:10:13] Hank Yuloff: And actually, let me look in, I think it was this book. Yeah. The foreword for Partners in Everything, I got up and it’s in here at two something, yeah, the preface, two something in the morning, and wrote the preface to the book, because I couldn’t sleep.
And it was a matter of getting it done. And I’ve had, and I’ve written things down in the middle of the night. And then in the morning, I was like, I can’t read it. Darn thing of what I wrote. I’ve also had the when someone schedules time with us, we use a URL. It’s how to get there faster. com.
Cause that’s what people want when they have a hire a business coach, they want to get there faster. And I had that idea in the middle of the night. So I trotted downstairs, check, who is. Actually, what I wanted was gettherefaster. com, but a bicycle shop owning, is that not the best thing ever?
[00:11:09] Kevin Stafford: Somebody else got the same idea at 3 in the morning. I think it was
[00:11:12] Hank Yuloff: great. How to get there faster, I settled for that, woke Sharon up in the middle of the night. Guess what? It was Boundaries. Yes, we do not. One of the things we talk about in Partners and Everything is where are your boundaries? And some of the couples we interviewed, they don’t talk about business over the threshold.
Whatever the threshold is. So some of them are
[00:11:36] Sharyn Yuloff: over the, right when you cross the business door into the house. Okay, so that’s the threshold. Some of them are, the threshold is the bedroom, right? You can talk about anywhere in the house, but as soon as we get to the bedroom, that’s it, we’re done.
Yeah.
[00:11:50] Hank Yuloff: We just don’t have that. I’d be inviting Sharon out to another, Babe, come to the kitchen with me. Babe, could you come out here for just a second?
[00:11:58] Kevin Stafford: I want to talk to you about some five things. It’s fine. It’ll be quick. I promise Actually, I would
[00:12:02] Hank Yuloff: lure her out oh my god, babe. One of the cats is sick I would that’s how I would get her out of the room Just kidding, but as long as you’re here, I have an idea for boot camp.
You really
[00:12:13] Sharyn Yuloff: don’t need a rule if there’s a disagreement, right? If one of you needs it to the bedroom, for example, to be clear, then you need the rule. If you both agree, you don’t need a rule. So we both agree, so we actually don’t have that rule. We probably would if we had kids, then I probably would feel stronger that we need that kind of a rule, but We don’t the cats don’t care what we’re talking about.
[00:12:34] Kevin Stafford: And
[00:12:34] Hank Yuloff: if you don’t work together with your partner spouse, significant other, it doesn’t it rarely comes up, but we do work together. We are partners and everything and.
[00:12:46] Kevin Stafford: That’s such a great you underscore a great point, too, in how the boundaries you set actually enable your freedom.
It’s a really easy trap people fall into. They think of those two concepts as working against each other, when in fact that they’re designed to work together. The boundaries you set are what enables you to be as free as you’d like to be and do the things you want to do together.
Absolutely. And it
[00:13:04] Sharyn Yuloff: works out great with kids, right? The kids need that structure so that they can flourish. Your relationship does, too, if there’s A disagreement, if you don’t, if you agree, then you don’t
[00:13:15] Hank Yuloff: need to work. Kevin, when, do you work when you go on vacation?
[00:13:18] Kevin Stafford: No, in fact, but I used to allow certain things to bleed in on the boundaries.
And that’s how I, that’s how I would think of it to myself too, things bleeding in on the boundaries. And now when I take time away from work, I set, I do everything that I can to set things up to where I’m not going to be needed. All like obligations are taken care of. Anybody who might need any information from me has some other place to go.
Set up the out of office message or whatever, and then I I turn off all the notifications on my devices, any devices that might be around me while I’m in this vacation spot, or even just like a time off, and then I just let it, I release it, and that that releasing, that took, those muscles were underdeveloped, to say the least, and that took years to even get to the point now where I can pull it off okay, and not feel my leg vibrating and think it’s a phone, but really it’s like a muscle vibrating.
[00:14:07] Hank Yuloff: See, we’re, that would be difficult for us. First of all, most of the time when we go on vacation, it’s on a cruise. And quite often we invite clients on the cruise so we can all write a portion of it off. Smart. Check with your accountant before you do this. Yeah. Of course. But, if, whether there are or aren’t clients on the cruise, we have figured it out.
Alright, we take X amount of time in the morning, and X amount of time in the afternoon to check email, and then we put it all away. So
[00:14:40] Sharyn Yuloff: during the day we can go do touristy things, after we check it in the evening we can go to dinner, and then that’s it. And. It used to be, so before we started working together, I actually worked at a job out of the house.
And it would bug me that he wasn’t unplugged during vacation time. But then when I joined the company, it was like, oh if we’re not plugged in, then nothing gets done. There’s nobody, it’s we’re the company. So therefore, the rule is, okay, so an hour in the morning. And an hour in the evening, and the rest of the time it’s
[00:15:09] Hank Yuloff: vacation time.
And we give our clients Oh, they get plenty of warnings. Wayyyy enough warnings. They all
[00:15:16] Sharyn Yuloff: know when we’re going, and they’re all really good about it, really. We rarely have an oh my goodness emergency, but we do check just to make sure
[00:15:25] Kevin Stafford: that there isn’t a I feel like you exemplify exactly, like, Why your clients are with you in the first place is like you have this you have these core concepts.
You really understand how things work in business and in relationships and in life. And you’ve created a tailored solution for your life while also having a really like systematized framework that you can, again, coach people to like help them figure out what’s going to work best for them within these certain rules and boundaries.
And it’s what’s the rules you’re going to set up? You have you have seven kids. My God, I’m so sorry. And congratulations. Let’s talk about how your life, how your best life looks in the context of all this and how your business thrives. And it’s I, you get, you really do seem to, again, we’re, we’ve been talking for 20 minutes on a podcast, but you seem to exemplify the kind of tailored, executed lifestyle that people are going to be coming to you, looking for coaching and how to find for themselves.
[00:16:16] Hank Yuloff: We we try and wait, do or do not, there is no try. We work hard to model
[00:16:22] Sharyn Yuloff: what it is that we do. We do work at practicing what we teach.
[00:16:27] Hank Yuloff: It shows perfect. We’re not perfect, but
[00:16:29] Sharyn Yuloff: we’re human. Yeah, we’re
[00:16:30] Hank Yuloff: not perfect,
[00:16:31] Kevin Stafford: but it’s part of the model. Perfection is not part of any successful model.
[00:16:35] Sharyn Yuloff: We are perfectly
[00:16:37] Hank Yuloff: imperfect. Yeah,
[00:16:38] Kevin Stafford: well, shoot. I, like I. Clearly, as I said at the beginning, and I’m even more so now, I’m just quite charmed by both of you, and I get to sit here and just talk about life and business and everything all day, but
[00:16:49] Hank Yuloff: when we’re done with the podcast, we can just, when we’re done with the podcast, we can just go over time.
You don’t care of anybody. Honestly, don’t care if anyone else is listening. We’re fine, Kevin.
[00:16:57] Kevin Stafford: A little more chitchat offline, but before I hit that stop record button where can the audience, where can people find out more about you, who you are, what you do, where can they get your books, where can they hire you for coaching, where can they just find out what you’re up to, next week, which cruises you’re taking, like, where can they just find out more if they want to, if they want to find out more.
[00:17:17] Hank Yuloff: Okay, let’s take the easy road first. We’re not really sure of the next cruise. It’s going to be early 24 sometime between April and September. Yeah, so that’s when the next cruise is. Not sure which one it is. Yeah, it’ll be on Princess though. It will be on Princess because we have a credit to you. Long story.
Nice. Okay, that’s the easy one. If you’d 30 minutes to chat about, strategy, whatever’s going on, you go to how to get there faster. com. It’ll ask you a couple of questions just so we can be ready for you and makes your time most valuable. Our next, our boot camps aren’t until next March, so don’t worry about that.
Just go to ul lof creative.com. Here’s, tell you what, here’s, let’s give you something free. But we have to make it interesting. If you send us an email, you have tell them the email address info at ul lof Creative. That’s Y-U-L-O-F-F creative. It’ll be in the show notes. And if you tell us you’ve listened to another one of Kevin’s podcast, at least one, you have to give us a one or two sentence.
Podcast report, what it was about, what you liked most, and we will check, we’ll send it to Kevin and say, is this real? If you do that, you get let’s see, which books do we talk about? We talked about three different books. Do they get their choice?
[00:18:39] Kevin Stafford: Yeah, part two, part four checklist, and then the partners and Yeah, we’re gonna send
[00:18:43] Hank Yuloff: you the three books that we talked about.
Partners and everything. Your couple’s guide to running a successful business without ruining your life. The marketing checklist too, cause that came out on our 25th anniversary, 49 more simple ways to master your marketing and the marketing checklist for your guide for overthinking and overwhelmed entrepreneurs.
I’m going to be mailing you what copy of this Kevin just got. Oh, nice. Good. Because yeah, hard copy. If you send us that you get all three, you get the e versions. We’ll send those back to you. Probably with some other cool stuff because
[00:19:18] Kevin Stafford: that’s just who you are. That’s how you, that’s how you move through the world.
Just throwing, just tossing some cool extras into everything you do.
[00:19:25] Hank Yuloff: There’s a term I learned from a friend. He was running really swanky hotels in Los Angeles and he always wanted to start a restaurant. And he said, one of the things that we will do is we will have a lanya. Yes, it’s a Creole term for a little something unexpected extra, like something between the courses.
You get just a little something, a yogurt, something unexpected thing. So I’ve embraced that term, that concept of a lanya, send something unexpected. Yeah, a little something extra and just go a little further extra. You know that old expression. There’s no traffic on the extra mile.
It’s another way of doing that.
[00:20:10] Kevin Stafford: I like that. I like that quite a bit. All of my most successful overtures of love or regard or care have been like, they haven’t been like the big grand gesture on the birthday or the anniversary or the whatever. It’s always been like the random Tuesday where I just decided to get flowers or, the random Thursday where it’s like I popped over by the bookstore and hey I picked up that book you’ve been talking about.
[00:20:29] Hank Yuloff: Or as you said outside. You stood outside with the boombox, which is now really just like your phone. Yeah, with the external speaker.
[00:20:39] Kevin Stafford: They’ve still got the trench coat with the rolled up sleeves. Certain things never go out of style, right? Okay, so
[00:20:46] Hank Yuloff: for those of you that didn’t get that reference you’re too young to be listening.
The movie is Say Anything, and it’s it’s both Cusack siblings are in that
[00:20:56] Kevin Stafford: movie. Looking baby face, just so young. Oh my god,
[00:21:00] Hank Yuloff: it’s great. I just, I actually just re watched that a little while ago. Oh, lovely.
[00:21:05] Kevin Stafford: I said get Cameron Crowe’s, I think, first, first movie? I can’t remember. Anyway, my brain’s not going into IMDb mode, so I got that.
[00:21:11] Hank Yuloff: Here’s your bonus for listening to today. IMDb. com. If you want to, if you have arguments about who was in what, It’s the internet movie database, imdb. com. You will love it. It’s a rabbit hole. It’s a rabbit hole. It’s almost, that’s almost as big a rabbit hole as textfromlastnight. com. Oh, yeah.
But.
[00:21:32] Kevin Stafford: I haven’t thought about that website in a while. I’m like, oh, yeah. I’ve definitely lost some hours. Just, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so speaking of losing time, I should wrap us up. Thank you, Sharon and Hank. Thank you so much for this delightful episode. It’s been really fun and thank you to the audience. I hope you had just like 10 percent as much fun as I think we had because then you’re having a great day.
You know what to do next. What they really want to
[00:21:55] Hank Yuloff: do, what they really want to do is answer. They have comments. Oh my god, I love that movie or something like that.
[00:22:01] Kevin Stafford: Do you want to talk about the work of Cameron Crowe, young John Cusack?
[00:22:05] Hank Yuloff: And your comments to Kevin, he’ll get into a conversation with you and you can have a great time.
[00:22:09] Kevin Stafford: Find us on LinkedIn, links to everything that’s relevant, it will be in the show notes. Thank you so much to the audience. for sharing some time with us. We’ll talk to you again very soon.
