Micheal Pacheco 0:00
All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome once again to another episode of the remarkable coach podcast. As always, I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And today with me, I have Jeff seasol. Jeff, did I pronounce your name right? I did a good job. We usually cover that before the interview, but we were talking about other stuff. So I forgot. Jeff has 3030 More than 30 years of being an entrepreneur, a consultant and a coach. Just passion is to help as many coach as many companies as possible, grow and be the best that they can be. He does this through business, executive and leadership coaching, along with providing content through blogs, podcasts, and a YouTube channel that provides business interviews, Jeff’s goal is simply to help businesses in any way possible. Jeff, welcome to the rocket coach.
Jeff Sesol 0:46
Awesome. Thanks, Michael. Great, great intro. I love that that was right on point. That’s
Micheal Pacheco 0:51
fantastic. So I like to always open up the interview by inviting my guests to just tell us a little bit more about yourself in your own words, and what, what and why you got into coaching?
Jeff Sesol 1:03
Sure, no problem. Yeah, you know, the quick story is that I spent 13 years in corporate America and got out of that. And now I’m 30 plus years in the entrepreneurial world. And I love that. I’ve had several over the years of it several of my own companies that were successful, I would like to talk a little bit about the one that was there was so much fun was called free. Dr. FRE dr.com. Back in, go way back. Now, this is 1998. But it was it was a small thing that we launched, where people could upload a file from their PCs or servers, and get to it from any web browser. Back in 1998. That did not exist. It’s what we know today is what they storage. One of the founding fathers of that which is my small little fun piece that I like to share. Crazy time.
Micheal Pacheco 1:54
I think I remember that website. I I am I am 9090 I’ll say 98% certain that I used that website in the past,
Jeff Sesol 2:03
you and you and 28 million other users, by the way, that’s crazy. Yeah, nice. That’s awesome. By 2001, we had 80 million. And then when I left in 2003, we sold it in 2001. For two years, I was the CTO. And we had my time we sold it, or I left in 2003, we had 28 million users worldwide using it. It was amazing. It was amazing. Amazing time, fun time. But I started after that after I left there. I just started consulting with companies. One of my passions became helping companies automate their operations. So they could grow. People get bogged down sometimes because they can’t get out of their own way. And they got to do it a certain way. And I used to come in and just help them to automate the operations and do that kind of stuff. And so I did that for many years. And that kind of flipped into people saying, Hey, I’m trying to grow my business. Jeff, you’ve got a lot of experience, could you help me? And I’m like, Sure. And so that kind of went through through the process. And then, recently, September of 2021, I decided to not do consulting, because it’s one to one, and do coaching, because it’s one too many. So here’s just a quick story. I tell people, there’s a few important birthdays in your life when you’re 16. Because you can drive when you’re 21. Because you’re illegal. When you’re 40 Statistically, your life is half over. So you look in the mirror and you say, Okay, what do I want to do while I still can from my bucket list, and I wanted to go skydiving, so I went skydiving and if you’ve ever done it, but you go 14,000 feet up, you tumble out of a plane, you’re falling it 120 miles an hour, it’s hard to breathe, a little movement in your hand, you’re spinning out of control, everything is happening so fast, you can’t see your eye and you can’t see your dog. But 5500 feet, you pull the chute. Suddenly breathe again, you’re in control, you can see where you’re at, and you can see where you want to go. And I tell a lot of people isn’t that a lot like being in business? Right? It’s just that’s how it feels. And so I decided to launch pull the chute as a way to get companies to literally pull the chute. And I have a lot of them that say, Hey, I’m pulling the chute this week. And what that means is let’s meet for an hour a week, where you can take a break, we kind of you know, talk through what’s going on in the business world, you know, where you need help, what’s some of the struggles? What’s your plan, so we kind of lay out a process for him. And then the cool part for me is that I get to hold them accountable then to some of those things, right? Because your business owner, it’s hard because you have no one that kind of says no, you need, we’re doing this and you need to kind of finish this up and get that done. So I do that a lot. The other thing that is fun for me, and I think makes me different type of coaches that I encourage my clients when they’re in a situation or if they have a great idea that’s really hot, you know, that they want to talk about. Don’t wait until we’re meeting, text me and say, Hey, do you have a few minutes to talk about this? Get me on the phone and let’s talk through it, especially when it’s a situational experience. You know, they’re going through something with an employee, they’re not sure how to handle it. You know, they’re frustrated. It’s when you do it in the hindsight it’s not as effective. If I can do it in the middle Let in coach them through the best way to approach it, you know, talk them through. And a lot of times those are all emotional conversations tend to be unemotional for a little bit. And to approach it, like, you know, a business owner or someone that cares and all that, then it’s more important. And I’m a big advocate, you know, my tagline is, grow your people grow your company. Yeah, a big advocate that if you can take care of your people, and treat them the way that they’re supposed to be treated, that you’re gonna grow your company. I mean, I always tell people, the great resignation is not about money. It’s about the way people are treated within the organization. And they’re looking for better companies to work for that appreciate what they do. So anyway, that’s probably a little longer do you want it but this place where I’m at?
Micheal Pacheco 5:45
I love it. I love it. We have, we have I think we have a lot in common. I wanted to go skydiving on my 40th birthday. Fortunately, my 40th birthday was April 21, of 2020. So we were all locked down at that point. And I don’t think anybody was skydiving. So I didn’t I have not, I have not yet made that happen. But that is that is definitely on the bucket list.
Jeff Sesol 6:13
The second time, it was a completely different experience, because I knew what to expect. Sure, the first time it’s like, frantic, right, and I’ve actually found the vehicle I had a videotape actually found the video course, it was, you know, 9098 99 Somewhere in there. Because it was right before my 14. And it was a by the time we digitized it. And then, you know, I was able to use it. It’s almost black and white because it was out of VHS tape. But it looks really cool because it looks vintage now.
Micheal Pacheco 6:41
That’s awesome. I love it. I want to circle back to something that you you said during during your your kind of intro there. You mentioned, you know, you you help get your clients, unemotional to help them make decisions in the moment if something’s on the fly you your example was you know, if there’s an issue with an employee, for example, what are you? What do you do to do that? How do you do that?
Jeff Sesol 7:04
It’s interesting. And I have a very clear philosophy and this, this works with anybody that you working with, it’s emotional. What I like to do is just say, Okay, tell me about the situation and let them blurt out and talk through just spew into whatever happened, and get it all out. Because once I find that once people can, can get everything out that’s bothering them, you know, here’s what happened. He said this, I really wanted to say this, I didn’t I took a moment, because you said you reminded me not to do that. Here’s all my struggles. Let them get all that out, right? When people get all that out. It’s like the age of you know, when someone takes off and they say, write an email and then delete it. You know, because you got all these thoughts that you want to get out. And then what I do is once they do that, then I start asking questions, but I don’t interrupt them, I just let them spew that out, right? Get the emotion out. And then I start asking questions. And then the ultimate goal is where do you want this to end up? Right? Where do you want to be when this is done? You got to have a plan. You can’t just go in there and willy nilly it, you know, here’s what’s going to happen. So, you know, do you want to reprimand them because of what they did. And again, you can have a conversation, not an emotional one about reference recommending them by pointing out, here’s what you saw, here’s things that we don’t do this way. We’re you know, as a company, as a culture, we do things certain way, here’s what happened, we don’t do that, you know, if this is something that you can’t do, then we’re going to talk about that. But I need you to start behaving in a certain way. Maybe it’s the way they talk to people. But again, when you talk to the person that you’re they’re struggling with, it becomes more of a conversation than an emotional accusation. Because the moment you start accusing them, and you call them with accusations, they’re gonna get defensive, and we all do it. And then it’s not a conversation anymore. Neither one of them are listening. So my goal is to get them to spew let me then make conversation so they can hear what I’m saying. That calms them all down, so that when they have their cup
we kind of talk through is okay, now what I want you to do is to ask them, where their struggle is, you know, what’s bothering them, let them talk. Don’t interrupt them. And then and then kind of come back and take a few notes if you need to, but then come back and say, Okay, here’s what happened here. Here’s why I did this. Here’s what happened so that it’s a conversation and that’s really the goal that I try to get them to have a conversation, not an emotional screaming, yelling match, you know, whatever it’s going to be.
Micheal Pacheco 9:36
Yeah, I’m a big fan. I’m a big I practice writing big, long, whiny, complaining emails and then deleting them. I do that a lot. Maybe not a lot. I could do that with when with relative frequency perhaps. What do you think that is like what is it about, you know, humans, the human condition that that that that the this process of venting of getting the garbage out? How does that create space for, you know, intelligent decisions that come from, you know, a grounded place.
Jeff Sesol 10:15
So think about what happens when we get into discussions. So my family, I have three daughters, and my wife and I, right, there’s five of us, two of my daughters, and I could hold on three conversations all at once and make comments back and forth and go like crazy. My wife and my youngest daughter are like, because they’re not as fast thinkers. Right. So I think the human mind is that we, when someone says something that we want to justify, or that we want to let them know why we did a certain way, instead of letting them finish, we cut them off. Right? And allowing, and so what happens is, we never quite get out what we want to get out. Okay. And I’m a big, my wife and I, whenever we have arguments, that’s our biggest issue, right? Because that’s, that’s my natural reaction is to defend myself. Sure. And it’s hard not to do that. But to answer your question. The reason that works, like typing out the emails, or just letting someone get it out, is that there’s stuff in our head, that we want to make sure that we get it all out. And if we’re allowed to get it all out, whether it’s an email or to talk it out. It clears the brain. Right? So now it’s like, okay, I got out everything. And at the end, I kind of go, Okay, we’re good. Everything’s out. Yeah. Okay, great. Now, my turn. And then you can pick that stuff apart and ask questions. And say, and then you could explain, Well, this is why it just, you know, this is why I did it. And it’s all about how you respond back to right. So the interesting part about emails is that, you know, we read an email off, because it allows us to clear our heads and think clearly, and we delete it. When we’re having conversations, it’s a little bit different. Because a lot of times, you know, we’re trying to figure out, we’re gonna do I, if you cut me off, I don’t hear anything you’re saying, because I know what’s in my head, what I want to get out. And then I’m not hearing anything that you’re saying. So by allowing, and that’s one of the things I teach, whether it’s, you know, Nike, I do that with my leadership coaching as well. And then executives that struggle, you know, it’s one on one with them, same thing, that’s a big piece of what I think and it’s hard, because for years, they’ve just been responding. You know, it’s almost like they feel like they’re under attack and the they gotta respond back, versus letting it all out. And then and then approaching it in a calm manner, it just works so much better. And the results 90% of the time, are exactly where you want to be, which is the other part of that, right. Where do you want this conversation to go? What do you want the other person to understand when you’re done? Yeah, it works much better when that happens.
Micheal Pacheco 12:48
Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, you’re you’re literally creating space for logic and reason to come back in. Which is, which is how you want to make business decisions, right? You don’t want to do that, you know, it’s, it’s hard to take if you’re coming from this place of extreme emotion. I think there’s a lot of value in emotions, but in terms of, you know, business decisions, talking to having having Crucial Conversations, right? You’ve got to, if you want to be taken seriously, you can’t come from a place of fire and emotions and all of us, right, you’ve got it, you’ve got to come feeling grounded.
Jeff Sesol 13:28
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, for me, the other side of that, too, when I was younger, I used to make not only emotional decisions, but then get frustrated with things weren’t happening in a proper amount of time. Which is another issue that I learned over time is if I can just be patient, it might only take another day. But the result is going to be what it should have been versus me forcing it. And I’m telling you almost every time when I forced a decision or a forced situation, it blew up on my face. And if all I would have done was waited a day, maybe two days, you know, the longest maybe a week. It works out where it should have been right. Especially if you’re making big decision, big business decisions. Maybe you’re partnering with someone and you’re like, is this the right thing to do? And somebody’s like, No, we got to do this now graduate today. i i So push away from the table. I have someone trying to make me make a decision right now. You know, anymore, and I never used to be like that. But that’s one of the things I learned over the years. Things I try to coach my my people is, you know, if someone’s really pushing you to make a decision, then it’s a bad decision. You know, just take a breath. You know, again, pull the chute, take a breath feel like control cigarette and say we want to go and usually it works out.
Micheal Pacheco 14:47
Well, I understand the idea of not succumbing to, you know, let’s call it peer pressure for pressure from a partner or something like that. What do you think about the idea of you know, Uh, Ready Aim Fire, for example, right? Like, let’s, let’s throw some stuff on the wall and see what sticks let’s you know, agile development, that sort of thing. You know, fail fast, learn, learn quickly, that sort of thing. What do you what are your thoughts on on that kind of mentality.
Jeff Sesol 15:20
I’m not a huge fan of fail fast. I’m a big fan of 2% change. Okay, and I have a book that currently in the editor, it’s called post super people where your company and one of the chapters are dedicated to percent change, which creates compound results. Because I’m a firm believer, you can make a small, you know, this week, make 2% change next week make 2% change, you know, suddenly, you’ve made a 10% change. But you’re, but you had controlled changes as you went through that, right? So you made a small change, and you was like, what’s the result? Okay. I like that. Okay. Yeah, I like that, right? I’ve been down the road a couple of times where we’ve done this, you know, fail fast piece, and I have failed completely fast, right. And it’s, you know, you don’t want to hit the wall moving 120 miles an hour, it hurts. It hurts, you know, both mentally and financial. And so, what I really find is that, you know, two plus two, when you do it in 2%, changes, two plus two does not equal four, it’s more like eight, because you’re building on where you want to go. Right, and you’re seeing, and you can do it quickly. I mean, you can do it within a week or two weeks, or, you know, within a month or two depends what you want to do. A couple of times, like my one of my last consulting gigs, I was brought into a company that they were, there’s only 18 people or 15 people when I started, they were rolling in probably 15 different directions. There was no clear, here’s where we want to go. And the problem was, they were stuck at a level. And they couldn’t get beyond it because they weren’t, as I say rowing together, right? So I started making small little changes over about a two month period, once they all started understanding where the company wanted to go, and they were all aboard, because people hate change, right? So small, little changes was easy to do. They didn’t even realize we were changing stuff, to be honest. I would just say, hey, let’s try it this way. And they go, alright. And then they do that, right. And then that became kind of the norm that way, you know, and then this became on that way. All of a sudden, six weeks. There’s a new process. Yeah, right. All of a sudden, they were hockey stick. And I mean, you know, we grew in 348%. Over two years. We had to get them all going the same way, with the same mindset and the same thought, right? So that’s more where I like to play in the sandbox is that the small little changes that you can measure and see what’s you know, I’m all about change, you know, I don’t have all the answers. I tell people that, like, I don’t have all the answers, but we’re going to talk about it. And we’re going to come up with an answer that we can all live with. And then we’re gonna move on. No more changes every day. So who has all the answers? Nobody. But you know how to ask the questions. And if you got someone, again, which is what I like to do from the outside, because I’m not in a day to day, right. So I’m not it’s the forest in the trees thing. I’m not that close to it, where I can take an objective view from outside and go, are you thinking about this? Are you thinking about that? You know, and let’s look at your financials and see if they make sense. You know, I had one client that was so excited. He goes look at the financials, I got the expenses cut away now. I literally took 20 seconds looked at him and went, where’s your payroll? He goes, it’s in there I go. No, it’s not there’s no way I go. I know your payroll is and it’s not here. He was waiting. Oh, crap. Right. But again, he was so close to it a great job. Literally, you know, 20 seconds into it. I knew immediately what was wrong. Yeah. Something that I said. And that’s, that’s the fun part. That really makes it special. For me.
Micheal Pacheco 18:54
I think that’s that’s a great example that that highlights how important it is, for anyone running a business, anyone at a high level of leadership to have a coach, someone, a second set of eyes, that’s removed from the situation that can come in and see things with a fresh set of eyes, right and just you just have a fresh perspective, because when you’re, when you’re mired in the day to day, it can be so difficult to see to recognize the forest from the trees. Okay, you’re right in the middle of it. You know, when you’re in the eye of the hurricane, you don’t see all the all the chaos that’s swirling around you necessarily. Absolutely mixed metaphors.
Jeff Sesol 19:41
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. It’s like, you know, when we had free drive one time the database crashed. And we were in panic mode right to do stuff. And you know, here I am trying to make decisions on the best solution. And I they brought in someone from the outside that looked at it and said, I have a theory that we can fix this. I said, I’m all ears. Let’s go. Yeah. And it ended up being an undocumented procedure. But it worked, right. But he was like, I, I am 90% confident this is gonna work. But I, you know, I was like too close to it, I was just trying to figure out how to save the data, right? Thinking about outside things, right. So we brought in this and it was great. And that taught me that lesson. You know, that was a big one, whereas I was just so close to it.
Micheal Pacheco 20:30
Yeah, that’s a that’s a that’s a great one. Jeff, tell me, tell me about your clients. Who are your clients?
Jeff Sesol 20:36
You know, I have clients all over the board. And people always say, Do you have a certain vertical and I go, like, I have an importer that imports champagne from France, I have a painting company, I have a custom housing company, I have a dermatologist. I have a tea company that wants to start launching a tea shop. It’s just kind of fun. I have a Pilates company. And I have an estate planner. So it’s the spectrum of things, right. But but you know, my philosophies are our pure, you’re from a business standpoint, I follow certain things, right? When I go into companies, their goal is they want to grow. My goal is to not only grow them, but make them feel like they’re at the next level, where people kind of look at them and go, Oh, you know, this is the tea tree company, I want their tea, right? Or your, you know, the dermatology, I want to go to you because you have this great reputation, right. So for me, one of the things that I really focus on, I’m going to focus on five areas, which is marketing, systems, sales, finance, and people, those are the five pillars, if you want to call it that, that I that really build the foundation of what we do for our clients. of mine, one of the biggest things I focus on is what’s your what’s your brand, what’s your reputation? What do people see when they see you? What’s your, you know, do you have a slogan, like mine’s growing people grow your company? what’s your what’s your elevator pitch? When people say, what do you do? For me, when I talk about pull the chute, I say, you know, and I got it down to 30 seconds, right? Let me tell you about 1621 40. Parent, you know, jumping out of a plane. The funny part is, when I tell that story, almost everybody goes, oh my gosh, I get that, that makes all the sense in the world. Now, when I walk around town, people walk up and they go, Hey, you’re the shoe guy. What was your name again? You know, but but that’s, you know, that’s kind of key. So yes, I have clients all over, in really, you know, businesses business, if we follow certain aspects of input to help them in certain things, you know, like the dermatologist, I had to really dig in a little bit, learn how the insurance side worked. Right How to file? Because I just wanted to see if I understand a little better. Now I got that. Right. So that’s good. The state planner, you know, not as much I don’t need to know what he does as much as how is he getting clients? And what are we doing? So we’re working through the better way to get clients on that. You know, the tea tree company, we’re just in the beginning stages of that. But we’re talking about setting up a tea Club, where it’s a monthly tea club, like a wine club, that you get, he’s has 40 blends that are high end, it’s not like Earl Grey, you know, or green tea, these are, you know, he makes his own blends. And so he would describe the least would describe why this blend what’s in it, what you can expect from it in a video. And then they get on a monthly basis, they get you know, they’ve registered and they get their tea for the month. Right. So again, I’m looking for those aspects all the time of what’s going to help them. Because one of the struggles most of my clients do is it’s this Yo yo, it’s up and down, right? One month, they’re really high next month, or low, high low. And you know, we got it, we got to kind of flatten that out for them. Because the stress levels that come with that, you know, our hit our two killers is really hard to deal with that. So one of the goals I look at most of the companies is, you know, how can we level or flatten out your income, and then go from there. Because it’s going to it’s going to make you feel a whole lot better about what you’re doing.
Micheal Pacheco 24:17
Yeah, I have this I mean, this subscription model is a no brainer for us as a solution to that kind of problem, especially for a tea company that can do custom blends and videos. Right? Love it. But how do you so where do you get your clients Jeff and how do you how do you market yourself and your services?
Jeff Sesol 24:36
So I’m based out of Nashville area, and I’m focused in Gallatin, which is where I live Gallatin, Tennessee. And so one of the things that I’ve done here is that I’ve really jumped into the chamber have jumped into some of the volunteering events. We have a lot of historical homes around here. So I’m you know, the committee’s a couple times. A couple of As I help plan with those, just to kind of be part of the community, because that’s a big thing here. You know, probably two thirds of my clients right now are locally to Gallatin, which is great. Um, I have two in Atlanta, which was a just kind of happened, someone I knew knew someone that needed help and, and that happened. And that led to another one. And, and those guys love me down there. They’re actually trying to help me expand down to Atlanta a little more. But probably the biggest thing that I love to do is we do LinkedIn outreach. I have a team, by the way, you know, I’m not by myself, because I need someone to hold me accountable. Right? So, so we meet once a week, and we talk about, you know, where the clients are, what’s in the funnel? What’s our marketing? What’s our marketing, for the week, and for the month, what are we focusing on, we started doing workshops that we do in person, usually 12 to 15 people, it’s very intimate, where we, you know, we take them through a three hour workshop, and we talked about those five pillars, but we make it very interactive, you know, I start out the whole thing with, tell me about tell me your name, your company name when you started, and your biggest challenge. And then what I try to do is take all those challenges that I heard and fit them into the workshop at some point, like you said, one of your challenges, you know, is finance. Okay, so we talked about finance, you know, let’s talk about one of your challenges, okay, or my channel your challenges, you know, getting your social media out or your, your, you know, getting out there across that. So I talked about marketing, we talked about that. And the group ends up supporting each other, it was really great, where they’re, they’re going, Hey, did you ever try this, and this did for me, and this worked. So not only did we do a workshop, where we were helping them kind of reanalyze, what they do, we help them build a little network and support group within that group. And help them do that. And, you know, if I get, you know, we’re getting into our second workshop, the first workshop, I got two clients from, that are ready to start in May. So so that works. So that’s another way to do it. And then of course, I do my podcasts, I do my YouTube channel, as a way to outreach. And the, I have one person on my team, that she does all my LinkedIn outreach, just to get it started. And then once someone is somewhat interesting, and the way we do it, is we try to get them, because I want business owners that are either business owners or CEOs of companies, and I want to interview that I either want to interview for the podcast, or I want to interview him for the, the YouTube channel. And then based on what I hear, potentially, what we end up doing is I start talking about what some of their challenges are and struggles. And then we could potentially turn that into a into a clientele, you know, kind of piece if that’s something you want. I my sales technique is, I don’t like to force people, I don’t want people to have buyer’s remorse at all. And coaching is a personal decision, and a personal relationship. You know, I laugh because I get all these LinkedIn, hey, we’ll get your 12 new clients and this and that. And like, that’s not the way it works for coaching. You know, coaching is, is completely different. It’s not like you’re selling, you know, lawn care service, okay, that I get coaching is, do you and I get along? People that I’ve said, this isn’t gonna work? No, because they, they might know, or they might think they need a coach because someone said you need a coach. But if they aren’t willing to be coached, and I didn’t want to do it, I literally had one woman that was doing that. And I said, Oh, I got this is working. I said, you know, we’ve gone through all this stuff, and you just keep in what the best thing for her that drove me crazy. Was that I used to say to her, so you’re telling you employees that you appreciate if they did a good job she was they should know, they did a good job. I don’t have to tell him. And I’m like, no, no, you know, and after a couple of months trying to do that I finally said this isn’t working. So no. So it’s my choice as much as their peers. You know, because I think if I can help them then I really want to, it’s my passion.
Micheal Pacheco 29:02
Now, I like that. So yeah, I think I mean, it sounds like you know, you’re going through you’re using content marketing, as your kind of funnel to, to qualify, right prospects, get people let people get to know you. You know, they can get a feeling and an understanding for your personality, who you are, how you how you behave, how you coach, and that kind of pre qualifies anybody who’s going to talk to you anyway, if they don’t like you, they’re not going to reach out and say hey, I want you to coach me. That’s a that’s a fantastic way of doing it. That’s a lot of what we do at boxer as well as is focused on the content marketing because it’s so powerful in so many ways, because you can establish your authority in whatever niche you’re focused on, get your content out there. And like I said, if if someone resonates with you, they’ll reach out and if and at that point it’s Not a sales conversation. It’s a timing conversation, right? If if they, yeah, or fit conversation perhaps.
Jeff Sesol 30:09
Yeah. And timing is the right word, the right word for me. And I always tell people this, you know, the days of the boiler room sales guy. Hey, I got tons here. If you want a lot, right,
Micheal Pacheco 30:21
those days are gone. Always be closing.
Jeff Sesol 30:24
Yeah, that’s false. No, I did. It’s not my fault. There’s people like to do that. That’s not my philosophy at all. My philosophy is I want people to feel good about the decision they made. Sure. And so when they’re ready, I’ll be ready. Yeah. In the meantime, you know, if you want to go have coffee with people that are like, hey, I really want to hire, there’s a couple things I want to do first, when when you’re ready, you let me know? Yeah.
Micheal Pacheco 30:51
Yeah, I don’t think I mean, I agree completely. I don’t think there’s another way to do it successfully. Right. I mean, if it’s, if someone especially with coaching, it’s such a personal thing. You know, whether you’re talking about one on one coaching, or whether you’re talking about small group coaching or large group, you know, course, making a course, if there’s regret, after the purchase, there’s not going to be trust and that trust is such a basic requirement. For something like coaching where you’re, you’re, you’re trusting this, this stranger, there to guide you from where you are to where you want to be, you’ve got to bridge that gap, and you need to help doing it. And you’ve got to trust this other person to do it. And if you don’t trust them, it’s not gonna happen. Yeah. Well, I
Jeff Sesol 31:41
mean, I had one of my clients call me this afternoon. And I was able to, he called me I usually tell them text me time. He just called them I happen to have time. So I answered it. He was, I just want to run this by you. Here’s what’s going on Bubble Bubble, took 10 minutes. And he’s like, thanks so much for answering. I’m glad I was able to bounce this off here. I know what I need to do. Yeah. And it’s worth its weight in gold to me, you know, I mean, it’s like, because then, you know, they’re gonna make the right decision for their business. You know, and that’s really nice. I mean, literally, you know, I tell people, you know, I turned 60. And I looked in the mirror and said, what I want to do with the rest of my life, well, I’m not retiring anytime soon. Because I love what I do. I love helping companies. But I just don’t want to I want to help more than one company at a time. And so that’s why I really decided to do what I do. And you know, when I hang up, when I’ve helped to come, you know, a client gets through a situation. That’s the biggest Hi, I could ever get, you know, I get off on smiling. A little fist pump going, like, this was awesome. This is why I do this. And it’s fun. It’s you want to wake up every morning excited about what the day is going to bring? Yeah, you know, I mean, I’ve worked in whatever corporate America, there were times when I’d wake up and go, Oh, crap, I gotta go to work today. You know, and why? I mean, we have to, we have to work. Like if we enjoy what we do.
Micheal Pacheco 32:57
Now, I love it. No, yeah, it’s super, super, super, super important. What does a typical engagement with you look like?
Jeff Sesol 33:07
So the way it starts out is it’s a minimum six months, I’ve had people say to me, can we do three and I go, we need six, you know, minimum, six months, I do one year contracts, they can give me a 30 day out, you know, after six months, if they want, no one does most of my engagements last years. And the way that it’s structured, and the team that I came up with this, this is probably the best I can describe what it kind of looks like is that the first the beginning level is called the tandem level. So I’m gonna use skydiving, vernacular right now. But it’s a tandem level, because we’re working very closely together, and figuring things out kind of laying the plans out. Where do you want to be? What do you do? And sometimes that can be six months? Anyway, it could be a year, I don’t know. But at some point, you know, we’re like, Okay, this is starting to work, we need to now set the foundation, and we call it the accelerate level, because we’re starting to grow. And so what is the foundation? What are the systems in place that we’re doing? How are we heading off to sales? What sales doing? What does it look like in finance? And, you know, what are all those pieces that we’re gonna do? And what people do we need now? Because they’re starting to accelerate, right? So we get that all kind of laid out in the next level. And from there, we move to the momentum level, which is almost like when I talked about the free jar stuff, it was a hockey stick. Hopefully, that’s the case and we can scale, but scaling is that is the reason for that level. So how do you scale? And part of that is because back to the accelerate level, where I have to work with the business owner to get out of their own way. Right? Because a lot of times they have to touch everything when they do they’re the you know, the struggle point. They’re the bottleneck. Right? And so they it’s hard to grow when when they have to do that. I always tell business owners look, give your employees a job. Show them what the results should be. You can show them how you do it, but you don’t necessarily force them to do it that way. After a while I’ll ask him, What do you need to do your job better. And if it’s within reason, give it to him, because now they own that job, and no one’s going to do and say, You don’t have to worry about that job anymore, right? Anyway, so we’re doing that. So we get to the momentum level, you’ve been able to scale, now you’re adding people, you’re building your culture, you know, all that stuff. And finally, I would I call it the top. Now, you know, it could take a couple of years to get there. But the goal at the pilot level is that you as a business owner, now feel in control, right, and maybe we’re not meeting every week for an hour, maybe we’re meeting twice a month for an hour, we’re just kind of doing check ins, things like that. But my ultimate goal, the pilot is once they’re confident of where they’re at, I want them to come back down to and meet some of the tandem level people and tell them about their journey. So the tandem level people know that it’s possible to get to that level. So that’s kind of what the overall looks like, you know, I meet with them once a week. I’m available, and usually what I do, you know, like, I have one client that’s interviewing someone, they’re getting ready to make their first hire, he was Jeff, I don’t know how to interview people don’t even know what questions to ask. Right? So I’m like, Alright, fine. So I got, you know, interview questions, I pulled that all together, customize the torches thing a little bit, sent it over to him, you know, stuff like that, where, you know, I’m not just coaching. I’m also periodically guiding, assisting giving them some of the tools that I’ve, you know, have in my tool chest, if you will, but it allows them to do a better job I have. And then the other thing I’ve done is I’ve built a corral of people around me that I really trust, like my podcast. That’s Jana, she’s a communications and voice coach. Right. So if you’re like, one of my clients, I want to get him on a radio talk piece locally. He’s like, I’m a pan. I can’t do that. Because I’m gonna get you a Jana. She’s gonna take care. Yeah. Nice. That’s what she does, right? So so I have all these tools, it’s not just me and my experiences, you know, I have people that I can go to, you get to a place where all sudden, you need HR, I got an HR person, you know, if you get to a place where you need to hire a higher executive, I got a hiring firm, you know, if you need any kind of printing, you know, I have cuffs and, and notebooks and pens. I have a guy for that, right? These are people that I trust, not just acquaintances, these are people that I’ve gotten to know which is key. You know, it’s not just someone Hey, I met this guy in Lincoln, he meant to help you. Not what I do,
Micheal Pacheco 37:31
Jeff, Jeff, I know a guy Cecil.
Jeff Sesol 37:36
Well, anyone that’s that helps your network. Right? And it helps you. When people come to you go, Hey, Jeff, what do you know, here? You know, they know, and that’s how you do it. But that’s important. My theory is I don’t know if I don’t have all the answers. But I surround myself with people that can help
Micheal Pacheco 37:53
you I think it was circling back to you were talking about your your kind of mid tier offering and giving people giving people equity, in whatever job it is they’re doing. I think it was Howard Berg of Starbucks that said, the person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. Yeah. And it’s that that’s always kind of that the first time I heard that it struck me is very, very powerful. In just, you know, the we’re not dealing with automatons, we’re not dealing with robots, we’re dealing with people. And those people want to be, you know, respected and they want to earn respect as much as anyone does.
Jeff Sesol 38:37
Yes. If you just and just ask them. I mean, that’s the biggest thing, right? I tell people, what they need, what do you need to do your job better? Because that, you know, you don’t, and I tell them, the owner, go look, just because you wanted to do it a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the right way. You know, people come in with different ideas, they might be able to enhance the time and come up with the same result. Why would you not wanted to do that? You know, so it’s kind of the stuff that I like to do. It’s fun.
Micheal Pacheco 39:06
So Jeff, what, what three books if you had to pick if narrowed down to three books that you would have all of your clients read? What would those three books be?
Jeff Sesol 39:16
Well, here, one of them is getting more. So this is an interesting book. It was it was written by Stuart diamond. The most ironic thing is that one of my very first companies, my first investor that came in Stewart, Dimon was his lawyer. And so when this when I found this book, probably four years ago, I was like, taken aback. I’m like, wait, I know. But it’s a great book, because it’s, it’s funny. I have a couple of friends. I did a couple of book clubs with people on this book, okay. And a couple of people that knew me go, you could have written this book because it’s my it’s how I believe in life, right? But it’s really all about sound about getting more continuing advantage of people, it’s really about getting more to help people be the best they can be. Right? Understanding a situation. For example, I was traveling to New York on a consulting gig one time, right? There was a six month gig. And if you’ve ever traveled to New York and try to get out of guardian airport at times, on a Friday afternoon, it’s a nightmare. And people are hot headed and in blah, blah, blah. So there was a guy in front of me, the flight was gonna be delayed, there was a guy in front of me yelling at the flight of the ticket person. And I walked up to him, he left and I walked up and said, Hey, I’m really sorry, that happened to you, you know, and I happen to have a brand new water, I go for water help. And she’s like, thank you so much. But no, I’m good. And her name was Malay. Right? And, and, and she said, What can I do for I said, obviously, I’m on this flight, you know, what’s the game plan, I was just really nice to her. So the funny part was now, over a six month period, I’m sure that those flights get delayed at least a dozen times, right. But because I was so nice to her that one time, every time I would come up, and she called me blue eyes, because I have blue eyes, of course, you can see that, but I’d walk up to my family, she was a blue eyes, to the point where she’s like, Hey, your flights delayed probably until nine, I got to see an eight o’clock flight, Here’s your ticket. I didn’t even ask for she was taking care of me. Because she would see my name. And another one where she’s like, Hey, I got to understand, buy, go down and talk to so and so down there. And she’s gonna get you on the flight. So because all I every time, I was nice to him, once in a while, I’d bring her some flowers, because she was always that nice, right. But it’s that kind of give and take. And that’s what Stewart diamond talks about. In the book, he talks about how much more you can get, if you just treat people like people as the ultimate thing, and he’s got theories. And He even talks about negotiation in here, like how to get the most out of negotiation. And at one point, you know, he’s he laughs because he says, There’s a book about how to negotiate with the Japanese, and he goes, like, all Japanese people are the same, they’re all gonna negotiate the same, no matter how you do it. You just gotta go into it with certain aspects, but it’s all about them, make it about them. When you make it about them, then you’re gonna end up getting more and he said, Look, if you’re cutting a deal, the worst thing you can do is make the person feel like they cave into you, and you got more than they got. And you never want to do that. Because then the next time, they’re not going to want to, you know, partner with you and negotiate with you. So, you know, that’s one of those. That’s really good. There’s another one that was crushed. I’m trying to think of the name of it, but it had to do with, you know, think of it a minute, with integrators and visionaries. Rocket, rocket fuel rocket fuel. Well, I love that one. Because I’m a firm believer that, you know, there is this world and there’s integrators in this world, if you get the right two people together. I mean, think about all the great companies, Walt Disney and his brother, right. John Rockefeller had, I can’t remember the gentleman’s name, but you know, his second command, right? Jobs had Wozniak Gates had had Alan, right. There’s all these, when you get the right team together, sky’s the limit, sky’s the limit. And then probably the third one. And I’m looking over here to see but um, and I kind of liked this one a lot. It’s called the 12. We here, okay. And the reason I liked this one is that the mistake businesses make is they do planning for a year. And the reality is, at the end of the year, it’s too late to make changes. But if you can look at your, of weeks, and identify where the shortfalls are coming, you can make changes so that overall the year actually ends up making sense. And you can see, and you can see what’s going on, you know, I mean, that’s the biggest struggle. Everyone’s like, Oh, I’ll plan it for next year. And they they lay out all these budgets and all this other stuff. And the reality isn’t, and then the first quarter crashes. So let’s look at that first quarter and see what we need to do to change. Right. So you look at every every look at every 12 weeks is a year. Yeah, you start breaking it down that way. I thought it was done very, very well.
Micheal Pacheco 44:18
I love that. I love that I think yeah, I mean, with with with boxer with my agency, you know where where we’re at, at our level we’ve got about we’ve got seven full timers on board, and we’re at a level where it doesn’t even make sense for us to plan a full year out. Yeah, it just doesn’t. So we do we do 13 weeks, which is about a quarter. Yeah. But yeah, and it just because that way, it just keeps you more agile, more flexible, because you don’t know what kind of curveballs you’re gonna get in the next 13 weeks.
Jeff Sesol 44:55
It’s called it’s called the pandemic everything shut down.
Micheal Pacheco 45:01
That’s great. Jeff, is there anything else that you would like to chat about that we have not had an opportunity yet to touch upon?
Jeff Sesol 45:08
No, I mean, I think this was a really great conversation kind of in depth, I think you have a good understanding of my theories and philosophies and just who I am as a person. Again, my passion is just to help companies, right. So understand what your passion is, you know, because company owners have a passion, they started out for a reason, right? By the way, the panic created, probably, I think we’re at 12 million last year, 12 million new businesses started last year, where, you know, couple years previous, it was only at about eight. So think about that number. And that’s two years running. So 2021 2022, each had almost so like almost 25 new businesses started over the last two years, which is insane. But I love that I love that whole fact. Because, you know, that’s where new innovations, new ideas, new thoughts, you know, the stodginess of corporate America. And you know, the way that they run things doesn’t have to be, and you can be successful in your business. But as you identified, I believe, every business should have some kind of coach. And people say to me, I’ll say this to people say to me, where are you certified, and I go in life. Because here’s the deal. It’s like going to college, right? You come out of college, you have a degree, you go to coaching, you get certified, a situation occurs, are you going to know how to deal with it? No, no, all the certifications do is tell you step by step things you want to go through. But here’s my thing, it goes back to the Stewart diamond saying, you know, not all Japanese negotiate the same, right? Not all businesses are the same, and they’re in different places. And so you can’t start them all. At level one, you know, I do a tandem level. But everyone has a different places right? Now I got one company that’s been in business for 13 years, I got one that you know, the tea tree company, when when they get going, they’re just starting up. They’re just newer, right? And so you’ve got to be flexible, and, and understand the situations and, and just be able to, you know, there’s no formula there. The basic formula is, is to focus on those five areas that I talked about. And let’s just make sure that those are solid, because that’s going to allow you to scale and just because you’ve been in business for five years doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go back to look at those areas, and seeing where you’re at, you know, because your marketing could change your, you know, all of a sudden, something could happen, your messaging could change, right. And that’s one of my biggest things. I tell people, you know, like, you guys are a boxer. If I was to ask you, what you’re, you know, what you do, and you would give me the pitch, you know, whatever the ask the other seven people, they’ll tell me the same story. Right. And that’s, that’s important, you know, and I tell my clients that all Zen, you know, I got one that’s got 15 People I go, you know, if I walk around with everyone telling me the same story, and what’s important about that is they’re your salespeople, they go to a party, someone says, Oh, hey, hi, where are you at? Now? What do you do in these days, you never know where the next leads gonna come from. You want to make sure that the message is crystal clear. And so I always encourage my clients, no matter what level, they’re at how many years they’ve been in business, we’re gonna take a step back, we’re gonna do a grant up to a brand workshop, we’re going to look at your brand, we’re gonna look at your messaging, we’re looking at your all that stuff, right? And make sure that it’s, is this still what you want to say? Is this still where you want to be? Is this the look, you still want? Things change? Yeah. So anyway, that’s that’s a lot of what I do.
Micheal Pacheco 48:29
Now. That’s, that’s great, Jeff. And I think, you know, I think there’s a place for coaching certifications. And the best coaches that I know, are not the best, because of their certifications. And in fact, one of them on top of my head is not certified in anything at all. But he’s, he’s the best coach, certainly the best coach that I’ve met. I think for being a coach, it’s more important to have experience in business and in life and to have disparate experiences doing lots of different things. Because what you want to be able to do as a coach, in my experience, is look at problems with look at problems and be able to attack them from from different perspectives, right, being able to see one problem from four or five different perspectives because of things that you’ve experienced throughout life gives you this idiosyncratic kind of approach that no one else is gonna have certainly not in the business because they’re too close to it, right. We talked about that before. And and it allows you to just see things so differently. And that is what makes Connect is what can really make a coach so powerful because then you can you can kind of reframe it reframe any problem in in a different way. Whatever is going to be most effective for your client for who you’re working with, or who you’re trying to get, you know, bridge that gap from where they’re out to where they want to be.
Jeff Sesol 50:01
Right. I agree. I agree. And I agree, certifications are good. And that arguing that what I’m saying is that it’s not something that I did. You know, when people asked me, Are you certified in certain things? And I’m like, No, I’m not, you know, because what you just described, you know, one of my friends used to play this game, what hasn’t just done, because I’ve done so many things over my life. Sure. You’ve tried all these little businesses here and there, and some of its successful, some have failed, right? You learn as much from the failures as you do from the successes, and it’s just where I’m at in my life right now. And it’s, it’s a lot of fun to be able to leverage those experiences for my clients.
Micheal Pacheco 50:40
100% 100% Yeah. And I And honestly, like, I feel the same way about college degrees, right? So if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna, if you want to go out and be a surgeon, you better get your college degree. You know what I mean? You got to go to school for that. And, you know, if you want to go to school and get your MBA, maybe, perhaps, perhaps not, perhaps you’re better off starting a business and using, you know, the $200,000, that it’s going to cost you to get an MBA, use, use that, to get educated in action and actual business and see what that’s like you what might you learn in the school of hard knocks, and you know, being on the street, like, not on the street? You know, I’m saying,
Jeff Sesol 51:24
why? No, it’s interesting, because I had this, I had this conversation a lot, you know, and I tell people look, where you start, and where you’re gonna end up in a year is not where you think you’re gonna be, you can make the best business plan in the world. And trust me, within six months, it’s probably no good. You got to revamp it, you know, I mean, there’s, there are those that have worked on can be wrong. But most of the time, things happen that you don’t expect, do you mean, how could you forecast that? Right? You know, your forecast sales and, and the sales didn’t happen? Right? And so now, where are you? Right? You know, you thought you’d have this much sales in six months, and you gotta be able to maneuver and change and, and alter that kind of stuff. And, and just be ready, you know, be ready, you know, when things change. And, you know, and that’s why I like all those books that I get, just because every one of those is a good, foundational piece to think about as you’re going through things. You know, that’s what we hear, you know, is great how to, you know, get more from stewardess is amazing. You know, rocket fuel just kind of really makes you think sometimes that you need to have that second person because there’s some great visuals like when, when we did free drive, my business partner, Mike was a fun, he literally would draw me things on a napkin. Because anything we can do this, and I go, Yeah, I think I got this. And then I’m gonna make it happen, right? Because he was a great visionary as to how things should work. And I was the, you know, the integrator to make it all happen.
Micheal Pacheco 52:54
Jeff, you’ve got you mentioned, you have a book. It’s an editing right. Now, you want to tell us a little bit about that? When does that come out? Sure.
Jeff Sesol 53:01
Yeah, I’m hoping that’s gonna come out, probably by May. I’m excited about that. It basically kind of goes through just different aspects of what it’s going to take to be successful, and to grow your people. Right. So I talked about 2% change, I talked about managing yourself in time, I talked about kind of my history about culture, you know, how, you know, leadership is important. So I talked about all these different aspects, ultimately, that builds a good culture. That’s the reason for the book, big advocate that you just need to have a culture that’s appreciative of your people, and rewarding of your people, and things like that. And just excited about it. I think it really, from from my first attempt at it really came out to a place where I was able to just share my experiences. There’s a lot of stories in there. But I was able to share my experiences as why I believe what I believe, and why, you know, bullshit is what it is today.
Micheal Pacheco 53:59
Fantastic. Jeff, if you want to reach back back out to me when that when you get a release date for that book, we’ll update that on the show notes for this podcast. Where can our listeners and viewers connect with you online,
Jeff Sesol 54:13
a couple of places, obviously, go to pull the chute.net and you’ll find all our podcasts there, you’ll find our YouTube channel videos there blogs are there. There’s a lot of resources that are there. If you want to talk to me personally, Jeff Bullas, shoot dotnet is my email or I’m in the Nashville area if you’re in the area, you can give me a ring 615572 9500 comes to me, you know, text me and say I’m in the area I’d love to have a coffee and I spent a lot of time doing those kinds of things. Because you never know where you’re going to be the next person to need your help or or how you’re going to meet him but I’m always open to you know, having coffees here or lunch there and just getting to know people I mean, that’s the key, right? We we kind of fell out of them for a while. I think it’s an interesting time. Pandemic force So as to not only realize who we were as humans in that we, we did have families and that it wasn’t all about work. But that it also after the pandemic that, you know, we were made to be in communication with people. We were not made to be alone. We were made to, you know, to be around people to talk to people face to face. And I think that’s key. And I think we’re getting back to that. And I think it’s important. And, you know, I think it’s going to change the way that we do business, you know, going forward. Fantastic. Awesome, Jeff. Seesaw,
Micheal Pacheco 55:33
thank you so much for making time to chat with me hear I appreciate it.
Jeff Sesol 55:37
About Michael, thank you for the time. Appreciate it was a blast.
Micheal Pacheco 55:41
Thank you, and thank you to our viewers and listeners. We’ll see you guys next time. Cheers.
