Lynne Jacob

[00:00:00] Michael Pacheco: Hello. Once again everybody welcome to another episode of the remarkable coach podcast. As always, I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And today with me, I have an Encore presentation of Lynn Jacob Lynn for those of you who have not seen the old episode, Lynn and I had a chat not that long ago, but maybe a year ago, a little less than a year, I feel like.

Exactly,

[00:00:25] Lynne Jacob: a little less than a year ago. Yeah,

[00:00:27] Michael Pacheco: yeah. So we chatted, we chatted before. It was a good chat, so I thought I’d just invite you back, kind of catch up, see how things have been going. I know since we last, since we did our first podcast, I referred a friend of mine over to you and you’ve been working with him.

So I thought maybe we could chat about some of the wins that you’ve seen there. But for those who are watching and listening, who are not familiar with you and who have not seen our first episode together why don’t you just, in your own words, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

[00:00:58] Lynne Jacob: All right. Well as a business performance coach, I was building my own house back in 2004, moved into it in 05. When a contractor I started attracting contractors to me to help them with their businesses. So the first one happened to be our Mason contractor, and it was because he said, What is it that you do that you can, you know, come and see the property during the day and it doesn’t have to be on a weekend or in the evening.

And so he said, He said to me when he heard, I need me some of that. So he was my first contractor. And then the next one was through BNI, I think. And then the other one was another networking event. And so I was working with ICI and residential contractors. And, and it was because I was coaching everybody one on one at that time.

And with these three people, I would ask them, so what’s something what’s something you could do differently like to overcome this challenge? How could you address that in a different fashion? They had no idea. And they really had no idea. I could sit there silently holding space for them as we call it.

For a day, and they would not come up with anything. So, and then, you know, of course, then I could feed them stuff like this one guy. I said, I said, so tell me, he’s a specialist in, in building on waterfront property in an hour area. There’s a ton of waterfront. And so I said, so tell me about these people who come from the big cities and, and you’re building their homes for them.

Where do you think their lawyers are based like far away in the big city or in this city? Oh, no, probably here. Well, when do you think they’re seeing their lawyers on Saturday morning? And he thought about it and he said, yeah, I’ll bet you there’s not a lawyer in town who would see them on Saturday morning or afternoon.

He’s seeing them on Saturday morning, right? And his wife is not happy. And so anyway, I, I could feed them ideas to think about and see things differently, but they couldn’t come up with them on their own because. Of the nature of the industry and all they’ve learned from everybody else. And so anyway, I, I just decided at one point, if I could get these three people into the same room, I could be training them on, you know, my style of business strategies.

And then we could get back to the one on one helping them come up with their own ideas. As to changes to be made to the way things are done around here as I call it, and the trade contractors business college was born. And that’s a one on and not one on one that’s an in person gathering, but then it’s, it got so that it was for bigger contractors and I was kind of leaving out the littler guys so then I created trade contractors business training.

And that I did for many years by Teleseminar, and now I have just recently resurrected it, and I’m doing it by, you know, Zoom video channel channel. And so that’s, that’s what I do, is I train on seven key business strategies that I have dramatically simplified with rubber hits the road, tried and true tactics, so that when a contractor says, oh yeah, but it’s different, it’s different for me.

Then I asked them, well, maybe, so explain.

[00:04:27] Michael Pacheco: Everybody’s a special snowflake, right? Everybody’s got their own unique business. Except that they don’t.

[00:04:33] Lynne Jacob: That’s it. That’s it. Exactly. And so then, inevitably, there would be somebody in the room years ago, and still today, you know, in group calls, there would be somebody say, well, actually, I’ve done that before, and it works like she’s talking about it.

So anyway, that helps them get out of it. That helps them get out of their stuckness. When they hear somebody else has done it because that’s what they really put a lot of stock in as somebody else having done it successfully and yeah, so I train on these strategies, they come up with their own ideas and then I help them follow through on their ideas.

[00:05:10] Michael Pacheco: Nice. do you want to talk a little bit about the seven tactics?

[00:05:14] Lynne Jacob: Sure, sure. I’ll go through them very quickly. The first one is to, is to create a three year vision. The second one is to map out the route to reach that destination. Why three? Why three years? Because, well, because 10 years is just way too far out, and people won’t do anything.

And then they go, oh, it’s been like, you know, nine years, and I’ve got a year left, you know. And it’s still kind of the same thing for five years. Oh, there’s lots of time, lots of time. Three years, there’s not a lot of time, really. They’ll get off track. They’ll get off track. But they’ll get back on track a lot faster because three years is such a short period.

And, and the 10 years, it’s funny because when people do these 10 year visions, they don’t really have to focus on them when they’re working, focusing on the three year vision. Then they don’t even get like maybe seven years and they go, Oh my God, like I’ve accomplished so much of what I had in my original 10 year.

Yeah, great, because you were working at it, you know, not just three years at a time, but strategy number two, mapping out the route means a one year business plan. And I call it non traditional because you won’t take this one to the bank and get them to pay serious attention to you because it includes you.

Not just the business. So, so I actually have helped people create business plans to take to the bank, but it start with their non traditional and then we just take some of the chunks out of it and fill in the blanks for the banks and it works. So then that’s the one year down to 90 day goals. And then weekly achievements and reflections review documents are done by my clients weekly.

And in it, it’s what are the three most important activities or actions I need to take this week. In order to reach my 90 day goals, and that’s not all they do, which is three things, right? And then every day it’s the H H W. So come hell or high water, I get these three things done before my head hits the pillow tonight.

And I actually worked with a guy one day who says, you know, like, I don’t quite get that HHW and like, I’m, I’m not getting the sales results I need, that sort of thing. So that’s what we talked about in our one on one that day. And I just got really clear. So he was getting the training in the group, but he was also investing in one on one as well.

And he was hearing it, but until you really step into some of this stuff, you hear it. You know it, but you don’t understand it. That’s the name of my book. I know you know, but you don’t understand. So I help take everybody across this bridge of awareness. from the land of knowledge. They know how to run a business.

They’re in a business. They have a business. They’ve been running this business for 10 years, you know, so they know and they’re in the land of knowledge, but I take them across this bridge of awareness so they get to the land of understanding where they understand how they’re sabotaging their results.

[00:08:27] Michael Pacheco: I love that.

I think, I think that’s an important, I think that arguably the most important thing that a coach does with any business is bring in that third party perspective, that fresh set of eyes and ears where when you’re the entrepreneur when you’re the business owner and you’re, you know, you’re, you’re there every day, you’re in the weeds, you can’t tell the forest from the trees, right?

You’re, you’re, you’re in the eye of the hurricane, not to mix metaphors, but I like the idea. You know, you’re, you’re, you’re, it sounds like you’re, you’re taking, you start with this three year vision of, of where they want the company to go and just reverse engineering down to daily habits.

[00:09:08] Lynne Jacob: That, that’s it.

Down to daily habits.

[00:09:11] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. Which is hell or high water.

[00:09:14] Lynne Jacob: Yeah, exactly. So this, this one guy, he says to me he sent me a message, I think it was like his two o’clock or in the afternoon or something, and he said, my pillow will never have felt. So comfy and and smells so sweet as it will tonight because I got them all done.

So we had mapped out the week of things that he needed to do in order. And then the HHW is from that and got it all done that day. Because once you get into the routine of it, you know, he just kept the wheels. Moving, and then he got there, and of course the next week when we spoke, darned if he didn’t have the results he wanted already.

Hard to believe. Yeah. Amazing, yeah.

[00:09:58] Michael Pacheco: Very cool. Okay, I like that. Yeah, I, I I’ve done, I’ve done similar things and what, what, what really, You know, speaking for myself, I think one of the things that really move the needle for me and my business was figuring out because there’s a lot of programs I think that will do, you know, they’ll start with a one or a three year vision that will reverse, reverse engineer it down a little bit, but really breaking it all the way down into daily habits.

That was the part Where when you went down to that level of, of kind of micro planning, right, where there’s, you know, one to three things that you do every single day as a habit that was where I really started to see the needle move at, at Boxer is because you could just, you know, you don’t, when you wake up in the morning, you don’t surprises, right?

There’s always going to be an email or a voicemail or something that’s going to smack you across the face. And you also know what you have to do to get to the next level, you know, by the end of the quarter. Whatever the case may be.

[00:11:12] Lynne Jacob: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, if we could plan the perfect day every single day, it’d get a little monotonous, right?

So we need that spice of life. That spice in our business. So two, number three is. understand what truly stops you from following through on your own ideas. And, and this gets pretty deep. And typically we don’t even get close to getting there unless we’ve been working together for a little while. And we, and I like to get together with people one on one for a half day, just to dig a little and see what it was that happened long time ago that has Cause them to not follow through on certain things today and just by seeing it, just by knowing what it is.

They get so much freedom from it because then I can bring it up. I have no emotion about it. I can bring it up in a coaching session when they’re not following through or whatever, you know? And then I said, kind of like when you were, you know, this few years old and that sort of thing, and I go, shit again, but it’s okay.

So now, you know, so now what are you going to do about it? You know, but, but I have one client right now, just my most recent client just started with me. I can’t use all the language, but at any rate, he said, I’ve done all that self help stuff and blah, blah, blah. And, and it sounds to me like that’s a bit about what you’re doing, but you’re still like, you know, an expert in the construction industry and we need you in a big way.

So just don’t come at me with any of that stuff. It’s like, okay. Anyway, he, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. So then within three weeks, I think, I think within weeks, he said, so he wasn’t following through and he was recognizing that and all this stuff. And so then I really held his feet to the fire and I.

phone him that afternoon because he made a commitment, you know, that he would do whatever it was. So I phoned him by the time it was going to be done. And he answered the phone and because he was driving. So he didn’t look, he didn’t know, but he would have answered the phone from me anyway. But anyway, he didn’t know why I was calling.

So I said, So how did it go? Well, I didn’t do it. Because, and I said, I don’t need to hear your excuses. They’re only excuses anyway, you know. So we had this fun conversation. So then, by the end of the day, I sent him a text message or email or something. Anyway, he emailed me back at one point, and this goes over a couple of days, but the last email I got from him, Said in response to my question, how can I best support you to help you follow through not only on this, but all the other things coming up in seven months ahead.

And he, his response was and this was two days after you know my call to him from out of the blue. And he said, as for how you can best support me, I don’t know, but you are really pissing me off. So I think that’s a good thing. That’s exactly it. And we’ve spoken since then, because he had a serious accident in his family and that, you know, kind of took him away.

But he also was using that as an excuse to not do the next thing that he had committed to do. And So I held his feet to the fire, gave him a few days off, and then I held his feet to the fire on that one again. And he said, God, I love you. You piss me off more every time we talk. Okay, good. Love it.

[00:15:01] Michael Pacheco: It’s not often that you hear those phrases together.

Exactly.

[00:15:05] Lynne Jacob: That’s what I said. I said, love and piss me off. And they’re in the same sentence. So that’s cool. Oh, yeah, so that’s that and that we haven’t even gotten together in person in each other’s energy, you know, for for me to help him see what the event was. It doesn’t matter what it was. He done all this self help work to know that he’s not permitting himself to see what it was.

And I said, Maybe you don’t need to see what it is. Just recognize everywhere you’re stopping. I’ve helped people like that before, too. You know, like, we don’t need to see it. But they want to. So, they do. They do, when we get together like that. So, that’s number three. And that’s everything. That is, that’s the glue of all seven.

But then the fourth one is to tame the cash flow beast. And get out of your fear of debt. And number five is to become a championship leader to an all star team. And number six is to help your customers do your marketing for you by leaving them with a wow experience every single time because birds of a feather flock together.

And if you’re looking for referrals from your customers, from your clientele, They’re going to refer to you, people who are just like them. So you want to make sure that you’ve done a really good job and that you’re working with the best people, you know, you’re tolerating anybody who will tolerate you.

So you’ve got to up your game. And that’s number six. And then number seven is get a life outside of the business. Love what you do and do what you love. I help people like not only take vacations, but take experiential vacations where they’re not laying on a beach with the business occupying their mind the whole time, you know, do stuff that occupies your mind where you have to be focused on what you’re doing, like deep sea diving, for example, one of my clients started with golf.

After two years told me he really, he hates golf. He doesn’t want to take any more golf lessons or anything, but it got him to a level where he now golfs confidently with his suppliers who are gifting him these five star golf trips, business trips. Yeah. So the two years he, he appreciates the fact that he did that.

But, but then he told me, you know, no, I don’t want to do this anymore. And so, okay. So what else, what else would you like to do for him? This was for him time, you see, because he didn’t even, you know, he would show up to family functions with his wife and children. But then, then a couple of years later, he’d say, no, no, I wasn’t there.

And somebody, a cousin or somebody said, I’ll prove you were there. And there he was in, in a picture in body, but not in spirit.

[00:18:05] Michael Pacheco: Yeah.

[00:18:06] Lynne Jacob: Interesting. Yeah. So what would he do when he wasn’t going to do golf anymore? And I sent him away, took him a couple of weeks of research, just. Ask yourself, what’s something I’ve never even thought of before that I might like to experiment with?

And here it is, deep sea diving. And he was sure his wife would never do this, would never agree to him, never be happy with him doing it because she would never do it. She got her certification, underwater deep sea diver certification, like deep, deep, deep sea diving certification before he did. Because he just had more time and that sort of thing.

And so now they, is

[00:18:53] Michael Pacheco: that different from scuba diving? Like

[00:18:57] Lynne Jacob: they go, they, their biggest vacation and I encourage my clients, this comes in number seven. Well, all of this stuff does let’s say, because he’s anyway to take a three week unplugged vacation is what I help all of my clients focus on getting to.

And that means you got it. That means you’ve, you’ve tamed the cash flow beast. That means you know your numbers in your sleep. That means you have an all star team and you are a championship leader. And it means you’re following through. So you’re doing all these things and that gets you to this three week unplugged vacation.

And he was away in total, unplugged total, I think four and a half weeks because This trip for scuba diving in the East Timor Sea was after, just after the new year. So they unplugged for Christmas where nobody works in the business during Christmas and New Year’s. And then off he and his wife go on this trip, five airplanes to get there, five flights.

To get there and fly back and when he lands in his city, his wife comes on home and he spends the night in a hotel room because he goes off on a five star golf trip the next day. So he’s unplugged all that time to the East Timor Sea and then of course he checks in because he’s You know, close to home, and they had their first problem that day when they knew he was coming home.

So, they could just, whatever, relax, chill a little, whatever, and drop the ball, and, and he had it all, he was calm and cool, and he had it all fixed up, all that he needed to do, which was. into the right people, never had the job site, nothing like that. And so then I went golfing for five days or something in a five star golf resort down South.

So that’s pretty great.

[00:20:58] Michael Pacheco: That’s pretty great. I had unrelated, but I had talked to my wife a couple of times in the past year or so thinking, you know, I should, I should get what do you call it? A set of golf clubs and learn how to golf because it would be good. Good networking for like, you know, business people, local politicians, that kind of thing.

But now you got me thinking twice about that. Cause I don’t really think I would enjoy it. I was just, it was purely just like a networking play for me.

[00:21:24] Lynne Jacob: That’s, that’s, that’s why he did it and look at what it’s done. It’s, it’s given him the confidence to say yes. All expense paid five star

[00:21:34] Michael Pacheco: trips. Yeah, it doesn’t sound terrible.

It

[00:21:37] Lynne Jacob: doesn’t sound terrible. I mean, it’s such a, such a win, you know? Oh my gosh, he just had another unexpected win. That was an unexpected win. Yeah. From him, from him following through and something he had thought of because he had been a president of the local chapter of the electrical contractors that he was You know, a member of, and, and he had to to represent the chapter, he had to go to these golf tournaments.

I mean, Hmm. You know, like a fish out of water. He just didn’t like it at all. And so, yeah, so he did this and he and his wife went out and golfed pretty much every weekend and good weather. And he golfed with his father, you know, he took advantage of having more time with his father. So it was to have a day off every week.

It started as Wednesday afternoon, and then it became all day Wednesday because. You know, he would, you know, he could only do half day, he could only get away for a half day. This was back when he was thrown in the towel and he had like eight employees and now he owns two businesses and he doesn’t really have much to do with the employees except to say hi.

[00:22:47] Michael Pacheco: When he’s taken half Wednesday’s off, is he working Saturday and Sunday? Or is he taking? No, no, no.

[00:22:53] Lynne Jacob: Yeah. So he was taking, that’s all he could afford to take off half, was half of Wednesday. And then it became the whole day, Wednesday, it was easy to see. I knew a day would be better because is he going to go golfing at seven o’clock in the morning and then want to go back to the, to the office in the afternoon and to get out of the office, you go to the office at seven o’clock in the morning and then you can’t get out.

And then you’re phoning your buddy who’s. Waiting for you in the club and, and all that stuff. So, so it only took him a couple of weeks to see. Wow. But had to experience the challenge of how challenging it was to take a half day off, and that was back in oh eight or oh nine. Nice. One or the other. And he he, he still takes Wednesdays off.

Wednesday is the best day for him because that means that it’s, We were trying to avoid Monday morning blues. That’s what it was like, like an employee Monday morning blues. Right. And yet he owned his own business. But by cutting up the week in Wednesday, that meant that he would have two Mondays, or it meant that he would have two Fridays.

So he took it as two Fridays. It’s all about the framing.

[00:24:04] Michael Pacheco: It

[00:24:04] Lynne Jacob: is. It is. Still is taking the Wednesday off. He still finds it’s the best day. But other people will start on a Friday afternoon, maybe. Interesting.

[00:24:15] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. Very cool. What what, what else is new with you and your business? Have you launched any new programs or anything like that since we last spoke or?

[00:24:25] Lynne Jacob: Well, this this program, the trade contractors business training, as I call it, I have launched relaunched that, but I have launched that so, so that. Like, why relaunch? What, what does that matter? Well, that matters because it’s, it’s telling people maybe that I did this program for years by tele, by teleseminar.

I know how successful it is by teleseminar. Well, it’s going to be that much more successful. By video, right by zoom, because now we get to see each other. They’re not just hearing a voice, but they see each other and already they’re sharing you know, contact I can, you know, when I’m whatever doing something and I can hear that I’ll say okay just give me a minute here, and they’ll take an opportunity to say hey so and so I just sent you a private message I’d like your contact information because I think we might have some synergy here.

So that’s great, you know, very cool. And that, that did not happen much. I think it might’ve happened once in many years, maybe 10 years or something. I ran it by teleseminar. So it’s just, it’s the face, you know, you see somebody and I feel that much more

[00:25:36] Michael Pacheco: comfortable. I mean, there’s a reason, like, I mean, this is a podcast and we’ll release this as audio, but right now, like we’re recording on zoom with video.

I think, you know, when you’ve, you’ve been on. Kevin’s podcast as well, which is another boxer podcast conversations with coaches. And that one is only an audio podcast, but also recorded with video just because it’s, it’s, it’s nicer. Yeah,

[00:26:01] Lynne Jacob: it is. It’s, it’s nicer. I mean, we, yeah, we. Technology. Yeah.

You know, it’s the two sides of every coin, right? Every coin has two sides. So, but the upside on the video platforms is you get to see each other, you know, and when I’m traveling around the world, I can still, you know, Tap back into friends or whatever. And we get to see each other, have a glass of wine together.

You know, we do, we’ll, we’ll get together for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee in the morning with my grandchildren, you know, my, my youngest grandchild, she just. Gave me the tour. It was a two part tour. Huh Of their new home, you know that they they just moved into this home that I haven’t seen yet So it was a two part tour.

Okay, and that’s all I’m gonna show you tonight. And then the next time I’ll show you the rest Okay How old is

[00:26:52] Michael Pacheco: she? Eight. Eight. Okay, right on. I don’t know I don’t know if I have told you yet, but I have a one year

[00:27:00] Lynne Jacob: old now No, I don’t remember hearing that last year that yeah, I was at your house that you built off grid and all that stuff last year.

So now it’s a baby.

[00:27:13] Michael Pacheco: We’ve got a one year old who is who is now walking around and opening drawers. She she likes to take the shoes from the entryway and put them in the, into the drawers and the, and the cabinets in the kitchen. That’s very important for her.

[00:27:32] Lynne Jacob: So that’s cool. And has she started climbing yet on those open drawers?

[00:27:39] Michael Pacheco: He hasn’t started climbing yet. No. She hasn’t figured out how to open doors yet either. And so I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m hoping that that lasts a little bit longer because as soon as she can open doors, we’re, we’re all just, our lives are over.

[00:27:58] Lynne Jacob: Oh, it’s just another stage, but my younger daughter, my younger daughter.

When she pulled out drawers and it was, this was in an old house. So those drawers made of solid wood and she was just one, just one. And she pulled them out and she knew how to stack them that she climbed all the way up, stood on top of the stove and opened the doors. Above her head, which made her lean backwards.

Oh my God, I came into the kitchen. Yeah, those things stick with you for a long time. It’s the emotion that’s a Oh my gosh. Yeah, so this is, these are our memories, our memories. Come with emotion. You know, you can ask me about other things. And it’s like, yeah, no, maybe, but I don’t remember, especially my girls, you know, I don’t remember.

I didn’t have an emotion. They had the emotion. Huh.

[00:28:58] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:58] Lynne Jacob: I’m still with me. And she’s 43 years old. And that one is still with

[00:29:03] Michael Pacheco: me. It’s funny. It’s funny at that at this at this age that my my girls at She’s, she’s known, she doesn’t really have. She’s not really afraid of anything yet. She, she has, she has no, she has no sense of self preservation because she doesn’t know what that means yet.

She hasn’t, you know, she’s bonked her head a few times and she’s fallen over while she’s walking. So she means she understands that there are consequences when you trip and fall or stumble or something like that. But that’s it. That’s all she knows in terms of consequences. So it’s, it’s interesting. It’s been, it’s been a lot

[00:29:41] Lynne Jacob: of fun.

And we don’t want them to learn in big, serious ways, you know? It’s okay, let’s keep it this way. Let’s keep going, we’ll figure it out

[00:29:52] Michael Pacheco: later. Yeah. You want to meter it out and make sure that it happens as slowly as possible. Like let’s learn these lessons in small doses.

[00:30:01] Lynne Jacob: Exactly. Well,

[00:30:05] Michael Pacheco: there, oh,

[00:30:06] Lynne Jacob: go ahead. No.

What a special time for you and your wife. I, you know, I remember and. Then I had grandbabies. And yeah, that was in 07. I had two grandbabies, two daughters, each had a baby within five weeks of each other. Oh, wow. And yeah, I know. And so I I was living two provinces away from them. And that was, that was the fall, October, November of 07 in 08.

My and and I went through a depression. They came home with me to my province, my home newborn, newborn babies. They shared a bassinet that I had. And so they were there for two weeks and then they both left. One went to visit the other abuelos in Mexico and the other one took a plane home to her province to where they both happened to live.

Yeah. Anyway, so then yeah, so then I. I just, I just got so depressed that, yeah, I did for three days. I never got out of bed. Yeah. And it was bad. It was bad. So anyway, I got back. I reached out to my coach and I said, look, I know it’s Christmas time, but I need help. He, he helped me, he gave me, you know, an hour of his time in this period sort of thing.

And, and at the end of this coaching set, it was like, you know, an hour or whatever. And he said, Lynn, I’m not feeling like I’ve really helped you get anywhere. And I said, yeah, me neither. And he said to me, Michael, he said, what is a question you wouldn’t want? Anybody to ask you, like you did like you just did I did that I remember leaning back in my chair and, and then I swiveled around and there was my bookcase I don’t know why I guess I was just panning the room or something but I remember my chair turn and.

And there was my bookcase, beautiful antique bookcase. And I said, Oh, I would never want anybody to ask me if I’m following the very same seven simple strategies for success on which I train and coach my clients.

[00:32:25] Michael Pacheco: The cobbler’s children have no shoes.

[00:32:29] Lynne Jacob: And that was it. It was just that just. And I said, just a second and I took my headset off from my phone and I go over and I get it and I said, I’ve got the binder sitting on my desk and I’m going to start working on it when we hang up and he said, Oh my God, I feel so accomplished.

An hour you have sounded so depressed and now there’s life back in back in you and I think he said there’s blood coursing through your veins or something. And that, that. Was it, was it? What a, what

[00:33:00] Michael Pacheco: a, what a question. Yeah. It’s almost like, I mean, it’s, it’s, that’s a very, like, that’s a very, that’s a coach’s question, right?

It’s like saying, it’s like saying what, you know, what secret are you keeping deep down inside? But it’s by, by phrasing it in the way that he did, it makes, it makes coming up with that more approachable perhaps.

[00:33:27] Lynne Jacob: It is not asking me for a secret, but I did feel it. That’s exactly what I felt. It’s like, you know, it’s like, oh, you know, Then I, like I say, I must have panned the room because I know I was looking and I, and I saw, you know, the bookcase so I whirled right around and I was like, why is the bookcase talking to me?

And then I went, Oh my God. Wow. Because it’s right there. All I have to do is follow the steps. It’s all right there. And so I did. And so my Business plan for 2008. This was December of seven and my business plan in oh eight. So I, I did the first thing is I mapped out three days all by myself, no interruptions and just did it.

And, and at one point, I went like bouncing into my, into my office. And send an email to my daughter and said, book me a flight from this date to this date return. And then the next time I got back to the computer, you know, this is before the days of cell phones being attached to us. And I got back there and it’s like, I need more information than that.

What more do you need? You know, anyway, so yeah, anyway, so that was, and so my 08 business plan. Was to see those two newborn grandbabies in every calendar month of that year, two provinces apart, but that I was in every calendar month, and I aced it. Yeah.

[00:34:57] Michael Pacheco: Nice.

[00:34:58] Lynne Jacob: And maybe I more than again more than tripled my business that year more than tripled my revenue of course my expenses went up a little with all these flights but I’m more than tripled my revenue that year.

Because every time, you know, when I was taking a flight, I just kind of, well, somebody has to pay for this. Huh. Yeah, so, get a new client.

[00:35:22] Michael Pacheco: Do you,

do you, I mean, you clearly think that going to visit your, your grandchildren, that had a big part to do with The increase in revenue.

[00:35:38] Lynne Jacob: Huge, huge. And not only because it was keeping me invigorated and happy. So my, my slogan is fun has never been so profitable. When you work with me, you’ll have tons more fun and you’ll be amazed at how the fun causes profits.

Yeah.

[00:35:57] Michael Pacheco: Huh. So that was like, that was your number. That was your number seven, essentially.

[00:36:01] Lynne Jacob: Yeah. Get a life. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And in my life, I wanted to see, I wanted those babies not to see them so much. I wanted those babies to know who I was. I did not want to be a visiting grandmother.

Somebody who, you know, they, you know, if they came to visit me, they wouldn’t feel comfortable in my home or something like that because it’s a different home and Different person and you know that sort of thing. So now I wanted them to really know me. And boy, did we ever. So, and also how did it positively impact.

My revenue is because I made that much more of an effort. If I’m going to be spending this kind of money, I made the commitment. If I’m going to be spending this kind of money on myself this year, going down to see those babies, I need more money coming in to be able to pay. So the more, you know, the more effort I made to market network, all that stuff, the more business that came in, I had appointments every time I went to their province.

[00:37:13] Michael Pacheco: I love it. Well, we, I think we, I think we digressed a little bit, but we brought it back in and circled it back

[00:37:18] Lynne Jacob: around. Well, that’s the thing is that, you know, in, in business, in business, we get, you said, you know, you get up every day with your habits, there’s new habits that you’re That you’re replacing your sabotaging habits with.

Yep. And yet you’re going to have a curveball. You’re going to. So you’re traveling down this, this road, and if you’ve ever lived in Belgium, it’s the worst there than anywhere I’ve seen in the world. But there are detours that you don’t know about. Well, maybe you do on Waze now. I don’t use Waze on my phone, but I don’t even drive these days, but anyway, it’s just, you know, like you might not know of this detour, you know, maybe some cattle got out on the road and it’s not, Google hasn’t found out yet or something.

So, so you’ve got to be taken off the beaten path and you need to know what your destination is so that you can get back on the path that will get you there. There will be other roads to get you. back onto the main road. But on those side roads, you have such fantastically fun experiences. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:24] Michael Pacheco: Are

[00:38:24] Lynne Jacob: you, are you in Belgium now?

No, but when I lived in Belgium, they would, they would say detour and then you’re on your own. Good luck. Yeah. There’s no more. Okay. Now continue. The detour continues this way or that way. Nope. It’s just detour to the right or to the left. And then you’re there and you don’t know where to go if you’re not.

From that little neighborhood and nobody even in all of Belgium knows that little neighborhood except the people who live in it, you know, so yeah, it just is the worst.

[00:38:54] Michael Pacheco: I was I’m gonna, I’m gonna digress again briefly. I was in Lisbon, I was in Portugal and went to Sintra. Outside of Lisbon, which is this old it’s a small area with an old Moorish castle.

And we were, I was hiking around there by myself, was just kind of backpacking through through Europe at the time. And was ended up spending about half the day with a, with a Belgian guy. And I don’t remember, I can’t remember his name, but I remember him, I remember… And the time we spent and just like talking.

And he was just a very, very nice guy. The only guy from Belgium I’ve ever met, I think. So it’s a random memory that sticks out in my head. Cool.

[00:39:40] Lynne Jacob: And, and since we’re talking about Belgium, well, I actually. I have a girlfriend I’ve met here, where I am, and she’s from Belgium originally, but through another country before she got here, but, but since we’re focusing on Belgium right now, you might very well meet somebody in the next few days who’s from Belgium.

Yeah.

[00:40:00] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. The reticular activation system.

[00:40:05] Lynne Jacob: Yeah. Exactly.

[00:40:06] Michael Pacheco: Exactly. Nice. Yeah. Well, Lynn this has been great. Is there anything that you would like to talk about that we haven’t had a chance to touch upon yet?

Is there any, do you have any? Oh, well,

[00:40:20] Lynne Jacob: I want to thank you again, big time for having thought of me to refer your friend to me. Yeah. Thank you so much. And yeah, it was, I mean, so here’s the value of a referral and I do get referrals. It does in fact happen. Until I started marketing for this group program that I’ve resurrected, I haven’t marketed my business in years, which is.

Testament to when you grow on a really strong foundation, you know, then you don’t always have to keep doing a ton of work. But anyway so anyway, the, the fun thing with your friend is we had this conversation and, and, and, you know, it was, it was just fun. Like he felt he knew me. Thanks to being referred by you, you know, he felt he, he knew me when we’re talking, you know, so easily together.

And then I, I said something about, you know, well, you know, so if you, if you like what you’re hearing today, I think I can help you with your business. So what, so the next step is, do you want to, you know, like bring your. vehicle that’s spitting and sputtering into my mechanics workshop and I’ll put it up on the hoist and take a look at it and, you know, open the hood and we’ll see if I really can help you or not, but I guarantee that.

When you invest in this diagnostic assessment that you will get at least a 300% ROI on it, even if you don’t work with me on going way and he said, Okay, yeah, I’ve got my credit card sitting here I wonder when you’re going to ask for it. Okay, fine. So anyway, even in that he said, Lynn, I knew I wanted to work with you as soon as you said hello.

You just have that. You just like ooze that, that something like, like confidence in what I do, but also it was this friendliness. Yeah.

So, yeah. So anyway, we’ve been working together ever since. Well, his biggest problem, I can share this with everybody because his biggest problem is the biggest problem that 80%. Of the people with whom I’ve been speaking over the last four months or six months, maybe that I’ve been marketing. And the biggest problem out there is.

People finding people for your company. So they will call it that problem. Oh yeah. They will call it. I can’t find enough skilled labor. So I encourage people to back it up a bit and, and it will, it reminds me of years ago, I was sitting at a dinner table, you know, those round tables for eight in a conference room, it was an association gathering, and there was this.

Guy, older guy you know, older than I am now anyway, and he’s complaining about not enough people. So this is, I’m talking like 09 or 08 maybe, and he’s talking about how he can’t find enough people. It’s been like this for a long time. Anyway, I said, well, how long have you had this as your biggest challenge or whatever, you know, he’s talking to the other guys, he’s complaining.

I’m kind of turning the language around a little bit for how long? And he said, five years. And I said, Oh, so do you hire like people who have a good attitude and then you train them to be your apprentices and help them go through the process? So he was either electrical or mechanical contractor. And he said, No, I’m looking for skilled labor.

I said, Oh, I’m just thinking that if you’d hired people five years ago, they’d have all their tickets in their pocket and they’d be your skilled labor today. And the guys around the table laughed. And, and laughter, this guy was not happy with me, but this guy can see it as those guys are laughing at him, but laughter is the body’s mechanism for releasing stress.

So that told me that all those guys were feeling the stress of, Oh my God, I’m in the same boat, and that’s just so freaking logical. How could I not even think of it myself? But because I was speaking to the one, they were able to deflect that. So that’s my message still today, still today. Are you going to be in business five years from now?

If not, okay, don’t bother. Let’s look at something else. We’ll, we’ll do something else. So then you’re going to pay them, you know, maybe 50, 75% more than, than what you’re willing to pay because they, they are who you want right now. So then your customer pays for everything, right? So it doesn’t matter what you’re paying your people.

You just have to. Convince your customer convinced. I don’t like that word, but you’re going to have to prove to your customer that they are going to get the solution to their, and they’re going to get more in use value than the, what they’re going to give you in financial value. That’s all. So you pay your people more, but this, this person you referred to me, thank you so much, his biggest problem was didn’t have enough people and he.

Needed a lot of people immediately. Well, within that month, so we have three coaching sessions. A month, but we had the diagnostic first. So in the diagnostic, we didn’t dig too much into that. I just saw that. Yeah, this is this is clearly, you know, one of his biggest challenges or his biggest, but I saw other challenges that were impacting that as well.

Anyway, so then we had three coaching sessions and by that third one, he had hired. So this is all inside of a month, he had hired 12 people for the field, he had hired a key person to be his operations manager to relieve him of so many busy tasks, and he had hired an assistant. For his administrator. So she was his executive assistant or whatever you might want to call that position.

No, she was the administrator of his company and she was burning out and she has little children and she was always having to be there. And his company had grown around him by so much that he hadn’t. He hadn’t realized it. So looking at it through my eyes, he was seeing like, Oh my God, I’ve got a much bigger company than I thought I did.

And here is this poor young woman. I don’t want to burn her out. I mean, we’re at risk of getting sick when, when we’re at this risk of burnout. Well, what the heck’s burnout? Well, it could come in the form of. A heart attack. Have we never heard of a 40 year old having a heart attack? Of course we have. It could come in the form of any kind of, of health ailments.

And what would he do if she wasn’t there, you know, so anyway, he hired all these people 12, 13, 14 people. And he couldn’t find anybody before we talked. He couldn’t find anybody. He didn’t know he was ready for a right hand man, you know, for an operations manager. He didn’t. He didn’t know that. He knew he needed the person, but he didn’t know he was ready for the person.

And his overhead, imagine his overhead. His overhead has grown in leaps and bounds. And it was scary. Each time we made these decisions, it

[00:48:16] Michael Pacheco: was scary. Hiring 14 people is not… That’s no laughing matter. That’s, that’s, those are, your expenses go way, way, way, way, way up.

[00:48:25] Lynne Jacob: And they look like overhead, right? And so I help him look at what overhead really is.

These people need to bring money in to your company. These people need to cover their salary plus. And then some. I don’t know why. Yes. And so by looking at it properly. Then you get to see okay so the assistant to his administrator. I mean any, any accountant in the land in any land will argue all of this with me, and yet, an accountant there aren’t too many but the accountants who will sit with me and listen, they go.

No, you’re right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Anyways. So the assistant, you could say, okay, well, she is overhead. He’s paying her and she’s not bringing jobs in to cover her salary, et cetera. But she’s getting, getting program systems. She’s, she’s creating systems that he’s thinking up that are bringing in new business faster.

I was going to say,

[00:49:34] Michael Pacheco: if she’s freeing up space for, for, for him,

[00:49:39] Lynne Jacob: she’s bringing up space for her, for his administrator. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the administrator is now able to do the things that only she can do as, as you know, the, the best in the company sort of thing. But these other things, they weren’t even thought of before we were working together.

Now imagine him loading that onto his already busy administrator. So So this other young woman is, is putting together this thing that she’s not bringing the new customers in, but they’ve got a story. It’s telling a story of what their challenge is. This is a job we did just like the one we’re going to do at your place.

If you hire us on, and this is what their problem was. This is how we went through it. This is what happened along the way. And this is where they are. And this is how much money they have saved. For the lifetime of that piece of machinery. Yeah. Millions and millions and millions, right? So now it’s, it’s all in a nice little story.

So you don’t have to, because it’s hard for them to see the type of work that they do. It’s hard for the customer to see that it’s going to pay for itself. Yeah, especially many times over. So, so anyway, that’s what this one young woman is doing and not only that, Michael, but she has a sense of humor about her that makes everyone in her presence laugh.

He sent me. He sent me an email that she had sent to him as an example, you know, it just like a belly laugh little line. I sent it to me. I went, Oh my God, I love it. So it’s that sort of thing. So she’s injecting laughter into this busy, stressful company, but I don’t want to say it’s not the company.

It’s the It’s the energy, you know, like the go, go, go, we gotta, we gotta get this done fast and that sort of thing. And so she’s bringing in these teeny little moments of laughter release because laughter is the body’s mechanism for releasing stress. And without them knowing this, she just has this, this ability to do this.

And then his, his operations manager is bringing new clients in already bringing in new jobs. And that’s all in less than, well, maybe it’s six months now, but this was in less than six months. And if you can have a high-end ticket, Bringing in his salary plus an ROI inside of six months, I think that’s a huge win.

Yeah,

[00:52:18] Michael Pacheco: yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s really good to hear. And I love that, I mean, the laughter thing it, at the face, on the face of it, it sounds very small, but that’s just like unquantifiable. Stuff that’s just, that’s, that’s the, that’s the, what do you call it? The, you know, the, the, the human factor.

Mm-hmm. .

[00:52:40] Lynne Jacob: Mm-hmm. , you know, it’s like, it’s like the icing on the cake. It’s the fluff, the sparkles. They’re the sparkles on the cake. That’s what they like that. The sparkles fine with the icing. The cake is just fine without the spark.

[00:52:54] Michael Pacheco: Now you get sparkles too, I love it. Yeah.

[00:52:57] Lynne Jacob: Awesome. Those 12 for the field that he got, I think there were two, I think there were two maybe who, you know, were the catch and release type.

And this is another thing is people will hire people and hang on to them for way too long. I heard somebody where I was speaking a few years ago, but where I was speaking, this other person was speaking on a topic that caught my attention for my clients. So I sat in and listened on it and I went, Oh my God, I’m as guilty as, as his statistics.

You hire somebody and you know, within the first two months that they’re not going to work out, but you don’t release them for nine months. And it was, I knew it, I knew it was in the second month. And yet, the guy was there nine months before I released them. So I was. But with, you know, our mutual friend, he released these two guys.

They were like catch and release. Yep. They said they’re all that plus a bag of chips and they weren’t. So he was able to let them go where he would have hung on to them longer because we

[00:54:05] Michael Pacheco: do. Yes, we do. Yeah. I’ve got a hard time with that myself. And you always, you know, we’ve all heard it. Every entrepreneur knows higher, slow, fire, fast.

We’ve heard it before, we’ve read it in books, and it’s so, it’s just harder to do. You know

[00:54:23] Lynne Jacob: what I mean, like,

[00:54:25] Michael Pacheco: Right, yeah, it’s just harder to do, it’s easier to say than it is to do. So, yeah, good for him. That’s great. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:34] Lynne Jacob: Yeah. That’s great. So we’re having a lot of fun together. We really are. I

[00:54:40] Michael Pacheco: love it.

I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that. Lynn, where can our listeners and viewers connect with you online?

[00:54:46] Lynne Jacob: Oh on LinkedIn, I’m very prominent on LinkedIn these days. I’m very proud of myself too for, for having that, you know, stick with it factor of working out. Yeah, my website is MLJ, like Mary Lynn Jacob, mljinternational.

com. is my website. And on LinkedIn, I’m Lynn Jacob, L Y N N E, Jacob, like in the Bible.

[00:55:13] Michael Pacheco: Awesome. And we will, of course, post links to that on the show notes page as well. Gosh, anything

[00:55:19] Lynne Jacob: else? I’d love to hear a song before we part. I keep looking at this guitar. I come from a family. Cowboy boots and

[00:55:30] Michael Pacheco: guitars.

I tell you what, I will, I will make, I will make, I will make a deal with you. I’ll make a promise to you. If you come back for a third episode, I will play a song.

[00:55:41] Lynne Jacob: You got it.

[00:55:43] Michael Pacheco: I just so incidentally, I just picked up a guitar again for the first time in years. Oh. So I don’t know if I have the, the hand, the finger strength to get through an entire song right now.

[00:55:57] Lynne Jacob: I love that I mentioned that. I’ve been thinking it the whole time. It’s like, you know, I love that. I love that. And I just, but anyway, I didn’t say anything. I’m so

[00:56:05] Michael Pacheco: glad that. Yeah. No, I’m, I’m, I’m actively, I’m taking lessons right now and I’m practicing, you know, 30, 30 to 60 minutes a day. But yeah, the, the fingers are still, we’re still, we’re, we’re, we’re getting back into it.

So if you come back for a, for a third round on the podcast, we’ll, we’ll play a song.

[00:56:22] Lynne Jacob: Good stuff. I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. Thank you very much for your invitation. Okay, thank you so much, Michael, for inviting me yet again. It’s fun to talk to you, yeah, and to Kevin as well, like, yeah, like old friends.

[00:56:38] Michael Pacheco: Awesome, yeah, no, it’s always, it’s always a pleasure having you on, which is why we invite you back. Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. I hope you know, hopefully I’ll be able to refer some more clients to you as well. Oh, I would love

[00:56:51] Lynne Jacob: that. Yes, and tell me, who Who am I going to see where I’m going to think of you?

Tell me who I can refer to

[00:56:58] Michael Pacheco: you. Yeah. I mean, so boxer, you know, we work with coaches and consultants are our, our primary, we have, we have three big services that we do. The main thing that we do is social media marketing where we take, you know, we, we take, if you spend a three minutes recording a little.

of some video on your phone. We’ll take that and turn that into posts and post it throughout the week for you on all your social media platforms, from LinkedIn to Instagram to whatever. So that’s one thing that we do. We also do search engine optimization for your website. If you get lots of traffic to your website.

If you sell things on your website that can be quite useful booking discovery calls, that sort of thing. And then the third thing that we do very, very well is branding and messaging. And that’s kind of a workshop, a done with you workshop where we’ll go, we’ll work with you to, to, to work on your, your branding and your messaging.

Okay. Okay. Let me see. So, you know, any other coaches that, that are interested in that kind of stuff, or if you yourself find your, you want to do more social media stuff, sounds like you’re killing it on LinkedIn.

[00:58:02] Lynne Jacob: You see, the thing is with my business, where I am, I said, I hadn’t marketed in years and it was great.

And now it’s just because of this program. I, and the reason I’m doing the program is because I really feel that I received a message. To do that. Yeah. And so when I reached out, when I started and I reached out last spring, I found that that, so I only took people out of my many thousand database whom I could see in my mind’s eye, only people I knew, right.

And 20% of them, they didn’t reach, you know, they don’t have the email address or whatever, 20%. Now that’s not unusual, but it’s 20% of these businesses didn’t make it through. The lockdowns, you know, and that’s here because in my industry, it’s only fear. It’s only fear. Yeah.

[00:59:01] Michael Pacheco: There was a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of building during COVID because bank rates were, were dead low.

[00:59:12] Lynne Jacob: And, and today the, the, the construction industry is. The hottest. Yeah, it’s just the hottest, you know, and there aren’t enough people and I, you know, they’ve got challenges and, and the clients I had, we continued through COVID and, or whatever, you know, the whole shenanigans. And in the very beginning. And one of my clients.

said, I don’t even, it’s like, I can’t even see three years. That’s what it was. I can’t even see three years out. I don’t even know. I mean, the problems we’re going through right now, and we don’t even know what the world’s going to be like in three years. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, he bought into it. You see, this is the thing is like, there are two sides of the fence and nobody knows which side I’m on.

And it doesn’t matter which side they’re on. It’s just forget all that stuff. It’s just business, but. I said, okay, if you create a three month vision, and he did start, he was able to get back at it because it’s like big, like, you know, we don’t know the sky is falling. You know, the sun might not come up next month.

I don’t know. You know, so three months, three months. Yeah. He could see. He could see that even if it continued with what was going on in that very, very moment, you know, right at the beginning, it could continue for three months. So then how was he going to get through it and all that stuff? And it had a huge impact on a lot of businesses for, I’m going to say six months.

Well, they did a lot of work in schools. And so they couldn’t get in to maintain them and stuff. And then they, they had to get in there, you know, the schools needed it. So then they’d have to go at night and on weekends. And it took twice as long. And I said, remember. The customer pays for everything. You don’t eat it.

You don’t eat, you know, your guy’s twice as many hours and stuff like that. Forget it. Anyway, so that was, that was the whole thing is that the challenges are just different. Still challenges. Yeah. It just looked different.

[01:01:28] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. That’s all. Yeah.

[01:01:33] Lynne Jacob: I saw it all.

[01:01:34] Michael Pacheco: There’s always going to be unknowns, no matter what’s going on and you can’t, you know, why you eat.

Eat. Eat. One thing that, you know, one of my first mentors and coaches taught me very early on is you can’t, you can’t cry over who gets elected president, right? And that, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a metaphor for, for stuff you can’t control, right? As a business owner, as a business owner, it doesn’t matter.

There’s always going to be unknowns. There’s always going to be stuff you can’t control. So just focus, you know, on what you’re able to control.

[01:02:05] Lynne Jacob: Yep, exactly. And, and I bring it right down to the kitchen. You know What’s the point in crying over spilt milk?

Yeah, yeah. Like a baby crying over it because they spilled it? Okay, well, why are they crying over the spilt milk? It’s because their parents have been freaking out when little things like that happen. And that’s why the toddler is scared and crying because they spilled their milk, you know? Yeah, it’s, we just, we

[01:02:32] Michael Pacheco: just call the dogs over and have the dogs clean it up.

[01:02:38] Lynne Jacob: Yeah, one of my one, I have three grandbabies on one side with the eight year old. And then, and then I have one on the other side of these two. And anyway, she has. Animals is like a, it’s like a zoo kind of, and, and how differently they grew up. And yet how similar they are, nonetheless, it’s so funny, you know, because they’re not from me, but grandchildren, right.

And they have different, but, but they’re mothers or sisters, you know, so they have so many similarities and yet so different. So one had a Chihuahua and then like with the three of them, that Chihuahua couldn’t, you know, couldn’t clean up too much and be, you know, and. The other one, funny thing is that even though the dogs would come over to clean it up, she had a habit, and just remembering it now, she had a habit at two years old maybe, that she always would pick up a cloth and go clean things.

If she spilled a drop of water, she would go clean it. If she spilled a drop of milk, she would go clean it. Wow, her with all these animals. So the house wasn’t as clean as the other house that only had one, you know, and it was just funny, just as you say, having the dogs clean it up, her dogs would clean up the big messes, but she wanted, she wanted to beat the dogs.

That’s what she was doing for her sisters. And we talked about it, like they were her big sisters. That’s

[01:04:03] Michael Pacheco: funny. That’s hilarious. It must have

[01:04:05] Lynne Jacob: been. Must have been.

[01:04:07] Michael Pacheco: Good. Very good. Awesome. Okay, well, Lynn, I appreciate it. Again, thank you so much for, for making the time to chat with me. We love having you on.

Next time. I’ll pick that guy up.

[01:04:19] Lynne Jacob: I’m looking forward to it.

[01:04:21] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. Until then thank you to, again, to all of our viewers and listeners as well. Of course, this podcast doesn’t mean anything without you guys. So appreciate you guys spending time with me and Lynn. Thank you so much. We’ll see you next time.

[01:04:32] Lynne Jacob: Yes, we will. Thank you, Michael.