Micheal Pacheco 0:00
Hey, everybody, and welcome once again to another episode of the market coach podcast. As always, I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And with me today, I have Steve Furman, Steve helps CEOs and executives reach their goals and dreams by using the proven methodology called Scaling up, which works on four critical components that all businesses must focus on. That’s people strategy, execution, and cash. Steve Furman, welcome to the podcast.
Steve Ferman 0:45
Hey, Michael, thanks for having me.
Micheal Pacheco 0:47
Thank you for making time to chat with me here. I like to open up the podcast by simply inviting our guests to tell us a little bit more about yourself in your own words, and what got you into coaching.
Steve Ferman 1:02
So um, I’ve been around a while I built bought and sold six different tech companies over the last 40 years. I’m a big believer in coaching, you know, I coach my kids in school, but just in general, I’ve always had a coach, I was a graduate of the master’s program from the Strategic Coach, that’s run by Dan Sullivan. And Dan was my coach like the last six, five or six years as well. So I’ve always been a true believer, and it’s kind of hard to see the forest from within the trees. But I exited my I merged my companies in 2016. And a year later, my partners fired me. And I didn’t realize you could be a 26% owner and a $7 million, your company and get fired but you can. So good lesson learned. One of my my lower points, but you know, I have walked the walk and talk the talk. I’ve been doing this a long time. And like I said, six different companies. And after a you know, litigation for a couple of years and a whole lot of money. We settled on one COVID to like, but I really didn’t know if I wanted to stay in the tech world. I really wasn’t sure. And I honestly couldn’t compete because of my non compete and my buyout situation. So I had to figure out something to do. And in January of 2020, I created a company called E Tegrity, which is a virtual CIO. They couldn’t stop me from giving helpful information to clients and helping people give them guidance. So my as long as I don’t really work in the manage it space. Everything’s copacetic. And I’ve been a member of EO Entrepreneurs Organization for eight years now I’m on the board, we have a thing called the accelerator program, which is entrepreneurs that don’t quite hit the million dollar mark yet in revenues, you can come in as an accelerator and people like myself, fellow yo members will coach them. And I’ve graduated three people out of four years. So I started thinking in the realm of, you know, doing the CIO work is great, I love it. I know it, it’s comfortable. It’s easy for me, because I’ve been doing it for 40 years since technology started. And I was doing cloud in like 2008 2009 When Hurricane Sandy hit, and Irene hit I had people already 100% remotely working. So for me, it was about you know, what I want to do in my older years, I’m, I’m 61 not gonna, you know, ashamed to admit it. But I got to start thinking about what’s the future, the next 10 years look like. And I’ve always been a big planner. So I decided that I was going to look into becoming a certified business coach and I looked at us and action coach and ICF and a bunch of the different ones. And we use scaling up at EO and honestly just, you know, the whole thing around getting the right people in the right seats on the bus doing the right things actually having a strategy documented, written down and disseminated. So everybody in the organization knows it, and being able to execute and have good meaning with thumbs. And of course, you know, be concerned about your cash because growth sucks cash in a downturn, you need cash to survive a good six months. So I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet. And a year later, I got certified as a scaling up coach back in March, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Micheal Pacheco 4:13
Awesome. Awesome. It’s always nice to have coaches that eat their own dog food so to speak. So you sounds like you’re you’re you’re a big believer in coaching. You’ve had a coach yourself.
Steve Ferman 4:24
I still do. And if you look at any phenomenal sports athlete, how many coaches they have, or really anyone that that I think has been super successful with as has had coaching in the past or currently has a coach a lot of
Micheal Pacheco 4:42
why coaching Why do you have I mean, you said you believe in coaching, is there a specific passion around that? Or is it just something is
Steve Ferman 4:48
I’m a big Simon Sinek fan and my why the reason why I do what I do is because I love to help people. I wake up every day and this honestly started during the pandemic and I won’t lie You know what happened to me with my companies, you know, 34 years of running an IT company and building five other ones alongside of it, to have somebody you know, try and take it not that they’re being malicious, that’s business, I get that. But you know, I was very resentful for the longest time. And I started in the beginning of the pandemic, actually praying as soon as I get up. And I’m not a super religious person, I believe as a higher being. But I stand up every day. And as soon as I stand up, I give thanks for my health, my wealth, my wife, my children, my dog, Tucker. And I pray for people that are suffering in the world that they get some relief in some some help. And I asked the Lord, let me help one person today. And I can’t tell you that day does not go by where I can’t go, Yeah, well, look, I help that person and that person, and I’m not keeping tabs. But without even thinking about it. I can look back and reflect, you know, yeah, those are some some things I did. That was good. So my, it’s my why I love to help people.
Micheal Pacheco 6:01
That’s great. No, I think yeah, I mean, service and service and contribution are, you know, maybe they’re not at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy. But they’re certainly at the top. And it’s something that I think helps fulfill us on a, you know, call it a spiritual level.
Steve Ferman 6:18
Oh, I totally agree. And I think the more you give, the more you get. And that’s not why you should do it. But for instance, I’m a vet. I’m a Marine. So I help in the barbecue Slattery, Marine Corps League. Men also in Kiwanis, and I don’t do any of it for any other reason, then. It feels good. Yeah, no, it just feels good.
Micheal Pacheco 6:38
Thank you for your service, ruff. Who, who are your clients?
Steve Ferman 6:46
My clients, you know, it’s funny, I specifically am trying to go out to the tech market, or the industry, you know, when I first started, because I thought that would make sense, because I know it inside now. And I don’t have any tech clients, I might clients or mid market clients, 5 million to 50 100 million, even three plus on the executive team. And it basically, or you know, even one on one CEOs that are just stuck, or can’t see the forest from within the trees, or they’re wondering, like, Why did I start this business, I seem to do everything, because they haven’t learned how to delegate, or they haven’t set up systems and processes yet. So that they can make the company one on its own. Those are really the two areas short of ironically, I’m starting that new workshop, I think I mentioned you called the marathon. Actually, I’m inviting no more than eight to 10 CEOs of companies. And it’s a peer to peer group that’s going to help each other and be counted each other accountable. And I facilitate those meetings twice a month.
Micheal Pacheco 7:51
I like it. Where do you where do you get your clients? How do you market yourself?
Steve Ferman 7:56
I call them COI centers of influences. But honestly, it’s been basically 100% referrals, I do a little bit outreach. Mike, I do a lot of reaching out on LinkedIn. Just trying to give helpful, good information to help people you know, in hopes that they’ll they’ll remember me when they have an issue like that, or something will trigger a thought like, Oh, you’re gonna call Steve. Um, but yeah, it’s mostly referrals is mostly where I get it from nomina number of networking groups as well.
Micheal Pacheco 8:28
That’s great. How do you for other coaches out there that may be listening to this? How do you build a referral network that is so strong, that that is respond that that’s your only marketing channel. That’s, that’s, that’s what you rely on for your business.
Steve Ferman 8:49
So being present, being mindful, and you know, you gotta, you gotta really find the right fishing hole deficient. As one of the things we tried to CEOs. If you want to find good employees, for a player employees, find yourself the right fishing hole for those employees you’re looking for. So for me, it’s it’s, you know, just giving, you know, helping people out think of them first, making referrals and introductions gets you top of mind, obviously. But again, I think it’s just my general attitude. It’s nice to be nice. And so the more that I’m nice, the more the world seems to, you know, maybe it’s the secret. Do you ever hear that thing called a secret?
Micheal Pacheco 9:31
I’m familiar.
Steve Ferman 9:32
I think the secret to the secret is that don’t make it about you. But put yourself in enough goods possible, possible potential situations to where goodness can come to you and becomes a world of abundance instead of a world of scarcity.
Micheal Pacheco 9:51
There’s a cognitive science thing. I can’t think of the word I called them the law of reciprocity. And I think that may have have part to do with it. So not only, you know, again, with service and contribution being so important for the human spirit, there’s also the law of reciprocity, as you’re out there doing good and helping people for no other reason than it just serves you, it serves you to serve others. Feels good. That’s gonna, you know, come back, call it karma, call it whatever you want. But I think that’s a that’s a it’s a great way to live a meaningful life.
Steve Ferman 10:38
Yeah, yeah, I’m a true believer that and I didn’t finish answering your question. So my clients also are in industries like PR, advertising. Actually, one runs a fairly large networking group. One wrote some software to help people sell products and services or become better salespeople. So their clients are all over the place, you know, in that regard. So it’s really more just people like that have realized they’re stuck, we give a free one hour consultation, and I got a free 32 Question assessment that I let people take, that really gives a good idea of where you are, or where you think you are in the four pillars of people strategy, execution, and cash. And if you have multiple executives, I put them together and a heat map it and I color coded with a score of zero to five. And you know, five being high green, and zero being red, meaning like, they don’t think that they’re good in that one area, whatever that is. And from a visual standpoint, it gives you a real good picture of how aligned you are with your executive team. Start, which is a lot of times, especially in larger organizations, you know, the real crux of it is is lack of trust, there’s a lack of accountability, you know, they’re just all these dysfunctions that go on in the organization that stops their production.
Micheal Pacheco 12:07
So let’s, let’s talk more about those those pillars. You got people strategy, execution and cash. Correct. Let’s start with pick one. And let’s, let’s dive into it. Tell us a little bit more about what people
Steve Ferman 12:19
people’s uh, you know, that’s a lot of people’s cost is people excuse the pun, but a lot of the expense that you have in your organization, you know, as people, I’ll give you an example, I had one one person I was speaking to, who didn’t understand the, what it cost them to get a project done. I’m like, well, then how are you pricing it? Well, I know basically, what it costs like, okay, but you don’t know how many hours that person that you’re paying how many dollars per hour to do. And it takes so many hours to do it, you need to understand for your own sanity and profitability. What is your actual true costs, and that includes a slim sliver for your GNA or your overhead, your lights, you know, paying rent, whatever. But it’s funny how many people especially CEOs don’t really have a good handle on where they are. When it comes like you know the margins. So, you know, what do you do? Either you get good at it, or you delegate people getting the right people that are good at it, that get it that you trust to help you, you know, achieve that. So, it’s also you know, it’s expensive to hire people and sink way more expensive to replace people. You know, so getting the right person in the right seat doing the right thing is super important. And that goes from disk where Kobe or what are some other modus operandi type testing, to understanding how they function all the way down to actually writing a will we call it a job scorecard. It’s actually a job description. Then you have who will fill that role, what that role means to the company and where the accountability is. So the bottom line of that role, so that person when you’re interviewing them, you’re asking all the right questions whose two stories little quickie? My youngest daughter worked at? GQ magazine as the social media designer, went on to college three years loved it did really, really well Excel well. Lots of reasons, all good. But she really wasn’t feeling that engaged. And she wasn’t really you know, the culture and changed a bit because a pandemic obviously is part of it. They’re all working remotely. And she really wanted to work at this company holiday 24 films because she really liked what they were doing and and excited her she took a lateral move. Uh huh. No extra cash because it was work that was more engaging. So, you know, regards to people understanding what drives people. And what, what, what really makes them happy. It’s not always about money. Sometimes. It’s about recognitions. Sometimes it’s about being concerned for their well being or being empathetic. You know about Family Issues, whatever. Sure. That’s people. You know, there’s a lot of people, we could talk for days just on people.
Micheal Pacheco 15:07
So you mentioned disc and Colby, is there are there specific tests that you that you prefer over other tests? To
Steve Ferman 15:14
know I know Kobe really well, so I recommend Kobe. But this is also no, it’s just that there’s another one out there. I think it’s Emma Graham or something like that. That also has four points. Enneagram. Yeah. anagram so it has like 12 points or nine points of, you know, rating. Kobe has four disc has four. I don’t know if any one of them was right, wrong or indifferent. It’s just what I’ve used in the past was
Micheal Pacheco 15:44
maybe six one way half a dozen the other? Yeah,
Steve Ferman 15:47
yeah. So like, I’m a 6376. It’s funny how you learn your number. Never forget it, because I even tried taking the test and not answering properly on purpose. And I still got the same number, which is like, Okay, you win. But first one is factfinder. So I do on the sixth, I need like to get some facts. But I’m a high Quickstart. I’m an eight, seven Quickstart. So I can get by without as many facts as well. Three follow through doesn’t mean I don’t follow up. It means I’m like the visionary. I’m the guy who’s gonna go out and create all the messes and hope all these great ideas. And I need who’s people like a past stuff onto that from Dr. Benjamin already? And then Solomon from the book who not how, but I get who’s to do those things. I don’t like I procrastinate, I suck at, I’m slow at whatever. That’s kind of you know, how it all flows? You know what I mean? Interesting. Yeah, you can literally talk on people, I think for days.
Micheal Pacheco 16:50
Well, let’s, let’s chat about the strategy pillar a little bit.
Steve Ferman 16:55
So strategy is all about, you know, again, we talked about the fishing hole, finding the right fishing hole for your customers who are defining who are you, your right customers that are getting your mission, your vision and your core values down. And I don’t mean things like, you know, list of 100 or 10, it should be like five, alas, maybe even four, three. But you know, what’s the real essence and this stuff takes time. You know, I say it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon for a reason. It takes time to really dig in and get the true core mission vision value statement down. We also help you build a brand promise all the way to your your X Factor, what makes you unique, we have a thing called SWAT or strengths, weaknesses and trends instead of opportunities and threats. And basically, if you can figure out what trends coming down the pike three, three months, six months from now and start doing it now, you can add all your competition, remember catchy little things like that we got a bunch of cool tools that we use to help you know, get the thought process rolling. But strategy is is really important. If you fail to plan you can plan to fail.
Micheal Pacheco 18:03
I love that it almost sounds it almost sounds to me like it’s it could be like brand new strategy specifically. Oh, yeah. Is that
Steve Ferman 18:15
That’s one aspect of it for
Micheal Pacheco 18:16
sure. Okay.
Steve Ferman 18:18
But you know, everything. If you really break it down and dig into or dive into it, you can break down a sales strategy, you know, production strategy. Strategy is just, you know, the planning and being consciously aware of what you intently are looking to do, and how do we strategize to get there just helps you achieve the goal you’re trying to accomplish.
Micheal Pacheco 18:43
I get about execution.
Steve Ferman 18:46
Execution is a good one. So obviously, you got the best strategy and the best people if you can execute it. Here’s I was telling the story about that person that didn’t understand the margins. And they wonder why, you know, they don’t have more clients, well, you need to be able to execute. So when I asked that person, how are you doing on on lead, so I get leads. Great. And how you gonna follow up on these leads? Well, yeah, that’s, that’s that’s the other issue. But the reality is, if you can’t execute on those leads, doesn’t matter that you’re getting leads, it’s kind of irrelevant. Also, execution is also in and around. Good communication and good meeting with them’s having daily huddles with you within your team for five minutes, or 15 minutes rather than every day. So you can just talk about what’s going on what you’re working on that day, what you finished up yesterday or whatever. Weekly huddles which are a little bit longer than upwards of 90 minutes, where you kind of dive deeper into the projects and things that are going on then there should be all hands on deck monthly meetings. So you can disseminate from the the executive team down you know what you’re thinking, What are your plans where you’re going, everybody and I go back to To record because it’s just so easy to do this, you know, we all had these different units, you might have worked in a supply pool, maybe this guy worked in the motor pool, maybe I worked in a comm center. The other guys are frontline gunner, this guy’s in mortar specialists, whatever. But we all knew what we were trying to accomplish. Same exact goal. Nobody was in silos. So because of that, we were like, one hell of a force. And that’s why you know, the brain is the Army, Navy, Air Force, on whom you put all those different units together working towards the same end goal. You can accomplish amazing things. We talked about grow by 10x, you go by 20x or 50x. On the same page,
Micheal Pacheco 20:44
nice. And how about cash?
Steve Ferman 20:48
Well, growth sucks cash. So if you’re growing, you’re gonna need cash to grow. And, you know, think Brad’s smart of top grading suggests you should have like six months cash reserves in is a really good idea. But what we do is we help people with their cash, how things are account out helping them disseminate data to their people how each individual function or, or critical function in the company ties down to the p&l and the balance sheet. So if you’re doing sales, obviously, that’s going to go to revenue. But if I’m doing production, and I can increase my production by 20%, which gets 20% more widgets out what that’s kind of due to the revenues, what’s it going to do to my costs? You know, and we helped streaming? I’m sorry,
Micheal Pacheco 21:37
I said, what happens down the stream from the production? Yeah, exactly.
Steve Ferman 21:41
The cause and effect. So yeah, so we help them get a dive into that. And even we have some software like cash flow store where you can put in different scenarios from I raised my rates by 2% or two, yeah, let’s say 2% or $2, whatever you want to call it. And I lose three clients, but I just gained 60 $60,000 in revenues. Was it worth it? Well, play with these scenarios and kind of figure out different ways to skin the cat different ways to become more profitable and make more profits.
Micheal Pacheco 22:13
Yeah, I like it. What does a typical engagement look like with you, Steve?
Steve Ferman 22:19
So I have a couple I do one on one CEO coaching, that typically will be twice a month and will be for an hour to an hour and a half. And then I have what I call the the full mid market client, which basically is an executive team a three plus. And we’ll meet with the CEO once a month and be with the executive team once a month and I meet with them both every quarter to make sure that we’re following up on the priorities and our goals that were were achieving them and everything I do I try and break break down from like the end goal back, what do I have to do to get to that end goal. So if I have a be hag big, hairy, audacious goal of I want to make 25 million this year, but I have to be doing. I’m trying for my in my 10 year goal, rather, what do I have to do in 90 days, you know, three to five years, be doing in a year be doing in 90 days, and monthly in order to achieve that goal and kind of seems to work now about as well. And I’m starting a new workshop. So I’m gonna try and run some, some some workshop mastermind classes,
Micheal Pacheco 23:32
is this new mastermind you’ve got coming up? Is this your first time kind of pulling in doing group coaching with people from different companies?
Steve Ferman 23:40
So no, in my accelerator program was five to six different companies, US companies. So I’ve done that before. But it’s my first mastermind group.
Micheal Pacheco 23:53
Uh huh. What is what is that? What kind of plans do you have for that you want to talk a little bit about, about the mastermind and what kind of plan
Steve Ferman 24:02
so you know, it’s lonely at the top. And as CEOs, entrepreneurs, you know, we’re always like frustrated, we think we’re imposters and get all these crazy thoughts in our head. And a lot of times, it’s just good to be able to bounce stuff off other people that are up to like mindset with the same challenges. Again, it’s like the four pillars doesn’t matter what industry you’re in those four decisions are important for every single company. And so it’s a support group to help each other. Again, I’ll facilitate it will use some of the tools that I use in scaling up to help them get clarity and get their thinking out on paper a little bit as well. But it’s basically an hour and accountability group. You’ll get an accountability buddy, you can bounce things off. It’s a no shame zone, total transparency zone, and what happens there stays there.
Micheal Pacheco 24:54
Nice. I love it. So for the I’m curious, the four pillars Is that part of scaling up the scaling up process that methodology? Or is the four pillars, something that you came up with?
Steve Ferman 25:07
Yeah, I know, it’s kind of funny, right, I was trying to figure out a name, I’m like, I don’t want to be Steve firm. And that doesn’t sound like a company. And all the other coach names you can think of were kind of taken. And there are four pillars of scaling up and I am a scaling up certified coach. So I just did it mainly because it kind of made sense. And the.com was available to be quite honest. Design, I actually had the design done by 99 designs or, or logos for you one of those places, you know, we kind of came up with it, the little
Micheal Pacheco 25:42
logo that’s right up there in your corner.
Steve Ferman 25:46
Okay, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, or, like,
Micheal Pacheco 25:49
cool. What to talk a little bit about some struggles that you have seen as a coach, for these for these clients of yours, and how you’ve overcome those?
Steve Ferman 26:04
Well, for the clients, or for me, I can go either way.
Micheal Pacheco 26:08
I mean, yeah, let’s do let’s, let’s let’s, let’s talk about your struggles for your clients, some, some struggles that you’ve run into with your clients, that you’ve helped them overcome.
Steve Ferman 26:20
That was funny, you don’t, you don’t know what you don’t know. And you don’t know what somebody else doesn’t know, either. Really, honestly, and truly, and I don’t know, for humility, reasons or not, don’t go in assuming they know anything. But I also assume they know everything. So it’s kind of a little catch 2022. But, you know, I had one client, this is kind of, kind of kind of funny. But I said, you know, Joe, or name’s John, I’ve been working with you for three and a half, almost four months now. And you won’t let me use any of my tools. I don’t feel like I’m providing you the value I should be providing, you know, my brand promises or product provide measurable value, you pay me for the value receive their own pay me at all, that’s my brand promise. It’s like Disney is happiness, or Southwest Airlines is wheels up, because they have lots of fares. But that’s a quick flight in the Midwest. And she said, you know, just talking to you with your years of experience and building like I built in in a cafe in 99, that went down in $2,000 down the drain. So I’ve succeeded, and I failed, I’ve been to both, she was just talking and getting your experience has been so much more valuable. I don’t think we need any tools. I use my hour of picking your brain. And one good example is this one, she’s not really good, but in agreements has been the same woman. And she Long story short, but it’s a it’s a health clinic type of facility. And they need to have a certified practitioner, do the payroll for whatever Jersey laws or whatever. And hers was leaving. So she had to find somebody else. And this person sent over an agreement and in the agreement, it didn’t say anything about a Schedule A but attached in the envelope was a Schedule A that basically said this person was going to get like 10%, of accompany solving whatever. And because I’ve written them read a million contract, like wait a minute, it doesn’t state anywhere in the agreement about any schedules. That schedule is not part of this agreement. I would call him up and verify but I sure as heck wouldn’t sign or initial that page and only send back the agreement. You know, but it was little things like that. So that that saved her 10% of our company. I think that’s pretty huge.
Micheal Pacheco 28:41
Yeah,
Steve Ferman 28:43
I’ve helped other people increase their sales by 40%. Most of the time, I’m helping them get clarity and, you know, get that love back for their business that they had before. They ended up doing everything and feeling like they had to micromanage everybody to delegate let go, you know, that’s really like such a riveting thing for somebody that you’re working 80 hours a week, you get 10 hours back, it’s like,
Micheal Pacheco 29:10
wow. You’ve mentioned helping to get back clarity and love for the business right? How do you how do you measure that or how does the client measure that right if the client is looking for measurable results or they get their their money back? How is that how is how do you take something unquantifiable and quantify it.
Steve Ferman 29:31
So typically by increase in production of some items, some KPIs some metric that we determine, but you know, if the person tell you the right way, the right way to put it. If the person is receiving the value I’ll know during the calls because Hello them you will help them or not, but there’s there’s also NPS net promoter scores that we send out at the end of our sessions, and I randomly send them out like every other session just to get feedback. When I want total honesty, I mean, again, my why is I love to help people. So I sure as hell don’t want to just take someone’s money and not help them. It’s not my intent. But everyone measures their success differently. So when we do an assessment, we find out what’s good, what’s not so good, or what’s working, what’s not really working in the organization. And the cool thing about scaling up is we can go right to where you’re having the most pain. So if you’re paying might be in strategy, and Susie’s might be in people, and she’s got to hire some people or whatever, we can actually go right to that pillow or work on that area and get you immediate results.
Micheal Pacheco 30:41
Nice. You, you mentioned earlier, you were telling the story about your client who just loved picking your brain. And you hadn’t use any tools with her. At that point? Do you? Do do you push like if you if you have a specific tool that you think would really help a client? Are you going to? Are you going to push that tool and kind of drive something like that? Or do you guess you work it out? Maybe with with the client themselves? Or what does that relationship look like?
Steve Ferman 31:14
So I’m big on culture? And you know, I think that, depending on the relationship I have with the client, I may push more or less, but one of the things I do tell them, I’m not here to tell you what you want to hear. I’m here to tell you what you need. Uh huh. And if I think they really need that tool, I mean, kind of look whether you like it or not, you really need this tool. Uh huh. I’m not gonna go you have to follow up on my talking to you anymore, because it’s kind of like some CEOs where there wouldn’t be transparent with their numbers or their numbers to their employees. And some aren’t. And that’s fine. There’s no right or wrong answer there. I mean,
Micheal Pacheco 31:53
yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes that makes sense. I think he has, it’s gotta be every person is different. Every client is going to be a little bit different. And you got to do what’s best for them. I mean, full stop, right? Yeah. Not about me.
Steve Ferman 32:09
Not me at all. And my job is it’s funny, you know, going from the tech world where my job was to fix it. I was broke. Don’t do this, this this fix it as a coach. No, no, no, no, we don’t tell you what to do at all. We basically ask, hopefully, the right questions for you to come to the right realization. You know, and there are some tools and things that we could do to help guide that conversation. But our job is not to fix it. Our job is to help you be the fisherman. Catch you on a fish.
Micheal Pacheco 32:43
Yeah. Yeah, I like that. You’re the you’re the you’re the guide on the on the fishing trip. Not that not the fit, not the fisherman.
Steve Ferman 32:54
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s a good way to put it. Absolutely. I like it.
Micheal Pacheco 32:57
So we talked about some some struggles that your clients have had, where you’ve helped them overcome that let’s let’s circle back to that and talk about some struggles that that you Steve have run into throughout your coaching career and, and how you’ve kind of figured out how to navigate those bumps in the road.
Steve Ferman 33:18
So for anyone that’s just starting this, this is for you. It’s not a sprint. It is absolutely a marathon in every sense of the words even for somebody like me who’s been doing this you know, I’ve been in business for over 40 years I was always basically the main ring Rainmaker and all my companies while I had salespeople is around just the owner easier to sell I guess. But um, it’s not necessarily an easy thing to do to become a coach. I think it’s important to have some background and have some some meat behind you obviously, but people don’t always want to admit they need help. People don’t necessarily see the forest within the trees so they don’t really realize they need that help yet. So our jobs as coaches is I spent a lot of time educating people and I think you need a lot of tenacity and I’ll be honest, it’s it’s been rough getting new clients. I have I have clients but no it’s not like when I was selling it services I got pop clients stuff right and that’s the way it was you know, we just ordered them so I think just you got to be on social media use video you gotta network you got to put in the time that’s just the reality and it only sucks for a while as he says he told me that and then the floodgates floodgates open. Love it. Love it. started coaching coaching like out to the world in November, so Oh, really? Yeah.
Micheal Pacheco 34:51
Oh, wow. Okay, so Okay. Wow, that’s that’s, that’s amazing for you. What books would you recommend? Pick three books that you would recommend for other coaches to read or clients for that matter.
Steve Ferman 35:05
Scaling. Background there it is scaling up to who not how by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, I thought was an amazing book. If you’re gonna be a coach, I tell you to read Rich Lipton, the prosperous coach. It’s also a good book, many books, and I’m like constantly reading them to always want to just read Oh, something about fish. Sounds crazy. But this is this is definitely worth the weight. It’s about this lady who learns basically how to manage a floor of unruly, not very happy people by going to a fish market, and realizing these people are working in this horrible, dirty, smelly environment but having the best time and they’re throwing a fish and one fish go into Wisconsin and the guy throws the fish to somebody else and the guy catches it. It’s just called Fish ftsh. Well, that’s why I couldn’t think of a different name because that’s the name of fish. It’s a little book. But it’s all about how she she really learned some good lessons from these longshoreman on culture and core values, and like, you know, building a team, positive attitude. So really, really good book, very motivating, I highly recommend it. And they
Micheal Pacheco 36:33
the author of fish again.
Steve Ferman 36:38
Like stop that. Why don’t you give me information, you know, because it won’t give you the info. That’s horrible. I hope you have enjoyed this program. Yes, I did. I don’t have the author in front of me. It’s too small to read. Okay. Well, I’ll literally just read it like a month ago, maybe three weeks ago, and it was awesome. I mean, I can go into things like simple numbers. You know, there’s so many books. But those are the top of my head. Who not how I think that’s that’s a really good book for people learning how to get the right people in the right seats on the bus doing the right things.
Micheal Pacheco 37:20
Obviously, that’s great. So yeah, for those of you of course, listening to the podcast, or watching on YouTube, for that matter, I’ll will get links to these books in the show notes as well. So I’ll figure out I’ll do some digging and see if I can find the author for fish. So we can we can get that because I imagine if we go to Amazon now and do a search for fish, there’s going to be about 3 billion things popping up.
Steve Ferman 37:46
Yeah, actually, I gotta right now. To do it is by Stephen C. London. l u n d i n. Perfect.
Micheal Pacheco 37:55
Okay, great. Fantastic.
Steve Ferman 38:00
I love the internet.
Micheal Pacheco 38:02
Yes, yes, we do. Awesome. Steve, is there anything else that you would like to chat about that we haven’t had an opportunity to touch upon already?
Steve Ferman 38:13
Um, no, I give him a free one hour life changing conversation for anybody that would like to have one with me. I’m available on LinkedIn. My website, the number four pillar coach.com. And also, I have a free assessment that I offer on my marathon, the marathon?
Micheal Pacheco 38:37
The marathon mastermind, where is your website, the best place to for people to get information and sign up for those things.
Steve Ferman 38:45
Everything’s there. My events are there. My blogs are there a lot of information in the
Micheal Pacheco 38:52
four pillar coach.com with the number four. Don’t spell it out.
Steve Ferman 38:55
And it was
Micheal Pacheco 38:57
awesome. This has been great. Steve Freeman, thank you so much for joining us on the remarkable coach podcast. Appreciate your time.
Steve Ferman 39:05
Thanks, Michael. Appreciate you have a great day, man.
Micheal Pacheco 39:07
Cheers. Thank you. And thank you to our audience for joining us as well. We’ll see you next time. Cheers.
