Steve Ferman

Michael Pacheco 0:05
All right, you ready? Ready? Here we go. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the remarkable coach podcast. My name is Michael Pacheco as always, I’m your host. And today with me for the first time we have a returning customer, Steve, Steve Furman, my brother in music, my brother and guitars. Welcome back for the first time to the remarkable coach.

Steve Ferman 0:34
Thanks, Michael. I appreciate it. I am honored my friend I truly am.

Michael Pacheco 0:38
Yeah, buddy. Yeah, buddy. We were. We were just talking off camera about motorcycles and guitars and all sorts of other stuff. But let me well, you know, let first let me introduce you to the people listening, if they haven’t heard the first podcast, Steve helps CEOs and executives reach their goals and dreams by using the proven methodology called the scaling up, which works on four critical components that all businesses must focus on people strategy, execution, and cash. That’s

Steve Ferman 1:12
my new publicist, your higher.

Michael Pacheco 1:17
Steve, tell us, you know, tell us what’s new since the last time we spoke, I don’t even remember when it was, I think maybe a year and a half ago, give or take.

Steve Ferman 1:24
Yeah, I was going through certification. I was figuring out how to be the best coach I can be. And I’ve now actually had lots of practice implementing the scaling up methodology or platform as we like to call it. And I’ve had some some great clients. It’s been a great, great ride. It’s everything I thought it would be. And then some, and I learned from my clients all the time. Nice, surprising.

Michael Pacheco 1:52
Yeah. So tell us about it. Tell us about scaling up people strategy, execution and cash. What’s the what’s what’s the deal? There? Were those those four components? How do they how do they work together? How do they work together to, to serve, you know, the businesses that you work with?

Steve Ferman 2:11
So scaling up is the creative by Vern Harnish, who also created a yo Entrepreneurs Organization. It’s all about getting the right people in the right seats on the bus doing the right things, holding themselves accountable. Bonus, if you can get that the strategy is all about having a strategy knowing what Pong you fish and having, you know, good function, accountability charts, you know, who’s responsible to do what, and by when, and what’s actually what they’re actually being held accountable for. An execution is all about meeting rhythms and like following up to make sure that you’re actually executing on your strategy. And I’ll tell you that growth sucks cash, that’s just the reality. And in a downturn, you should have six months cash reserve, but I like to show you these backgrounds, because I think they’re really depict what this is all about. I’m going to slide out of the way a little bit. Yeah. So most entrepreneurs start a company because they’re good at doing whatever will make a widget and fix something that is the maker back there. And they always, you know, a lot of times they feel like they’re dragging everybody up a hill, they’re trying to pull everybody along, like come on. Here’s my vision. Everybody understand that? You should just know it doesn’t work that way. But that’s how we feel as entrepreneurs, a lot of times also want you to feel like this. Like you just as this influx of information and questions. And you know, I always say, right, I always say, WWI D, what would you do? So we’re going to come up with a problem, great come, but come with some some possible solutions as well. So that’s as part of the training methodology. But what we really do is we strive to get everybody rowing in the same direction, heading towards the same end goal, the same vision that’s driven really by the CEO and leadership team. And it’s got to be disseminated down to everybody that can recite the core values, what the mission of the company is, you may have Quarterly box within your organization for your division or your your role, but how about the company as a whole, if you can figure this out, and also understand the winds of the market, in this instance, the winds behind you, hopefully, they just think how much faster how much better you can you can do and get to your end goal or the vision of whoever’s, you know, putting the vision out in the organization, typically, the CEO, the president, or whatever. It’s all about really, the business owner has the same problems, man. It’s just different. Different companies. I know I’ve started six, oh, my god, seven different companies got bought and sold them. And I always, for the most part, for me, it was because I was trying to solve an issue, fix a problem, or I had this cool idea and I did the backup or the cloud in 2010 when I was doing tech 13 years ago, no What are you even thinking about to virtual desktops? But I had a vision I, you know, by that I knew how to run a company. But when I first started and it meant I had no idea what I was doing this school that that told you how to be a good business owner.

Michael Pacheco 5:14
Yeah. Yeah. So did you then. So too, did you then start your first company as as it?

Steve Ferman 5:23
Yeah, so I learned technology in the Marine Corps in 1979. I got out in 84. And I couldn’t find a job and technology for the life of me. But he story, there’s an old bank that’s gone surprise this these days and times, carbon savings alone. And I worked in their data processing department, key punch operator, because I just want work, you know. And they had these giant flat patents on this next door of IBM next door type machine. And there’s these four large platens I think had a total of 10 megabytes was the first orange. And every so often that we get loosened, it would wobble when it wobbled, the heads couldn’t read the data, I go over and smack it, damn. And it would like, like level out and it would start working again. And I became the de facto IT guy. So I’m like, wow, I kind of got an act for this. You know, I did technology stuff in the core. I had a top secret NATO clearance. I just went out and started my own IT company and started building PCs, installing them and servicing clients. And before I knew it, I went from Steve from an associates to computer and computers.

Michael Pacheco 6:29
Nice. Nice. I remember my, I think my first computer crash, I want to say 1990. My first PC was a 386. And I think it had a 20 gigabyte hard or 20 megabyte hard drive. I’m sorry, not gigabyte. 20 megabyte hard drive. And, and huge back then. Right? Yeah, no. And then and then we, you know, eventually I upgraded to the 46 dx two with the turbo button with a button that you can press. And then

Steve Ferman 7:02
overclock the processor is all it did to make it run fast.

Michael Pacheco 7:05
Yeah, yeah. But it wouldn’t it would play it would play Wolfenstein and Doom very, very well.

Steve Ferman 7:12
Great games, man. I love do that.

Michael Pacheco 7:15
Yeah. But I digress. Who are your who are your clients these days? Who are you? Who are you working with? What kind of you’re working with entrepreneurs and small businesses? Are you? Are you niching down at all in terms of industry, or the size of the business that you work with?

Steve Ferman 7:34
No, every every business owner has an executive team has the same challenges whether you’re in manufacturing, or you’re selling cars, or you’re building PCs and technology I haven’t seen or I’d like to work with technology companies, because I know what they’re going through. I helped build a lot of the industry. I was doing my data backup in 2003 when magnetic media owned the world and they were like you want to do what with my data, you want to send it to a datacenter the cloud, you know, which wasn’t called the cloud, then

Michael Pacheco 8:05
2008

Steve Ferman 8:07
Yeah, no, Mike Yeah. Because then you don’t have to worry about replacing those tapes, or your secretary taking the tapes on because you want to be safe. Leaving them on our car seat. When she goes into the quick check to get herself a coffee goes out and all your data is gone. So yeah, you want to move it to the cloud. And the funny thing was, it was 40 bucks a gig. I just paid apple $9.95 for two terabytes. So, you know, times have changed. But for me, oh my god, I’m not gonna lie, but blank. What was the question again? I got and yet I digress. Now, where are you?

Michael Pacheco 8:48
Well, we’re talking about your clients and who they are, if you’ve niched down kind of businesses you work with these days, what size businesses I got

Steve Ferman 8:56
lost, I got lost the technology sorry, I spent way too many years there. Were client agnostic, we really are scaling up over 80,000 companies grow and scale by using the platform and the methodology throughout I think 60 countries. And, you know, we all face the same challenges having the right people in the right seats on the bus, doing the right things, holding ourselves accountable, having a real true strategy that everybody knows in the organization that’s disseminated down, you know, I feel like a broken record. But, you know, the reality is that, you know, it’s really these four pillars that make or break a company that’s going to scale and I don’t mean just grow, I mean scale 10x 20x 50 100x And there’s some if you if you go to scale ups.com You can see a ton of testimonials of companies that you would never know how to use scaling up to grow in scale.

Michael Pacheco 9:54
So as is scaling up, I mean, it’s for, you know, a company of any size for for box or for Example rent for us, we’re an online marketing agency for coaches, we’ve got five full timers in total are we is is that something that would work maybe work for us?

Steve Ferman 10:12
Well, I work personally in three different areas. And some coaches only work with like 5,000,250 200 million sounds good is worth 300 million up to a billion I, I’m more of a, I’ve been such a startup Master, I guess I’ve had seven different companies. And I started them all myself groom sold them, I shut one down in 1989 in a cafe that died in 2000. So I’m definitely an entrepreneur, because I’ve failed at least once. But um, you know, for me, I work with individual CEOs in the startup capacity, or individual CEOs that are looking to grow and scale, maybe they don’t have the management team to delegate to yet, but I help them learn how to do that and get more time. It’s all about getting your time back, man, you know, it’s all about getting your freedom. Why, as entrepreneurs, do we start our own company, not because we want to work 90 hours a week, which we end up doing, because we want to have all the freedom in the world and make all the money in the world and work when we want to. But I’m not employable. I just you know, I don’t do well, working for somebody else after the Marine Corps. He was like, Yeah, I just don’t think I can really take orders anymore. And that’s fine. But but the reality is, for me, I work with individual CEOs, I work with leadership teams, I do have day workshops I do today, annual planning sessions, and kick offs. But where I really shine, and where I can really make a big impact is work the CEO, the executive team leadership team, and helping them understand the ways to grow and scale their company. And it’s really simple. So I want to give you the secret. Pick a big, hag big, hairy, audacious goal, as the owner of your company, okay? Write it down, put it out there, then you want to think about okay, great, what do I got, that’s in the next three to five years, because we used to say 10 to 25 years. But reality is with COVID, who knows what’s going to happen two years from now. So the next three to five years, pick your big, hairy, audacious goal, even if you think it’s lofty, and you’re not going to make it, pick it anyway, set it in stone, write it down. And we have a tool in our toolkit called the vision summary we use that for and then you want to think about okay, great, what do I gotta be doing in a year in order to get to that three to five year goal, and keep working backwards, what I gotta be doing quarterly, in order to get to my yearly goal, and monthly, and weekly and daily. And just like you know, how to, you know, elephant, one bite at a time right? Now, same thing with your business, if you can just like start, you know, where you want to be a we want to end up with your vision, and work backwards in a little chunks, and break it down and dissect it, it’s so much easier to achieve it. And we have a tool set of tools in our toolbox, over 300 of them that we use to help CEOs entrepreneurs, get clarity on that vision, get clarity on core values. I’ll tell you a quick little story. I did a two day annual planning session for a company I’d never met. They do about 20 million a year, all in tech products and happens to be ironically. And I asked them to beginning of the first day at eight o’clock in the morning, I said if it was five o’clock tomorrow, what’s the one thing you want to have accomplished? If you know that it was five o’clock right now today, but it’s tomorrow. It’s like our core values. We really want to get the final core values because there’s a bunch of them. And they’re not only right. And okay, great. So we did a million other exercises, I can show you on a big giant whiteboard what we did. But we did a bunch of different exercises. And at 440. The last the second day, after we had a two hour discussion back and forth about what is the core valuable? What do we stand for? What’s innately within us, which is what your core values are? And every time they throw one out, I’d say great, would you hire buyer and take a financial hit over that core value? And if you wouldn’t, not a core value. And Mr. Got up. And she wrote down on the board. And actually Sarah, who was the CEO of the company did it like the iPhone, I guess you could do it kind of like fast time, but it’s not like super fast. So she’s handwriting relatively quick. And they came up with leak, leak, lead, seek, build. And then she just dropped the marker like she drops the mic. And basically they want to be the leader in the industry want to be the best at what they do and provide the best products and services for their clients. And they want to be able to build the right products that solve the issues and the problems for their clients. Let’s see, because now there are values just three, five, no more than five. It’s just too much people to remember.

Michael Pacheco 14:56
Yeah, no, that’s great. Remind me again For the core values hire fire and what was the third one?

Steve Ferman 15:04
I have people who I fire people by and take a financial hit. So I have a brand promise, one of the things we help people get is their brand promise define. And my brand promise what’s called the short paid brand promise, if I don’t provide measurable value, and we define that a beginning note, I asked them, what’s the one thing you want to have done? It was five o’clock tomorrow, right now. Yeah, and then their core values. So now I’m setting myself up. If I fail, it’s going to hurt me financially. Because my short paper and promises the bottom provide measurable value, aiming for the measure I provided are no pain at all. It’s not a trick thing. It’s more, I want to do what I can to help the client, I want to help them achieve their goals. Yeah, where I get my happiness is watching them succeed.

Michael Pacheco 15:51
This great man, so for for the core values thing. So circling back to the four pillars of people strategy, execution, and cash, where does the core values? Where does that fit into those two, those four, those four pillars

Steve Ferman 16:12
are the core values is really all about people. So I’ll give you another little quick story. Because this is this I hold near and dear to my heart. My my youngest daughter, Corinne is 25. Now, she went to Syracuse in her first job as a GQ magazine. And if she sees it, she’ll probably go Dad, I’m sure. But anyway, so she worked at GQ as a social media designer for GQ magazine. So anything that GQ magazine put out on Instagram, my daughter created never got her name on any of it. But I was proud because the new ones are all there. For three years, I loved what she did, didn’t really have a good idea of what their core values were or their culture was during the, the you know, the pandemic. It was a lot of people weigh in or not in few people in so there really wasn’t much of a culture going on. And she inspired this company called 824 films who just one like nine Oscars, by the way. And she went through five interviews, five interviews with five different people. And every single one of them embodied the things that she loved about wanting to work at that company and why she loved that company. They all can cite the core values. So my daughter, one of the first things that every single one of the five people asked her was about the core values, because it was important to them. They probably had a scaling up coach, I don’t know. But end result is she took a lateral move from GQ, she’s been there six months. And you know, I’ll brag a little bit. But she got a nice little note from our bus, the night of the Oscars, wild Korean, it feels like you’ve always been here. I don’t know how we ever did it without you. And they created the position for her to us. But the moral of the story is more that she wanted to be a part of something that she could believe in something she could you know, have heart in something that truly was was embodied within her core values. So people is super important. Get the right people in the right seats on the bus man doing the right things.

Michael Pacheco 18:08
I love it. I love it. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think, man, I’ve never heard of core values being kind of approached in this way. But the idea of defining your core values around Would you hire by fire by a take a financial hit for your core values that really like I really puts the rubber to the road? Like we’re not screwing around anymore? Like, let’s let’s let’s stop, you know, let’s stop waving the flag of you know, our values. Let’s live it.

Steve Ferman 18:42
Yeah, I mean, you know, people go around talking to all this garbage, and I will be nice and not curse. But the reality is, when you get down and what coaches help you do is see the forest within the trees, we help you dig down. And we ask questions like, Why do you think that’s important? Or does it meet higher fire? Or would you be willing to take a financial hit over? And I will, I promise I can tell you right now, I must or we reminded them of that question while we’re going through this process during the second day, for a good hour and a half of that two and a half hour part of them having discussions in and around. Who are we, you know, what do we stand for? What’s our purpose? Why would people want to buy from us, you know, what makes us different? What’s our x factor in the market? And it takes time, it takes you know, a good year to take a company and really bake it and get it right and they’ll change you’ll say your core values and three months down the road six months, I don’t know what it was, you know, I kind of feel that but I love this core value this yard. And that’s fine.

Michael Pacheco 19:49
This is great, man. I mean, I’ll tell you right now like I’m gonna I’m gonna walk away from this podcast and I will. I will more than likely be spending some time this weekend. Looking over boxer’s core values and reconsidering those because I’m, you know, 80% sure that I just came up with those, you know, not on a whim. But you know what I mean, like the way that everyone else comes up with them where, you know, we have integrity, and we have fun. And there’s a family environment here and you know, stuff like that

Steve Ferman 20:21
surface all surface, right? Right. I mean, attention, I’m sure, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll offer you a free two hours. And we’ll get together and we’ll go through your vision will be called a vision statement, which is your core values, your purpose, your brand, promise, your B hag, and we’ll set your one year and three year goals. And your in your quarterly goals. Oh, my gosh,

Michael Pacheco 20:48
I would love that. I tell you what, I’ll I’ll throw something else in there. Why don’t we record that? And we can throw it up as as a podcast. So that so that that way people can see what that process looks like.

Steve Ferman 21:03
It’s long, tedious and aggravating, I’ll tell you right now, but it’s awesome when you get it right man

Michael Pacheco 21:10
for bathroom breaks. That’s great, man. No, I will absolutely take you up on that. And if you’re, you know, if you’re comfortable posting that posting that kind of thing in public, it might give, you know, a prospect or two, an idea of what that process looks like. Now, I don’t know that anyone is going to sit through two hours of you talking to me about my company’s core values. But maybe and I don’t know,

Steve Ferman 21:37
they can watch the last 1015 minutes and see where we ended up. There you go. That’s always possibility. But I’ll do it. Because I would love to help you because you’re such an awesome person. And honestly, like no one person today. I had a great day, man.

Michael Pacheco 21:51
I love it. I love it. I appreciate that. Sweetie man. So let’s, one thing another thing I wanted to circle back to is you’re talking you had mentioned before, I’m looking at my notes here about you know, it’s all about getting your time back and getting your freedom back. We didn’t start a business so that we could work all the time. Did you say you’re speaking you’re speaking my language?

Steve Ferman 22:18
Oh, you’re the guy with the anchor.

Michael Pacheco 22:20
I’m I’m not I’m not my anchor. I’m the guy with an anchor. I don’t think my anchor is quite that big. We’re doing all right. But what I what I understand that, you know, one of the things that we do for coaches at boxer is we sell time, time is our value proposition. Right? We do marketing, and we we do social media marketing, and we do is lead generation through your website. Like we’re helping coaches focus on coaching. And so, you know, I think I think in terms of, you know, the audience for this podcast, there, I think there’s going to be a lot of people resonating with that, because there’s a lot of people who are spending, you know, the coaching is why they got into coaching, they didn’t get into coaching. So they could be on social media all day long. Or, you know what I mean? They’re doing all they’re doing all this other stuff and running the business takes time. So how having? Go ahead?

Steve Ferman 23:22
I said, since if you want the secret? Yeah. For me, I can’t speak for you. But for me, when I realized when I was running my I think I was in business, maybe 13 to 15 years, I used to go to the Strategic Coach up in Toronto, good solid zip program. I actually it’s funny. I use these exercises all the time. And I have the book like right here, my Strategic Coach book. But one of the first things is I learned that the time management system, the entrepreneurial time system, it’s called. And with the entrepreneurial time system, there are three kinds of days there’s a free day, focus day and a buffer day. Hmm, doesn’t matter what day the week, but there’s three types of days throughout your seven day week. I do a free days when you turn off everything. I mean, no email, no phones, whatever. You recharge your batteries as an entrepreneur, I can tell you right now, what I’m focusing on the focus day, I am Mike all in 12 hours, man, I am zoned in doing what I do best. And a focus day is when you spend your whole day a 24 hour period doing the three things that make you the most money or that energize you the most for me, it was doing sales and creating new products and services and talking to customers. But when I was out seeing customers, that was my focus today now what happens is when I’m out seeing a bunch of people, that creates a lot of work for the rest of my team. Right? So now you’ve created you know, here comes the tornado. There go Steve, he’s out drumming up business. He’s talking to people. Oh no, he’s gonna do this. Somebody’s gonna want me to figure it out and fix it. That’s right. That’s why you don’t want to have you know, your focus days back to back because you just create too much havoc. But let me explain the three days. So you’re free days recharge your batteries, every four hours, technology, no nothing, you just disconnect and recharge that brain cell, those brain cells, focus day you spend the day doing the three things that make you the most money or the most productive for you as the entrepreneur. And then the buffer Day is the day that you clean up messes, and you go ahead and like, you know, handle all those things you created from the focus day like managing the project with your team. Okay, great, I got these four new deals, here’s what we’re gonna do over here, you probably need three technicians to do this or whatever. Uh huh. But the whole idea of the entrepreneurial type system is your week is designed by you. Right? I think you know what, this week I want for free days. And I want to have two buffer days and one focus day, that’s all good. Typically, it’s more like most entrepreneurs would have a focus day on Monday, for instance, they have a buffer day on Tuesday and Wednesday, a focus day on Thursday and a free day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then there’s like tools that go along with it, where you can write down your top five things you’re trying to accomplish. In order to break a habit, it takes 21 days. So there’s your 21 day habits on it. But if you look it up online is the entrepreneurial time system. That is one of the first things I tell people if you only want to start running your company more efficiently, learn how to manage your time. And the reality is my doors closed in my office, nobody comes in, there’s a big sign that says you’re not one of your employees, you still laugh at me. And it got to the point where my Maria, my, you know, admin assistant would be mean for like 13 years to just skip the ad to see people but she would schedule my, my my free focus not, or my focus on buffer days, not my free days without asking me but she would she would fill me up and say, Okay, you go to three people, you’re playing golf with these two people, you’re going to this dinner at that night scheduled it and I booked it and whatever. So. So if you think bring it back to scaling up, having the right people around you, to support you. So you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, you got to know all the smart people in the room. Right? thing. The other thing that goes along with that as being willing to delegate, yeah, even if they do it 80% As good as you, it’s 80% of your time, you’re not doing it. Sure. And you spend your time working on your business, not in your business. And you can start to focus and do what you do best. You don’t want to create the company for a reason. Because you’re good at whatever, go do it. You get your time back. And that’s where you get your freedom. And it’s liberating man.

Michael Pacheco 27:53
I love it. That’s a great one. I have not heard of that before. And I’ve done I don’t know 100 or so of these interviews, and I’ve never heard of the entrepreneurial time system. So I will definitely be be looking at it. I feel like a lot of my days are buffer days cleaning up messes.

Steve Ferman 28:11
Take a lot of most people’s days or Buffer days. As an entrepreneur, one of the things most of us are add a hotline. And I accept that I am maybe I have an extra D in there, I don’t know. But I do know that when I focus best is in the mornings. I’ve learned about myself as I get the best work done in the morning so I can get between the hours of 6am and 9am. more done than I can all day from 9am to 5pm. Because of ADP your thing. This is going on up being Oh, I’m going to switch over look at Slack and know that you know what learn to focus your focus. It’s huge.

Michael Pacheco 28:49
Yeah, I have recently let past few weeks have been getting up at 4am to get stuff done, because I’ve been watching my daughter in the mornings. So she’ll wake up. She’s about a year she’s 13 months old. She’s a year old. And she you know she’ll wake up at anytime between seven and 9am. So if I’m up at four I can usually get my morning focus work done at that point in man. I tell you what, I get more stuff more work done on a Sunday than I do on any other day of the week. Because I don’t have things coming into my inbox. I don’t have people calling me slack is doing nothing. And

Steve Ferman 29:27
here’s my new thing. I love it. You can see this on there. Yeah, yeah, here it is. It says focus. Okay, so is setting new year’s resolutions. One of the things they and this happened I got this at scaling up you can buy them online. Is that you know, pick one word. One thing you’re going to do so I turned off all my alerts on my desk. You won’t hear any dings any bugs during this conversation. My young belzona slack is open. I have all my communications open and guess what? I’m gonna focus on this interview this conversation And when I’m done, I can go up and I can switch to the next one and then focus on the next one. So on a Sunday, you’re not getting all this influx, you’re able to focus on what you’re doing. So be mindful of that. Okay, great. You know what, it’s Monday, let me just close my email. You want to do your project you’re working on and when you’re done, turn your email back on. Trust me, no one’s gonna die in between you check on your email. Not likely anyway. I don’t want to put any false hope out there. But you know,

Michael Pacheco 30:37
highly, highly, highly unlikely.

Steve Ferman 30:39
Yes, yes. And unfortunately, you know, what, in the world that we live in, and I come from the world of beepers, in big giant brick cell phones way back when it’s like an instant response required. I mean, heck, even healthcare agencies are now sending you text messages about your appointments and my charts. And this the other? And you know, at some point, when is it just so much wrapping your head in your face that you just go whoa, so I’ve learned to manage it.

Michael Pacheco 31:06
Yeah, I get I get I get text messages from from my veterinarian from my dogs. Literally everybody. So I have, you know, my phone. I don’t ever have any, I don’t have any kind of alerts on my phone. So I’ll check my phone every once in a while. And I’ll see whatever’s there and deal with it. And then, of course, you know, I don’t have any email alerts on at all, but I’ll check email reasonably regularly.

Steve Ferman 31:35
I’m looking for a book that I’m reading by now. I guess it’s in a living room where I read most of the time, it called it’s called come up for air hop by Eric Sonnenberg, I believe. And it’s all about what we just talked about, you know, like focusing your time turning off certain devices and your notifications. So you can actually focus. And they say this book that you can actually gain an hour to three hours back a week. But if you get a whole team of five or 10 people doing that, about a man whose time back, oh, and it takes the break up the 13 minutes to switch gears from one thing you’re working on to the next one and truly be engaged and involved in it. Pretty powerful stuff. And we help people do that. That’s part of what we do.

Michael Pacheco 32:27
I love it. Steve, how are you? How are you getting your clients? How do you market your services? Do you? Do you get for like scaling up? Is it scale up scale up? Yeah. Do they pass clients on to you as one of their kind of representatives, one of their coaches? How does that work?

Steve Ferman 32:46
They do if they have a lead in your general area, there’s 230 coaches throughout the world. Yeah, when we went to Jersey to California, you name it, I happen to be the only one that’s in New Jersey. So if anything happens in New Jersey, typically they’ll come to me. And the reality is as to be a fit. If somebody is looking for someone specifically in nuclear science, I’m probably not your coach. Although we all have the same problems. I don’t know nuclear science, and that’s a requirement. They’re going to go to the community and find someone that specializes in nuclear science. But that I do a posting on LinkedIn three to five times a week, I do blogs once or twice a month. I have newsletter goes out every month on LinkedIn itself. I have my own insights newsletter. I have like 800 subscribers on there. I do. Webinars, I do podcast Hello. I do workshops. You know, I give and I give and I give and I don’t give it any other reason if I can help one other entrepreneur or President CEO not have to go through some of the bullcrap I went through, ya know what the time, awesome. And if I get paid for it, it’s a bonus. But it’s not why I do it, to do it, because I love helping people.

Michael Pacheco 34:03
That’s great man. And I think you know that what that does, man is it tends to if you if you’re putting out all this content and your value forward like that, and you’re helping people all the time, you’re, you know, going through this process, we were talking about it a little bit earlier of kind of pre qualifying your leads, you’re giving people an opportunity to hear what you have to say you’re building trust with people as you’re helping them do stuff. It’s just it’s a really great way to do marketing for any business, especially I think for coaches because coaching is such personal work, you know, and if you can deliver that value through content and you’re consistently putting out helpful content truly helpful content, right, not just garbage content, truly helpful content. You know when it when when it comes time for someone who is thinking about hiring you it’s not If I’m going to be a sales conversation anymore, it’s going to be a fit conversation. Yeah, because they already? Yeah,

Steve Ferman 35:10
exactly correct. And to add on top of that, I do have a marketing team that does that. I also have a virtual assistant. But to add on top of all of that, I also am very intentional about which networking groups I spend my time in. You know, I don’t want to spend my time in a b2c type networking group, because I’m not really dealing with consumers, I’m dealing with businesses, or executives or running corporations. So I try and intentionally I’ve been very definitive about joining specific groups that are intentional about helping each other. If they don’t, it’s like hire fire and take a financial hit over it. They don’t meet my core value of a honestly, I’ll say it, I don’t want to hassles. That’s just that’s my number one core value.

Michael Pacheco 35:54
I don’t have time for it.

Steve Ferman 35:56
And I just, you know, look, I’m 62 years old, I spend way too much time on my life. Wasting time and time is a commodity, we don’t have to waste. Yeah, I want to deal with the right people. And I tell my clients, and I’ll tell you and everybody else. I’ll never give you what you want. Unless what you want is what you need. And that’s just that’s just who I am. Like, if you don’t have time to waste either, I’ll give you 40 Or you’re 50 or 60 or 90 times commodity we cannot get any more of

Michael Pacheco 36:29
No. You should. You should use some of that time that you’re that you’re saving, not dealing with assholes to practice that guitar. So

Steve Ferman 36:40
I promise I will, but I’m actually in the midst of writing a book. You got to spend some time on that as well.

Michael Pacheco 36:49
Awesome. I’m learning. Steve, this has been a great conversation, but it’s good to catch up. Is there anything else that you want to chat about that we haven’t had an opportunity to touch upon yet?

Steve Ferman 37:02
If you’re not sure where to go? Or you’re not sure what to do, you know, that’s a time to really sit back and reflect and wonder should you talk to somebody that can give you an outside perspective, whether it’s a coach or a therapist or your your next door neighbor, I don’t really care who I will you know, if it’s about your business, I’d recommend getting a professional. But you know, there’s no shame in eating up. Here’s a here’s a God’s honest truth. I have a coach, every sports successful. Michael Jordan during the speed the tiger to Mike Tyson, they all have coaches, why do you have a coach? Because it’s so easy to get wrapped up in your head, feel that imposter syndrome not feel like you have any way to turn? And the reality is, you don’t have to know all the answers. You got to know who’s around you that can help you get the right answer. So surround yourself with the right people I think is really the crux of it. You know?

Michael Pacheco 38:03
Yeah, I love it. You gotta have, you gotta have that, that that third party that that external pair of eyes and ears to see the things that you are not able to see because you’re in the eye of the hurricane right? You can’t see all the stuff that’s swirling around you because you’re just you’re right in the middle of it. And those Yeah, the fresh eyes and the fresh yours. Awesome.

Steve Ferman 38:28
Well, we’ll start tomorrow I was just trying out my clothes on you.

Michael Pacheco 38:39
Awesome. Steve, where can our well actually first Do you have anything you have any any programs? Any any offers that you want to Pitch Anything? Yeah, let us let us know.

Steve Ferman 38:50
I offer a free hour and a half free life changing free free free no charge no strings attached life changing conversation after consultation with me. You can go to my website, the number four pillar coach.com Where to make life easier learn more about me if you look at my name in the thing, there is a link tree li NK TR dot E or slash the number four pillar coach. It has all of our events. I’m doing a workshop on where are we going? And how do we get there? Or I’m sorry, what’s holding you back rather on the 19th at two o’clock. I have a marathon which is a mastermind group for CEOs and entrepreneurs that just want to talk to someone else who gets them and really get I’m not really coaching as much as I’m facilitating, but there’ll be a little coaching in there as well. And yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. Forward slash Steve Furman LinkedIn slash lions slash Steve Berman. Just go to my website, probably the best for politico.com

Michael Pacheco 39:49
Awesome. And we, you know, for those obviously listening are in the car if you’re listening to this while you’re on a jog. We’ll have all that stuff in the show notes at our website boxer dot agency. Steve man, I appreciate you making the time to chat with me again.

Steve Ferman 40:06
It’s always a pleasure, Michael. I love you, man. You’re good.

Michael Pacheco 40:09
Thank you, brother. And as always, thank you to our listeners and viewers. We’ll see you guys next time. I’m sure Steve will be back with us again for a third episode, maybe in 2024.

Steve Ferman 40:21
Cool, thanks. Thanks, everyone.

Michael Pacheco 40:22
Cheers.