The Five Levers of Business Growth with Dr Brenda Hector

Welcome to Building your Leader brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Brenda Hector. If they're not the right customer or it's not the right service, or it's not the right time, then all that hard sell and that sleazy salesman thing that's persuading people to buy something that they don't really think they need or they're ready for. That's what gives sales a bad rep. So if you're doing it well and you're doing it professionally, you're not trying to sell something to someone that that doesn't want it. You're trying to provide a solution to the problem that they have. Hi there, and welcome back to Building Your Leader brand. My name is Bob gentle, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetising your expertise in the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, then while you still have whatever device it is that you're watching or listening on in your hand or on your on your desk. Take a second to subscribe. It's different on every device. I'm not going to tell you how to do that today. So this week I am really excited to welcome my friend Brenda to the show. Doctor Brenda Hector, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Bob. This is great. A little nervous, but great. So. Well, it's a chat. We chat all the time. I think the reason I'm excited to speak to you. I've known you since you started the current incarnation of your business. And it's been really. And I speak about this quite often on the podcast, that personal growth and business growth tend to be parallel, and we probably speak about that a little bit today. But seeing you in your business now is very different to seeing you in your business at the beginning. And your business is quite a special one. I think it's going to be a very interesting conversation today and I'm resisting from to. I'm resisting the urge to introduce your business on your behalf. So for the listener who's meeting you for the first time, can you maybe just tell us a little bit about who you are, where you are, and what it is you actually do? Sure, absolutely. Hello, listeners. I haven't met before. I'm in Aberdeen, here in Scotland. Where where Bob. Bob grew up as well. And I am a business coach. I'm a franchisee with Actioncoach, which is the largest business coaching organisation in the world. And I help business owners mostly across Scotland, but other places as well, to grow their business, to achieve their goals, to work less hours, make more money, get better results from their staff. I help them to develop as business owners and yeah, achieve what they achieve their potential in their business. I think one of the things I love about Actioncoach is that it's a it's a franchise. A lot of people can look down their noses at franchises, but a lot of the time these are people who've never really explored what is a franchise. And the thing I love about franchise is you don't have to make anything up. There are systems and processes, and you can pour your creativity and your energy into those processes, knowing they've been tested and that they work. And as a business coaching franchise, it's a little bit meta, but bringing those same success principles that have led to Actioncoach being one of the biggest coaching organisations, if not the biggest coaching organisation in the world, to clients in order to recreate that same success is really interesting. Maybe it would be worthwhile you explaining to the listener what actioncoach is, the scale of it, and what makes it distinctly different from other coaching organisations? Absolutely. And Starting off with the, you know, the franchise thing and what you said about the progress I've made in my business from six over six years ago to now, I would never have started this on my own. I wouldn't have had the confidence to do what I do and to to make up the, the the strategies and the tools and the and the processes and everything that we use from the Action Coach toolkit. I would I would never have been able to do that. I could I might be able to do that kind of thing now, because that's what I've done with a lot of my clients. But to buy the toolkit, that meant that I could. Enhance my skills. And the business background that I had was something that was proven to work. So there's the risk when you start off in business, that will this work? Well, there's over a thousand action coaches around the world. You know, we're in 80 odd countries around the around the world. It's been operating for over 30 years. Started in Australia and now it's in all of those all of those places. And if it didn't work, that wouldn't that wouldn't be the case. If our customers weren't getting the results that they are, we wouldn't be here. I just learned yesterday of somebody that you maybe were aware of as well in the Aberdeen area, who has recently moved to Canada and bought an Actioncoach franchise. So yeah, it's that's it's the it's security or a safety blanket or something that comes from, from buying into a franchise. That's that's proven. And not all franchises are great, but the one that I bought into has five star franchisee satisfaction for about a decade, I think. So the UK support is amazing for us. And then the actual the actual system that we use is a it's called a six steps framework. And we've got a lot of what we tend to do is the the business owners we work with have the expertise in their specific field. They're the let's say they're the expert hairdresser or the expert mechanic or the they're an expert, but they're not so great at the business stuff that goes around it. So I'm here to help help them to become better at running a business around their expertise. And it's we measure our success on increasing profit because that's what we're in business for, to make more money. So that's one of the things that makes us different with Actioncoach is that we offer a guarantee that you follow this proven system, you'll make more money or we'll give you the difference back. I like that. So for the listener, I think coaches are ten a penny. That sounds really crude, but lots of people have a coaching shaped component to what they do, me included. But I would never call myself a a business coach or be a coach. And I think it's important to draw the distinction between the kind of coach who will try and walk you towards the answers yourself, where a lot of it's maybe personal performance coaching or things like that, and what action Coach does, which is very specific and often prescriptive in terms of if you want to perform better in your business, you need to pull these levers in this order, because we know that this is what works. One of the things that I like about action coach and I read Brad Sugars, one of Brad Sugar's books. I'm sure he's written quite a lot, but one of the real aha moments for me in business in general was when Was when he talked about the business chassis, and I don't know if I'm naming it properly, but I think for me that was a real revelation, that business is inherently simple. And I think it's probably makes more sense if you talk about the the business chassis than I talk about. Yeah, yeah, it's applicable to just about every business. And the business chassis or the, the five ways we call it. And essentially most business owners should know how many customers they've got, how much revenue they're generating and how much profit they're getting that is left at the end of the day. And those are the results in the you know, those are the results and the things that we can do to impact those. So the number of leads that are coming into the business and how good you are at converting them determines how many customers you have, and then how often the customers buy and how much they spend on average, each time they buy determines how much turnover you've got, and then your margins determine what's left and profit at the end of the the end of the year. Yeah. And what's fascinating for me is that's essentially five levers you have to pull. You have some marketing levers, you have some operational levers, you have some sales levers and you have some finance and pricing levers. That's it. It's actually very simple. I've probably missed something there. But what that perhaps leads into is I am fairly sure that despite business being very simple, most business owners will often think they're the exception. Something's different for them. There's a reason why it won't work for them. What are the most common pushback elements that you see coming up against this? Well, it's actually simple. It's the. Yeah that's. Yeah, that that's all well and good but yeah. Does that apply to what I to my industry. Have you ever worked in this industry. You know have you ever worked with a dentist before. And for me I'm more excited with businesses in industries I haven't worked with than somebody than one that I've. I'm not going to turn down another marketing agency or whatever. But, you know, I, I'm getting into a new industry where I've not worked and I can learn more about because that's what makes it interesting for me. And I know for sure that the, the chassis and the structure are the took a lot of the tools that we've got work in every business. So yeah, it's about um, about proof then. So maybe I haven't worked with that type of business, but because I'm part of this big organisation, somebody within this organisation has. So we can probably find a testimonial or a case study where we can share with the unsure prospect to to give them evidence that, yeah, we can make a difference in their business. So around that big data piece, because Actioncoach has worked with thousands of businesses over many years, you know what works and what doesn't work. But not only that, you know who's going to be successful and who's not going to be successful with Actioncoach, what success habits has Actioncoach identified as? These are the traits that will typically drive success, and these are the red flags. As action coaches, you should avoid. It's People who are open to doing things differently. There's a scale and business owners are somewhere on the scale. And at one end it's. But yeah, but this is what I do and this is the way I do it. And they just want to do keep doing the same thing and they expect it hoping for different results. Whereas at the other end, the attitude of I'm open to learn anything, I'll try anything. You know, we'll willing to learn, willing to do their, their own learning. You know, not it's not necessarily just about me telling them this is a tool that that should work for you. It's about being open to reading and listening to podcasts and, you know, watching YouTube, YouTube videos and learning from what other people are doing as well. So it's all yeah, attitude is the is the biggest factor. Not not so much about any of the details of the business. It's the the attitude of the person. I think attitude probably coupled with a willingness to take action. Yes. Is it fair to say that a lot of the organisations Actioncoach works with and you specifically, they tend to be businesses where there's quite a few people involved. There's there's generally a team. It's not just a solopreneur business. Is that a fair assumption? No. No. We can we can help. I mean, if the, you know, the the franchisors would have us looking for larger businesses because it's more likely that they can afford to pay properly for our services. Um, it's if I put a business onto the wrong programme for them, either It's too big a stretch to for one person to be doing all of the work, or it's too big a stretch for them for their cash flow at the at this current point in time, then we're going to lose. I'm going to lose the client and their, you know, their their business is not going to get to where it potentially can get to. So what I've learned is that we're not only going for the 1 to 1 customers. We've got some group coaching offerings and some some workshops and things. So there's something there for everyone. And I've got a business book club. It's got solopreneurs on it. I've got some group coaching for businesses that are just starting to take on and develop their teams. And I've got, you know, 1 to 1 coaching for businesses with quite a team of staff. And then there are some training courses as well, where we can be helping the salespeople to develop their sales skills. Or we could be helping the the middle managers. You know, people that have been promoted into a management role. So we've got some training courses to help them to develop those skills. So there's yeah, not only the bigger businesses that are the bigger end of SMEs, but yeah, solopreneurs are. I've worked with a lot of solopreneurs as well. So it's a very diverse suite of offerings. I guess this is something I'd actually forgotten about. But reflecting back on having heard you speak about your business so often, it's the way that you describe it, and the service offerings is very much tailored to the people that are in the room at that moment. Yeah. Which makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of business coaches, they do tend to specialise and I think there's a lot of value in specialisation. Whereas actioncoach through the economy of scales and the fact that other people have produced the products that you deliver to an extent, means that you can be delivering service in a specialised way to lots of different stages of the business journey. Yes. So for me, I've over the six and a half years that I've been doing this, I've had various coaches within Actioncoach and out West. So like yourself, you did a lot to help me with my, um, with my personal brand. And I wouldn't have a podcast if it hadn't been for you. So thank you for all of that. But and I've had I've had different coaches through the action coach, um, other action coaches that have been the right person to help me at the right time. And, you know, so when I was looking at the very beginning and then focusing more on my on my numbers and my financials, it was a different coach. That was really good on on that sort of stuff, and I'm doing some work on my bit more sort of personal development and the coach that is helping me with that, because Action Coach has got such different offerings, I think that I can be there for more of the journey with, with my clients than, than if, if I didn't have all of that different product offering and different tools to help them. So one thing I think a lot of people, a lot of people listening will be coach adjacent, or they'll be people with coaching elements of their business who won't have come up through an organisation like Action Coach, where they have systems and processes for things, and a lot of people, the part of their business where they feel the most struggle is around sales and marketing of their own practise. And I would be really interested to hear from Knew what action coaches, sales and marketing philosophy internally for their own people. What do they train you? What do they provide you in terms of systems, so that you can be self sufficient so that you can be successful in the marketplace? I'll just start off by saying lots of us that get into business, get into business because we want to deliver a service and then realise that we have to sell it. And yes, I remember being at a training and action coach training 4 or 5 years ago probably, and I was sat opposite someone who said I thought I was buying a coaching business and what I've actually bought is a sales business, and I she really didn't like it. And it took a long time to get her head around being a salesperson. But anyone in business is a salesperson. We have to we have to first, you know, the mindset of sales. We don't call it call it sales within our within Actioncoach in the UK. Here we have an onboarding process and it's, it's it's on my wall there. It's a 13 step process and it's very clearly mapped out. And we've got a coach within the organisation that just coaches people on the sales process and getting really good at it, practising, recording, listening. It's all about practise. Follow the system and practise it and critique how you're doing. But also lots of people have got a negative. Association with salespeople. So I, I talk about a travel agent. It's January. Lots of people are thinking about their holidays and they get thinking about their holidays and then maybe go and talk to somebody. It was less common, but I think it's picked up again, talking to travel agents and going. And the travel agent will ask you lots of questions. They'll ask the kind of place you want to go. They'll ask who's going. What their interests are. How long a transfer you can put up with. How long a flight you weren't willing to put up with, what you're going to do when you get there? Are you into food? Are you into lying in the sun? Are you into jumping off mountains? And they'll find out all. Ask lots and lots of questions and then they'll suggest some holidays for you. They'll ask about your budget as well, obviously. And nobody ever feels sold to by the travel agent that's providing them this amazing holiday that they're going to go on because they're professionally helping people to buy. So that's that's our take on on selling is that we're professionally helping people to buy. And if they're not the right customer or it's not the right service or it's not the right time, then all that hard sell and not, you know, sleazy sales salesman thing that's persuading people to buy something that they don't really think they need or they're ready for. That's what gives sales a bad a bad rep. So if you're if you're doing it well and you're doing it professionally, you're not trying to sell something to someone that is not that doesn't want it. You're trying to provide a solution to the problem that they have. Yeah, yeah. You're facilitating access to a solution. Yes. And I think a lot of people, the worst time to be trying to sell is when you're desperate to sell something. And I think this is actually when a lot of people decide, okay, I'm going to get serious about sales. It's when sales is a serious thing. And so the stakes feel very high. So it pushes you into a high pressure situation, whereas it's the whole question of when's the best the best time to plant a tree? Probably a long time ago. A lot of people like marketing, but they don't like sales. And I was speaking to somebody else earlier today, and he described sales as the last mile of marketing. It's part of marketing, really, but it's about turning this awareness into a conversation. And there's a really good book by a guy called Rich Litvin called The Prosperous Coach. I don't know if you've come across it. Well, I would imagine you would have. But he talks about letting people experience working with you. And this is something Actioncoach does wonderfully. I've been through the sales process with Action Coach, not with you. It was before you were involved in action, coach, but it was a really elegant experience of being provided value and then being put in a situation where if I wanted that value to continue, I'd probably have to ask for it. It was as simple as that, but I wanted it. By that time, I never actually bought it. Oh, we need to have a chat. But but I think a lot of business owners, they don't take that last mile. And I think this is where systems can be very helpful. Processes can be very helpful. And as you described practise the last time, the last thing you want is to be telling somebody how to work with you for the first time when you've actually got a customer in front of you because you're going to trip over your tongue, you're not going to know all the words to use. You're not going to know how to describe eloquently what that looks like. So it takes practise. I mean, everybody feels uncomfortable doing role play, but if you can get a friend or another business colleague or something to pretend to be a prospect and vice versa and just do some role play and so that it feels comfortable when the When the words were or that that question that actually closing the sale and actually asking them if they're does it make sense then for us to to start coaching or start whatever your service is, if to get comfortable saying the words and getting them, hearing them come out of your mouth rather than in front of a prospect. You know my favourite way of doing it? My favourite way to ask people if they'd like to work with me is I've gone through what it all looks like, how it how much it costs. But often there's this moment where people are silent. You're looking at them, they're looking at you. And I simply say, and this is almost all the time. Does this feel like something you'd like to do? And because I'm asking them if it feels like something they'd like to do rather than, is this something they'd like to do? It takes it out of the head and into the heart, and they'll tell me how they feel rather than what they think. And it's so straightforward but non-confrontational. And they can say yes or no more. It's a more sort of temperature checking thing because if they say no, you're like, well, you can ask more around that rather than going, well, do you want to buy? And they go, no. And you go, okay then buy. Yeah, yeah. You can learn more from it. And you can, you can find out what the objections are. Yeah. There's a book called The Perfect Close. What I often encounter is you get a bit of a poker face on the other side of the call, or on the other side of the table, and you think people are thinking they hate me. They don't want to do it, I can tell. And so instinctively, a lot of the time we'd back away, we'd change the subject, we'd deflect because we think they're not going to buy anything. That question. Suddenly the face lights up. I would love to do this. It's really bizarre. It happens all the time. Anyway, I would like to move things into the next part of the podcast where I'm going to invite you to share three things. These are three things that people can do to take action in their business today. So it could be a favourite book, mental model, hack, link, tool, software, whatever. But Actioncoach has many tools and I know Brenda Hector is a bit of a nerd and you'll have your own as well. So what have you got? So I wasn't thinking of it as as as tools as such. It's more strategies if if you want to grow your business and you want a different result. Find find a system or a strategy that's going to work for you. Find a proven a proven method. If you've never if you've never run before, you do couch to five K because, you know, millions of people do that. And it's amazing that you just start the process in however many weeks you can you can run for half an hour so that if there if there are use proven systems that other people have developed, you know, you can you read about them in in books. You know that we've talked a lot about sales. So there are there are sales scripts and there are books and things out there that you can you can teach yourself and you can learn the process from other people. So, you know, I my top one really, Bob, would be get an action coach. If you can't get an action coach, get another coach for you or find a part of what works is accountability. You know when you're when you're going to the gym and it gets it gets a bit hard, the weather's really miserable outside and you can't be bothered going tonight. If your friends go in as well, you're much more likely to go. So if you can find if you if you get a coach, then they provide a lot of that accountability. But if if there's something that you want, and you're only accountable to yourself is going to be hard to get there. But, you know, if you tell someone else and you bring somebody else. Someone else is there on the journey with you. You're much more likely to get there. And then the third thing, which is maybe the first thing, is know what the goal is that you're aiming for. I think that one is really powerful and not for the obvious reasons, because a lot of people actually can plateau in their business, because they achieved their goal and they didn't actually realise that they'd done it because they got so accustomed to the fight. And I recognised that a few years ago, in my own business, nothing seemed to be going anywhere. And I looked at what I was doing and I realised, well, it's because I've arrived, there's no what's next. I haven't reset that goal. So knowing what the destination is so important, because if you don't know what the destination is, you don't know what you're pouring energy into. You can't. Course correct. You don't know what to say no to. That goes really. You know, if if you if you know where you're going, then because lots of shiny objects come up when you're in business, you know, you you listen to a podcast and there's somebody that's, oh, there's this, this really great thing that you could be doing. You go, oh, I'll try that. And then you read a book next week and then, oh, this is really interesting. This is bound to work. And so you forget the thing that you started and you go and do that. But if you know where you're going it's much easier to say, well, yeah, that would be nice. And I'm quite interested in that. But it's not what's going to get me where I need to be at the end of this year, for example, or, you know, at the end of March or whatever. So knowing where you're going means it's easier not to divert down different routes. Yeah, I think accountability is easy to underestimate. But actually, if you've got people looking over your shoulder and you're going to have to tell them even in a even in a low key, having a group of friend business owners and you've all shared your goals for the year and you're going to come back and you're going to talk about it, even that can be quite potent. But I think the proven methods, this is one that I encounter all the time, especially in my industry business, as we said right at the beginning, is inherently simple. Yes, there's a lot of creativity. Yes, you have to have a good product. Yes, you have to have good service. But all the time I'll meet people who are the unsung heroes, and the only reason they haven't risen out of business mediocrity is because they didn't follow simple processes. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We maybe need creativity in order to express these processes in innovative ways. But the processes themselves, they're constant. They're not going to going to change. And I meet people trying to cheat the processes all the time, and they wonder why things don't work. And then alongside that, there are lots of people in my industry who are selling miracle cures, quick fixes, hacks, shortcuts. And people pay a lot of money for these and then they don't work. And then there's the outlier who wins at the casino and is the exception to the rule that is used as the marketing poster child. Business is all about process, and I think Actioncoach is one of the greatest proponents of that. I think you can I think you can bring the the process and the creative together though. An example being actors performing Shakespeare. Okay. Actor thought of as one of the most creative there could. You know that there is. But they're not going to get on stage and do their own words if they're if they're doing Macbeth, you know that that's what people are there to see. That's what they need to hear. That's the process that they're oh, I'm getting a bit of an echo there. So I think what I would like to do now, I guess, is if anybody's listening and they're thinking, I'd like to go deeper with Brenda. Hector, I think I need some of this action coach in my life. Or there may be even people thinking, you know what, maybe Action Coach is the route that I should be taking as a business owner and not simply trying to wing it on my own. How can people find out more about you, what you do, and how can people find out more about action coach in general? Well, very lucky to have a not very common name. So if you Google Brenda Hector action coach, I should come up. I'm also actually this would be a good, good plug for my podcast. Actually, Bob, I'm a bit of a champion for women in business as well. So I've under your guidance, I started a podcast called Scale Her Up so you can find me there. Where I interview women in business and some men who have got a valuable message that's of benefit to women to start in and scale in their business. So you can find me on all the podcast platforms. And I've got, I've got a little questionnaire, a little assessment that people can do that will just give us an idea of where they are in their business and what we would need to focus on to help them to achieve their goals. So yeah, we can put the the link to that, I think, in the show notes. And yeah. I will be happy to put that in the show notes or wherever this podcast appears. It'll either be below or above. Just find the link and you can take that assessment. I'm going to have a go at that later. Brenda, this has been a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed it. I think I'm maybe going to make this a semi-regular thing that we have a chat because like I said at the beginning, one of the things I love about Actioncoach is the systematic approach that they take to business success, and I don't think it can ever really get too much of that. But for the moment, thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, I've enjoyed it. It's nice being on the other side of the mic for a while. I bet. I mean, I always it's a very different experience, I'll tell you that. So that does bring us to the end of another episode. If you have enjoyed listening, then I would welcome you to leave a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts. That's five like the fingers on your hand. Or if it's YouTube, it's a thumbs up and a like and subscribe, I believe. And if you did enjoy the show, then you will love the personal brand business roadmap. It's 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale or fix your expert business. Just visit the link in the show notes or visit Amplify Forward Slash roadmap. Thanks for listening and I will see you next time. And Brenda thank you. Thank you.