Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tie podcast. I'm your host, thomas Helfrich. I am on a mission to help you cut the tie to whatever it is holding you back, and you've got to define your success on your own terms first. And if you don't do that, you're chasing someone else's dream. And today I'm joined by Kevin Weir. Kevin, how are you Doing good? How are you doing? I'm doing well. I smell wonderful still, which is great, excellent. Take a moment, introduce yourself and what it is you do.

Speaker 2: 0:25

So I am a business coach with Action Coach Business Coaching. I'm based here in Spokane, Washington. I work with small to medium-sized business owners, helping business owners achieve their dreams of a business that runs without them.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Love it. You know we've been arguing with the second Action Coach to come on the show today. All right, I love, I love your guys's brand. What you do, uh, we just like it's the process driven. You know we run the marketing for a couple of guys there. I it's. It's really good stuff and and uh, and, because of how you guys are set up, I can actually bring as many of you of you on because you're you're in a certain geographic area for the most part. So if you're in the Washington area, listen up. All right, we're going to start with what I call the stalker stage of the show. Tell them how to get a hold of you so they can stalk you while you're talking today.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Well, kevinweiractioncoachcom is my website and I am Kevin Weir Coach on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Instagram. So you name it.

Speaker 1: 1:38

I am on just pretty much every single social media platform. It sounds like you're smart and you bought the block, so to speak, of your name. So good, smart move.

Speaker 2: 1:44

I have a secret weapon. Her name is Brittany. She is my social media manager. She does everything for me.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Yeah Well, good job, brittany. Two points, kevin. You know there's a lot of coaches you are in a crowded space, you know, and you guys in Action. Coach itself has a really good reputation, good brand and lots of proof points Like the stuff you guys have works, if you work it. Why did they pick you, though? Give me the defining unique characteristic of why people should pick you, though, to be their coach.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Well, first of all, you need somebody who's going to be a combination. There's three elements of great coaching. One is knowledge You've got to be a good teacher. Number two, you've got to be an excellent motivator. And the third one is you've got to be a butt kicker and see, the trouble with coaches is, if you think about this, some coaches are really good at one or two areas and one of the things I figured out is somebody has to be educated, but then we have to motivate that person when they're in a down position in their life. But then you've got to hold them accountable and basically call people's BS on themselves, because people are experts at creating their own excuses, not realizing how full of cotton candy they are. Hello, hello.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Hello, in the old days I would have had to start drinking by putting myself on mute, and so we just had a lull there and if you were listening, you're like what happened? Well, that was suspenseful. I intentionally put myself on mute so you could have a pause. What I was saying there was, as a coach. You were spot on with saying that people make a fear and excuse cycle. I talk about this quite a bit and you make these reasonable things. I can't do this because, well, that is just not an excuse. It might be valid, it might be whatever, but at the end of the day, if it's holding you back from what you need to go do, then it's in the way and you got to do something about it. And to just keep accepting it is not acceptable. And that's where a coach can come and give you paths, different ways to think, give you the confidence, take away the scaries. So I love that. Tell me about your journey a little bit, but before you do, you have to define success. So what does success mean to you?

Speaker 2: 4:19

Success is achieving what your God-given calling is in your life, and are you pursuing that on a constant, never-ending basis? And so here's the whole thing. Is that success for somebody? Everybody's going to look different in success, but true success is what are you called to in life? What true success is is what are you called to in life. Are you progressing along that path and are you getting better every single day of your life? Here's the problem is is that you define success in a way that doesn't align with what you were called to do in life. It's a false success. You could have all the physical possessions in life, all of the income and all of the success, but if you are completely misaligned with what your god-given purpose or calling life is, it's all fluff. And so part of what I'm always looking at with the person is what do you want to be when you grow up? And when I ask that person, a lot of people who are even successful going.

Speaker 1: 5:30

I'm not sure well, it comes back to sometimes the questions you had like in earlier life. It's a lot of times around money or things, and as you get older it's like you know, it's the legacy, what I want to be known for, uh and, and like you described it, it's it's hollow. When you chase some other definition of success that no longer meets your needs, and your definition of success will certainly evolve over a journey and, speaking of which, tell me about you a little bit, and as you define success for yourself, what was the biggest tie you've had to cut to achieve?

Speaker 2: 6:00

it. Well, you know a lot of it. I'll give you a quick history. I graduated high school, went to college, went in through ROTC, went into the army and figured I was going to do a 30-year military career. Well, the Cold War came to an end, and they basically said here's a bunch of money go away. So I went and got my MBA, and I got into corporate America, and I found out corporate America sucked.

Speaker 2: 6:23

So one of the things, though, is I had a lot of opportunities to take jobs that would have, you know, put me out of my comfort zone, but I didn't do it. Why? I had a fanatic fear of sales, and so what happened is that I then was able to, through a long series of events, I knew I was called to help small business owners. Now here's what happened, though. I got into career coaching. I had all the clients provided for me. I'd walk in. There's the blue slip on the box new client, great, wonderful, boom. Well, here's what happened and talk about cutting the ties is that my company that I was career coaching for started financially failing, and I went out, and I was like, oh, I got to look for another job. So I went on back. Then monstercom put my resume in and I get a message back from Action Coach says would you like to be interested in buying a franchise?

Speaker 2: 7:30

And every single fear that came up inside of me just screamed out this is not safe. You need to take something in life and make sure it's safe for you. To take something in life and make sure it's safe for you. And so what happened is that I looked at this and I had that fanatical fear of sales and I remember sitting down with my wife and I just told her.

Speaker 2: 7:57

I said I don't know if I can do this, and my wife is my biggest cheerleader and she knew deep down inside me I could, in essence, cut the tie of a consistent job income. And she said are you willing to take that risk? Because I know you want to be the provider of the family and this is scary, but I already know who you are. And so one of the things that I really had to dig deep into is can I cut the tie of safety in order to achieve a calling and a dream that I knew, knew was deep down inside of me? And that was not easy. No, that's hard, and sometimes we in life have to do things that are scary, in order for us to achieve our call, our purpose, our direction in life.

Speaker 1: 8:55

It. I went through the same thing. Many entrepreneurs go through that. Uh, sometimes you're forced into it through layoffs or whatever else. But uh, what I found on the other side I'm curious if you found this as well was the falsity of secure that was with the W-2 or with employment. And what I found was like that's actually no more secure than me just figuring out and working hard and driving through and grinding through building a business, because it's more secure once I know what I sell and I know what I can do. And I just got to go repeat and get kicked in the face a hundred times for one person to say yes, and you got it. And so did you find the same thing that you, you, you, we got on your side, right? Actually, this is more secure than that.

Speaker 2: 9:40

You know, it's interesting is that I wasn't believing that the first 14, 15 months of my business. But once I had enough critical mass and I started really scaling my business up, then all of that satisfaction, the realization of yeah, I can do this. So much about cutting the tie, is do you trust yourself and what you're called to do to make it happen? And I think what happens is in people who don't want to cut the ties, don't trust themselves enough. And so if you are going to go out there and said you know what I'm tired of X, I'm tired, and I saw this so many times in career coaching.

Speaker 2: 10:28

A lot of my clients were really dissatisfied with their career path, their career this, their career that, but they were never brave enough or willing enough to take that ultimate leap to say dang it, I'm going to follow a process. It's a proven process and if I just execute it, it was too much of that. I like to stay in the safe zone. The safe zone, even though it's dysfunctional, makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and yet in a long-term situation it's the death of you in many respects.

Speaker 1: 11:00

Well it is. You're trading truly the most diet lasts you have, which is time for something you don't enjoy doing, or what it produces for you doesn't create enough. It's the leaky bucket happiness philosophy something you don't enjoy doing, or or what it produces for you doesn't create enough. You know, it's the leaky bucket happiness philosophy, like the inputs way slower than the output of, and so you're unhappy. Uh, along your journey, uh, you know, did you have, though, the moment when you're like I believe in myself, I've cut the tie, I could do this? Do you remember the actual moment?

Speaker 2: 11:27

You know, I think what it was is that when I there was always that nagging kind of maybe I should just go back to corporate America and play it safe. But I still remember I was about 15 months into my business and I went from about three. I went from two clients to 11 clients in about 75 day period and probably shortly before that thing hit I had seriously considered you know what? I can go back, I can get a job. It's not what I would like to do, it's not what I'm called to do, but it will pay the mortgage and feed the kids and all of that stuff. I also knew deep down inside that would be one of the worst decisions in my life and I trusted God inside of me. I trusted his calling for my life. I also trusted the process that I knew would work if I stuck to it. And sure enough, bang. But here's the thing Every one of us is going to have self-doubt when we cut the tie, or in the preparation of cutting the tie, or in the you've already cut the tie and you want to go backwards.

Speaker 2: 12:45

You, every single individual. If you're telling me yeah, I cut the tie, I've never had any problems like that, I'm going to call a liar liar pants and fire out on you. You're going to want to go back to that comfort zone, but if you, deep down inside, know I'm going to push through to achieve what I've been called to do in life, guess what? Cutting the tie will be the best thing you ever do.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Yeah, agreed, you're right, it's going to be rough. And if it isn't rough, you haven't taken enough risk. I'd say it that way. And if you feel like you don't know what you're doing and you're thinking about quitting, you're not far enough along. You haven't, you know. And also, maybe you don't have the, you still have fallbacks once you kind of have a safety nets in place.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Um, the game changes once you're on your own. Yeah, and I know that because I built my company while working somewhere, but I had the safety and I have a really nice salary and some other stuff. But as soon as that ended, I was like, oh shit, there's really no more excuses. Yeah, and now I'm like really focused, like a whole different level.

Speaker 1: 13:44

And then you know you go through the, the evolution of a business, and you're you almost, you almost have to close the door or you're borrowing money from and you're doing stuff to get through some times, and you get another level of focus and it's like, like you, my output compared to you know, five years ago is they're not on the same planet, like anyway. So you, you go through this and I think you know is your in your own journey, talking about getting there? That's a beautiful thing, because now you're like I'm never going back, this is what I'm doing, and you may change your perspective. I might do less clients, I might do more, but you know what you can do. You can speak to it. People can hear and feel that confidence, and getting clients is probably a hell of a lot easier right now than it used to be.

Speaker 2: 14:23

Yeah, after 23 years of doing this, you're still going to have peaks and valleys. Those are never going to end. But the nice thing is, when you hit a valley you know it's not permanent, you know that you're probably going to get back on track, because that's what's been transpiring. And I think once you get into that rhythm of life you know it's kind of the whole up. You know three steps forward, two steps to. You know one and a half steps back, two steps forward, maybe one step back, but you know what, you're okay with that. When you are in that sort of safe zone and you lose everything, your mentality can't fathom that loss. But when you do proactively cut the tie, you then go through the ups and downs of basically life. In that respect, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, guess what? You're going to be okay. It's like, okay, we've been here before, we'll get through it again.

Speaker 1: 15:31

What happens too, I think I find with a lot of myself, others I've spoken to about this is, in good times, in the analogy of up four, three, back two. When you hit a four, four, four, five, you expect it to stay like not realizing early on, hey, that's really really good, yeah. And then when you take a two, three, step back, you're you panic, yeah, and you're like, well, wait, like that, your margin there was great, so try to go, go do it again. And so the point is to understand when it's really going well, enjoy it. Prepare for a winter that's going to come, yeah, for a winter that's going to come, yeah, save a little food, so to speak, and I know that it's going to go backwards, but those are the times you can retool, refocus your personal brand a little bit, your content. You could do some things to get ready for the next spring, if you will, of your career.

Speaker 2: 16:16

Exactly, it's exactly the case. And here's what happens is the little voice in your head will try to crawl back in there and share itself of doom and gloom. Oh no, oh no. Here we go. You know you're never going to. This is going to happen, that's going to happen. And and you have to basically damper the voice a little bit better every single time. But guess what? And then you know, I, even you know when the last downturn I had, then the little voice says oh no. Voice says oh no. And you're just like ah, shut up, you're fine. 10 years, 15 years ago, it would be like oh no, oh no.

Speaker 1: 16:55

A big difference for 10, 15 years ago. Right now, you know you can't like in your guys' business, you guys can't market really outside of your zone, but you can get referrals in from outside.

Speaker 2: 17:05

Well, that's exactly it. And so most of my business today is outside of the Spokane area, strictly because I get referrals. You know, it's like the hey. Can you help my friend in Portsmouth, new Hampshire? Sure, I can, you know. Can you help my friend in Lubbock, texas? Sure, of course I can. And so that way, when you build trust with people who know that you know what you're doing, it's a lot easier for them to market you and create that sort of yeah you know what, as long as I take care of people, they're going to be fine.

Speaker 1: 17:43

I actually often ask this question more about you, but I'd like maybe to change the question just a little bit, because you've been doing this a long time, so I usually ask the impact of your change. It's been so long now. At this point it is you, so it's not like it's a recency thing. So what's been the impact of your coaching, though? On others?

Speaker 2: 18:01

Yes, I'll give you a quick example. So I coached a business for about a year and a half two years and they were consistently doing about 20% profit margins. They were growing and they decided they didn't need me anymore. Well, about I think it was Friday of last week, I get an email hey, can we get back on coaching? And so it's like, yeah, okay. So I met with them a couple of days ago and they said well, you know what? We took a look at our bottom line. We've been about break even and we realized, when you, we are coaching us, we were really making it, we're having good profits, we were moving forward. And it's like, yeah, that wasn't a good idea to quit coaching. And so that's what happens is that your job as a coach is to help these business owners achieve what they want to achieve, and a lot of them, just without that coaching support, will fall back into bad habits or that have basically stymied them.

Speaker 1: 19:08

You know it's the analogy, but I hear those stories because you hear it all the time of oh, I did this and I stopped doing it because it was working. And you're like, okay, let's just start with. Just think about that. You're trying to save a few pennies. I said this actually this morning in one of the interviews with another action coach and I said people are so fast to go spend 8K a month on a sales guy, but they'll pause at a $2,500 a month coach that can transform, that allow them to get in a position to hire 10 of them effectively Exactly, or what you just described.

Speaker 1: 19:39

We're making double commas now and lots of zeros. I don't need coaching anymore. That's the equivalent of somebody who takes medicine to fix a problem for high blood pressure or something, and they're like you know what? My blood pressure is great, I want to stop taking this medicine. And they're like a month later like why is my head? I don't get it? Oh man, I should get back on that medicine. Duh, that's an inexpensive resource for what you do for value. For $30,000 a year. The Action Coach, for 30k a year. The action coaches is, if I understand the brand, and I'm not paid to say this. But I love the brand because you guys are paid to take that 30 000 and say, how do I go that 300 000 to 3 million? I would take them from 3 to 30 and that's a no-brainer right, absolute no-brainer. Yeah, and it's not working. Sure, dump it. Fine, I get it, you're making money.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Keep the guy around like, yeah, in coaching is an investment, and that's something I have to constantly emphasize with clients. This is not a spend, it's an invest and for every dollar you put into coaching, you should be getting three to four dollars back. And that's the key. And a lot of people don't understand that when they start switching the mindset back to expense instead of investment, it makes it easy for them to go I can cut the budget and then all of a sudden, things start going downhill and a lot of them forget that. What got you?

Speaker 1: 20:59

here, yeah, and well, listen, if you can't afford it, you shouldn't do it. But if you can afford to hire somebody to do something, you might want to consider bringing someone in to help you organize in a way to really scale a business, to get out of owning a job. So I'll get out my hat. So I think the impact that's a great one. So if you're out there and you're thinking, oh, I could do it myself, which is the other lovely one I think you cannot unless you've done it before. If you've built a business and exited it probably similar industries I would say go ahead. You probably know enough. Yeah, if you have not and this is your first run you only know what you've heard from others, but no one's actively managing it with you. You need someone to bring you through on it, and your multiples are going to be much higher too. Yeah, absolutely, I'm pitching for you. I just love what you guys do. So what do you? What are you personally most grateful for right now?

Speaker 2: 21:57

I am personally most grateful for having a family who loves me and supports me, even in all the ups and downs. I'm thankful for clients who have trusted me over the years to get them to do the things that they know they should be doing, but get them to do the things that they know they should be doing but are, and to teach them things that they've no idea. You know, I'm really grateful for the Action Coach system. As I said, I've been doing this for 23 years now. I guess I'm just also grateful that I have a Lord and Savior that guides me every single day and I'm just blessed beyond all means and I'm so grateful and this is one of the things you look back and going wow, I have been blessed in this life and many areas that you don't even realize until you think about it.

Speaker 1: 22:41

Yeah, that's the function of gratefulness, because you'll need to. You'll need to be grateful. Some things in times get hard. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 22:50

Give me a lesson for the listener lesson for the listener I, I one of my great mentors of all times, a guy named dr bernard holiday who founded bernard holiday associates, who was my first coaching job, and I was really struggling one day and he was retired. He's 90 years old, living in Seattle, and I was struggling with clients because I couldn't get them to focus. And I was talking with Dr Halden and he said and I was telling him a complaint, I can't get these clients to make decisions, they always want to waffle. And he looks at me and his 90-year-old British accent boy he goes, mr Weird. I said yes, dr Halden, he goes, mr Weird. I said yes, dr Alden.

Speaker 2: 23:27

He said you can never change your mind until you make it up the first time. And that blew me away because we are so afraid of decisions that we will avoid decisions because in our mind a decision is permanent. No, you can never change your mind until you make that first decision. Too many humans, all of us included, are afraid of making a decision, so we put it off and we put it off. If you make a decision, you can change it. You have that ability. But so many people freeze up because they're afraid of actually making a decision, because they think it's in the cement and it can never be changed. It can but make that decision.

Speaker 1: 24:23

It's like you're talking to a wife right now about what are we going to go for dinner?

Speaker 2: 24:30

Oh, how true that is.

Speaker 1: 24:32

We're not going to go down that route.

Speaker 2: 24:34

I think Tony Robbins made a comment one time. He said the power of life is in the power of the decision.

Speaker 1: 24:44

It is. There was a question I should have asked you today, though, and I didn't. What would that question have been, and how do you answer it?

Speaker 2: 24:51

You know what I'm thinking. What is it that makes me fanatical about what I do? And I think the answer to that is when you know you're called to do something. I'll give you a great story. I was called out at church one day by a pastor who said guys, bless you to be a resource for small business owners in the community where you live. And that was caught I deep down inside. I knew that was it, but I spent 12 years avoiding it, and so in doing that, I take a look at why do I do what I do?

Speaker 2: 25:29

Because there's such a deep calling for me to get business small to medium-sized business owners to achieve their dreams so that they can bless others. It's not about me, it's actually not about them. It's the people that they're going to bless on their journey of providing jobs, providing purpose and providing charitable offerings so that they have enough money to give to people to change their lives through a nonprofit or whatever that looks like. People to change their lives through a nonprofit or whatever that looks like. And so to me it's all about is that person going to be successful, but what are they going to do to support and make the world better? So I'm multiplying my efforts. If I have 15 clients and they can hire additional 10 people, and then they have enough net profits to fund their organizations of choice which spread things around the world. Guess what it's amazing what that means for me.

Speaker 1: 26:39

Thanks for coming on today. I really appreciate it. Kevin, who should get ahold of you and how should they do that?

Speaker 2: 26:44

Best way is my website kevinweiractioncoachcom. You can also find me on Facebook Action Coach Spokane. Would love to, or even on LinkedIn. Action Coach Spokane.

Speaker 1: 27:02

I appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time today, Kevin.

Speaker 2: 27:05

Okay, thank you very much, tom.

Speaker 1: 27:08

And listen. Everyone who made it this far in the show. I appreciate you for listening, watching, and if this was your first time here, I do hope it's the first of many. And if you've been here before, thanks for coming back. Get out there, go cut a tie to whatever's holding you back. Define your success first, though, so