August 22, 2025 • 35 mins
What happens when years in corporate America teach you how to make money—for someone else’s business—but leave you wondering if you could do it for yourself? In this episode of Cut The Tie, host Thomas Helfrich sits down with Steve Chiama, a business coach with ActionCOACH Western Fairfax, to talk about scaling companies, pricing correctly, and cutting the tie to the false security of corporate jobs.
Steve shares how he shifted from engineering and running profit centers in Fortune 500 companies to becoming a business coach who helps owners scale from six to seven figures—and beyond. With 15 years of coaching experience and more than 140 businesses transformed, Steve knows what it takes to build a profitable, sustainable company.
About Steve Chiama
Steve Chiama is a business coach with ActionCOACH, serving clients across the U.S. His background spans 38 years in corporate America, including leadership roles in engineering, customer service, and profit center management. Today, he brings that hard-won knowledge to entrepreneurs and small business owners, guiding them through proven systems to achieve the growth, profitability, and lifestyle they imagined when they first started their business. Whether it’s refining processes, pricing for profit, or building teams that can scale, Steve’s mission is to help owners step out of “doing everything” and into running a business that works for them.
In this episode, Thomas and Steve discuss:
- Cutting ties with corporate security
After nearly four decades in corporate roles, Steve realized the “security” of a paycheck wasn’t so secure after all. - Why most small businesses stay small
Steve explains why 96% of businesses never get past $1 million in revenue, and why only 0.4% ever hit $10 million. - Pricing, value, and paying yourself first
Steve breaks down why paying yourself first, building margin into pricing, and scaling through others is the only way to achieve lasting profitability.
Key Takeaways
- Corporate jobs aren’t secure—your skills are
Layoffs can erase “security” overnight. Real stability comes from knowing how to create results yourself. - Break problems into small pieces
Steve’s engineering mindset: solve challenges step by step, then reassemble into a working whole. - Most businesses fail by undervaluing themselves
Undercharging and overworking kill profitability. Pay yourself first and charge what you’re worth. - 10x growth requires systems, not hustle
Working harder won’t scale. Build processes and delegate to grow beyond your own time. - Coaches drive accountability
Knowledge without action fails. Coaching ensures consistency, follow-through, and momentum.
Connect with Steve Chiama
📎 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevechiamabusinesscoach/
🌐 Website: https://westernfairfax.actioncoach.com
Connect with Thomas Helfrich
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelfrich
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cutthetie
📎 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashelfich
🌐 Website: https://www.cutthetie.com
📧 Email: t@instantlyrelevant.com
🚀 Instantly Relevant: https://instantlyrelevant.com
Serious about LinkedIn Lead Generation? Stop Guessing what to do on LinkedIn and ignite revenue from relevance with Instantly Relevant Lead System
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Cut the Tide podcast.
I'm your host, thomas Helfrich.
I'm on a mission to help youcut the tide of whatever the
hell holding you back fromsuccess.
And also, you should bedefining that success yourself,
because if you didn't, someoneelse defined it for you and
you're going to have a toughtime reaching that and it's a
big thing.
So definitely define your ownsuccess.
Today, I am joined by my friend, steve Chiama.
How are you, steve?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Very good, thomas.
How are you Steve?
How are you doing?
Very good, tims.
I'm doing well.
We meet almost weekly andwhenever I realize.
I've known Steve a long timenow and we've never met in
person, but he finally decidedto come on.
He is an action coach, so I'mgoing to pre-sell him a little
bit.
Listen to what this guy saysabout building businesses.
He's helped people go from likea few to a whole bunch of zeros
(00:43):
.
So, like, just preface that Ilove this, so introduce yourself
and what it is you do reallyquick, and then I'm going to set
something up for you.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well, yeah, that sets the stage.
Thank you, thomas.
I am a business coach withAction Coach.
I work with business owners,guide them through a process.
It's actually a step-by-stepsystematic process.
Guide them through a processit's actually a step-by-step
systematic process.
Help them grow their businessto achieve the goals that they
were imagining when theyoriginally started the business.
(01:11):
And it turns out that it's notalways the way they see it when
they begin it.
There's a few things they needto learn along the way.
That makes it easier to getthere, and so I help them go
through those uh processes anduh get the most out of what
they're doing.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So people can stalk you while they listen um to the
show.
They can work you out, causethat's a common thing to do
because people's attention.
You're about to go hit yourphone and listen to something,
so I want you to go hit this.
Where where should they gocheck you out while you're
talking for your your show here?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Uh, they can look me up on linkedin.
They can look me up on mywebsite, which is action coach
western fairfax uh, they canlook them up.
They can look me up by my name,which is steven kiyama, on the
on the internet, and, uh,there's any number of ways they
can find me I'd like to pointout something.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I've been mispronouncing your name now for
18, 19 months.
I said she I have.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I've.
There's probably 10 people I'vemet in the world in my life.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
That got it right the first time my wife being Slovak
, I would call it Chiama, and sothat's actually probably the
pronunciation.
It's an.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Italian name, and so if you think of words like
Chianti, you can catch itGabalucci, gabalone.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know of words like Chianti, you can catch it,
I didn't know.
Gabalucci, gabalone, you know,yeah, something like that.
Yeah, it's like Italian.
I just I just fix Sicilian, Ithink is what I go with there.
All right, I know this, but youhave to share why people
typically will pick you as acoach and I would give the use
case.
You have a bunch of them, butyou have a really good one.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So tell people why they should work with you.
Many business owners start withan idea that they have
knowledge good knowledge of acraft and are really good at a
particular skill, a particularservice or a particular product.
They can only get so farbecause there's only so many
hours in the day, and then theyget really, really, really busy
and they can't keep up and allof a sudden they're not making
(03:12):
the money they really thoughtthey would make in the beginning
and they're working an awfullot of hours to do it, and this
is pretty typical.
What we bring to the table theskills that I bring them is a
way to learn how to convert thatproduct to money, to learn how
to be able to drive thatbusiness without them being the
(03:34):
one that does all the work, butbringing in a team of people to
do a bunch of it for them.
Learn how to scale that moneyup so that they're making the
money that they really want tomake, and if their appetite
grows as they grow, that's finetoo.
I've had businesses go from$700,000 to $3.2 million in
(03:57):
three years Businesses in thefive, six, seven million dollar
bracket right now that aregrowing as they learn how to
grow their teams to become alittle bit more effective than
they've been in the past.
And that's the key Learning howto be more productive, learning
how to focus on the rightthings, learning how to do the
(04:18):
do the things that make money.
And it isn't just selling thenext project, it's how you're
going to sell the next 10projects and who's going to do
them for you while you go getthe next 10 after that.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So it's kind of learning how to think so that
you're in a money-making placeinstead of a doing place.
There's a few things that cameto mind.
Just as a business owner, Ithought the world was flat and
that's what I was going to goafter.
And then I meet people like youand I'm like oh, it's actually
round.
Oh, this is way worse Round andbumpy, round and bumpy, if not
smooth.
Okay, so that's one.
And then on the journey, andyou know, the one thing I would
(04:58):
say to people is you're going tostart off with 10X is kind of
easier than 2x, meaning you'reprobably an entrepreneur and
you're too far spread and you'renot really focused on the one
or maybe one and a half thingsthat make you money.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And that's the 700 to .
You know, double comma, andafter that it's who, not how,
and that's the, and I think justto summarize that, like so,
there's a journey you'll gothrough that you don't realize,
and if you're doing who, not how, before you got the 10x is
easier than 2x piece, you weredefinitely doing it wrong,
because you're going to be,unless you got endless funds
somehow.
Anyway, my point is there is anorder and a reason for it, what
(05:34):
you do.
Now that we got that defined,let's talk about how you define
success, just for yourself.
How do you define it?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
All right.
So I'm going to define it twoways.
One is this the satisfaction ofhelping people get a result
over and over and over.
That's a satisfaction, that's astep in satisfaction.
Two, for myself is and I usethis as much as a scorecard that
(06:03):
I'm successful.
Is that how much money am Imaking and how much of that goes
to my pocket and stays with me?
So you know, like any otherbusiness owner, the objective is
to be here and be profitable.
Otherwise you aren't going tobe here for very long.
You can't sustain that.
So how much money am I makingand what's my growth curve in
(06:25):
that process?
So those are the key ways Iwould take a look at it.
You can't let go of thesatisfaction of helping somebody
, because that's what gets youup in the morning.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I couldn't agree more , and one of your definition of
success has actually influencedme.
And you've been with me throughthis.
But I had this idea that youstart with paying yourself first
and then you retain money foryour company.
And I'm like, hey, wait, that'snot the way to build a pricing
model.
I need to make this and I needto have this much margin for
error, and then I need to paythese people.
This.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So that means my price is.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
You can't be doing this for break even and you will
go break even if you do it theway I described, the other way
where you go the other way, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I mean, it's a side hustle, it's a hot one.
A lot of people run along thelines.
They think that being a smallone, two, three person business
is the inexpensive, cheap, I cango get more customers because I
can have lower prices.
And the fallacy to that is andthere's a phrase for this
economy of scale the bigcompanies are cheaper.
(07:49):
The reason small companiesthink they are cheaper is
because they don't paythemselves, and I can think of
business after business, afterbusiness after business that the
owner is not really payingthemselves, or if they are
paying themselves, it's not evenclose to what they could be
paying themselves with adifferent thinking process.
(08:09):
Yeah, and pricing, you're right, pricing is a huge piece of
this equation.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
The underlying of that is some we'll move on here
but is the idea of what yourvalue is.
So if you've undervaluedservices because you don't think
you're not a big company, butpeople sometimes buy from niche
because they think they getbetter service and they get more
fine things, so knowing yourvalue takes a lot of that and
don't be discouraged.
I know a few times I've thrownand this has worked.
(08:37):
I said, hey, listen, ourservices are $15,000 a month.
And they took it and I'm like Ithink I'm going to do that more
often Because I was just likeI'm going to throw this turd on
the table and see what happens.
That was $100,000 of theirbudget and I was like God, 8,000
a month.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, well, this is where you're sitting down and
thinking about what's the rightniche, not what's the niche I
know how to sell to.
What's the niche I should belearning how to sell to?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
We'll pick that one offline in our weekly session.
All right, you got your successdefined for you.
Tell me about your journey alittle bit.
And what's been the biggestmetaphor, ty, you had to cut to
get it.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh gosh, biggest metaphor, ty, you had to cut to
get it, oh gosh, the biggest.
I started in corporate Americaand I did about 38 years in
corporate America and in avariety of roles.
I started my life as anengineer, so I kind of think of
myself as a recovering engineertoday.
I went, evolved into thebusiness side and I for a
20-year period I was runningprofit centers for different
(09:39):
corporations, most of the timein customer service-related
areas of the company, socarrying on services and parts
sales and upgrade sales formanufactured equipment out there
globally it's actuallyworldwide.
I guess the biggest cut-to-timemoment I had was when I made the
(10:00):
decision that I'd been learninghow to make money for other
companies.
Why am I doing it?
Why am I doing it that way?
And I've been thinking thatcompanies are kind of a secure
place to be and yet I've beenthrough a handful of
acquisitions on both sides ofthe table where the company I
(10:25):
was in was bought or the companyI was in bought something else,
and I was involved in theprocess of dealing with the
merger of these differentactivities and teams and
technologies and what have you.
It was very interesting andvery challenging, but when you
stop and think about that.
How secure is that?
(10:45):
What makes that different fromgoing off on your own and
figuring out who's the customerthat I need to be reaching out
to?
And figuring out who's thecustomer that I need to be
reaching out to, what's theservices, what's the results
that they need and the servicesI can provide that get them
those results.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So you get the tie was the belief that you needed
to work for somebody else.
Right Is that I can do itmyself.
Right, and you remember theactual moment, though the straw,
so to speak, that you're like.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't really remember the actual moment.
I think it was more of aprocess than a moment.
It happened over a period oftime.
I had some family changes goingon that I was looking at.
I'd been through a lot of movesFor me.
I've moved around the country alot, lived in a lot of
different places, and so I guessit just was one more evolution
(11:42):
and sit there and say why am Idoing it this way?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Knowing you, it would be a process.
I didn't think there was goingto be like a big F you moment.
I'm out.
That's not Listen, he'sactually selling their Corral de
la Clely.
I like to point this out on theside notes.
Do you see how he did that?
He said I'm going to take youthrough a process.
No knee-jerk reactions, Whiskey, that's true.
I like that you are not here,but I think that's what makes
(12:07):
you effective as a coach is thatyou actually look at real data
and I don't want to beunemotionally because you're
considering the emotions of thedata, but at the end of the day,
you make a decision on realdata because you may feel and do
this, but the data is sayingeverything else.
Your outcomes don't match and Ithink that's where a business
owner struggles is they have alens on the data that they need
(12:30):
someone to look around and gothat you're trapped inside that
little fish eye right now.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Angle that you're trapped inside that little fish
eye right now.
Yeah Well, I'm going to get ona rant here a little bit,
because I think our educationprocess, our education system,
is terrible.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
All right, we're going to pause that rant, hold
on a second here.
We don't know that kind ofthing.
That's a story we're going topodcast on that one I do want to
know, so I want to come back tothat, maybe offline.
But I want to know something.
There's one thing to have yoursuccess defined, your journey.
It takes you where you go, andthen you're like, okay, I'm
going to do this, but thenthere's the how.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So give me maybe the top one or two things you had to
do in the how part to make thatmove.
The first thing I had to do wasto decide, and the first thing
I needed to do was build avision for myself when did I
need to be, find avenues, paths,opportunities, choices that
(13:36):
would help me get there.
And a lot of that process waslooking at different business
models, looking at differentbusinesses that I thought were
attractive to me for one reasonor another, and part of that
would be the product, part ofthat would be the model of the
(13:56):
business itself.
Part of that was who would I beserving?
And I looked at quite a fewdifferent things.
Then I started to work with afranchise broker, because one of
the things I learned was thatit's nice to want to buy a
business, which is what I wasthinking about.
It's nice to want to buy abusiness, which is what I was
(14:17):
thinking about, but it's hard tostart a business cold.
You don't have systems, youdon't have processes, you don't
have product.
Really, you can make it up asyou go along, but that's the
hard way.
Why make it up and go alongwhen somebody else already has
done that for you.
(14:38):
I tripped across the ActionCoach system going through that
exercise and discovered thatthey had essentially packaged
all the things I had learned thehard way over a 20-year period
of time and I didn't have allthose neat formulas and all
those neat tools and all thoseneat templates to be able to
(15:01):
figure out how to do this stuff.
I was doing it from my gut,based on hard lessons rather
than based on data, and I knewthat wasn't going to cut it.
So when I sat down and lookedat what they brought to the
table, I said huh it.
So when I sat down and lookedat what they brought to the
table, I said huh, that lookslike a much easier path to be
able to help a customer get aresult than sitting down and
(15:23):
trying to make it up myself.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, and you also didn't realize the competition
was out there beating you upwith all these assets you don't
even have.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Well, in that particular particular case, you
know what the worst competitoris probably your what time
people thinking they can do itthemselves?
Speaker 1 (15:42):
oh well, sure to do it yourself, or I'm one of them.
Who can I get?
Who am I?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
it's amazing how many people in how many parts of the
market think they can do thisthemselves.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And if you've done it before, I'd say, if you've been
through it, that you'reprobably speed to go build to a
5 to 10, like the jump between a2 and a $10 million business
right and you have some statsaround that Very difficult.
It's like a very low event ofthe percent to get there figured
out and a lot of times there'sa big luck piece to it.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
The numbers that I have seen tell me that 96% of
business owners never make itpast a million dollars of
revenue.
0.4% 0.4% make it to 10 million.
That's kind of a reflection onthe do-it-yourself approach.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
You and I have had this conversation lots of times,
and I'm a zero to hero one justbecause maybe if I'd taken ADHD
medicine prior, I would havehad a different thought on that.
That's a tie we need to cut.
That was a tie and we've cutthat right off too.
I'll tell you what we arehyper-focused, um, but.
But the truth is it's it's afun route and I love that.
I've gotten to the point whereI have.
Also, I know at the time Icouldn't.
(17:06):
I looked at franchising and Iknew at that time.
So I'm going to tell people thisspecifically if you know you
can't follow a system, don't bea franchise, do not even get in
that rut, because you're goingto pay a lot of money to do it
and then really be screwed andyou're firing yourself.
So, for the same reasons, youprobably aren't going to be
successful in a corporate world.
You're going to have thoseexact same challenges by
yourself and you'll find everyreason to blame anything.
(17:28):
So you got to understandyourself.
For me, zero to hero was theonly path that was going to
possibly work and it's been thepath to discover.
So just, I think people need totake that in a little bit.
I want to keep the focus on youon this.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So, since making that move about how long and what's
been the impact, that's doing itwell, okay, from a personal
perspective, I've probablyhelped about 140 people over 15
years be 15 years this month.
Um, I've enjoyed it.
(18:05):
It's been a blast.
It's always amazing to watchpeople get one more success and
then one more success and thenone more success.
To me, that's the blast, rightthere.
Learning how to make moneyreally that's been a blast.
All of those things have beenpart of the game and it's just a
(18:26):
matter of you know learning howto.
How do I position myself to beattractive to more business
owners so that they'recomfortable talking to me about
their problems?
Um, what would what?
What's the obstacle that theywant to overcome?
To me, overcoming challengeshas been kind of a lifetime game
(18:49):
.
Um, I enjoy it.
To me, it's to me, it's fun,kind of a lifetime game.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I enjoy it.
To me it's fun and there's asatisfaction in knowing you're
like.
I could be wasting away in theback and I think of your 150 or
so people you said you've helpedin 15 years.
Fair to say, more and more havecome in the last four as you've
gotten better at what you'redoing and as you're escalating.
If you refined your talentswhere you're like man, I am
really got this.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I is escalating.
If you refined your talents,where you're like man, I am
really got this.
I know who I can help reallyreally well now and I'm nailing
it.
I would not say that has beenthat simple.
Covid had a real negativeimpact for a while.
People got really really scared.
They couldn't see a future, sothey hid away.
They did not take risks, theydid not take chances.
They hid away.
They did not take risks, theydid not take chances and that
meant they did not look foroutside input very well and it's
kind of interesting, I actuallyopened up a mini mastermind
(19:39):
that was free.
How few people actually tookadvantage of that over those
years when I did that Now, he'sfree.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Steve, Now he's free.
You got to charge like $10,000on that.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Evidently I'm quite happy to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Can I throw something in there just on that note, and
I want people to think aboutthis.
And Steve, you come, jump in.
You're like, no, don't ever dothat, he's wrong.
I love the idea of, once you'vegotten some stable revenue in
for 30 days, go do somethingcrazy and say, hey, it's $10,000
to work with me and see if youcan find one or two clients to
(20:16):
do it.
And you might be like, huh, nowpart of that might be.
What I mean is maybe you'recharging $2,000 for your ticket.
Go and say go, look what otherpeople charge our experts and
just charge what they charge andbe like and take that persona a
little bit.
I'm going to do exactly that.
What do you think about that?
From an idea, because there's afolks and solopreneur here
that's getting going versus thebusiness that's established.
(20:37):
So what about that idea?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
All right.
So what's kind of interestinghere is I actually offer a
ladder of products so people canenter in at almost any price
point they want to come in thatthey feel that they can handle.
I'll tell you, the ones thatjump in a little bit
aggressively are the ones thatget stuff done because they have
(21:01):
to, um, but I can bring peoplein for something for 360 bucks
so I think that's the thing, isit so you and okay, I'm beating
the question a little bit for360 bucks.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
So I think that's the thing, is it so?
Okay, I'm baiting the questiona little bit here.
So the thing is get customersin at the level of their comfort
, as long as you can add valueand make money at that price
point, at 360, you're not everyweek with them.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
No, and now I'm going to play with what matters
Somebody who's willing to put up$2,500 a month.
That's the person who's goingto make real progress.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
So I Do you think it's because you ordered $2,500
and or they are financiallycommitted, so they're like, I'm
not they are committed.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
They are going to do the work.
They are going to step up anddo the work, and this is what
it's all about.
It's about getting out of thecomfort zone.
It's about doing things they'venever done before or they've
never done consistently before.
Doing them consistently, doingthem regularly and doing them
often, which specific thingsdepend business to business, but
(22:17):
it's always in that category.
Many times it's going back tothe beginning and setting
processes up.
I mean, we played around withthe process word a little bit
ago, but that's really a corepiece of this.
It's putting everything into aprocess, following the process.
Make the process work for you,um, but it's gotta be the things
(22:39):
in the process that work andproduce results.
And there's the key is learninghow to measure results so that
you can see what does work andwhat doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
You know it blows me away is that people will spend
minimum if they have a crappysalesperson five to 7K to bring
a salesperson in without eventhinking about it, but they'll
blink at a coach expert that canhelp them transform their
business for 2,500.
So it's not about the money youspend, because you get more of
your time.
You get more which you're theredoing, and I think this is the
(23:10):
piece where I think, as youthink, about how you're evolving
your own success.
When people think about whatthey need to do, the more often
you're holding me accountable,the more shit I'm going to get
done on a system proven to work.
And that's what 2,500 gets youversus 362.
That's you doing the work inthe afterthought of time, when
you thought about it and didn'treally spend the rest of money
(23:31):
somewhere to burn it.
Right and I think that's themindset you should have is, if
I'm willing to hire asalesperson, but I still can't,
I've done it five times.
Now pause, save 5K and go hiresomebody who can show you how to
go repeat the model and get theprocesses in place so you can
hire 10 salespeople that are allmaking 10X what you pay them.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
All right.
So here what you pay them.
All right, so here's a funstatistic.
People go to workshops, Peoplego to seminars.
People buy books.
85% of the time they never doanything with it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I'd better be hiring that.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Spend $5,000, go listen to Tony Robbins and then
don't do anything.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It blows me away.
Friends of mine go do all thatstuff and I'm like you own a
cleaning business and nothing'schanged in your business.
You feel better about yourself.
I don't get it.
I don't go to those thingsbecause I just don't see the
value in a conference.
I just feel like I'm going toget sold the whole time.
Go fill out one Grant Cardoneform and you'll get called 700
times.
Yes, right, I put your phonenumber last time I felt them
(24:32):
about.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
What does it take to get?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
you doing what needs to be done Exactly that.
I love it.
All right, let's keep movingforward on our show, because I
think I can do this with you.
I'm trying to.
I've got.
This is an important showbecause I'm stealing free advice
for people that don't reallyhave to pay $2,500 a month for
it for you.
So here we go.
What's actually been the bestbusiness advice someone's given
you?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Oh, there's an interesting question, hmm, hmm,
I guess the best bit ofinformation I've learned along
the way, and it came while I wasin college.
(25:27):
But every time somebody comesback and talks to me about
something, it goes back to thatsame lesson over and over and
over and over.
And that is when you have aproblem or a challenge or an
issue in front of you break itup into small pieces, understand
(25:52):
each piece, work to solve thepieces one at a time and
collectively put the resultsback together again for each of
the pieces solved.
And I hate to say this, but Ilearned that in engineering
school, just literally trying tosolve homework problems, work
(26:23):
problems, and every time I turnaround, the business problem in
front of me has to be solvedexactly the same way.
Sit down, think about what isthe problem, what are the pieces
of the problem, what's the dataI got to have for this piece,
what's the data I got to havefor that piece, what's the data
I got to have for that otherpiece over there, and then start
to work out what have I got tochange to change the outcome of
(26:46):
the data?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
There's, you do have to, but in that that you know,
this goes back to kind of thecentral theme of the we've been
talking about.
You have to have good processesand understanding of those
processes to be able to do that.
If you don't, you get it.
Yes, you have to have goodprocesses and understanding of
those processes to be able to dothat.
If you don't, you get nothing.
If there was a question, Ishould have asked you today,
though, and I didn't what wasthat question and how would you
answer it?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I think the universal question is how can I scale my
business up 10 times, 20 times,100 times?
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I think, though, they have to pay you for that answer
.
I don't know, but you can do itfor free.
I'm accepting that.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, the short approach to that answer is to
sit down and understand what isthe flow of money in the
business.
What is the flow of money inthe business and that starts
(27:45):
with marketing and ends withcollecting on orders completed.
What is the flow in detail andhow do I systemize that?
And then how do I put peopleinto it?
Piece by piece, by piece bypiece, in a sensible sequence.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
In a short answer, that's the one that's worked the
most.
You're obviously spot on,that's what you do for a living.
But it is so true, right?
So, as I've really kind of doveinto my business of what makes
money, what's fun, what's anideal or, and what's a future
bet that I should or should make, I know by looking at where,
like even now, like right, okay,cool, our podcasts are top of
(28:32):
funnel for us.
They're great conversations,there's a sales opportunity
right after for people buyingpromotion, but there's no real
revenue because that's all done,that's the future investment of
the cut the tie.
And so I'm like, all right, buthow do I make revenue then?
And so it's.
It's making sure the guests thatcome on also probably need some
help with lead generation, andif they, if they don't, that's
fine, cause they might be peoplewho know people, they might be
(28:53):
something else, and it's not100% fit.
But realizing that was numberone, and then saying how can I
be in one shirt all day?
It's all these little pieces ofthe process.
Instead of doing the podcastall week, you and I talk and
you're like, why don't you batchthat shit?
I'm like, all right, I'll batchit, and you start doing this
stuff and I think how do yougrow to a big company?
(29:14):
It doesn't just happen and Ithink a lot of entrepreneurs,
including myself, thought itjust would like.
All of a sudden, things aregoing great out of because they
did and the truth is it doesn'tit.
You have to be very, very, verystructured and approached and
and systematic on how you'regoing to make it happen it,
otherwise it will.
You will go through these peaksand values of revenue for the
(29:34):
rest of your life until you quit.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Do you remember the old?
Speaker 1 (29:45):
story if you invent a better mousetrap, the world
will beat itself to your door.
I've heard that Not that longof a form Never works.
Nope, Actually, China does itand sells it for 30% less than
you can make it for.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Well, there's another piece of the equation right
there, but just start with theoriginal point of view.
If they don't know you exist,why should they come?
That's right.
If they don't know your producthas a better track record of
catching mice, why should theybother?
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Here's a realization I will painfully publicly admit.
So a year ago, we started thepodcast with the idea that I
wanted to shift our things thatway, and as we built part of our
other company going out, what'sbecome very clear to me?
The road ahead on my company'spivot is long, and so I'm like,
okay, we will continue that,because that is a much bigger,
(30:36):
there's a real reason to do thatand it's also some top of
funnel.
So I moved my brand back tolead generation, which is what
we do for people, and as soon asI did, you know what's happened
.
I've written more proposals insix weeks than I did all last
year.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Isn't that interesting.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
We are.
When you tell people what youdo and you have a system and
you're very, not area butconfident about what you do
because you've done it well andyou know you do it better than
probably 99% of other.
The point is, yes, you have tolet people know what you do and
don't don't get sucked in thisidea that you shouldn't promote
yourself because you.
No one else is going to do itfor you.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
There's a, there's an auxiliary piece to this too.
Uh, and I see this all the timePeople get to a place where
they feel they've capped out butthey're not making the money
that they want to make.
So, rather than do the work ofmarketing and scaling, they go
out and look for anotheropportunity, and then another
(31:31):
opportunity, and then anotheropportunity.
And then all of a suddenthey've got trying to do four or
five or six or even 12different things and they're not
doing any of them effectivelyenough to scale up, because they
just don't have the number ofhours in the day, the number of
hours in the week to make it allwork.
And they wonder why it's notall coming together.
(31:52):
Well, if you're working on thisopportunity over here, you're
not working on this opportunityover there.
So which is it?
If you really want to do them?
Get one going so well and getit so well scaled up that
somebody else is doing the work.
So then you've got the time andthe cash to go over and do this
(32:18):
one, pick one at a time.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I think that goes back to what we said you have to
go 10x on one thing.
Now this is the value statement.
I'll leave everyone with when acoach matters.
They will help you figure outof the four things you're
working on.
It'll be painfully obvious andyou'll be like I can't believe I
spent money for that, butyou'll need to hear it from
somebody else of which is theone that's most likely to be 10
Xable in the shortest amount oftime, or six Xable in a shorter
(32:41):
time, which allows a really goodwhat's the best one to focus on
and giving you the confidenceand tools to make it, because
that's what entrepreneurs getscared of is lost opportunity.
And then they see you know therift, or I're like I need
another revenue source and Ineed another one, and they get
so thin that nothing works well.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
You just need to make this one work really well,
scale it up and then come backto the other one later.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Great, all right, I appreciate you coming on today,
so I want you to it's shamelessplug time part two who and where
?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Well, I'm not sure I understand exactly the question
who and where but where do theydo that?
Any business owner, anybusiness owner that wants
significantly more than they'vegot, should get a hold of me.
I've got a way to hold of me.
I've got a way to help almostany size business.
(33:40):
Where is they can find me onLinkedIn.
They can find me on the website.
They can just look my name upon the website.
But Action Coach WesternFairfax is the name of the firm.
Those are the places that theycan check me out and connect
(34:04):
with me.
That's probably the easiest,most consistent way that they
can find out what they want tofind out.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I'll narrow it for you too.
Us businesses that want to gonext level.
Next comma, next zero Fairenough 10x 10x.
I like that.
I think that's a zero.
Is that just one zero?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
It's got a zero in it , followed by a whole bunch more
.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, I like that.
I like zeros and commas.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
The more the better.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
My two theory characters on the thing are
Zeros and Commons, not thatEuropean crap either.
Like a real comma, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
The US version of those US and.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
US.
Who thought of that?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Yeah, I have no idea how that happened.
I don't understand.
I did a lot of business inEurope and there's still things
I don't understand where theycame from.
I understand how to work withthem, but I don't understand
where they came from.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I'll leave you with this idea, though we did come up
with like a foot and some otherweird measurements.
It's probably us who did it,Since we're Americans.
You know, it's Gulf of Americanow.
So I'll leave it at that, allright, thank you, steve, for
coming on today.
Thank you, steve, for coming ontoday.
I really appreciate you gettingon here finally and spending
some time with me.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Awesome.
Thank you very much, Thomas.
Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
And everybody who listened and got to this point.
Thank you.
If this was your first time,hope it's the first of many and
if you've been here before, I dohope you come back.
Get out there, go cut a tie, gohire a coach If you've on
LinkedIn C-H-I-A-M-A.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Thanks, steve, for coming on, all right.
Thank you, thomas.
Welcome to the Cut the Tide podcast.
I'm your host, thomas Helfrich.
I'm on a mission to help youcut the tide of whatever the
hell holding you back fromsuccess.
And also, you should bedefining that success yourself,
because if you didn't, someoneelse defined it for you and
you're going to have a toughtime reaching that and it's a
big thing.
So definitely define your ownsuccess.
Today, I am joined by my friend, steve Chiama.
How are you, steve?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Very good, thomas.
How are you Steve?
How are you doing?
Very good, tims.
I'm doing well.
We meet almost weekly andwhenever I realize.
I've known Steve a long timenow and we've never met in
person, but he finally decidedto come on.
He is an action coach, so I'mgoing to pre-sell him a little
bit.
Listen to what this guy saysabout building businesses.
He's helped people go from likea few to a whole bunch of zeros
(00:43):
.
So, like, just preface that Ilove this, so introduce yourself
and what it is you do reallyquick, and then I'm going to set
something up for you.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well, yeah, that sets the stage.
Thank you, thomas.
I am a business coach withAction Coach.
I work with business owners,guide them through a process.
It's actually a step-by-stepsystematic process.
Guide them through a processit's actually a step-by-step
systematic process.
Help them grow their businessto achieve the goals that they
were imagining when theyoriginally started the business.
(01:11):
And it turns out that it's notalways the way they see it when
they begin it.
There's a few things they needto learn along the way.
That makes it easier to getthere, and so I help them go
through those uh processes anduh get the most out of what
they're doing.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So people can stalk you while they listen um to the
show.
They can work you out, causethat's a common thing to do
because people's attention.
You're about to go hit yourphone and listen to something,
so I want you to go hit this.
Where where should they gocheck you out while you're
talking for your your show here?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Uh, they can look me up on linkedin.
They can look me up on mywebsite, which is action coach
western fairfax uh, they canlook them up.
They can look me up by my name,which is steven kiyama, on the
on the internet, and, uh,there's any number of ways they
can find me I'd like to pointout something.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I've been mispronouncing your name now for
18, 19 months.
I said she I have.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I've.
There's probably 10 people I'vemet in the world in my life.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
That got it right the first time my wife being Slovak
, I would call it Chiama, and sothat's actually probably the
pronunciation.
It's an.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Italian name, and so if you think of words like
Chianti, you can catch itGabalucci, gabalone.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know of words like Chianti, you can catch it,
I didn't know.
Gabalucci, gabalone, you know,yeah, something like that.
Yeah, it's like Italian.
I just I just fix Sicilian, Ithink is what I go with there.
All right, I know this, but youhave to share why people
typically will pick you as acoach and I would give the use
case.
You have a bunch of them, butyou have a really good one.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So tell people why they should work with you.
Many business owners start withan idea that they have
knowledge good knowledge of acraft and are really good at a
particular skill, a particularservice or a particular product.
They can only get so farbecause there's only so many
hours in the day, and then theyget really, really, really busy
and they can't keep up and allof a sudden they're not making
(03:12):
the money they really thoughtthey would make in the beginning
and they're working an awfullot of hours to do it, and this
is pretty typical.
What we bring to the table theskills that I bring them is a
way to learn how to convert thatproduct to money, to learn how
to be able to drive thatbusiness without them being the
(03:34):
one that does all the work, butbringing in a team of people to
do a bunch of it for them.
Learn how to scale that moneyup so that they're making the
money that they really want tomake, and if their appetite
grows as they grow, that's finetoo.
I've had businesses go from$700,000 to $3.2 million in
(03:57):
three years Businesses in thefive, six, seven million dollar
bracket right now that aregrowing as they learn how to
grow their teams to become alittle bit more effective than
they've been in the past.
And that's the key Learning howto be more productive, learning
how to focus on the rightthings, learning how to do the
(04:18):
do the things that make money.
And it isn't just selling thenext project, it's how you're
going to sell the next 10projects and who's going to do
them for you while you go getthe next 10 after that.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So it's kind of learning how to think so that
you're in a money-making placeinstead of a doing place.
There's a few things that cameto mind.
Just as a business owner, Ithought the world was flat and
that's what I was going to goafter.
And then I meet people like youand I'm like oh, it's actually
round.
Oh, this is way worse Round andbumpy, round and bumpy, if not
smooth.
Okay, so that's one.
And then on the journey, andyou know, the one thing I would
(04:58):
say to people is you're going tostart off with 10X is kind of
easier than 2x, meaning you'reprobably an entrepreneur and
you're too far spread and you'renot really focused on the one
or maybe one and a half thingsthat make you money.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And that's the 700 to .
You know, double comma, andafter that it's who, not how,
and that's the, and I think justto summarize that, like so,
there's a journey you'll gothrough that you don't realize,
and if you're doing who, not how, before you got the 10x is
easier than 2x piece, you weredefinitely doing it wrong,
because you're going to be,unless you got endless funds
somehow.
Anyway, my point is there is anorder and a reason for it, what
(05:34):
you do.
Now that we got that defined,let's talk about how you define
success, just for yourself.
How do you define it?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
All right.
So I'm going to define it twoways.
One is this the satisfaction ofhelping people get a result
over and over and over.
That's a satisfaction, that's astep in satisfaction.
Two, for myself is and I usethis as much as a scorecard that
(06:03):
I'm successful.
Is that how much money am Imaking and how much of that goes
to my pocket and stays with me?
So you know, like any otherbusiness owner, the objective is
to be here and be profitable.
Otherwise you aren't going tobe here for very long.
You can't sustain that.
So how much money am I makingand what's my growth curve in
(06:25):
that process?
So those are the key ways Iwould take a look at it.
You can't let go of thesatisfaction of helping somebody
, because that's what gets youup in the morning.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I couldn't agree more , and one of your definition of
success has actually influencedme.
And you've been with me throughthis.
But I had this idea that youstart with paying yourself first
and then you retain money foryour company.
And I'm like, hey, wait, that'snot the way to build a pricing
model.
I need to make this and I needto have this much margin for
error, and then I need to paythese people.
This.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So that means my price is.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
You can't be doing this for break even and you will
go break even if you do it theway I described, the other way
where you go the other way, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I mean, it's a side hustle, it's a hot one.
A lot of people run along thelines.
They think that being a smallone, two, three person business
is the inexpensive, cheap, I cango get more customers because I
can have lower prices.
And the fallacy to that is andthere's a phrase for this
economy of scale the bigcompanies are cheaper.
(07:49):
The reason small companiesthink they are cheaper is
because they don't paythemselves, and I can think of
business after business, afterbusiness after business that the
owner is not really payingthemselves, or if they are
paying themselves, it's not evenclose to what they could be
paying themselves with adifferent thinking process.
(08:09):
Yeah, and pricing, you're right, pricing is a huge piece of
this equation.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
The underlying of that is some we'll move on here
but is the idea of what yourvalue is.
So if you've undervaluedservices because you don't think
you're not a big company, butpeople sometimes buy from niche
because they think they getbetter service and they get more
fine things, so knowing yourvalue takes a lot of that and
don't be discouraged.
I know a few times I've thrownand this has worked.
(08:37):
I said, hey, listen, ourservices are $15,000 a month.
And they took it and I'm like Ithink I'm going to do that more
often Because I was just likeI'm going to throw this turd on
the table and see what happens.
That was $100,000 of theirbudget and I was like God, 8,000
a month.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, well, this is where you're sitting down and
thinking about what's the rightniche, not what's the niche I
know how to sell to.
What's the niche I should belearning how to sell to?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
We'll pick that one offline in our weekly session.
All right, you got your successdefined for you.
Tell me about your journey alittle bit.
And what's been the biggestmetaphor, ty, you had to cut to
get it.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh gosh, biggest metaphor, ty, you had to cut to
get it, oh gosh, the biggest.
I started in corporate Americaand I did about 38 years in
corporate America and in avariety of roles.
I started my life as anengineer, so I kind of think of
myself as a recovering engineertoday.
I went, evolved into thebusiness side and I for a
20-year period I was runningprofit centers for different
(09:39):
corporations, most of the timein customer service-related
areas of the company, socarrying on services and parts
sales and upgrade sales formanufactured equipment out there
globally it's actuallyworldwide.
I guess the biggest cut-to-timemoment I had was when I made the
(10:00):
decision that I'd been learninghow to make money for other
companies.
Why am I doing it?
Why am I doing it that way?
And I've been thinking thatcompanies are kind of a secure
place to be and yet I've beenthrough a handful of
acquisitions on both sides ofthe table where the company I
(10:25):
was in was bought or the companyI was in bought something else,
and I was involved in theprocess of dealing with the
merger of these differentactivities and teams and
technologies and what have you.
It was very interesting andvery challenging, but when you
stop and think about that.
How secure is that?
(10:45):
What makes that different fromgoing off on your own and
figuring out who's the customerthat I need to be reaching out
to?
And figuring out who's thecustomer that I need to be
reaching out to, what's theservices, what's the results
that they need and the servicesI can provide that get them
those results.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So you get the tie was the belief that you needed
to work for somebody else.
Right Is that I can do itmyself.
Right, and you remember theactual moment, though the straw,
so to speak, that you're like.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't really remember the actual moment.
I think it was more of aprocess than a moment.
It happened over a period oftime.
I had some family changes goingon that I was looking at.
I'd been through a lot of movesFor me.
I've moved around the country alot, lived in a lot of
different places, and so I guessit just was one more evolution
(11:42):
and sit there and say why am Idoing it this way?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Knowing you, it would be a process.
I didn't think there was goingto be like a big F you moment.
I'm out.
That's not Listen, he'sactually selling their Corral de
la Clely.
I like to point this out on theside notes.
Do you see how he did that?
He said I'm going to take youthrough a process.
No knee-jerk reactions, Whiskey, that's true.
I like that you are not here,but I think that's what makes
(12:07):
you effective as a coach is thatyou actually look at real data
and I don't want to beunemotionally because you're
considering the emotions of thedata, but at the end of the day,
you make a decision on realdata because you may feel and do
this, but the data is sayingeverything else.
Your outcomes don't match and Ithink that's where a business
owner struggles is they have alens on the data that they need
(12:30):
someone to look around and gothat you're trapped inside that
little fish eye right now.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Angle that you're trapped inside that little fish
eye right now.
Yeah Well, I'm going to get ona rant here a little bit,
because I think our educationprocess, our education system,
is terrible.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
All right, we're going to pause that rant, hold
on a second here.
We don't know that kind ofthing.
That's a story we're going topodcast on that one I do want to
know, so I want to come back tothat, maybe offline.
But I want to know something.
There's one thing to have yoursuccess defined, your journey.
It takes you where you go, andthen you're like, okay, I'm
going to do this, but thenthere's the how.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So give me maybe the top one or two things you had to
do in the how part to make thatmove.
The first thing I had to do wasto decide, and the first thing
I needed to do was build avision for myself when did I
need to be, find avenues, paths,opportunities, choices that
(13:36):
would help me get there.
And a lot of that process waslooking at different business
models, looking at differentbusinesses that I thought were
attractive to me for one reasonor another, and part of that
would be the product, part ofthat would be the model of the
(13:56):
business itself.
Part of that was who would I beserving?
And I looked at quite a fewdifferent things.
Then I started to work with afranchise broker, because one of
the things I learned was thatit's nice to want to buy a
business, which is what I wasthinking about.
It's nice to want to buy abusiness, which is what I was
(14:17):
thinking about, but it's hard tostart a business cold.
You don't have systems, youdon't have processes, you don't
have product.
Really, you can make it up asyou go along, but that's the
hard way.
Why make it up and go alongwhen somebody else already has
done that for you.
(14:38):
I tripped across the ActionCoach system going through that
exercise and discovered thatthey had essentially packaged
all the things I had learned thehard way over a 20-year period
of time and I didn't have allthose neat formulas and all
those neat tools and all thoseneat templates to be able to
(15:01):
figure out how to do this stuff.
I was doing it from my gut,based on hard lessons rather
than based on data, and I knewthat wasn't going to cut it.
So when I sat down and lookedat what they brought to the
table, I said huh it.
So when I sat down and lookedat what they brought to the
table, I said huh, that lookslike a much easier path to be
able to help a customer get aresult than sitting down and
(15:23):
trying to make it up myself.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, and you also didn't realize the competition
was out there beating you upwith all these assets you don't
even have.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Well, in that particular particular case, you
know what the worst competitoris probably your what time
people thinking they can do itthemselves?
Speaker 1 (15:42):
oh well, sure to do it yourself, or I'm one of them.
Who can I get?
Who am I?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
it's amazing how many people in how many parts of the
market think they can do thisthemselves.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And if you've done it before, I'd say, if you've been
through it, that you'reprobably speed to go build to a
5 to 10, like the jump between a2 and a $10 million business
right and you have some statsaround that Very difficult.
It's like a very low event ofthe percent to get there figured
out and a lot of times there'sa big luck piece to it.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
The numbers that I have seen tell me that 96% of
business owners never make itpast a million dollars of
revenue.
0.4% 0.4% make it to 10 million.
That's kind of a reflection onthe do-it-yourself approach.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
You and I have had this conversation lots of times,
and I'm a zero to hero one justbecause maybe if I'd taken ADHD
medicine prior, I would havehad a different thought on that.
That's a tie we need to cut.
That was a tie and we've cutthat right off too.
I'll tell you what we arehyper-focused, um, but.
But the truth is it's it's afun route and I love that.
I've gotten to the point whereI have.
Also, I know at the time Icouldn't.
(17:06):
I looked at franchising and Iknew at that time.
So I'm going to tell people thisspecifically if you know you
can't follow a system, don't bea franchise, do not even get in
that rut, because you're goingto pay a lot of money to do it
and then really be screwed andyou're firing yourself.
So, for the same reasons, youprobably aren't going to be
successful in a corporate world.
You're going to have thoseexact same challenges by
yourself and you'll find everyreason to blame anything.
(17:28):
So you got to understandyourself.
For me, zero to hero was theonly path that was going to
possibly work and it's been thepath to discover.
So just, I think people need totake that in a little bit.
I want to keep the focus on youon this.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So, since making that move about how long and what's
been the impact, that's doing itwell, okay, from a personal
perspective, I've probablyhelped about 140 people over 15
years be 15 years this month.
Um, I've enjoyed it.
(18:05):
It's been a blast.
It's always amazing to watchpeople get one more success and
then one more success and thenone more success.
To me, that's the blast, rightthere.
Learning how to make moneyreally that's been a blast.
All of those things have beenpart of the game and it's just a
(18:26):
matter of you know learning howto.
How do I position myself to beattractive to more business
owners so that they'recomfortable talking to me about
their problems?
Um, what would what?
What's the obstacle that theywant to overcome?
To me, overcoming challengeshas been kind of a lifetime game
(18:49):
.
Um, I enjoy it.
To me, it's to me, it's fun,kind of a lifetime game.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I enjoy it.
To me it's fun and there's asatisfaction in knowing you're
like.
I could be wasting away in theback and I think of your 150 or
so people you said you've helpedin 15 years.
Fair to say, more and more havecome in the last four as you've
gotten better at what you'redoing and as you're escalating.
If you refined your talentswhere you're like man, I am
really got this.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I is escalating.
If you refined your talents,where you're like man, I am
really got this.
I know who I can help reallyreally well now and I'm nailing
it.
I would not say that has beenthat simple.
Covid had a real negativeimpact for a while.
People got really really scared.
They couldn't see a future, sothey hid away.
They did not take risks, theydid not take chances.
They hid away.
They did not take risks, theydid not take chances and that
meant they did not look foroutside input very well and it's
kind of interesting, I actuallyopened up a mini mastermind
(19:39):
that was free.
How few people actually tookadvantage of that over those
years when I did that Now, he'sfree.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Steve, Now he's free.
You got to charge like $10,000on that.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Evidently I'm quite happy to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Can I throw something in there just on that note, and
I want people to think aboutthis.
And Steve, you come, jump in.
You're like, no, don't ever dothat, he's wrong.
I love the idea of, once you'vegotten some stable revenue in
for 30 days, go do somethingcrazy and say, hey, it's $10,000
to work with me and see if youcan find one or two clients to
(20:16):
do it.
And you might be like, huh, nowpart of that might be.
What I mean is maybe you'recharging $2,000 for your ticket.
Go and say go, look what otherpeople charge our experts and
just charge what they charge andbe like and take that persona a
little bit.
I'm going to do exactly that.
What do you think about that?
From an idea, because there's afolks and solopreneur here
that's getting going versus thebusiness that's established.
(20:37):
So what about that idea?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
All right.
So what's kind of interestinghere is I actually offer a
ladder of products so people canenter in at almost any price
point they want to come in thatthey feel that they can handle.
I'll tell you, the ones thatjump in a little bit
aggressively are the ones thatget stuff done because they have
(21:01):
to, um, but I can bring peoplein for something for 360 bucks
so I think that's the thing, isit so you and okay, I'm beating
the question a little bit for360 bucks.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
So I think that's the thing, is it so?
Okay, I'm baiting the questiona little bit here.
So the thing is get customersin at the level of their comfort
, as long as you can add valueand make money at that price
point, at 360, you're not everyweek with them.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
No, and now I'm going to play with what matters
Somebody who's willing to put up$2,500 a month.
That's the person who's goingto make real progress.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
So I Do you think it's because you ordered $2,500
and or they are financiallycommitted, so they're like, I'm
not they are committed.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
They are going to do the work.
They are going to step up anddo the work, and this is what
it's all about.
It's about getting out of thecomfort zone.
It's about doing things they'venever done before or they've
never done consistently before.
Doing them consistently, doingthem regularly and doing them
often, which specific thingsdepend business to business, but
(22:17):
it's always in that category.
Many times it's going back tothe beginning and setting
processes up.
I mean, we played around withthe process word a little bit
ago, but that's really a corepiece of this.
It's putting everything into aprocess, following the process.
Make the process work for you,um, but it's gotta be the things
(22:39):
in the process that work andproduce results.
And there's the key is learninghow to measure results so that
you can see what does work andwhat doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
You know it blows me away is that people will spend
minimum if they have a crappysalesperson five to 7K to bring
a salesperson in without eventhinking about it, but they'll
blink at a coach expert that canhelp them transform their
business for 2,500.
So it's not about the money youspend, because you get more of
your time.
You get more which you're theredoing, and I think this is the
(23:10):
piece where I think, as youthink, about how you're evolving
your own success.
When people think about whatthey need to do, the more often
you're holding me accountable,the more shit I'm going to get
done on a system proven to work.
And that's what 2,500 gets youversus 362.
That's you doing the work inthe afterthought of time, when
you thought about it and didn'treally spend the rest of money
(23:31):
somewhere to burn it.
Right and I think that's themindset you should have is, if
I'm willing to hire asalesperson, but I still can't,
I've done it five times.
Now pause, save 5K and go hiresomebody who can show you how to
go repeat the model and get theprocesses in place so you can
hire 10 salespeople that are allmaking 10X what you pay them.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
All right.
So here what you pay them.
All right, so here's a funstatistic.
People go to workshops, Peoplego to seminars.
People buy books.
85% of the time they never doanything with it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I'd better be hiring that.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Spend $5,000, go listen to Tony Robbins and then
don't do anything.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It blows me away.
Friends of mine go do all thatstuff and I'm like you own a
cleaning business and nothing'schanged in your business.
You feel better about yourself.
I don't get it.
I don't go to those thingsbecause I just don't see the
value in a conference.
I just feel like I'm going toget sold the whole time.
Go fill out one Grant Cardoneform and you'll get called 700
times.
Yes, right, I put your phonenumber last time I felt them
(24:32):
about.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
What does it take to get?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
you doing what needs to be done Exactly that.
I love it.
All right, let's keep movingforward on our show, because I
think I can do this with you.
I'm trying to.
I've got.
This is an important showbecause I'm stealing free advice
for people that don't reallyhave to pay $2,500 a month for
it for you.
So here we go.
What's actually been the bestbusiness advice someone's given
you?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Oh, there's an interesting question, hmm, hmm,
I guess the best bit ofinformation I've learned along
the way, and it came while I wasin college.
(25:27):
But every time somebody comesback and talks to me about
something, it goes back to thatsame lesson over and over and
over and over.
And that is when you have aproblem or a challenge or an
issue in front of you break itup into small pieces, understand
(25:52):
each piece, work to solve thepieces one at a time and
collectively put the resultsback together again for each of
the pieces solved.
And I hate to say this, but Ilearned that in engineering
school, just literally trying tosolve homework problems, work
(26:23):
problems, and every time I turnaround, the business problem in
front of me has to be solvedexactly the same way.
Sit down, think about what isthe problem, what are the pieces
of the problem, what's the dataI got to have for this piece,
what's the data I got to havefor that piece, what's the data
I got to have for that otherpiece over there, and then start
to work out what have I got tochange to change the outcome of
(26:46):
the data?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
There's, you do have to, but in that that you know,
this goes back to kind of thecentral theme of the we've been
talking about.
You have to have good processesand understanding of those
processes to be able to do that.
If you don't, you get it.
Yes, you have to have goodprocesses and understanding of
those processes to be able to dothat.
If you don't, you get nothing.
If there was a question, Ishould have asked you today,
though, and I didn't what wasthat question and how would you
answer it?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I think the universal question is how can I scale my
business up 10 times, 20 times,100 times?
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I think, though, they have to pay you for that answer
.
I don't know, but you can do itfor free.
I'm accepting that.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, the short approach to that answer is to
sit down and understand what isthe flow of money in the
business.
What is the flow of money inthe business and that starts
(27:45):
with marketing and ends withcollecting on orders completed.
What is the flow in detail andhow do I systemize that?
And then how do I put peopleinto it?
Piece by piece, by piece bypiece, in a sensible sequence.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
In a short answer, that's the one that's worked the
most.
You're obviously spot on,that's what you do for a living.
But it is so true, right?
So, as I've really kind of doveinto my business of what makes
money, what's fun, what's anideal or, and what's a future
bet that I should or should make, I know by looking at where,
like even now, like right, okay,cool, our podcasts are top of
(28:32):
funnel for us.
They're great conversations,there's a sales opportunity
right after for people buyingpromotion, but there's no real
revenue because that's all done,that's the future investment of
the cut the tie.
And so I'm like, all right, buthow do I make revenue then?
And so it's.
It's making sure the guests thatcome on also probably need some
help with lead generation, andif they, if they don't, that's
fine, cause they might be peoplewho know people, they might be
(28:53):
something else, and it's not100% fit.
But realizing that was numberone, and then saying how can I
be in one shirt all day?
It's all these little pieces ofthe process.
Instead of doing the podcastall week, you and I talk and
you're like, why don't you batchthat shit?
I'm like, all right, I'll batchit, and you start doing this
stuff and I think how do yougrow to a big company?
(29:14):
It doesn't just happen and Ithink a lot of entrepreneurs,
including myself, thought itjust would like.
All of a sudden, things aregoing great out of because they
did and the truth is it doesn'tit.
You have to be very, very, verystructured and approached and
and systematic on how you'regoing to make it happen it,
otherwise it will.
You will go through these peaksand values of revenue for the
(29:34):
rest of your life until you quit.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Do you remember the old?
Speaker 1 (29:45):
story if you invent a better mousetrap, the world
will beat itself to your door.
I've heard that Not that longof a form Never works.
Nope, Actually, China does itand sells it for 30% less than
you can make it for.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Well, there's another piece of the equation right
there, but just start with theoriginal point of view.
If they don't know you exist,why should they come?
That's right.
If they don't know your producthas a better track record of
catching mice, why should theybother?
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Here's a realization I will painfully publicly admit.
So a year ago, we started thepodcast with the idea that I
wanted to shift our things thatway, and as we built part of our
other company going out, what'sbecome very clear to me?
The road ahead on my company'spivot is long, and so I'm like,
okay, we will continue that,because that is a much bigger,
(30:36):
there's a real reason to do thatand it's also some top of
funnel.
So I moved my brand back tolead generation, which is what
we do for people, and as soon asI did, you know what's happened
.
I've written more proposals insix weeks than I did all last
year.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Isn't that interesting.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
We are.
When you tell people what youdo and you have a system and
you're very, not area butconfident about what you do
because you've done it well andyou know you do it better than
probably 99% of other.
The point is, yes, you have tolet people know what you do and
don't don't get sucked in thisidea that you shouldn't promote
yourself because you.
No one else is going to do itfor you.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
There's a, there's an auxiliary piece to this too.
Uh, and I see this all the timePeople get to a place where
they feel they've capped out butthey're not making the money
that they want to make.
So, rather than do the work ofmarketing and scaling, they go
out and look for anotheropportunity, and then another
(31:31):
opportunity, and then anotheropportunity.
And then all of a suddenthey've got trying to do four or
five or six or even 12different things and they're not
doing any of them effectivelyenough to scale up, because they
just don't have the number ofhours in the day, the number of
hours in the week to make it allwork.
And they wonder why it's notall coming together.
(31:52):
Well, if you're working on thisopportunity over here, you're
not working on this opportunityover there.
So which is it?
If you really want to do them?
Get one going so well and getit so well scaled up that
somebody else is doing the work.
So then you've got the time andthe cash to go over and do this
(32:18):
one, pick one at a time.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I think that goes back to what we said you have to
go 10x on one thing.
Now this is the value statement.
I'll leave everyone with when acoach matters.
They will help you figure outof the four things you're
working on.
It'll be painfully obvious andyou'll be like I can't believe I
spent money for that, butyou'll need to hear it from
somebody else of which is theone that's most likely to be 10
Xable in the shortest amount oftime, or six Xable in a shorter
(32:41):
time, which allows a really goodwhat's the best one to focus on
and giving you the confidenceand tools to make it, because
that's what entrepreneurs getscared of is lost opportunity.
And then they see you know therift, or I're like I need
another revenue source and Ineed another one, and they get
so thin that nothing works well.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
You just need to make this one work really well,
scale it up and then come backto the other one later.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Great, all right, I appreciate you coming on today,
so I want you to it's shamelessplug time part two who and where
?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Well, I'm not sure I understand exactly the question
who and where but where do theydo that?
Any business owner, anybusiness owner that wants
significantly more than they'vegot, should get a hold of me.
I've got a way to hold of me.
I've got a way to help almostany size business.
(33:40):
Where is they can find me onLinkedIn.
They can find me on the website.
They can just look my name upon the website.
But Action Coach WesternFairfax is the name of the firm.
Those are the places that theycan check me out and connect
(34:04):
with me.
That's probably the easiest,most consistent way that they
can find out what they want tofind out.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I'll narrow it for you too.
Us businesses that want to gonext level.
Next comma, next zero Fairenough 10x 10x.
I like that.
I think that's a zero.
Is that just one zero?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
It's got a zero in it , followed by a whole bunch more
.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, I like that.
I like zeros and commas.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
The more the better.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
My two theory characters on the thing are
Zeros and Commons, not thatEuropean crap either.
Like a real comma, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
The US version of those US and.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
US.
Who thought of that?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Yeah, I have no idea how that happened.
I don't understand.
I did a lot of business inEurope and there's still things
I don't understand where theycame from.
I understand how to work withthem, but I don't understand
where they came from.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I'll leave you with this idea, though we did come up
with like a foot and some otherweird measurements.
It's probably us who did it,Since we're Americans.
You know, it's Gulf of Americanow.
So I'll leave it at that, allright, thank you, steve, for
coming on today.
Thank you, steve, for coming ontoday.
I really appreciate you gettingon here finally and spending
some time with me.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Awesome.
Thank you very much, Thomas.
Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
And everybody who listened and got to this point.
Thank you.
If this was your first time,hope it's the first of many and
if you've been here before, I dohope you come back.
Get out there, go cut a tie, gohire a coach If you've on
LinkedIn C-H-I-A-M-A.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Thanks, steve, for coming on, all right.
Thank you, thomas.
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