[00:00:01] Jeff then was working in a corporate bubble. A pension, a 9-to-5, a boring commute. But Jeff wanted autonomy to spend time with his family, to work out, to surf and enjoy the things that matter to him.
[00:00:15] Suiting up every day as a corporate IT director was never going to give him that. I literally felt like a rat in a cage, you know, like hey run on your little hands to wheel, suck your water all day,
[00:00:27] run back home to where you live at the beach. Looking across a table of guys that maybe could have been my dad. I was like, I cannot do this for another 20 or 30 years until I get a pension.
[00:00:37] Jeff quit his job to start Create Studios, a web design and digital marketing company. At first it was exactly what he wanted and he exceeded his salary goals. But after a health crisis, Jeff realized things weren't working.
[00:00:51] He'd become a master technician, focused on the day-to-day he couldn't see his business as an asset or how it was going to serve his life in the long term. He was done building websites, his passion was gone, something needed to change. Then he met EMyth coach Kay Robinson.
[00:01:10] When I first met Jeff, his first comment was, I dread going to my office. And I have a successful company. I don't have a cash flow problem. Our revenues are up, I dread going to work.
[00:01:25] Now after only nine months, Jeff loves going to work. The difference is night and day. He's leading his team rather than managing their projects. His employees feel purpose in their work and ownership over their positions. Create Studios is growing into the business Jeff always dreamed it could be.
[00:01:43] I'll be talking with Jeff and Kay on this month's episode of On It, a production by EMyth. Each month we tell the stories of owners and how they transformed their companies. You'll learn about their struggles, their successes, and the changes they made
[00:02:01] to create the business they always wanted. One that, in the end, serves the life they want to live. I'm Martin Kamensky, CEO of EMyth. EMyth is the original business coaching company and over the last three decades we've worked with tens of thousands of business owners
[00:02:18] to help them systematize their business, improve their bottom lines, and find more meaning in their work. Schedule a free one-hour session with an Emyth coach at Emyth.com. That's E-M-Y-T-H.com. We'll personally match you with a coach based on your industry, location, and what help you're looking for.
[00:02:39] You'll have a real coaching experience and learn the steps necessary to produce both immediate results and long-term change. Learn more on our website, Emyth.com. So I want to start off by thanking both of you, both Kay and Jeff for joining us today
[00:02:58] and talking a bit about Jeff's business, Create Studios. Glad to be here. As well. Excellent. So let's start off just by Jeff letting you share with everybody listening the quick synopsis of what your business is about and how you got started doing what you do. Sure.
[00:03:19] I've been somewhat of a techie slash creative. Way back in the day, I got a computer science degree in minor and graphic design in the early 2000s. I did the corporate thing and worked at a 200 person IT shop.
[00:03:32] We went into management and managing coders and working in different parts of that. Got sick of driving downtown 40 minutes, 30 to 40 minutes every day and just kind of plateaued there after six and a half years. And I mainly started this business in 2005 here in Jacksonville, Florida
[00:03:50] to just have a sense of autonomy. It was kind of what's described in the Emyth book. You know, hey, I'm doing this here. I can do this better on my own. And I went out and achieved that. And the focus was web design at the time.
[00:04:07] Now it's web design and online marketing. And as of right now here in 2016, we exist to grow businesses with beautiful web design and help them with measurable results as they treads the world of the digital landscape. Everybody's digital. Everybody's mobile. Everybody's online. So that's what we do.
[00:04:26] And we're a married band of six including myself. And we have a few writers and overflow coders we use, but our team is six. And we've celebrated year 10 back in October. Wow. That's worth some congratulations. That's a huge accomplishment.
[00:04:45] Tell me what it was that you realized at that point when you were at your corporate job before you started off on your own. What was it that you realized about that job that made you choose to go in a totally different direction? Sure.
[00:05:03] So I, the IT shop, so it was a 2,000 person company. It was a municipality. So water, electric wastewater and a 200 person strong IT department. I was an interim director at the time. So it was the CIO and 10 of us. I really enjoyed the fellowship with Kamari.
[00:05:20] I really enjoyed the job. Me and one on left, the CEO talking me on the way out. Is there anything we can do to change your minds? And for years I knew I could go back there. So very stable, pension driven kind of place. But here I am.
[00:05:32] I think I was like 28 at the time. I'm 39 now. Looking across the table with guys that maybe could have been my dad who I highly respected. I was like, I cannot do this for another 20 or 30 years until I get the pension.
[00:05:44] And being the young rambunctious kid I was, I just pulled the ripcord all in good terms. I had a plan and I did it and just left. And the rest is history. A lot of history in that 10 years. But yeah, I was just, I was bored.
[00:05:57] I mean it was a civil service mindset. It was the same day in and day out. And don't forget, I hate lines. I hate lines at Disney World. I call ahead to order food if I'm going to pick it up. Like I have four lines.
[00:06:08] Traffic is like the line of law lines. So I literally felt like a rat in a cage. You know, like hey run on your little hands to wheel. Suck your water all day and run back home to where you live at the beach.
[00:06:19] And it's quite different from downtown. So those were the drivers, that autonomy and the fact that I looked across the room and I was just like, no, this is not me for the next 20 or 30 years. So all right, we heard about how you got started
[00:06:35] and what kind of drove you out of that job. Jeff, maybe you can tell me what that was like. Talk to me about the experience you had when you first set off on your own and your business was yours and you started ramping things up.
[00:06:54] Yes, I'll give you the first one to three years. So all right, so the year is 2005. I launched out of my own in fall and I love autonomy. So I'm working at home. I only have one child at the time who's like one years old.
[00:07:07] I have four now ages 11 to four. So the house was a lot quieter. There was a space at home. And yeah, it was kind of funny. I would just keep the same habits. Like if I didn't start work by eight, I felt guilty
[00:07:18] and I like surfing a lot. So if I was out surfing, I was like checking my watch and the first big mistake I made was I had a lot of safety nuts. I could have always gone back to the place I worked
[00:07:28] and even three years ago we might get to that later actually considered going back when Google really changed their algorithms and kind of wrecked my recurring revenue model. But so I knew the door was open there and I had about $15,000 to burn through
[00:07:41] and savings and I had forecasted maybe, you know, I don't know what I needed at the time. Maybe I needed four or five grand after taxes to live on. So I probably had about nine or ten grand in business forecasted.
[00:07:53] So I was like, oh two or three months kind of covered. You know, two or three months with the savings covered. The first major lesson I learned though is boy, you stack those deals up and with any kind of project, website projects too, just things take longer
[00:08:07] than you thought. I was dipping those savings hard for the first six months and after six months I turned a corner and it wasn't so like, oh my god, you know, if I got to take $2,000 out of the savings again or $3,000
[00:08:21] this is going to get kind of sketchy. And once again I always knew I could go back to the place I worked. So there wasn't a true fear there but there was definitely a fear this is not going to work out.
[00:08:28] But in six months it just started clicking and then I was like superstar technician so I'd have some really high points, some really days were a lot busier than I wanted. It's kind of like when you're the solopreneur technician it's always feast or famine.
[00:08:42] When you're busy it starts to bury you so you're like grateful there's stuff going on but you're like ending your day longer later than you want, you're starting earlier than you want and then when it's you know kind of famine-ish you're not like
[00:08:55] hey I'm going surfing and they're going to go hang out with the kids you're like dang this prospect better sign up hurry hurry so I went through a lot of that. Overall though I liked the autonomy obviously I stuck with it and you know where that technician went
[00:09:07] kind of did everything for the first two or three years and lightly experimented with outsourcing. And what brought you to that breaking point where you were really honestly considering just giving that up and going back to the corporate gig? Yeah so it's a pretty emotional
[00:09:24] story for me so when I was 35 in the year 2011 I got very sick I had just this this infection and they couldn't diagnose it so from like December to February I basically just ran a fever and had night sweats and I ended up in the
[00:09:38] hospital for 18 days on antibiotics and you know these four little kids and when I woke up from that you know my view of life just sporadically changed. I don't think I'd ever really faced hardship to tell you the truth and then a year
[00:09:52] later so I get through that you know I'm alive I'm doing okay a year later Google changed algorithm updates and at that time I was kind of a glorified technician so I had myself like doing all the sales kind of doing 95% of the communication that
[00:10:08] people doing the work underneath me and we were kind of at a place where I was finally you know in a way printing money we had a very good model where we could rank companies quickly. I mean we had companies ranking for like home insurance Florida spot number
[00:10:24] three spot number seven spot number 10 we were number one for web there was all these link building practices which people may or may not have heard of and we made through many updates and then this one just dropped all those rankings so all the
[00:10:36] number ones and threes went to 10 and within 30 days they were like a hundred so at that point I was just like dang I don't have an in game for my business like I got a glorified job right now granted I got this good like
[00:10:48] lifestyle and I'm not tied to any corporate grind but what do I really have and so the thought of retirement and buying back some years of pension driven place I was at because I could buy back six years and you know you can retire
[00:11:00] with 20 to 32 years and I wouldn't talk to them and they're like yeah sure come on back it was tempting but that was honestly really a fear response obviously when I got definitely ill and recovered and then had the Google thing happen I was just
[00:11:12] kind of in catastrophic mode so yeah I strongly considered actually made me a job offer they drug their feet for nine months it was actually blessing in the sky but when they finally said hey we're going to execute I was just like I'm sorry you know my heart's
[00:11:24] not in this like let's stop it and they're like okay well I first of all just thanks for sharing that I can tell it obviously impacted you in a huge way you know you it was a personal realization it's funny whenever things like that when your body
[00:11:46] jumps up and tells you some things that something's off and it can be I've heard stories from a lot of different people and about a lot of different things but the bottom line is that it's a good wake up call sometimes and seems like it at least
[00:12:06] spun you in a good direction at the end I Kay I wonder if if you've encountered before so if you think about where Jeff was at in terms of having started out and then he's built a job for himself basically and and he's his own
[00:12:30] employee and he's doing all the work how often is that what you're seeing when you encounter a new client most often is an owner who started a business that they're good at or they had a good idea about and they started and they're the technician
[00:12:46] they get it going they get it successful and they go I'm tired of being the technician I need to do this a different way I want I want to have my life so that's a really common story for business owners when they when they contact
[00:13:02] us and say how do I stop being the technician how can I become the leader of my business when I first met Jeff his first comment was I dread going to my office and he said and I have a successful company I don't have a cash flow problem
[00:13:20] our revenues are up I dread going to work and it was because he was still being the technician and he was in a life of a business owner being the technician is often the first step but then you evolve and you grow and you realize okay that's not
[00:13:38] that's not where I want to stay it's kind of the same thing the job he was I don't want to stay here I said that I got a big smile on my face because that's the sign that's the sign when a business owner is ready to become
[00:13:52] the leader of their business when they said I dread going in and doing one more technical thing and and Jeff what was that conversation like for you the first time you connected with K sure so I got to pick up
[00:14:08] there's one last little part to the story that's cool so in 2012 when Google slapped us hard revenue went up 40% that year annually so here I am in May going on printing money on recurring revenue and by when that thing happened the Google update
[00:14:24] I thought I'd be out of business by fall because when I got recurring revenue a component of that in our business and it's 50% right now of our businesses recurring and we're growing it cash flow just smoothed out so I was just like I'm done in fall
[00:14:36] instead of ironic thing was revenue grew 40% that year back in the web design again we had never left it but then that started so that was 2012 and K and I started in 2015 this three year journey of me growing the company but just not
[00:14:52] I mean I've been doing it so long by then right it was year 7 8 and 9 it was just uninspiring I had all my employees virtual even if they were in the same city I was in so it was kind of like how quickly
[00:15:04] and efficiently can I get through the day to maximize the best world in just life and there was no people interaction vision so that just got freaking old I remember that point I turned down going back to corporate so then I was just like kind of devil
[00:15:20] I knew I shouldn't have gone back to corporate so I wasn't regretting that but I was just like oh my god this is like I cannot work the way I'm working now for in 10 years if I'm working this style I'm working now
[00:15:32] I want to shoot myself so to speak so that was kind of the crisis and I was just like I'm going to give the pain so when I first had a conversation with Kay I kind of dabbled in the waters I mean we all have like
[00:15:44] flip book and Zeit and these reader things and top 5 tips to be an entrepreneur and you know 2016 set your vision but I sold Kay that was like you know just snacking off chips and thinking you're going to have a sustainable meal and like take care of your body
[00:16:00] so I just kind of dabbled with stuff I even started the emith thing on my own and I didn't have time to do it without a coach and so yeah I was just kind of walling around I get you know 3 steps forward and take 3 back
[00:16:14] I go for uh go back to step 1 so I just felt like I was going nowhere and then with Kay I had a really good connection now that you're looking back on it can you attribute the going 3 steps forward 4 steps back to anything in particular
[00:16:30] like what was missing about that Kay so in the 3 years from 2012 onwards the financial success was pretty good for me the hours were reasonable but I had no company culture there was no vision for create studios there was no human interaction
[00:16:46] so I would go to this really cool office I had by myself lots of space and I'd say hi to some of the other tenants there but I mean it was just lonely I mean not because I'm sitting there going oh I wish someone would talk to me
[00:16:58] but it's just like day in and day out I'm on the hill everyday and it just rolls back down it just felt kind of purposeless and meaningless and heck I mean web designs are great trust me I'm passionate about technology but you know I've been doing them 7 years
[00:17:10] so it was just like oh it was just grindy you know and you know the grind when that bad was working about 30 hours a week and making good money but it was just kind of killing my soul so Kay what was the first step you took with Jeff
[00:17:26] to turning this business into something that wasn't going to crush his soul well one of the important things for Jeff is his life, his family, his kids, his church and his business and so the first thing was to talk to him about changing his relationship
[00:17:48] to his business so that his business could serve his life and that and to refine that passion that he had for this business that he created he started it with great passion so what he said earlier which is really true they had no vision, they had no culture
[00:18:06] it was just work so we started with that in the EMF terms what is your value, what is your passion what is your purpose and we started there and Jeff I'm just imagining you to be a results oriented get it done
[00:18:28] where is it at, what do I have to do let's not get out kind of person that's what I'm picking up so far and talking with you and what was that like the idea that you were going to start off this experience by talking about
[00:18:42] your values and your vision yeah so a two fold answer there personally I love to journal, meditate, pray all that stuff so I'm down with doing that all day long so the personal vision passion purpose thing came pretty easily as soon as we turn the corner
[00:18:58] because that's module one, as soon as we turn the corner module two the company stuff and by the way so when Kay started this is a good point, Kay was like all you need to do is five or six hours a week can you commit five or six
[00:19:10] hours a week to not doing technician and managerial stuff and I was like yeah having worked a certain way for like nine years at that point it was a bit challenging but I did it but then what would happen is she's like
[00:19:22] alright your exercise for this next two weeks is to work on the company vision and here I am like vision smidgen you know so I literally sit out on the porch at work and I would just I can write all day long
[00:19:34] and communicate all day long but I was like who gives a rat's tail about like they're just websites this that and other so Kay's first big step was just to realign me of why and I know this sounds funny because we really did have, there was a culture
[00:19:46] there and there was a sales process in certain things when you met me as a sales person it was all alive and fun we're going to do all these great things but inside Kay really had to realign me and get me in touch with how much
[00:19:58] websites and online marketing do impact the business and now importantly are today and how much, how your employees could care to know about that and learn that so honestly that was a huge mind shift and every mindset shift and every
[00:20:10] time I sat down to work on like vision and culture oh my god it was just so painful but once I got through that and I saw some of the first fruits of it amongst my team and inside internally I was like let's go.
[00:20:22] Kay what was one of those first really impactful changes that you saw happen coming after that? The thing that I saw the immediate result was that his staff responded because he immediately started sharing his vision with the staff and they used to come together as a group
[00:20:42] and talk about projects like where's this project where's that project and Jeff made a shift from you know being a manager and a technician to learning how to be a leader and I think that was when he had that vision and he was posed to share that
[00:20:58] with his staff the staff responded because people really do want leadership they love when they see that the company has a vision that there's a direction that they're going and Jeff already had really good people and when he started to show his leadership
[00:21:18] which he didn't realize he had in him but he's actually a great leader just naturally so when he brought his vision to his staff and shared it with them they cared and they responded to him as a leader and I think that really changed the whole energy of
[00:21:38] the company for Jeff and for his staff so Jeff what was that like for you turning from a technician and sometimes a manager into a leader did were you even aware that that was the kind of a transition you were making at that point no and I
[00:22:02] you know leadership is so cliche and Steven Covey Seven Habits and you know but all that stuff is actually really true I'm a bit of a rebel so I don't like to use the word like I'm a leader and I'm going to be a leader in the community
[00:22:16] and a leader of my family that's out there but with that said this thing that's best described on this podcast and us is leadership it really works and it's not so much about thinking you're going to be on a stage like Dale Carnegie or
[00:22:30] Seven Habits are highly effective people but it's just I don't know what it is it's just like I guess casting a vision calling people to a higher place and in doing that I got called to a higher place of course I loved it
[00:22:42] because I've been kind of doing this variations of the same thing for at that point nine years so I loved it and then the staff loved it it was really funny the team meetings we would meet and they would always turn in a project update so I kind
[00:22:54] of knew in my head I needed to have like these all team meetings and then they would turn in these painful project updates when Kay had that switch flip the first meeting we had was in August if I'm not
[00:23:04] mistaken and I'd spent many hours on our company culture which we already had a culture at that time it was pretty good so once we got on paper identified it that was like the best funnest meeting and so then we had
[00:23:16] another one and then we came up with this like kind of mission statement which is to grow businesses online with beautiful design and measurable results and now everything we do is it beautifully designed and you know is it measurable is it going to
[00:23:28] have an impact on their business and at first I was just like how are we going to come up with some cheesy website for small to medium businesses tagline BS but we really believe in that so you know from establishing the culture to getting kind of
[00:23:42] what we're about as a company it just created this momentum and this thing that became shared among us and kind of became definitely bigger than my head in space alone and bigger than the individual team members had in their space and it's like we kind of all united
[00:23:58] kind of like that moment at the concert when everybody comes along that's like the moment you look for so it's kind of a analogy of how it came together we kind of all got in the same room and sang the same songs and looked at each other
[00:24:10] and just identified and honestly I'm not trying to be too magical or mystical here but that started in August and like things are night and day here we are now you know end of January 2016 and I actually enjoy going to work I don't count hours
[00:24:24] at the clock of how many you know how long I'm working in the day and I just enjoy being with the people and I enjoy growing it and I've seen the fruits of it and you know kind of hooked there's so much more to come
[00:24:34] if we collectively as a team and as a company keep out this and yes as a leader using that word on at the helm and you know I enjoy it it's just what's supposed to be happening right now well I gotta say having
[00:24:46] somebody at the helm I won't call you a leader if you don't want me to having somebody at the helm who is that fired up and passionate about creating the vision and sharing it and then seeing the results happen that you are what's making
[00:25:02] that magic happen it is magical it's magical in a way what what it's like to put a spark in a company and see it take off and you gotta know that your team and your people are benefiting from it just as much as you are
[00:25:18] you know you may love coming to work now and that's a huge change for you but having it's gotta be touching the lives of everybody on the team do you have you heard any stories or do you have any anecdotes about what your team is feeling
[00:25:34] now since this change has taken place sure so there's there's four of us that are customer facing the first one and she came on board about a year and a half ago she has a master's in organizational psychology she's brilliant so she was
[00:25:50] already helping push me in this direction and that was good we have two younger staff they're college graduates university graduates with marketing degrees they're about two or three years out of the university and yeah I mean they just responded real well
[00:26:04] they're in that stage in life where it's young and it's fun and they love our culture and then finally the coder our main coder and main designer they've been on board for a long time like four years and maybe three years they were already fully
[00:26:16] committed to create studios they just never got to put it in words they're celebrated amongst the team members so they really were just like this is great and I saw a passion and commitment from them
[00:26:28] which I kind of knew was already there because we had years under our belt but it just made me smile and chuckle and I don't get very sentimental at work I'm kind of like let's get it done you know once again the young people are just
[00:26:40] along for their eye they've kind of lucked out coming in at the right time and then that's where the other team members fell in this transformation that's been going on so what I would like to add is all of that
[00:26:52] is true and it was great but the same process also pointed out another staff person who was not on board who was not aligned to the company culture who really didn't share the values and so it pointed out one position that actually was not working and
[00:27:14] once Jeff had really gotten everyone on board and gotten the vision in place and the values we didn't mention but he also established the company brand and once he established the company brand he realized that one person didn't fit it wasn't working for her
[00:27:32] it wasn't working for him so it gave him the leadership to help her leave the company and bring in someone who was more aligned to the company brand and so that was a really good transition I think for her and for the company absolutely
[00:27:52] it's not uncommon at all when you bring so what the vision and defining the brand and actually talking about the culture in a way that you can write down where it's clear what you're bringing is clarity and there's a way that when you bring
[00:28:10] new layers of clarity to a company things like this rise to the surface and the more clear you are about it actually the easier it is to see where you have people who are aligning with you and who are part of your camp
[00:28:28] and where you have people who aren't fitting anymore I can only imagine the change that had for you Jeff and not just on the team and the team chemistry I'm sure it got better as you realize that everyone here is really marching to the same beat
[00:28:48] or singing the same song it's got to have an impact on the bottom line too yes absolutely Martin the other result from that was when Jeff went to replace that position we used the we created a position agreement which is something he didn't have before
[00:29:08] so whoever he was going to hire in this actually was one of the most important positions in the company because it supported the recurring revenue which is a major product and service of create studios Jeff took the time to learn how to create a position agreement
[00:29:24] that really clearly outlined the results for this position and the standards and he put in the company brand and its values in this position agreement and he re-hired for the position he got the right person he got someone who really was passionate about the job absolutely
[00:29:46] I want to make a segue here Martin to the position agreements in that staff mentoring process if you don't mind yeah yeah go for it so my e-miss leadership experience has been my personal vision and mission didn't have too much of a problem with that
[00:30:02] company culture vision brand and I got out of there saw it resonate among my team and then the next step was writing these position agreements we really love attention to detail and since we have a lot of autonomy like you can come in at 8
[00:30:16] you can come in at 10 in the morning generally our hours are 10-6 we have a lot of flexibility around that but you have to get the work done too so these position agreements were awesome and it turned into with the customer facing people on my team
[00:30:30] I meet with them weekly and we would go around having a breakfast and coffee shops around town and I do the two meetings back to back and it was another moment so I saw my company light up when I had this culture vision meeting
[00:30:44] and started having true leadership team meetings not project update meetings and then I saw people light up when I put down this super long position agreement which probably took 8, 10 or 11 hours to get the first one and 6 or 7 to get the second one but when it was done
[00:30:58] it was clear to them and me that what I thought is about and it captured the vision, it had strategy in there and now because the promise in the position agreement is that the employees, the team members will own those positions and jobs
[00:31:12] and they will just take ownership of them and that's exactly what's happened so in this weekly mentoring meeting that I have going on I've just seen the team members come alive and just own their position and bring problems and solutions all at the same time
[00:31:28] if anybody ever needed to be let go which is not the case right now it would be abundantly clear to them and myself that it's not working out after we go through some 30 day trials and chances I would suggest for the people
[00:31:42] out there listening, if you don't have written agreements with your people and specifically using the EMIS model with the position agreements has been pretty brilliant I mean you're way missing out, your staff performance can go up just so much further
[00:31:54] and guess what that did to my stress level and my ability to back off technical and managerial work it took a tremendous amount of so now I had more time to apply to this other stuff that we're talking about in the podcast
[00:32:06] so for me, I'm so sore on position agreements and right now we're in the process of getting them down to not just the customer facing people but the designers and coders and with them we're not going to have weekly meetings but monthly so everybody will have
[00:32:20] a position agreement they'll all know exactly what they're held accountable for and on a monthly basis and then a weekly basis for others they'll be bringing to the table how their job is going, how they're holding up to the standards, what problems are they
[00:32:32] encountering and solving like what strategic changes does their role need to bring all that to me now whereas before it was all in my head or dissatisfactions in my head or things like that. I love how you put that Jeff because position agreements or
[00:32:48] as many people who are listening who aren't familiar with that exact process or what that means it's not too far different than a job description but it's like a job description and then some it's not the most tantalizing part of the business to be talking about there's nothing
[00:33:06] revolutionary about position agreements on the surface but like you're talking about when you dig below it and you see it as yet one more tool to bring a little more clarity about what you mean to your team that's where the magic is because you know
[00:33:28] in your head and in your heart what you're trying to do and what you hope to see but until you find ways to communicate this to your people it's not going anywhere it's just living in you and your team is walking around wondering whether
[00:33:42] or not they're on track. Agreed. I want to, I'm wondering if I want to go back for a second and talk a little about mentoring people in those meetings I think the idea of mentoring and mentorship is something that a lot of business owners who are just
[00:34:04] getting started in the work or people listening who might not have ever done any kind of business development work formally it can be maybe intimidating or at least something that you might not be as confident in as you are in other things
[00:34:20] you do like the technical skills you have was there anything that prepared you for taking that next step and having starting these mentoring meetings and working with your team in that way? Sure so I mean there's no achievement without some
[00:34:36] sense of courage and the opposite of courage is fear so as a person doing this EMA thing as any business owner who's listening or a potential business owner you always have to overcome things in this case for sure especially if you haven't run things that way
[00:34:48] for a while and all of a sudden you show up and you slap the 7 page document on the table and you're like hey this is how your role is going to go now and I'm now your superstar coach like I got great advice for you
[00:34:58] you know so yeah if you look at it from that angle it's not going to go well but the first meeting yeah is awkward but as a business owner if you're committed to it and you've truly documented what this person may have already been doing
[00:35:10] if you hadn't done one or if it's a new position you know you got a clean slate but the bottom line was as soon as they saw that and they're like oh yeah that's what I do and wow I do a lot
[00:35:18] and this is me then team member looking at like all these things and oh wow now I can do some strategy work this that and other it becomes not so much about Jeff the leader has sat down before the end shall coach thee into thy future
[00:35:30] it's more like well okay wow I really get what you want out of me and I really get how my position you know affects the vision and the culture and like what it's supposed to do for the company and it quickly becomes a shared thing
[00:35:42] that's on the table between you and then if in my case you know I met with these employees every week it just creates a killer bond there you kind of know something's going on personally or professionally and you it's I can't recommend it more I
[00:35:58] guarantee most of the business owners out there are probably like being absentee bosses you're like out doing all kind of sales or doing this and they're mad about this and then they're really happy about this and if you're the employees sitting there
[00:36:10] watching all this and especially if you're getting kind of sick of the company your pay is not where you want or the camaraderie is not there I mean the employee doesn't really care like the business owner cares by default and the employees don't
[00:36:20] care so when you do this position agreement they're like oh this is mine I can own it I can work it out the boss likes it I see how it fits with the boss it gives them a real sense of identity and purpose and place in the company
[00:36:32] so I really am I'm not overselling this most business owners don't do this why because team members have come to work for me and they told me what's going on in other cultures and places like that and you know you're missing out so yeah the first meeting
[00:36:44] a little scary and hard but as soon as you get past that first time it's one of those things that has immediate massive returns and some of that could be someone leaving the company or someone stepping up and you know they were
[00:36:54] a B minus C player now they're performing at like a B plus and A minus level and you're like kudos to you team member like you're crushing it like let's keep this up so that's been my experience in the
[00:37:04] how long I've been doing it Kay maybe just a few months now I think I started in December and it's you know turn of February starting November so the change that I saw in you Jeff when we first started working together
[00:37:18] you were managing the work of your people and the change that I saw in you is you started mentoring them in the work that they did with you so there was a significant change in how you perceived or interacted with your staff
[00:37:37] and you became more of a mentor to help them do a good job to help them understand and support them in doing the work that they actually wanted to do and that was really different than managing their work that's right on and the beautiful thing
[00:37:54] in my opinion about position agreements for the staff I love what you said about it really shining light on areas of the company that they could get involved in or have more responsibility and that they really feel ownership for their role
[00:38:09] the thing that I love beyond that is it lets them know when their work is done you know like when they've had when they've done their job an employee without a position agreement to me is like somebody who can never honestly say
[00:38:27] I did my work because the bounds of what you could do is infinite right? if you're in marketing and your job is to try to drum up sales and there's not some goals set or some tasks that you're supposed to do
[00:38:44] to make that happen or some structure to it then how many leads do you need all of the leads like infinity leads that's how many we want we want as much as possible so when do you as an employee ever get to feel
[00:38:59] like yeah I nailed my work this week well that's interesting you say that because one of the things that Jeff is really really good at and because he does it for his clients he also is doing it for his company he's very good at metrics
[00:39:15] and that's important to some of the products that he provides to his clients to show results but his staff use metrics and he uses metrics so they know exactly if their strategies are working yeah and it's beautiful I'm sure it's wonderful for UK
[00:39:31] to have somebody that's oriented that way because so much of the work that you all are doing has to do with measuring the numbers and Jeff's orientation to getting measurable results just connects and slots in perfectly but also helps him look at we tried this strategy
[00:39:51] did it work and so he knows and then they can adjust we have that happen today actually Kay and I had a coaching call today and it's Jeff's personal time management plan for 2016 and the first couple weeks failed miserably
[00:40:09] so we made adjustments because the goals were just not accurate and it was right then that just happened today Kay remember that was awesome tell me beyond time management what's on tap for this coming year Jeff what is your next year going to hold
[00:40:29] so in the EMF program there's this full annual plan that's broken out by quarter and by month Kay and I have done quite a bit of review of 2015 what worked, what didn't and then we did this free brainstorming exercise
[00:40:45] where I just grabbed what I thought was important for 2016 and we've distilled that down so now we kind of have a loose roadmap for 2016 by quarter and we have a tight roadmap for actually what's going down in this first quarter
[00:40:59] and it's great because I meet with the team now and I can be like hey, a little bit of what happened last year you were part of it, you know it but from the 30,000 foot view this is how it looks and from the 30,000 foot view this is where
[00:41:12] we're going next year and in these quarterly goals different team members have things to do so they're going to get new work right there that's going to help create studios where it needs to go in 2016 so that's been super exciting it takes a lot of focus
[00:41:30] many of us started out 2016 with personal goals and business goals and we all know the statistics about fulfilling those but by golly gee, we're getting it done so we have a killer team, Revenue Growth will be a tremendous thing we're going to focus on
[00:41:46] add on quite a few more customers without additional overhead right now we're going to try to be the best digital marketing company we can be for ourselves as always the cobbler has no shoes thing happens to business owners
[00:42:00] they might be an accountant but they have the poorest books or they might be a paver company and they have like a whole broken down cement driveway so being the best digital company we can for ourselves and everybody's going to have a position agreement
[00:42:15] this year, that's going to be new and then finally I'm heading towards there's a natural arc as a business owner and Kay and I were talking about this today you go from a technician and then you go more into like marketing and sales
[00:42:29] and then finally you can get your hands off most aspects of the business that set leadership so this year we're going to build out the first sales team member and like the first official manager of getting things done and I'm sure it's going to go pretty darn smooth
[00:42:43] as with anything in business this has its bumps but I'm confident with the tools and the focus and the accountability that the coaching brings it will get done will it be 100% right? No but it will be certainly better than
[00:42:55] like balance better than it was three or four years ago because nothing like this existed I love that and if you can send me the position agreement with the title listed as manager of getting things done I want to hang it on my
[00:43:09] I want to hang it on the wall in my office that's amazing I love that I'm a little blown away by the fact that you just started this how would you compare where your business has gone in the last seven months
[00:43:25] to what the first ten years were like there's this archetype this mythical figure who pushes the rock up the hill every day and it rolls back down and he wakes up and pushes it up and rolls back down and I was providing for my family
[00:43:41] I was working the number of hours a week I wanted I did have decent financial success but it was just purposeless and after a while it was just not exciting or fun being the technician gets very old so in this transformation
[00:43:55] when I started coaching I think it was around the May timeframe and now here we are in January the following year it's been night and day I mean I enjoy going to work I love it I love the people
[00:44:07] I work with and I'm kind of hooked on this leadership stuff because I'm capable of it and now that I've gotten the taste of it and seen how it works and got people doing more of the technical managerial work I think the sky's the limit
[00:44:21] I think we'll knock it out of the park I think it will be two, three, four fold more successful this year than it was last and by golly gee don't let finance be the only metric of success there's so much more to a business and life
[00:44:35] and I say things will be two, three, four fold better I'm in all areas like work satisfaction camaraderie there helping businesses grow online with digital marketing financially so I'm really enthused and pumped I'm going to keep at it it's working very well I love it and based on
[00:44:53] what I'm hearing and getting to know you better I personally love the idea that you're tapped into the idea of learning what this leadership thing is all about and bringing more of that to the table because I think you're right it's it is an overused word it's a
[00:45:13] it's become an almost meaningless concept because of that where it means so many different things to so many people what does it actually mean anymore these days but what you're bringing to it and the way that you've talked about how it's changed your life and your relationship to
[00:45:33] your business and how it's changed things for your team and I can only imagine that if you're feeling a lot better and different about your relationship to work that things are also going to change for you at home and with your family I mean that
[00:45:49] when you get talking about leadership you're talking about making some really significant changes and it sounds like you figured out great ways to improve things for the better yes Martin thank you I really believe EMA is a great choice for coaching and there's actually a real business
[00:46:05] case to use you guys coaching model over just your random coaching you may find in your city which I think it's pretty powerful you have this history and this curriculum behind it so not only are you getting that coaching
[00:46:15] which you can find in many places but it comes with like a proven curriculum so I'm a big believer and I researched a ton before I chose to go with K and frankly I just wouldn't even
[00:46:27] be able to go with anybody else so I think you guys have a great thing going on and trying to get other business centers to get on board too but once again they have to be ready internally to make that change and commit
[00:46:37] yeah yep that's right that was exactly right thanks thanks for saying that I really appreciate it I just want to thank you both very honestly for taking some time out of your days to talk with us and to talk with everybody that's listening
[00:46:51] and share some of your story about what it's been like both being a coach in K's part and being a business owner who started out fleeing a corporate job created your own job for yourself and then came to realize that there's something more at emith.com
[00:47:27] and if you like the show please leave us a review on iTunes or like on SoundCloud we really appreciate it you can also schedule a free one hour session with an emith coach and have your own coaching experience at emith.com
[00:47:41] you can learn more about our clients and coaches by visiting our website