1620 – The Rollercoaster of Business Ownership with Action Coach Solent Kevin Stansfield

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0:57with us right now kevin standsfield kevin you are the managing director and business coach uh for action coach solent and you're found on the web at abc.actioncoach.co.uk and we've got that direct link right in the show notes to our friends listening to our conversation right now kevin joining us from the uk thank you so much kevin for joining us great to be on the show josh Yeah, really looking forward to it. I had a wonderful conversation with you leading up to this about my attempt at my first attempt at creating a proper English breakfast. I did okay, I'd say. It sounded like you gave me about a B.

1:33Well, I'd say it was about seven out of ten. So a few tweaks to make it perfect. Well, and it felt like seven out of ten ingredients. There's a lot of little food on that plate. And you're also the author of the book, The Big Dipper, How to Survive the Rollercoaster Ride of Business Ownership. Don't I know it. Kevin, thank you so much for being here today. Great to be on. To start with an English breakfast is a great way to start the day. I tell you, I got about one third of the way through that plate and I am full for the day. That's a lot of protein and fiber. Exactly. Well, take me through just a bit of your superpowers in the world and who you work with and the challenges that you help folks with.

2:22So I've been coaching business owners for some 17 years now. I'm a chartered accountant, so I came from a finance background, went into industry, built some multi-million pound businesses. and during that time my father's business which he bought off a man in a pub is as you do he'd run that for 15 years and unfortunately his business had failed so you know he'd gone through this roller coaster of success doing really well then hit the buffers and then the recession in the mid 90s basically took him under and yeah a lot of people have found that journey with COVID two years ago with, you know, the inflationary recession we're in at the moment, the cost of living crisis, you know, when you're in business, there's always this up and down and real frustration that, you know, why can't my business provide me the life that I wanted when I started it?

3:21And that's what I do. I help those people on that roller coaster to to build better businesses, to grow them. Some, some want to build multi-million pound businesses. Many just want a business that can work without them, that gives them more life and doesn't mean they have to be working twice as hard as they did when they had a job. Yeah, Kevin, that is got to be frustrating because you'd think, I think if you're new to business, the idea here is that it's going to be rough in the beginning. It's going to be a slow, steady grind. And then it's like, you're going to follow this linear trajectory up.

4:00And then you're going to pass this imaginary line and life is going to be good from that point forward. That's not at all what I would say. 99 % of business owners would say who have been through the rollercoaster. It is, it's more like a rollercoaster. Can you talk about why that is? i think i mean i i've studied this you know because i i love what i do but i i don't just sort of teach people the theory without understanding it myself so i i looked at uh in in the uk we have a thing called company's house where all companies are registered um and my my study of that showed that 98 of businesses so limited companies run by good people 98 of those businesses never make it past a million pound turnover.

4:52So if you're over a million pound turnover, million dollar turnover, you are in the 1%. You're in such a small minority that make it through that barrier. The ones that get to past 10 years, so have been going over 10 years, is now 10 % of that 2%. So the figures of success is actually tiny. And the ones that we see that multi-million businesses you know they are they're like looking in a sports world of the Roger Federer's you know the people that make it into the number two golfers in the world um and you know while we look at those and they're they're inspiring for most people starting I want to be like that sports person the reality of sports people is the number of people that are playing golf or playing tennis that aren't at that level is huge and it's those people that find it difficult to actually take it to that level and and that comes from a little formula that we we use a lot which is b you know who do i need to be times do what do i need to do equals have so if you want to have something you've got to be that person so you have the knowledge and skills you've got a do you've got to actually put into practice what you learn then you have a chance of succeeding it and the big thing that i've found over the years is is the people that succeed out of those three things that they have you know what they want to have is really clear and generally it is big you know they go after the big fish yeah and therefore they be more and they do more the majority of people in business, you know, just want a good life.

6:39You know, they don't want to be a multimillionaire and have all the trappings. That's not what they started. You know, there's there'll be a reason why they did it. But unfortunately, that reason often means the business doesn't need to be over a million, you know, five, 10 million to actually achieve it. So they get stuck, they get stuck in this rut that they think they've got this lifestyle business. But because it's not big enough you know you've got let's say you've got 10 employees and two employees leave that's 20 of your workforce disappears overnight now no organization will survive if they lost 20 of their their workforce you know you know um ICI lost 20 of its workforce overnight it would struggle and and that's that's the challenge that you've got and the business owner is continually working in the business so they're part of the the team so they're not spending enough time sitting thinking planning strategizing finding opportunities to grow which is why you get the roller coaster you get the up you know when things are going well then you're so busy working in it to deliver that you're not growing the business so because you're not growing the business it then takes a bit of a downturn then you're starting to pedal really hardly and try and develop the business again and then it goes up and then you're busy delivering it and it just just it becomes like groundhog day and that's where my father was for you know five years it took him to build to about a million pound business 10 years of maintaining it and not growing it and then suddenly you know the 90 recession kicked in and he lost the whole thing um and and too many people are on that surviving the business you know it pays the bills it gives them a reasonable lifestyle but you know they're never building it to a point where they could retire that they could turn around and have what i call financial freedom the ability to choose whether you work or not you know most people in business are working because they have to not because they want to you know likes of donald trump um you know richard branson alan sugar you know warren buffett you know they're not working because they have to you know they're working because they love doing it yes right and And that's where we want to get the business to is we do it because we want to do it, not because we have to do it.

9:02Yeah. Well, what are some maybe I'm just, you know, extremely empathic for the business owner that is I don't get it. Like and I know why this is the case. Right. When we think about the stages of business ownership, I have seen and I've heard this as well. right? That, you know, as a solopreneur, like you can get to a point where you can make a good living and you've got a great lifestyle business for you. Generally your profitability is okay. Unless you have issues with, you know, client acquisition. I mean, that can really suck. Like if you're kind of feasting famine, just because you don't have enough work to do, but if your work is good and you keep focused on it, you keep doing good work, it's generally going to lead to more referrals, you got a nice steady stream of business.

9:50But then I think a lot of us, at least I see this a lot in the consulting, coaching and agency world, you know, B2B service providers, I see this a lot. You get to a point where you start developing the bright idea. I know, I think I'll start getting leverage here. And I'll start building a team. And then, you know, I can enjoy more lifestyle and less business. But there's a problem because now you've got overhead and you've got other people involved. And would you mind maybe talking about that inflection point that you see in business? Yeah. I mean, it's consultancy businesses, but Michael Gerber called, if you read Gerber's book, The E-Myth, The Entrepreneurial Myth, that businesses are started by entrepreneurs, they're not, they're started by technicians.

10:38So whether you're a plumber that starts a plumbing business or an accountant that starts an accountancy business or a consultant that starts a consultancy business you know the the big danger is you're very good at delivering the operational side of things but when you break business down there are four key skill sets that you need to be as successful in business so so you're rather than learning one skill and then applying that one. So you need four key skills. So the first one is operational. You've got to understand the game that you're playing, the operational game. Now, most technicians are good at that.

11:17The plumber's good at plumbing. The accountant's good at accountancy. So that one generally isn't the issue. The second one is finance. Business is a numbers game. So if you're not good at numbers and you don't understand your profit and loss account, your balance sheet, and your cash flow and your projections and your key performance indicators, then you're going to suffer. And that skill, you know, I trained as an accountant, probably took me about five to 10 years to master finance. So you've got to go on that journey to master that part of the business. Then you've got sales and marketing, you know, and you could split those into two.

11:56But for this, I tend to put it into one because they are different skill sets. You know, sales is a conversion rate skill set. Marketing is a lead generation skill set. Now, if you talk to any salesperson and say, how long is it taking to become a great salesperson? They'll say five to 10 years. Marketing, you know, and that's marketing in each discipline. So social media, you know, and online, you've got offline marketing, you've got direct sales, you know, all of those can take five to 10 years to master. So there you've got the operational, it probably took you 10 years to master the operations and it's going to take you 10 years to master finance and it's going to take you 10 years to master sales and marketing then to add it all if you want to build a team and you want to get gain leverage yeah it's going to take you five to ten years to become a great manager of people and any master in any of those disciplines will tell you well you never really master it in five ten years you you get competency in it mastery takes a lifetime it does Yes, exactly.

13:02So that's the challenge that every business owner's got is, yeah, I've got to master all these skills. If you added them all up, that's probably 40 to 50 years to master those. Yeah, well, I don't have time. I don't want to take 50 years. So the key one, the one that you've got to have an understanding of finance, you've got to have an understanding of sales and marketing, you've got to have an understanding of operations. The one you really have to master is the people. yeah if you can't build a team of people to deliver what you want to do then you'll never create a business so you know you even the most automated businesses systemized businesses you know requires a an element of the ability to build a team yeah to communicate to people to lead people to motivate people to sack people you know that that's the one that most people don't put enough effort into learning and to develop.

13:58And that's why those businesses will never scale because you can't scale it without building great people around you. Yeah. Kevin, someone's been listening to our conversation, like, I want more Kevin Stansfield in my life. How do they get that? I mean, the best thing is reach out on LinkedIn. So that's, of all the social media platforms, that's the one I'm on the most. So, you know, I'm posting content regularly on LinkedIn. Just reach out, just put Kevin Stansfield into LinkedIn and I'll be there. If you want to get some of my free content, then my YouTube channel, which is Action Coach Solent on YouTube or just type in my name.

14:40I'll come up on there as well. So I put a lot of my content on YouTube for free. And, you know, if I'm more than happy to have a one to one with anybody, if you want my book, Amazon. the Big Dipper book. You'll find that on Amazon. And my other book, which is on Amazon, which is called The Great Game, which is looking at the similarities between the game of golf and the game of business and why business, if you treat it as a game, is a much more enjoyable thing to play. Yeah. Love it. Kevin Stansfield, again, your website, it's abc.actioncoach.co.uk. Again, to our friend that's listening to our conversation, just click around in your podcast app.

15:27You'll see a direct link to it. But again, you serve, again, as the managing director and business coach with Action Coach Solent. Kevin, it's been great having you. Thank you so much for the conversation. Great be on the show, Josh. Thank you very much. And good luck with the breakfast.

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