1834 – Effective Strategies for CEO Coaching and Self-Awareness with Kris Kluver

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0:58with us right now chris kluver chris you are the founder of entrepreneurial advisors your website is entrepreneurial dash advisors.com chris thank you so much for joining us hey josh thank you so very much i'm humbled to be here yes well give us an overview of the work you do the impact you have in the world and who you serve well you know i i like to say i'm the the luckiest cat on the planet because I get to work with people that I love, having an impact and driving it. I primarily in my quote unquote day job do strategic advising and CEO coaching where basically I help turn around underperforming assets in the mid market.

1:36It's an area that's been a lot of fun and I've had some really solid success. I've helped multiple companies go from entrepreneurial all the way to billion dollar market caps. But I also have multiple organizations where I help people who who've had their exits and they've achieved more than they ever thought possible. But then it turns out that they're sort of miserable sods and they're not happy with it. So helping people reframe and look at success. Yeah. And so go ahead and let us go a little bit more specifically, because I'm sure there's some people may be listening to that and go, oh, OK, leaning forward.

2:12Tell me more. So what does that look like? Well, the challenge is, is a lot of people played the game and done really well their whole life. And they ended up with a whole bunch of money. Maybe they have an exit. Maybe they've hit that stride in life where it's like, man, everything is going my way. But they're really unfulfilled. And the primary reason is that we as a society, as a whole, tend to abdicate the narrative. We give it away on what success looks like. We give that away to the advertising industry, the social platforms, to the scarcity mindsets of others, to maybe even parents, peers, a variety of those things.

2:51And rarely, you know, people get on that treadmill and they're just chasing the dollar. And then they may get their exit and they're like, well, holy smokes, my wife doesn't like me and the kids don't like me. I don't like me. And it's a matter of helping people to transition and look at success in a different way. you um chris are also the author of the book i and i really am interested in this um the the book is called life on your terms discovering what's next uh and i suspect that there's a lot of us that uh at some point in our lives we are we're going to be asking those questions like you know i've worked my tail off here i am right here but you know it's like i was actually even just talking about this about how often it's important for us to kind of keep that vision or those goals of where we're going.

3:40But sometimes we get so focused on the immediate, like what needs to get done, that it's easy. Admittedly, so I'll speak for myself. It's like, I need to make sure that I'm checking in with where I want to go and what my vision is. Because give me a task and I'm going to bust my tail working on it. But sometimes, again, I guess I don't maybe stop to think about the big picture. And there's consequences to that if we don't know where we're going necessarily. Well, and the thing is, is one of the hot topics that everybody has a hard time with is work-life balance. But the reality is, is I don't know that work-life balance is even possible anymore.

4:21I think a healthy work-life integration is. But to do that, we have to transition from a reactive state to a proactive state and look at success on a holistic level. And what I mean by that is so often, especially business owners and senior leaders, they track and they focus more on building and driving the business, and then they try and make their life fit with that. And I think that's backwards. I think we need to define what is an ideal spectacular life, physical, mental, spiritual, relationships, our partner, our family, our friends, and our resources, time, talent, and treasure, how we're leveraging those.

4:59But define what that success looks like first and then incorporate the business into that. And it actually, you'll become more successful in the business. It's a lot of the CEOs I work with. I work with some publicly traded CEOs on a regular basis for coaching And helping them give themselves permission to protect themselves as the asset of the organization and look at things differently helps them reframe that success in a different way. Yeah. I'm on your website right now, Chris. And so I'm looking at like your services or like how you engage with your clients, strategic facilitation, leadership and management training, strategic advisory.

5:44Can you maybe explain like what kind of the structure of how you engage with your clients? You know, it's fun. I'm in the process of reworking this and I'm challenging myself to define where I want to go. And I actually practice this process myself. But helping my gift is working with the high level C-suite and the CEOs, but helping them to figure out what are those next steps and where do they want to go? Because the reality is, is for any of us, the skills that got us where we are today are not going to get us where we want to go tomorrow. And for us to grow through that more often than not, there's going to be a little bit of discomfort.

6:25And how can you have somebody who can compassionately, but with ruthless consistently call you out and help you challenge you to become the best person you can be? Because when those leaders become better leaders, when they stop being doers and they start transitioning to becoming teachers, facilitators, coaches, working on it instead of in it, and as cliche as that is, the more that the business can start to accelerate and move faster. yeah um so um also too um you know i mentioned your book um can you tell me maybe just a little bit more about the book who should be reading it what the kind of the transformation that would take place um and it's a um it's the book is a fable it's uh so it's it's a story um but i'm hoping maybe you could kind of give us a glimpse at the outcome there.

7:20Well, so in the book, there's two primary characters you get impact. One is a younger person who is doing well financially, successful-wise, but doesn't feel happy and feels unfulfilled. And it's a different way of redefining the success for that person. Another character in there is the owner of a private equity firm who's got more money than God and is losing the relationship with his spouse. And he's realizing and seeing the impact that that's having in the business. So it really fits with anybody who primarily has the self awareness that there's more out there, but they're not really sure how to achieve it.

8:01And they're really questioning sort of the status quo on how people have looked at things. And they want to live outside the box. They want to blow the whole damn thing up.

8:14You know, Chris, one thing I wanted to follow up on that you had mentioned earlier, and I think this really deserves to be chatted a little bit more about is, is this idea of someone, an entrepreneur saying, my life is out of balance right now, like I'm spending way too much work, or usually that's the case, right? Right. And, you know, I'm wondering if maybe we could give them a little bit of grace for a moment in terms of like maybe they feel guilty. Maybe they've missed some opportunities. They just feel out of whack. Maybe they feel a little burnt out. Can you address that a little bit more?

8:52I'd really love a little bit more of your take on that. So the biggest challenge with that is, oddly, it comes around for the individual seasoned leader to start giving themselves permission. Permission to slow down a little bit and realize that. So as an example, I spend at least 15 hours a week. I try and spend in the woods going for hikes, quiet time. Maybe I'm listening to a book or something. But it's giving people themselves permission to look and work on the business in a different way. And the biggest challenge is just because somebody can doesn't mean they should. So it is so easy to hide in busyness.

9:33Slowing down, giving yourself permission and being uncomfortable and saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Who can help me with this? How can I delegate? Is this really highest and best use of my time? and being open and candid with themselves on that is the challenge. So because I believe a lot of it, unfortunately, is self-inflicted. And the challenge is, particularly for the senior leaders or owners, if that's the case, then that's the culture you're creating that goes through the entire organization. And it will be incredibly counterproductive versus when the senior leader can start to elevate to a different level.

10:13they start teaching everybody else in a very different way. Wow. You know, I don't think that I've really stopped to consider that, that how I model, like if I have the personality where I am the founder, so therefore I, you know, the buck stops here and I have to do everything. And I not only am I probably straying outside of my zone of genius a bit in terms of like my work I'm doing, But I think that that also applies to the fact that if they see me leaning toward getting advice from other consultants and experts, I'm modeling there as well. I had never really even thought about that aspect of it.

10:56It's helping senior leaders transition, like I said, to being those teachers, the facilitators, the coaches, empowering it. I use the analogy of the last dance from the Netflix series. Yeah. But Phil Jackson, no matter how good he was, could never get on the floor. All he could do was empower and build an amazing team and create a clear vision around that. And then meet his teammate and meet them where they were at to empower them to become the very best cohesive unit they could. Same thing with this. And this is where if you have a great leader who's always trying to go out on the field and always wants to take the ball and run everything else.

11:36All they're doing is showing everybody else, that's how I want you to manage. And it's going to slow you down dramatically. Yeah, I love it. Chris Kluver, you know, to our friend that's been listening to our conversation, and like, listen, I really appreciate what I'm hearing. Where, you know, I don't know if you can kind of maybe define who should be reaching out to you. Like, say, listen, if you're at this level, you know, or higher, but maybe not at this level. Come talk to me. Who should be reaching out? And what would you recommend their next steps be? Well, I appreciate that very much. Thank you, Josh.

12:14The three primary things I look for if I choose to work with someone is, number one, does that person have a self-awareness? Do they have a self-awareness that they're stuck and they're looking for help? Number two, they're dreaming and they're audacious as hell. They want to change the world. They want to grow like nobody's business because they're looking at things in a different way. And then three, are they in an industry that has the potential to be disruptive? Is this something that has the potential to change in a very different way? When I have those three things, ideally, it's typically going to be mid-market, which I define as$50 million to a billion dollars.

12:52It's going to be, in some cases, it may be a private equity firm that's asking me to consider working with an organization. And there's ways we set up because trust is critical on how we do that. I've had boards reach out to me, but it's typically the CEO is where I start and I will do consulting. It'll just straight coaching for a while. And then we build a very customized plan on what they need going forward. Yeah. Awesome. Again, Chris Kluver, your website, entrepreneurial-advisors.com. And then on the website, you'll see a link, Chris, to your book, Life on Your Terms, Discovering What's Next.

13:32Again, it's a fable. you've got some great reviews on it and looks like a good read. So Chris, thank you so much for joining us. Loved our conversation. Thank you so much, Josh. And a high level, if people want, they can go to entadv.com. It's a little easier than the whole mouth. Wait, wait, slow down. Give me that one more time here. First three letters of entrepreneur, first three letters of advisor. Oh, entadv.com. Yes. Okay, great. Also to our friend that's listening, click around in your podcast app. You'll find where it's got show notes. You might have to click on the cover art or the information button or whatever.

14:08And we have a direct link, Chris, to your website as well. Chris, thank you so much for the conversation. Right on. Thank you so much, Josh.

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