2160 - Mastering Economic Change and Leadership Insights with GrowthSource Coaching's Steve Smith

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Steve Smith. Steve, you are the president and founder of Growth Source Coaching. You're also a business and executive coach and a management team trainer. Your website, Steve, is growthsourcecoaching.com. Steve, thank you for joining us. Josh, it's my pleasure. I'm really looking forward to it. Well, before we get talking about your superpowers, the impact you have in the world, I'd love to, like, in your daily or your personal life, are there things that you're passionate about, like hobbies or music or TV shows? Like, what have you been into lately? All right. So for my entire life, I always wanted to be able to play an instrument, but things always got in the way and I would start and I would stop and, you know, starting and stopping.

1:51So I just, I just put it out of my mind. I said, you know what? This is just not for me. I'm not one of those people. And this year I started looking at all the things that I had accomplished professionally. And I thought, you know what, I should be able to do this. Yeah. So I, my wife had bought me a guitar a couple of years ago and it, you know, just sat and gathered dust, which was not good. So I finally reached out to somebody locally, this guy, he's in a band, you know, he's very good. And he also provides, you know, guitar lessons. So I hired this guy two months ago and it's like, when I'm not working, that's all I can think about.

2:24Oh, my gosh, doing the next steps in his process, because I can see it getting better. You know, a lot of times you don't see yourself, everybody around. And it's like, okay, I got to find 15 minutes in the morning, in the afternoon, whenever nothing is going on to go in there and just, you know, give it another shot. So that's, that's become my all encompassing drug of choice. Okay, so your story and anyone who listens to this podcast with any regularity knows exactly what I'm going to say. That is my exact story. 52 years old. I used to be able to sing. Okay. I just, I just don't have my voice for that anymore.

3:01Too much podcasting, not enough karaoke. But I picked up the bass guitar about a, about a year and a half ago. And, and exactly what you're talking about. I just love it so much. And your same emotions about that thinking that's only for other people or talented people. But you and I probably each know from our track record success in business, like nobody is a CEO on day one. You know, nobody is an accomplished leader on day one. How does one become that? Well, usually it's just in the trenches and you learn through doing and you keep learning new and you practice and, you know, and you're right.

3:37Like with the music thing, are you getting to the point or how long has it been? It's only been two months. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Wow. You're like, okay. So the greatest sensation. And I don't, okay. So the brain is learning whether you think your brain is learning or not. And that's, that's the, I heard that and that was my big aha moment. Right. And so I, and you're at the point now too, where you're probably like, oh my gosh, how do I know how to do that? Like, do you get that feeling? Oh, sure. Yeah. When you least expect it, everything works and it's like, okay, you know, this is, this is reminiscent of my years learning how to play golf.

4:16And when you, when you stop trying so hard, things seem to work better. But I'll tell you the mistake I made, and I have to watch myself today with this, is looking at people who are an absolute, the best in their field, in playing music and playing guitar, and thinking, I can get there in a short period of time. So, you know, you watch old videos of Jimi Hendrix, and you think, oh, a couple months, I'll be there. When you don't get there in a couple of months, it completely trashes your desire to keep going. And so you quit. And so it's like, all right, I'm not going to do that anymore. If I watch people on YouTube, I'm going to watch people who are in the throes of just learning how to play G chord, because that's where I'm at.

5:01Right, right. And so that'll keep me from launching myself into this unrealistic expectation, and then giving up like I've done so many times before. If you search my name on Facebook, it's kind of where I post all my I just play along with songs and i post all the videos to facebook so if anyone wants to just search josh ellage in facebook click on my videos you don't have to friend me or connect me or follow me or whatever um but at least you can if you want to feel good about your own musical journey if you're new i'm gonna do that i put it out there as soon as i get like i can play through it okay probably a little too early but for me like that's kind of my trophy is like i'll work on a song learn it and then I can kind of play through it.

5:42Okay. And then I'll immediately shoot a video and put it on Facebook. So look, you're, you're way farther down the road. I don't even know a time when I will be willing to put anything I do like that on, on some social media platform. Yeah. Well, and that was, I was very afraid of that at first. And then I thought, what do I care? Like I, and I acknowledge in all my videos, Hey, I'm a brand new bass player, you know? So then people aren't going to come at you. You know, your technique is not wrong. You're holding your art. Oh, yeah. Oh, and the critiquers will come out of the woodwork when you least expect it.

6:19So, yeah. Okay. So all of this, Steve, I think is an excellent parallel for what you do and teach professionally and how you help leaders. Do you mind talking about that? Yeah, I started this back in 2008 with a lot of other people who had no idea what was coming. We were months right before the big crash took place, but I got in it quite by accident. I left my former career in consumer products manufacturing, and I said, for the first time, I want to do something that I feel good about, that I can contribute to, that doesn't require me chasing numbers for somebody else's benefit. I was introduced to coaching, did a little research, bought a franchise, loved every minute of it, up until the point where the franchise went bankrupt.

7:07And when that happened, I thought, oh God, what am I going to do now? Everybody else in the franchise went back to their occupation of choice before they fell in love with coaching. And I stuck it out, repurposed, rebranded. And if I had, you know, I look back now and I think, okay, what did I do that allowed me to have the success I have today. And I realized if I hadn't gone through that experience, I probably wouldn't be here today. I learned so much from being in a situation where you went from really believing you had something going to all of a sudden having it completely ripped out from under you because your franchise organization just disappeared in three days.

7:45So I got into it and I realized a lot of what I had learned over the years, a lot of really well meaning, really hardworking entrepreneurs, they get into it just by blunt force. They don't ever pick up a lot of the training that allows them to see and avoid the pitfalls that typically take a lot of them down. So when I got into this thing, I thought, okay, I can help people reach their journey by simply shortcutting things that don't work, helping them figure out how to stay out of the holes that will kill them. And along the way, get them to basically open up their eyes and say, I see what I'm capable of doing.

8:27You ever notice how people will say, gee, you know, we always saw you being capable of doing that. It was like, you know, from a small age, but how come we don't see it? We don't see what other people see. My job is to help clients see what other people see, whether it's good or bad, because once you're aware of that, Now you're in a position to actually affect it. Yeah. Well, you have to be looking at trends that are happening right now in 2025. And I would imagine in your work with leaders, you're probably hearing some concerns. Oh, yeah. Right now, boy, by the time this airs, who knows? Right now, as of when we're recording this, there's a lot of concern over instability in the economy.

9:10and there's some tough talking going out there. I'm not touching politics with a 10-foot pole. I'm just saying there is concern out there, both from consumer sentiment and across business leaders. There's concern over instability right now. And that has big impacts on organizations. Can you maybe address some things that you, and I didn't mean to lead the witness here, because you might be hearing things completely different, but what are you hearing right now? Well, economically, everybody's really concerned about the trade tariffs. They're concerned about other types of regulations, especially in California.

9:50California is an anomaly from the rest of the country because we are just up to our eyeballs in regulation. And that's not new. That's been going on for a while. But it just seems to get more pervasive as time goes on. So there's a whole bunch of things. And what I try to get clients to remember is that when you're dealing with adversity or things that you think are going to threaten you, and this has been researched to death, okay? So this is not stuff I just pulled out of my hip pocket. 90 % of the things people worry about never actually come true. But we get it in our heads that this is the demon of the day.

10:28And if I don't do something right now, I'm going to die. And that almost never happens. Now, does that mean these things aren't down the road threats? Possibly. But most people have time to think through how that's going to impact my corner of the world. And so a lot of it is just tamping down the fear and just say, look, let's just walk through your business model, the clients you serve, the market you're involved in, and just look at it for what it really is. And oh, by the way, stop watching the news every morning. Because if you cut that filter off, in about seven days, you're going to have a much more clear idea.

11:08Because instead of listening to what's going on 3000 miles away, what you really need to be doing is just observing what's going on in your own backyard. That's more of a telltale of what your future is going to look like than and listening to pundits who repeatedly misdiagnose situations all the time. Right. Yeah, I'm going through some Ryan Holiday stoicism stuff right now. And, you know, Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, those two books alone. I think anyone who goes through those two books will, I mean, exactly what you just said right there is absolutely. So what we need right now, what the world, so I think, would you take that point a little bit further and talk about the type of leaders that we need right now and the kind of leaders that stand the test of time, no matter what kind of turbulent waters may be out there?

11:56Who are the leaders that we end up looking towards during, again, no matter what kind of chaos might be going on? I think the leaders that weather these storms the best are the ones who have become settled in their own philosophy about how to deal with the world around them. You know, they recognize things aren't perfect, but they have a level of inner confidence that if I stay the course while I'm continuing to survey what's down the road a couple of miles, I'll be in a much better position to make sound decisions. And nine times out of 10, when businesses go off the road, it's not because somebody else came in and hurt them.

12:42It's because they misdiagnosed what they thought they were running into and they made a decision that was part and parcel to taking themselves down. I see this a lot. And most of the time it involves money, you know? And so what you really have to be able to help people do, and here's one of the things that I will tell entrepreneurs that go from bootstrapping it now to some semblance of stability and scale. I said, don't go this alone. Get yourself an inner circle, you know, three to five people that you know and trust who will give you very good, candid feedback and help you navigate those waters.

13:24And most of the time, if they're outside your business, they're even better because now they're not tethered to what's going on inside like you are. And they can speak freely about what they actually see and hear from you. So those kind of leaders that rely on the feedback of other people close to them to help them navigate what's going forward, and they already have an internal clock that says, I know I'm on the right path because I've been here before, and I know what comes after it, and I didn't die. I continued to grow. That's the best way to get through the murkiness that we're probably going to be seeing throughout the better part of this year.

14:00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can you talk just a bit about what you do? So what is growth source coaching? What does that engagement look like? Are you working with teams? Do you work for a short amount of time? Do you work long term? What does that engagement look like? Okay. So when I had to repurpose the business because the franchise company that I bought the thing from went out, my first thought was, okay, I got to come up with a name for this thing. Right. And one of the things I had learned from years ago was one of the things you shouldn't ever do is name a company after yourself. Now, plenty of people have done it.

14:40OK, so there is some success behind that. But if this thing gets to a point where you want to offload it someday, who's going to buy something with your name stamped on it? So I thought, OK, I'm going to get something that has more market appeal to it. And the word growth source, which is a bit of a tongue twister, I came up with because what I realized after at that point coaching for five years and being in business for 30 before that was the growth that you're seeking. OK, the development you're trying to achieve that hopefully will take you to the success you want actually comes from in you.

15:16You know, you're not buying it from somebody else and bolting it on. you're learning best practices and other things from people and you're absorbing it. So the growth is internal. So growth source was where that name came from. I do individual coaching. I coach C level people and other executives in larger companies. I coach business owners in small businesses. And these are all one-to-one type things. There's a minimum time length that they have to stay with me because that demonstrates commitment on their part. But most people stay with me 18 months or two years. I have some that are longer.

15:51I always tell them after the initial commitment, you stay as long as you want. You tap out when you think you've got everything you need. So there's no long-term contracts. They stay as long as they get value from working with me. Now, the management team training came along about five years ago when I had a large customer come to me and say, we're bringing in new businesses and we've got like 150 managers nationwide. mind. And we're starting to realize they have no idea what they're doing. You know, it's not their fault. They were pressed into service without any training. Can you write a program for them?

16:27So I did. I wrote a 12-hour course that will take anybody that is in a management role and put them in a position where they now fully understand the magnitude of what they've just said yes to. So I added that on as a service. And that's, you know, training's different than coaching, But it's still a great service for large companies who are being held back because the people that they have running things, especially in that critical middle phase of the company, are just not up to the task. So everything I do is for the benefit of helping someone else in a professional role eventually become a better version of themselves.

17:07Your website, Steve, is growthsourcecoaching.com. And I'd like to point this out because obviously it's pretty easy to engage with you here on the website, but you have a lot of great resources. Do you mind maybe sharing some of those resources that folks might be interested in if they're listening to this? Well, one of the best ones you can go to in the resource section is my book recommendations. So I have 10 on there. And these books are not new. Some have been around for a while. But I've just learned over the years that there are some business development books that will speak to you in a way that you'll walk around for the rest of your life remembering some of the philosophies that are game changers.

17:52So I tell people all the time, go to that first. Here's a great example. One of the books on there is called Spin Selling. It was written by Neil Rackham back in 1986. So it's not new by any stretch, okay? But if you're in a business where relationships and consultation and big ticket items are part of your world, you cannot not read this book. because most every other sales process will completely eviscerate the ability to have big relationships with big whales over big products. And so that book spoke to me in such a way that I actually adapted a lot of how I work with prospects before they become clients based on that book.

18:38Because what I realized, it's not about me. It's about, look, every business is a solution for somebody's problem. So I have to spend all my time figuring out what the other person wants to solve before I can expect them to do business with me. So it changed my complete philosophy. So go to that page and you'll find a lot of great recommendations that will help you, not in an industry you're in, but as the professional you want to be. You're right. I'm looking at the list right now and I've read about half of these and the other five are going directly on my queue right now. So Steve - They're all great.

19:15Yeah. Again, founder, CEO, GrowthSource Coaching. For folks that want to grab a conversation, I see you can grab a quick coaching assessment. Do you want to just kind of explain that real quick? Yeah, what I have learned about coaching, it's a very special relationship. And the people that seek coaching and are looking for a coach to do that, they have to understand that what you're able to do is a solution for the problem they're trying to fix. You hire somebody that does not have that ability, you're wasting time and money. The second thing is they have to know that they can have a relationship and work with you for maybe a year or more.

19:58And so a lot of it is just, you know, personal connection. So when I tell people, if you want to have a conversation, just sign up so I can get you on the calendar. And I will give people 30 to 45 minutes. And my sole reason for having those conversations is to understand what you really want to overcome. number one, do you actually know what it is? You'd be surprised how many people need help, but can't define what it looks like. But do you know what it is? And can I actually help you with that? You know, am I the right person? And through that conversation, I've had people just say, hey, send me your contract.

20:33And they haven't even asked how much it costs. Yeah. You know, so that does happen. But the whole idea is, can I help you? If I can't help you, I'll help you find somebody because they can, but I'm not interested in getting into an engagement where I know right off the bat, you're not going to get what you want. Yeah. It sounds reminiscent of situation, problem, implication, need, payoff strategy, which I love is the best way to do business. It's so much easier than other ways of selling. So this is fantastic. Steve Smith, again, your business coach, executive coach, management team training, your website, growthsourcecoaching.com.

21:11Love the conversation. What song are you working on right now on the guitar? Okay. The one that I, and believe me, it'll take me a while to really learn how to play this, but it's an old Arlo Guthrie song called City of New Orleans. And it's a folk song about a guy talking about the aura and the folksiness around trains and how that part, that mode and the the lifestyle of the hobos and all that stuff is kind of going away. And it's a great song, but admittedly, when you actually look at the music and you realize how it's scored and, and the chords and everything, it's a little more complicated than, than where I'm at right now.

21:53So I told my instructor, I said, help me at some point get to the point where I can play this. Right. Right. And that's kind of my target for the moment. City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie. Right. Right. Did you happen to catch the Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I love that movie. I bet you enjoyed that. There was so much stuff about him that I didn't know. And I'd been listening to his stuff, you know, since the middle 70s. But the guy that they had play his character. Timothee Chalamet, yeah. He was as good as the actor they had play Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

22:30Agreed, Rami Maliko. Absolutely. Halfway through the movie, I forgot I wasn't looking at Dylan. Oh. Oh, you know, and truly that is the mark of a great actor. You know, when you just, you forget that you're watching a movie, right? You're just engrossed in there. And I'll tell you, both of those characters are, I mean, both of those musicians, those artists are, I mean, what a daunting task to say you are going to be an actor who's going to play Freddie Mercury. I mean, come on. I mean, that just, that is someone that just, you know, embodied their own persona. so well. And I'll just, you know, about Bob Dylan too.

23:11If you haven't watched our friend that's listening, if you haven't watched the movie, please watch it. So good. The Monterrey, was it the Monterey Folk Festival? Was that where he plugged his, he plugged his guitar into an electric amp. That was one of, I'd say one of the three biggest moments in rock and roll history that completely changed the direction of rock music for the time. So I'd say number one would be Elvis, you know again kind of took you know that that's you know what was largely more of an african-american sound uh you know kind of mainstream and made it popular uh bob dylan gave rock and roll a soul and i'd say the third one i have to give credit to like nirvana because rock was kind of in a little bit of a slump in my opinion where it just kind of got right you know it lost its soul again it was just the thing that amazed me about that point that you just made with the dylan movie yes When he did that, the amount of pushback that he got from the crowd, it was almost, they were offended.

24:08Oh, absolutely. That he had somehow besmirched folk rock. And so, yeah, it was really quite amazing. Where what he did is, you know, he took folk sensibility and consciousness and brought it to rock, which is, and I think, you know, anyway, watch the movie. I don't want to spoil the movie. It's fantastic. Steve Smith, what a great conversation. Again, your website, GrowthSourceCoaching. To a friend that's listening, go look at the book list and go grab some time with Steve. You're a good guy. Steve, thank you for joining us. Hey, Josh. Thanks for having me. This was great.

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