As you build a business, too often you can find yourself focusing on logos, websites, and business cards. Although great for branding, you really need to be focusing on if your idea is viable, if there is a market for it, and who your target market is. Solving those key issues is where you should be focusing. For this episode of the Guest Speaker Series, we are extremely excited to welcome Biz Coach Steve Feld. Listen as Steve takes us through this story of his rise, the tech bubble burst, and rebuilding while teaching the importance of the power of extreme accountability.

Books Mentioned:

EMyth Mastery and EMyth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

About the Guest:

Biz Coach Steve Feld, MBA, is a Certified Business Coach, Author, Professional Speaker, Podcast Host, award-winning Business Management Executive, and coffee enthusiast. Hundreds of businesses have sought out his services to work with them on gaining much-needed clarity, implementing solid strategic plans, and achieving positive growth results. How does he obtain the best results for them so quickly? He focuses on the foundation of the business. 

Steve is passionate about business growth, efficient operations, and long-term success. He has built, owned, and operated 7 lucrative businesses (5 years with his current company). Has consulted with many other businesses providing change management and process improvement. Operated within 3 Fortune 500 companies manning and boosing entire divisions for them. 

These have included being a COO/CFO for a large non-profit organization, director of global merchandise for the Harlem Globetrotters, and General Manager for Rawhide an 1880s Western Theme town. 

Steve's goal is to stop business owners from suffering entrepreneurial depression, stop doing everything themselves, and making running their business easier and fun. Stop the struggle and start getting the results you want in your business. 

Business owners and entrepreneurs hire me to crack multiple 6 and 7 figures without burning themselves out. 

Because most lack a solid marketing strategy, getting divorced over their business money issues, haven’t taken a vacation, are in burnout mode, and struggle with sustainable revenue and profits. 

So, I help skyrocket predictable profits through their messaging, implement strategic systems and processes to gain freedom in their lives, and have the competitive edge for long-term success.

Bottom line, in 45-minutes I can uncover $50,000 to over $100,000 or more in hidden annual revenue for your business without spending more on marketing or advertising, which allows you to start reaching your business and personal financial goals. 

Biz Coach Steve works with dedicated coaches, small business owners, and entrepreneurs to skyrocket their revenue and profits. With an array of resources from 1-on-1 and group coaching, and workshops, to mastermind facilitation and an E-Learning Academy and proprietary software, Steve has all the proven tools and resources businesses need to expand. Has written 7 books and has his own brand of coffee.

https://www.bizcoachsteve.com/about/?fbclid=IwAR1szOgwpq_eGlQb-XLufRi6W7YT_zFT5kpis9pVHlnVG5ZTaWSHX8IAJR0

About Me:

My name is Tara Bryan. I help business owners break into the next level of success by packaging their expertise into an online business. It's my passion to help you find the fastest path to results to create a greater impact and income for you and your tribe.

This podcast is 100% focused on support, tips and example sharing, and building a community of online business owners who are passionate about building awesome learning experiences.

We do that by building engaging, motivating, gamified, and learner-centered online experiences. We come up with ideas and strategies to ensure that our learners can thrive and succeed using our packaged products.

To learn more:

Find us at https://www.taralbryan.com

Here are two ways we can help you grow and scale your online course-powered business:

1. NEED TO CREATE AN ONLINE EXPERIENCE BUSINESS? (Course, Program, Digital Delivery)

Join LEARN ACADEMY MENTORSHIP - Learn Academy is the best done-with-you On-demand and cohort implementation program that will help you create, sell, and launch your online business. 

2. ALREADY HAVE AN ONLINE BUSINESS & READY TO INFINITELY SCALE?

Schedule a 15 minute call with Tara to talk about our offers that will help you master the game.

Thanks for listening!

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Mentioned in this episode:

Gamify My Course Camp

https://bit.ly/2023_Gamify

Tara Bryan 0:05

Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan and you are listening to the course building secrets® podcast. Whether you're a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give you practical real life tips that you can use today to build your online experiences that get results and create raving fans. Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people without adding more time or team to your business? If you're looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and use it to scale you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Hey, everybody, welcome to today's episode of the course building secrets podcast. I am so happy to introduce you today to business coach Steve Feld. And he is going to give us some awesome tips around how to build your business, how to think about what you do. And so welcome Steve. We're so happy to have you here today. Why don't you kick us off by telling us a little bit about your story, who you are, how you got to where you are today. And and just kick us off?

Steve Feld 1:23

Great. Well, I'm this good Steve Feld business marketing strategist. I actually have podcast as well. I'm a professional speaker, author of seven books, and I am a coffee enthusiast. Ooh, I like that. I even have my own brand of coffee.

Tara Bryan 1:39

You do? That's super interesting. Okay, we're gonna dive serious I am, we're gonna dive into all of those things. Of course, I could talk about coffee all day long. So we'll save that. I'm sure there's a story there. That you're gonna tell us in a little bit. So. So alright, so break down sort of your story in terms of how you got started where you are today? You've said you've written seven books like, how did that happen?

Steve Feld 2:07

Tara Bryan 4:25

That's amazing. Okay, so you're a little bit of a serial entrepreneur, right? That's what I'm gathering. But the biggest thing is is that you sort of you are in a role and found a need. So you went after trying to fix that needs. So some some part of you is naturally thinks about processes and systems and how to how to maximize things which is amazing. So so so often when people are getting started building a business or packaging their expertise, they sort of like get sort of stuck in maybe either what they were doing or well how do I turn this into a business? Can you help help Somebody who's maybe in that place right now where they're like, Well, I'm really good at what I do. But can I turn that into a business? Like? What kind of tips do you have for somebody who's who's in that place? Maybe remember what it was like to make that transition?

Steve Feld 5:16

Well, it's funny because I teach a workshop called ABCs of starting a business. And I've done it for six years, two to three times a month. So what you're saying is, I hear that all the time. Yeah. People are so worried about their business card, their logo, a website, when they shouldn't be looking at, is my idea viable? Is there a market? What are who is my target market? They don't even have that identified? What are their problems? And how am I going to solve those problems? That's what they should be focusing on. Not all that mucky muck, you know, money, burning stuff. Focus on your bid your true business, because it's about sales. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. Well, and it's really about finding your voice, right? Like, how do you even articulate what you want to do to help these people and be able to build it that way? So yeah, 100% Agree, because that's the that's the biggest shift is, is that perception that you have to start with all the things, when you really just have to go out and solve that problem, like sounds like, well, that's what you started to do. And then people recognize it, and they came to you. And then it started to snowball from there.

I have a business card, right?

Here. Let me just write my name on this post.

I didn't have a website or any of that. And I said, Okay, you're you do this, right. Yes. These are your problems. And I would say three, and they always go like, how did you read my mind? I do X Y, Zed. I solved this problem. And it was like, they're like, you have a contract? I didn't even have a contract. Right? Right. Yeah, you're like, Yes, I do. Let me go make one. Yeah.

Tara Bryan

On a piece of paper, but because I focused on, but yeah, I mean, you can get pretty far just by showing up in serving. And then when you want to grow and scale it, then that's when you put everything in place where people can find you, you know, who you maybe don't know, or don't have an association with for sure. Yeah. Okay. So I want to dive in a little bit to you said, you've done workshops, you've said you've you've created books, and you obviously been doing coaching and consulting. So did you at one point, have sort of that one on one model, and then you transformed to coaching, maybe groups or more people or moving what you're doing from, you know, in person to online, talk to me a little bit about that, and what that transition look like for you?

Steve Feld

Yeah, one of my businesses, pure consulting, doing change management process improvement. And I woke up one day going, I have two clients, and I can't breathe. I'm working 60 hours a week. And then I was like, Okay, think think think, I can't scale, I didn't build a scalable business. And I got to, that's got to end. So I shut that down. Because that was a nice, open up a whole different model. I started doing one on one. And then I was speaking on stage one day and 31 people want to hire me as a one on one coach now.

Let's do the math and Yeah, I can do it, folks. Good luck. Maybe you're doing 15 minute segments. But then I started realizing I gotta change and I gotta shift in some models. So I brought in group coaching. So I have some automated stuff as well as live. I still do one on one mastermind groups. And I also even have an automated program. So for startups do it yourselfers I got this kind of, I got something for them as well. And I also have coaches underneath me. So now the scaling is great. I have programs that are all online. So someone could sign up go through all online program on their time. And it was just you got to focus on one thing at a time. If you tried to do it all at once. You're gonna just your mind just explodes. Oh, yeah. And then instead of helping your clients, you're just sitting in your office going?

Yeah, you're not helping anyone, including yourself. You're actually hurting everyone. Yeah, just focus on like, you start off one on one. And then slowly transition into like group slowly transitioning to online courses, slowly transition writing that book and everyone goes like that everyone has a book No funks on tiny, you cannot get a book in 30 days. You really can and it will not take you that long. So it get it out there become that expert in your field in a book is a great way to do it. And it's a great lead gen magnet.

Tara Bryan

Yeah, for sure. Well, and I think that one of the Think you're first of all, you're totally right. Like, start with one thing, don't try and do all the things you're gonna get overwhelmed, then you're gonna do nothing because you're so overwhelmed with everything. And don't you think that as long as you don't recreate the wheel every single time, you start to gain momentum, when you start packaging things in, you're like, Okay, I have this now I can focus on this and you go through, and it starts to snowball just naturally, because you're fulfilling those needs of the people that you're working with. One thing that I always get people really struggle when they're moving from helping people one on one to moving to a group. How did you position that for your people? Because so often, it's like, why can't I can't move into a group because they only want me one on one. Like, that's what they're paying for. So, so and I obviously have an answer to that. But I'd love to hear from you. Like, how did? How do you position that? To make it even a better experience?

Steve Feld

saying it out loud, and then seeing it around other people like your advisory panel, that makes a huge difference, because other people aren't gonna hold you accountable. And they're gonna say, like, you didn't do like you've done nothing.

I've been in a, I call it a hardcore accountability group. And it's six of us. It's fast and furious. And if you said why didn't get to this, but they wait till you're done talking. But if I will, I'm gonna have to move this next week. If you don't say why I got COVID. Okay, everyone, I'll give you the path. But I got busy that everyone will jump on you all day? Because that is a lame excuse.

Tara Bryan

Yeah, I love that. So one on one and group. Tell me about kind of your online programs and how do you keep people engaged? How do you keep people interested and kind of finishing what you're doing? And then ultimately, a sending to your, your other offers that you have?

Steve Feld

Absolutely, yeah, the online so it drips on them every week with this many things to work on. Nothing crazy. And it just one piece in their business. So they're always learning and engaged in a short lesson. 10 minute video, sometimes with a worksheet if they spend about two hours total, watching it, and engaging in implementing it, their business will usually double the triple and six months, and I've had success stories out one person who has been in the online automated program for three years. So they can meet to earn 10,000 a year. Now they're doing over 400,000 a year. And I keep saying you know, when are you going to go to one on one. And they're like this, Keith? It's part of my habits, my ritual. It's become so engrained. And so she sees the same material every year. But she goes, I'm in a different business than I was a year ago. Yeah. Scenario all together.

Tara Bryan

Yeah. So I love that because that's not that's a perspective that we don't usually think about is that so not only is she able to take it on demand on her schedule, when she wants it, like maybe she doesn't have her morning routine, or sometime during her day, she can plan it, and it's something she can access anytime. But I love that you just said that that like it's something that somebody can layer as they continue to grow in their business, that it's not just a one on one and done. It's not just a oh, well I'm only getting you know, this, this small amount of value. I need to go to the next level that sometimes It's it's something that just becomes part of, of something that they're using to run their business.

Steve Feld

That's it. I mean, we also have an ad library in it. We have resources, Trent other training. So it's just not like the weekly one email, they can go into our E Learning Academy and download, like, email, copy and just make their changes. Well, that's going to save them. Oh my god, how many hours and hours I did a whole drip campaign by going into my own elearning Academy, hold seven emails because they're crafted by good copywriters with the right language. And I put them in a sequence. And I realized it was 45 minutes to build a whole drip with better copy than I could write if I did it by myself that take two three weeks. Easy

right? I love that because I do that too. I'm like, Oh, I have a template for this that I built for other people. I could just actually use that for my own stuff. I love that. Because a lot of times, we don't think about that, right? Like, well, we have our own resources that we could be using. I'm like I should I should go out and find somebody's email copy. And then I'm like, wait, I have all these templates that I've created for people. That's awesome. So tell me about your academy? Is it? Do you? What tool do you use to launch it? I just call it learning. I live does it? Are you using a specific tool?

No. I mean, I just log in. So it's all web based. So if you have internet access, you can go in there. And everything is downloadable it. I tried to make it as easy as possible. And we always are updating the material as well. I mean, I just went through it with one of my coaches, and I said, Have you ever done sales training? Or like, no, I need help. And I showed him in the E Learning Academy. It's like, watch these videos. And he goes, Why is this person's name so familiar? It's like, well, if you're looking I'll Why don't you google him and Googled him and comes back. He's listed as a number three sales trainer in the US. Yeah, yeah, that's where you're getting training from.

Tara Bryan

Right. Right. That's awesome. Okay, so I'm curious. Um, because this is something that I hear a lot. So in. Typically, in our space, people call the sort of automated courses or even hybrid courses, online courses. And you're using the term elearning, which is what we use in the industry to describe more interactive training. So, so tell me like, how did how do you land on elearning? Like, what, what is the difference that you see between elearning and online courses?

Steve Feld

Online Course that kind of gets fed you? Here it is, it's kind of coming down the mountaintop. Whereas an E Learning course, it's like, okay, great. I just watched that video that just was fed to me. But now, that was a good appetizer, I want more. Now you can go into the elearning Academy has categories. So if you're looking at leads, conversions, pricing strategy, it has sections, and I always say you're like going down the rabbit hole, because you're going to find what you're looking for eventually. So even like, one thing was like someone goes, Hey, I need to get a market dominated position. Great, what industry, let's go into elearning Academy because I have hundreds of industries segmented out. Let's go to that industry. And then we'll go down the rabbit hole. Now look, we have a whole page of market dominated positions, find one, create your own download, whatever. So now we're getting that educational side to it, as well. And I've had people create their whole ad copy because we have an ad library in there. And then someone showed me their ad. I'm like, that looks really familiar. Like what do you mean, I download it, I gave it to my graphic designer and put my stuff on it.

Tara Bryan

Yeah, perfect. Awesome. Very cool. All right. So one thing I asked all of my guests is what's one tool, resource book, whatever that you recommend that's helped you along your journey?

Steve Feld

Oh, wow. I've always written books. One, there's a lot of books that have definitely changed the path of my book, my course. But at the beginning, definitely I always recommend anyone starting off, you must read. Read E Myth and E Myth revisited, revise you, that's a must. It's an easy read. That's going to get your head are you really going to are you an entrepreneur? You really have to understand that. And then as you start looking at people, I would say, get on the bus. There's that book. It's like, do you have the right people on your bus and one I read that I actually went back in I'm gonna say cleanse my personnel. Right and got the right view on the bus, right? My business took off right after that, just that move, which was hard. And then Good, Good to Great. That's a That's a must as well change or die. I was running someone else's business at the time. They said, read this book, I read it on a convit at a convention, I read three times, by the time they came back I had, I went to the board, hey, we're going to make these things to change or die. And they said, whatever you want to do, and I told them and their jaws were on the ground. They're like, go ahead, I went. And we had 720 employees, I went and laid off, or 150 employees redesigned all the departments all within 30 days, the business took off the 30 days after that. Wow. And that's word was like that was like change your diet. Right.

Tara Bryan

Right. Okay. Well, that sounds like a good one. So just out of curiosity, when you had to sort of shift your team, what was the one thing that was holding you back in terms of growth with with your prior team?

Steve Feld

I just didn't have the right people in the right positions. And I, me, wasn't being the right leader. And that's where I ended up getting help getting a coach. And they're like, Well, do you have the right people in place? And I started looking at, yeah, I hired this person to do this. But they're not like, well, that's your fault, because you hired that person. So you're the problem, not them. Right. So it's like, well, we can try to correct them, see if that's this, the position. And we did all those things to keep on because I'm not that ruthless. But it was like I had to change, learn more about leadership style communication delegation, which kills most of the businesses stop micromanaging people. And once that happened, then that's when it's like, moving forward, I hired the right people by having a better add a better onboarding process of their hiring process tighter. And next thing, you know, only the best of the best work, they were banging on the door to work for me. Instead of me, like, oh, man, I need a warm body to fill this position. It was never that after,

right? That's so that's so smart. I think when you first get started, you're doing all the things and washing dishes, right? Like, you're doing all the things. And then you hire people. And you're still doing all the things but you're having them help you and then at some point of growth, you have to pivot and realize that you have to step into a leadership role and not a doer role anymore. And so moving forward, so that's awesome. So that you said that was good, too great. was the book that helped that? Yeah.

Tara Bryan

Yeah, E Myth is great, because that's gonna get you the three levels. So are you the entrepreneur, the manager or the technician? As new business owners, you're always a technician. You can build a better mousetrap you have to get move yourself into the entrepreneurial. Yeah,

very smart. Awesome. Well, I love those resources. So what do you think like your biggest sort of actionable tip? Like, bring it into something that's super tactical for our audience? Like, what do you think is, you know, sort of your number one thing that you would recommend to people who are trying to move from one on one to one to many, or trying to grow and scale? Like, what is, what's the one thing that you want to share with my audience around that?

Steve Feld

Being that I've been there. And I finally took some other coaches advices. And it was to get help. Because what we think how we can move from one on one to group, it's up here. But when you start seeing it from here and your heart, it's like, whoa, that's, that's not gonna fly. And then what kind of value are you giving to the people now? Because it's different. So in one on one, it's very interactive and resources and everything. Why can't you do that in group, but it's on a bigger scale, instead of being about you helping them it's about everyone helping and getting an outside perspective, really did help me develop my group programs, going, Wait a minute, here, use the power of the group. That's what I would say. There's someone smarter than us out there. And they're probably in our group.

Tara Bryan

Yeah. Well, and that's, and that's what I think that I've been hearing from you during this time is how you have gone out and asked for help you have hired coaches, you have looked at Okay, so here's, I'm very good at what I do. But there's another perspective that somebody could help me take it to the next level or look at something a little bit differently. So I love that approach. Because I think so often, especially when people are getting started, they feel like they have to do it all themselves. Yeah,

Steve Feld

I agree. I mean, Michael Jordan had over 20 coaches, and he's the greatest basketball player but he needs some and he even said, like, I can only see me, they see things in me I can't see and they push me to be better and without them I don't know what better is.

Tara Bryan

Right? Right. Oh, that's so good. That's so good. I always say, you can't see, you can't see the label, if you're inside the bottle, right? Like, we can only see what we can see. But there are all these other sort of parts and pieces of of ourselves, or how we bring value to the world that if somebody else can, can just sort of shine light on that sometimes it helps you just go to that next level. So, so much faster. So I love that Steve, that super powerful is, is that message of really, you know, be scrappy, be, you know, like, get in and do the things and help people and get help yourself.

Steve Feld

So you can continue to grow and move forward. We all buy our own brand of BS.

That is true. That is true. So yes, that's another good reason is you they help you help you keep it real, right. Yeah, that's awesome. But I mean, in the same sense, you wouldn't think about writing a book and putting it out there without having an editor or somebody who is who's gonna look at it critically. And so often, we just don't think that way, when we're putting out our programs are where we're, you know, going out to market is it's that same thing of like, Hey, can you look at this and make sure that, that it is providing the value? It's saying what I want it to say and looking at that.

Tara Bryan

So yep, that's super powerful. Awesome. So where can my audience learn more about you and and find all these great programs and books and all these things that you've been talking about today?

Steve Feld

I have my website. Well, it's this coach, Steve GIZ. Coach, Steve. And then for all the resources, you can just put a forward slash and about, and it has everything about me.

Tara Bryan

Awesome, very cool. We will put that in the show notes. Steve, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to talk to you and learn more about what you do, and how you do it. Alright, everybody. So go out and check out Steve's all Steve's information. And we will see you on the next episode.