Dominic tells us why he'll never retire, what the most misunderstood thing is about business coaching, and why being carbon neutral by planting trees isn't everything it's cracked up to be.

Dominic's recommendations:

The Drive - Peter Attia (podcast)

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits - Verne Harnish (book)

The Value Profit Chain - James L. Heskett 

Net Promoter Score - Fred Reichheld

BWB is powered by Oury Clark

businesswithoutbullshit.me

Hello and welcome to this week's BWB Extra where we get to know master business coach and author Dominic Monkhouse a little better.

So let's wind the clock back, eh?

How did you end up doing what you're doing?

We'd sold the company and I thought I would do something else.

I don't have a proper job for a while.

How old were you?

47.

47.

Good, you're looking pretty good.

Midlife crisis.

It's the peak of unhappiness in men.

We're at the bottom of the U.

This is a pit of despair.

What's the 47.

47, same.

What's your long term goal?

Uh, keep working until I die.

Nice.

I have no desire to retire.

I've spoken on the podcast to a number of people who are in their 80s and they say, Dom, don't retire.

And one of the guys said, look, I don't talk to anyone that, that I used to have a, be friends.

Cause he said they retire and then they just talk about what they used to do.

Oh, it's a, my dad's still working at 80 and he goes, if we go to a wedding or something, he ends up, and my mum, they end up coming sit at our table.

I'm like, he's like, I just need to talk to your friends.

Cause like, you imagine sitting with 80 year olds, my mum's like, everyone's dying.

So everyone's like, oh, my leg hurts and my back hurts.

It's golf, you know, you got my dad still working like a fucking bastard going, well, this is what's going on.

Yeah.

Shoot me.

Shoot me.

If I pick up a golf club.

What's the most misunderstood thing about your job?

My wife constantly says to me, my wife says to me, she's not the most misunderstood, but she does say to me all the time.

I don't know what you're fucking whinging about.

All you do is stand there and talk to people all day.

You don't even have a proper job.

So that's your warm inside sitting down.

Talking, rubbing her ego.

It's pretty good.

Yeah, and she said, look what I've been doing.

I've done this and this and this and this and the kids and blah.

It's good that she respects what you do though.

Oh yeah, totally.

There's a lot of respect in our house.

What's the biggest problem facing your industry?

Oh, I mean, often I say coach and people go, life coach.

And it's like, oh God, no.

Totally different.

Life coach is annoying.

Team alignment specialists, you know, team alignment.

A lot of the stuff you do, I've got clients from Australia who, it comes out of sport, team alignment.

You know, high performing team concepts and stuff.

You touched on that, that's kind of your area a little bit.

A bit, but it's, I think they're specialists and I'm a generalist.

I coach the CEO and their team.

No company can outperform its leadership team.

And that's what I do.

And so when people say, Well, what do you do?

I go, well, what's your problem?

Yeah, yeah.

Let's start there.

Let's not start talking about a tool.

Like, I've got a spanner.

Like, why is your car broken?

Like, you brought it into the mechanic.

You don't go, show us your toolbox.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have you got, do I like your spanners?

Oh, snap on.

Alright, I'll let you work on my car.

It's not, no, it's like, your car's broken, I'm a mechanic, you think you can trust me, I'll fix your car for you.

And then they tell you, I hate my CTO, and you kick him in the bollocks and go for a smoke a cigar in the toilet.

Job done.

You know?

What are you doing about climate change?

Doing anything?

What are you doing?

Yeah, we are carbon neutral.

Yeah?

Do you know what to tell companies to do about it?

You could have quite an influence in trying to help them get their head around this nightmare.

One of our clients is also the chairman of a company called Ecology.

Oh yeah.

Really?

The tree people?

Yeah.

So they make it real easy.

Are they lying though?

'cause we, me and my friend, were like, it's the perfect business.

It's a website with pictures.

Are they lying of trees on it?

It's genius.

And I looked up this guy and he had a web business before this, and he built websites as his previous career.

So you just think he's built a nice website?

No, I, I, we, we, we, we like uses them.

We have it on our website.

But I was laughing when the partner said, I mean, what a brilliant business.

Who the fuck is gonna check a tree?

Go to Madagascar and let's look at the trees.

Yeah, let's do it.

And even if you did them once, you could take the same, you could take people to the same place.

They're not gonna know it's the same tree.

Walk around five times, they'll get confused a lot.

Wherever they are, they just bribe the farmer to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're trees.

Yeah, yeah, trees.

Perfect.

It's perfect.

You could compete on cost, couldn't you?

Could be the cheapest non tree planter on the internet.

If you know him, I'd love to discuss it.

He could, he'd be very welcome on the podcast, but I'd just love to discuss the, you know, how do you, you know, I mean, maybe I'm trying to sell auditing because basically that's what you need.

You need auditors, you need a, but you're talking internationally.

I, I like it because it's like, instead of having to do a carbon audit and it's complicated, it's just like, how many employees have you got?

Do they fly much or not?

Okay, some do, some don't.

How many?

Pay here, put your credit card details in, done.

And so because we see when clients work with us, they're down with us in the farm in the New Forest.

So we go, how many clients are coming this year?

Make some estimation of that and offset their journeys to us as well.

And now a quick word from our sponsor.

Business Without Bullshit is brought to you by Ori Clark.

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What are you most excited about for your business?

Is there a recession coming?

They're always exciting.

We've been in a recession for like 60, 70 years.

Britain basically has moments of glimmering hope, but generally we've been down the top.

Oh, I like, it's uncertain.

And I remember I rang, I rang Jack Stack and got him on the podcast as Covid happened, and he said he wrote a great book called Great Game of Business, and he said, Dom, I love a Black Swan event.

We've had seven.

We double the company every time.

We've got half a million dollars in the bank.

Bring it on.

And I have the same view.

Some of our clients will struggle.

Some of them won't.

Some new people will ring me up and go, Can you help us?

It'll just be interesting.

Yeah, as long as we're moving forwards, and not, like, cascading into the abyss, that might be a little bit...

Oh, does anyone want to buy my technology?

Oh, we're all dying, you know.

It's fine if everybody's roped together.

Oh, that stops us.

We'll all go.

Well, one of us, I mean, one of us needs to hang on.

If somebody's in the abyss.

And then we'll be alright.

Yeah, yeah.

Climb up.

And what's your biggest fuck up?

I'm not very good at writing down a plan, and I do remember probably over promising and under delivering.

Is that just the once, Dominic?

Oh no, I've done that loads of times.

But, uh, in particular, the CEO of a company I was working for rang me up and said, You are a four out of ten.

And it's like, oh.

He said, so I'm gonna come and spend a week with you.

see what you do because you don't write anything down.

At the end of the week he said you're a seven and a half.

So I got to keep my job.

I have to say, doesn't mean I write anything down.

Seven and a half doesn't fit, I wouldn't be like, come on.

Well I thought I was getting fired, so seven and a half was to keep your job.

Yeah, yeah, seven and a half's fine.

Would you lose sleep if you didn't get an A in a test?

No, because I'm dyslexic, so like you, at a very young age, I was always failing stuff.

What do I have to do, what do I have to do to not get detention?

You end up running the tuck shop, as I did, you know, because you can't...

I've got five covered.

Yeah, because you get on with everyone really well, but when it comes to class, it's like 50 percent of the classes, you're just like, what the fuck is going on?

Well, and then free sweets for you.

Yeah, free switch to me.

Recommendations on what to read, what to watch, what to listen to, anything you like.

Peter Rattier has a podcast called The Drive.

He, uh, competitive cyclist, swimmer, had a heart murmur or something in his 30s and realized that he might die.

So he's now has a thing called the Centenarian Olympics.

So it's like how to live to a hundred.

So his whole thing is about.

Getting healthy to live as long as possible.

So that's, so that's good, I enjoy that, that sort of non work thing.

The book that probably had the biggest impact on me is a book called The Rockefeller Habits by a guy called Verne Harnish.

The audiobook I assume you're talking about here?

No, the audiobooks.

Did you actually read it?

I did.

Is it a particularly big book?

No, not really, it's about the size of your notebook, right?

So, but it's, it's a whole load of things that you have to do to build a great company.

And so, as the MD at Rackspace, I looked and went, I need an operating manual for this company.

So that was the book that gave me the operating manual.

And they're the tools that I now sort of underpin the coaching that I do with clients.

So I've spent 20 years using them and 8 years coaching them.

Step 1, find Barry.

Step 2, fire Barry.

Uh, and then there's a couple of other books which I really like.

There's a book called The Value Profit Chain, uh, which is, profitability is not where you start.

You can't get, you can't get profitability unless you have happy customers.

Those happy customers have to be looked after by happy staff.

So that had a massive impact on it.

Uh, on my business career.

And then Net Promoter School, Fred Reichelt.

I do.

Fred's a lovely bloke.

Had him on the podcast.

He's great.

I find it all a bit like Net Promoter School was to complicate or something.

I don't know.

It's all like, you know, people bullshit their numbers so much too, because people are like, Oh, I've got a 9.

8.

If you said that's impossible, you couldn't have possibly more than a 7.

1.

I just find it really, I'm going to admit something that I probably shouldn't admit.

I find it really hard to read business advice books.

Buy one that's a bit like a manual.

I, I think there's a lot of them, which is one clever idea, and there's a book written around it.

When I was jogging when I was young in my antelope, you know, it's like fucking chapter four, they finally tell you what it is.

Be the antelope you want to see in yourself.

Exactly.

So that was this week's episode of BWB Extra, and we'll be back tomorrow with our finale for the week, the Business or Bullshit Quiz.

Stay tuned.