In this empowering episode, Brad Koch shares how you can take control of your business by shifting your mindset and focusing on key strategies. If you’re struggling to let go of daily tasks, or if you feel overwhelmed by scattered marketing efforts, you won’t want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why shifting your mindset helps you delegate and focus on your zone of genius

- How to focus on one marketing channel to drive growth without burnout

- What daily 1% progress can do to steadily scale your business

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 3 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Bradley J. Koch is the Owner and CEO of 4sight Coaching. Brad is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a 32-year veteran of corporate America. He's developed high-performing teams, started and sold businesses, and been part of growth teams. Brad works with small businesses, Founders, and CEOs to help them overcome their biggest challenges. Whether a company needs to improve retention, profitability, sales performance, or strategy, he provides the environment and tools for success.

Want to learn more about Bradley J. Koch's work at 4sight Coaching? Check out his website at https://4sightcoach.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

Take the Founder's Evolution Quiz Today

If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.

Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once

again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And

here with us today is yet another high demand coach in

the one and only, Brad Koch, who is owner and CEO of

foresight coaching. Brad is a veteran of the United States

Marine Corps and a 32 year veteran of corporate America.

He's developed high performing teams, started and sold

businesses and been part of growth teams. Brad works with

small businesses, founders and CEOs to help them overcome

their biggest challenges, whether a company needs to

improve retention, profitability, sales,

performance or strategy. He provides the environment and

the tools for success, and he's here with us today. Brad,

welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here with

us today. Out of the gate here, I want to kind of set

this stage. So I've seen a lot of founders who start their

company get kind of everything they wanted, right? They get

the revenue, they get the growth, and then they find

themselves working 80 hours a week or more missing all the

rest of life. And there's this, there's this feeling of

like resentment or just being trapped, for a lot of

founders. So if we've got someone listening today,

they're just in that place. I know I've been there. I'm

assuming you have too of being overwhelmed by it all. What's

the biggest reason that they're losing control?

Bradley J. Koch: Uh, first of all, thanks for having me.

It's great to meet you one on one having listened to your

podcast. Good to put a face to a name. So I think at 30,000

feet, the core issue is they're not letting go.

They're not comfortable yet they don't have the right

mindset. And some of the common reasons that I've

personally experienced myself and coached through is at this

stage, they still feel like they have more time resource

than money, resource. Yes, they might also feel like,

hey, it's something that the founder should do. I'm the

founder by golly. I have to do this. And then that fear of

trust that is someone else going to do it as well as I

am. And I I think you said something important. They've

got a few wins to some that reinforces the beliefs. They

create this loop, like, Hey, I'm I'm winning, I'm making

money. So I got to do this.

Yeah, I want to unpack this because, like,

it literally is the roadmap for this stage. So they

they're not comfortable. You said they don't have the right

mindset. Tell me a little bit about what the mindset is that

they do have and the mindset that they need to take moving

forward.

Bradley J. Koch: Yeah, a couple of generalizations. Let

me start there and say that I know from personal experience

that when I fell into this trap, it was because I had the

mindset that I had more time resource than money resource.

I hadn't gone through and experienced some very helpful

processes that uncovers what my zone of genius is, and then

really understanding that's the skills and the tasks that

I need to leverage. I didn't done that yet, so I'm still

looking at everything through that. I've got to do

everything thing and right? I may be working 80 hours a

week, but I can afford to work 85 I feel like I can't pay

another employee, or another half employee, or whatever it

is. So I hate first things. First is we just have to get

out of that mindset that everything is better with you,

and once we can, once we can see through that, that's to

me, that's when the business starts to get fun, because you

start to build a team, have you, as you've talked about so

many times.

Yeah, I love that. I love that that time,

instead of money, is so true. And what's so fascinating to

me about this is that when you look at those things, my time,

I have more time than I do money. I need to do it. You

know, if it's to be, it's up to me. It's not that those

things aren't true leading up to this, right? So they're,

they're mindsets that are there because, to some extent,

they're necessary to get through the very earliest part

of the process, you know? So these aren't bad things and

and you, you nailed this as well, saying, hey, it's those

wins when you behave like that. When you behave like

it's to be it's up to me, and you close the deal and you

deliver it on time. It kind of locks you in as like this. Is

it? Right? I would go so far to say there are synapses that

are built in your brain that drive that behavior. So how do

you help folks to kind of demarcate that point when

those things aren't serving them anymore, when those

mindsets and traits?

Bradley J. Koch: Yeah, excuse me, I think what I try and do

is get into that zone of genius understanding. So we

start to unpack Pareto and this 8020 role, like in the

beginning, you're the founder. 8020 doesn't exist. 100% is

what you do. But as you get closer and you start to get

extended, and you have some wins, and you can see that

your that your concept is validated, like you have a

marketable business going through that and figuring out

what that 20% of what you do that drives 80% of the results

is sort of a life changing process to go through. And on

the other side of that, I would expect the founder to be

able to leverage that 20% so what did that look like?

Acknowledge for the first time, probably in their in

their journey, that I need help with the 80% right? And

I've got and maybe at this stage, they do have a team

built out, and maybe the team is really close, and then he's

keeping or she's keeping them very close. But we know, and

it because we're from the outside as coaches and

consultants. We can see the forest through the trees. They

can't, so they they still think everything has to flow

through them, and we can see the next big thing for them is

what happens when you start to build up your A players and

the team around you. And that doesn't happen, at least in my

experience, until we can recognize and categorize what

it is they do that leverages the most results.

Right, That's so true. So one of the

things I noticed as I was getting ready for the episode

and doing some research on your work, was there was a

pretty heavy emphasis on marketing. And even in your

answer here, you said, once you have a marketable

business, is as one of, like the the many things that

contribute to the timing of all of this, what role does

getting hold of your marketing play in taking back control of

your business.

Bradley J. Koch: From the founders point of view? Well,

God, this is a multi faceted question, so bear with me,

because I think there's, there's a couple of key things

that I'd want folks to take away from. So early on,

marketing tends to be, I'm just going to do everything,

I'm going to do ads, I'm going to do the social I'm going to

do lives, I'm going to I'm going to do this. And then

here's my strategy for a banded cart. Here's my

strategy for this or that. And if we think about a game,

Scott, if you had a checkers board, and I had a checkers

board, and we lined our pieces up on the baseline, and the

goal was the first person to get a checker all the way

across to the other side. Wins my strategy, and we alternate.

So my strategy is, I move one piece, you move a piece, I

move a different piece, and we just go back and forth like

this. I'm moving all those pieces a little at a time, but

you You're smart. You already understand the game. You're

taking that one piece and you're moving that

consistently until you get to the to the finish line, and

you'll beat me every single time. Yep, the same is true in

marketing. There's time to spend resources and and energy

on building this ecosystem of marketing, the cus, you know,

the customer journey understanding. How can you I

mean, ultimately, you want to get to a place where you've

got more eyeballs, those people are committing more

frequently, so they're not abandoning um, that they're

adding more things to their cart, so each transaction is a

little more and they come back more often. And lastly, they

tell everybody they know about you, right? If we're trying to

do that early on, that's, it's, it's like the checkers

game, right? We're never going to make it. So my advice for

them to feel productive with marketing and actually to see

results is to go back and keep it simple. You know what?

Right? What is one thing that you know about your audience?

You know where they hang out, you know what their pains or

frustrations or aspirations are focus on that.

I love that. I love that. And it's part of

a it's part of a bigger pattern that's playing out in

a number of different spaces goes right back to your 8020,

principle, right? Because I do think that there's a necessary

stage of trying out a number of things, right? It's kind of

like, if you have a shrub out front, you plant it. You don't

just cut every limb off, or, you know, as soon as you put

it in the ground, that's not going to go well, so you let

it grow out a little bit, and then there has to be a season

of pruning, right? And I think that's a more painful season

than we recognize for for founders, if you don't realize

the benefit of it, if all you do is think you're saying no

to things, if all you do you think you're saying is cutting

away, it can be very painful, but the value of that, I think

I'm hearing from you is the ability to focus your limited

time and resources in one place where you can really

succeed. Is that right?

Bradley J. Koch: 100% and just add one thing to it every that

there's an overlaying principle that as founders, as

entrepreneurs, as creatives, we tend to lose sight of and

that is, what is the goal? What is the goal? And have

that be the filter that we view everything through? So

this, at an earlier stage in the business, the goal is one

thing. Later in the journey of the business, the goal is

something different. You know, it might be scale, it might be

profitability, it might be whatever expansion. So ask

yourself, are all of these efforts, and this goes back to

the founder in the 8020 are they supporting what the goal

is? Are you just doing a lot of things? Because that's kind

of what got you there, right? Does it support the goal?

Yeah. And, and that sounds very

elementary, but, but it isn't right, like, because here's

what I've seen happens at this stage, and add to this,

because I think you've got a lot of experience in this

space, but one of the big pivotal shifts from our

mindset issues, you're moving from your business surviving

to it thriving, right? And what that means is success is

not just being here tomorrow, which is kind of it's kind of

as much as you can expect at some points early on. But if

your hope when things are going well is to just be here

tomorrow, there's no direction in that. There's no purpose in

that. There's no kind of like higher meaning. And when being

here tomorrow is covered, it's kind of like, why am I still

here? You can only play that game so many times before it

starts to get very old. So how do you help folks at this

stage to redefine success through that lens of thriving?

Bradley J. Koch: Yeah, so it's a blend of going back to day

one. I mean, what? What drove you to start this business? It

wasn't surviving. It wasn't, you know, maybe ultimately, it

was to have more control over your time or more control over

your income. But oftentimes the the founder is driven by

something, right? They've got a deeper call to do something.

And if they go back to that and keep that in the forefront

all of all of the other things that take place tend to go out

of focus, like you don't necessarily need. Well, I'll

use your analogy, and I'm sorry to change thoughts, but

the pruning, I love that. I mean the season for pruning

sounds simple, but it is probably the most painful

thing I can recall at different stages. There were

very distinct stages in my life where pruning had to take

place and saying no to things had to take place. That was

hard, and I ultimately think that I want to support the

founder and their creative why, why they started the

business, and as long as we keep that in the forefront,

and there's another piece to this, which you'll probably

ask, is, is going to help us, you know, do the right things

or be okay with where we are. Now I'm rambling, so bear with

me for a second. I apologize to the listeners early on,

once you decide this is what I want. Do it's, how do I do it

and stay open tomorrow, right? That just survive once you got

that covered, how do you stay focused on doing the things

you need to do to get to the next stage? Well, the question

I'd ask before that is, when you started the business, have

you thought about it as a journey. Have you thought

about it as you're going to go through iterations? And that's

one of the reasons I'd love to meet early, early stage

thinkers about what they want to do, because I think

educating them about all of these I say six. I think you

talk about seven, I think the difference is you have fun as

a stage. I don't, but they're gonna the life cycle of the

business is gonna go through here, and here are the key

things that you have to stay focused on through each of

them. I don't know, does that answer? I felt like I just

rambled.

No, it does. It really does. And it

captures some of the tension that's there and that it's not

formulaic, right? There's a lot of folks who will approach

that and say, Well, here's the formula, here are the meetings

that you need to have, or the goals, like the goal program

that you need to have. And it's deeper than that for

founders, and I think you're touching on that in the heart

of it. And I think that's really cool. I do have another

question for you, and then I want to make sure folks know

how they can get in touch with you, because I know there's

folks who are going to want some help and to tap into more

of your wisdom. So question first, what would you say is

the biggest secret that you wish wasn't a secret at all?

What's that one thing you wish everybody watching or

listening today knew?

Bradley J. Koch: I would say this, that in the in the stock

market, or in investing, there's something called

compound interest. You put money in, and this magical

thing happens with time, and you don't have to make huge

investments to become wealthy. You can make small, consistent

investments. The same is true in your life and in your

business, in many different ways, and practically

speaking, if I am a new business owner, I have this

pressure of feeling like I have to hit home runs every

single day. And I think that pressure does a couple of

things. It kills businesses, it kills the drive and fire

that they have, and it also forces them, I think, to make

bad decisions if we could refocus them and say, no, let

me show you how 1% better or 1% progress every single day

is going to far out perform. You know, a 20% jump here, and

then maybe a 6% jump there have been a 5% jump backwards

because you're overthinking compounding action. Do you

want to make change in your life? Do you want to make

progress in your business? Break it down. What are the

what are the smallest things that you can control that move

you towards your goal?

I love it. I love it. Brad, there's folks

listening who would love to reach out to you and connect,

hear more and potentially even work with you. Where can they

find more out about the work that you do?

Bradley J. Koch: The simplest place is 4sightcoach.com and

that's a number 4, s, i, G, H, T, coach.com and yeah, all the

resources I have and how to get in touch with me. And

yeah, I'd love to, and like you, I just, I just enjoy

meeting people that have taken that step to starting a

business. And yeah, that's a that's a pleasure.

Amazing, amazing. Well, I highly

recommend it. The website's fantastic. There's so much

there, and if you like what you heard today, it's only

just the scratching the surface. Brad, thanks for

being on the show today. Just a privilege and honor having

you here, and for those of you watching and listening, you

know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope

you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did,

and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.