402: Optimizing Your Business Journey- with Brent Halfwassen

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To you, the listener. I want you to know that I appreciate you. And I'm super thrilled to have you here for another awesome episode. If there's ever anything that I can do to support you, reach out.

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Today's guest is Brent Halfwassen. He is the founder of MKE's Small Business Coach, a business coaching and consulting firm focused on small business owners and entrepreneurs from 5, 000 to 5 million in revenue, helping to turn their hard work into hard cash. Brent is a reality focused small business coach, empowering small business owners and entrepreneurs so they can stop spinning their wheels and instead take the right next actions to transform their hard work into hard cash. He has spent over 20 years building businesses and opportunities, coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs and small business owners around him and evolving his own entrepreneurial focus. Brent, welcome to the show.

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[00:02:01] Lori Highby: Absolutely. Happy to have you on. I'm sure you've got some really sound advice for our listeners. So, you know, I credit the Milwaukee business community is very, very tight. And I'm sure just in general, there's the There's tons of business coaches out there and I know there's a lot in Milwaukee, but what sets MKE small business coach apart from other support options, coaches, businesses, consultants?

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There are some coaches who will come around you and help you in your area of expertise. If you're a baker, they'll help you learn how to like bake better cookies or do better brownies or whatever it is your focus is. However, in my experience, I found that's not the spot that I think most entrepreneurs struggle.

Most small business owners struggle when they're looking at all the things that are not their specialty, not their expertise. And then they get 72 pieces of advice. Here's what you need to do in order to build your business. And you're going to do the marketing and the hiring, the people and the manager and the books and the compliance and all these other things.

And they're just like, ah, what do I do? That's really where we come alongside people. We want to help you know what those next right actions are. Of the 72 things, let's pick one, two or three that are actually critical to your next step towards success. Let's help you understand how to align to what you're doing.

And then once we figure out the connection between your activities, what you're doing and the results you want to achieve. Now we can go look at your goals and say, where do you want to get to? And let's realign the actions you're actually taking. Cause we have an action based coaching.

Some of the coaches that are out there, it's all about a slick strategy. It's about a sales pitch. It's about a stern lecture. It's about a system. And for me, that really doesn't work. I think most small business owners are independent thinkers, and we try and bring a lot of empathy and insight along with a large dose of humor in order to really make it successful.

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And I'm like, why am I doing this? There's people that do this for a living. And the irony of that is I want people to hire me for my expertise, Because that's not their strength. So there is a balance and you do need to hire those, whether it's internally or externally that have those specific skills.

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Do you have a plan to use that time, because that's what you're really doing. It's the one thing entrepreneurs can never get back is time, but you can buy time. And you can buy time by having other people do the tasks you're doing, but you have to deploy that well. So many people is like I don't understand I got someone doing my books and I got a VA and I got someone handling my social media and all this and things aren't really happening. And I'm like, but are you doing the things that the owner needs to do, the person who's got the expertise that you have to do. And those are some of the pieces that will help people break down because so many people grow sales by adding people, but when it turns out that you don't have any more dollars at the end of the day than when you were like maybe a lower sales number, all that's not being allocated efficiently, and that's another spot where we come behind people.

And that's why we say, I want to turn your hard work into hard cash. Cause so many of us can relate to, "Man, I am working my butt off." And when you look at your bank account, it does not look like it.

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[00:06:50] Brent Halfwassen: Right on, right on. I, another part I want to put out there is look, you don't need to be a hundred percent at these other pieces. You mentioned bookkeeping. You don't have to be a hundred percent of bookkeeping. You shouldn't be a hundred percent of bookkeeping, unless that's your area of expertise and where you're going into business for. I tell people to look at 80 percent as kind of a cutoff line. And that's because if you look at sort of the learning curve, right, you can get decent at something pretty quickly.

You know, if you're at 20%, you can probably get to 50 percent really fast. You get a few pieces of advice. You do, you practice it a couple of times. Like, all right, not bad. If you need to get beyond 80 percent on something, like you really feel like you need to. My website's not where I want it to be. My social media like impact or CRM flow isn't where I, I would love it to be in terms of what I envision. That's maybe another indicator of that's the time to start passing it off. Because now for you to go from 80 percent to 85 percent is going to take a ton of time. For someone in their zone of genius, they should already be operating 90 percent plus. Once you hit that spot, it is not worth your time to be out of your expertise doing stuff you probably shouldn't do.

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[00:08:03] Brent Halfwassen: Oh, my goodness. Relationships. I love that you said relationships because so many people are scared of networking. I'll admit when I started, networking was like this big boogeyman. I've just started explaining to people, all you're doing is building relationships. If you focus on building relationships, and build it the way you generally would build many of your other relationships, I think you're going to see something successful.

Most small business owners that I encounter, they don't really continue the relationships with their existing network. And by that, what I mean is that if you really went out and asked their friends and family, like, Kind of what, what does this person do? Have they talked to you about it? And I don't, I'm not talking about sales pitch, but I'm talking about, are you bringing in your business to kind of everything that you do in your relationships? Because for small business owners and entrepreneurs, really, really huge part of who we are. So I would say it's about understanding you got to keep building relationships. Relationships take time. They take followup. They take nurturing if you're going to be successful. And sometimes it just feels like, yeah, but I'm not doing anything. Ooh. That's the problem, that the relationships take time. And then the benefits that come out of those, they show up later.

So that's my- go out, work the circle you have. Don't be afraid to tell all your friends, Hey, this, I've just launched it. That's exciting. People want to celebrate with you. Yeah, go ahead and get out there. You don't have to sell them. Hey, come, come get your shoes shine cause I just opened a shoe shining thing.

No, you just tell people you open it. This is what you do. And these are the type of shoes you really love to, and people will figure it out. But as you build that relationship, someone would be like, huh, that's interesting. I know a person.

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A sale may be an outcome. You might be able to generate some new business because of a relationship, but the focus is on that long term value add and to your point, what you're being known for, right? So if someone starts hearing, like, you know, someone starts talking to me that they're in Milwaukee looking for a business coach.

Well, Brent's name pops to the top of my head because I've, I know that this is what you do and this is your strength and expertise. So I can easily refer that.

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Because I think, I think what some of the most productive meetings I've had is shifting into more connector and supporter mode. Um, Because I was told, you know, you got to go out, you got to have your pitch, do your 30 second thing, your elevator thing, your tagline, all that. Cool. I'll go out there. I'm happy to say, Hi, I'm Brent Halfwassen, Milwaukee Small Business Coach. We work with our small business clients to turn their hard work into hard cash. And some people are like, Oh, interesting. Cool. Is that what I spend all the time talking about? No, I actually spend more time, probably- it's hard to turn the coach off. You may get this too. Lori, when you're in that period, I was like, I apologize.

I dropped into five minutes of coaching here, but that's part of what I can do to help give back. There is nothing I can convey to someone in five minutes that would negate the value of what a longer term business relationship would be with me. And so why not support someone along the way and say, huh, have you considered? Or, oh, you're going to an event tonight? Do you have an outcome in mind? Like, what do you want to do at that event? And people are like, Hmm, I don't know. I just thought I should go there. Okay. But what if you added an outcome to it? Okay. And all of a sudden now they're like, Oh, wow, I came out and I had three great conversations with people and I'm going to follow up with them, and now we changed the course of one action. And now if we were continued coaching, we'd say, what, what are the next steps? And we keep building from there so that new opportunities show up where people miss it, but it all starts with relationships.

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[00:12:16] Brent Halfwassen: Yeah. Well, I love that you asked this question. Went back to the original example when we're just getting started and we can't find three nickels to rub together.

That is not necessarily the time to get a coach. There's information that we can get, but we're not ready to deploy it. So there's an expression I heard recently and I love it. And it says when the student is ready, a teacher will appear. Entrepreneurs have to be ready, and we have to be ready and humble enough to take advice in areas where we're not strong.

And that's, that's a hard spot to be in because some people show up. And I'll tell you, I've coached a lot of entrepreneurs. I've probably worked with over 800 different entrepreneurs, either in the, looking to start up or already in business, and in that entire time, I don't think I've talked to any of them who initially identify what I would consider is actually the primary problem they need to address. It's like, you know, they see the symptom, like I have a cough and I was like, well, the real problem is, you know, you have cold, not that like, you know, you keep coughing. So we got to get to somewhere deeper down.

So the business owners know that they're ready when they've recognized that they've reached the limit of what they can do and that they're ready to listen and ready, ready to take someone else's advice and implement it. And put it into action.

I would say, go back and look at the last advice or whether you got it through YouTube University or reading a blog or a magazine or a book, when's the last time you actually implemented a change? Or when's the time that you learned it and then continue doing the things that you're going to do?

It's a, it's a mindset change. It doesn't mean that you implemented a change and it worked. That's not what I'm worried about. But if you're not implementing any change today, it's hard to believe you're going to hire a coach and do a great job implementing their change. Cause they're going to suggest changes on how things are and it's uncomfortable. And yes, you get added accountability. Yes, you may have more comfort level that you're getting great advice, but I find that's a defining threshold and folks that I've coached. You can tell the ones when it's the third meeting and you're like, so we keep going back to this point about we need to go out and build more relationships, but I noticed you haven't changed the behavior. What's going on? That's that to me is probably the number one indicator. When you're ready to make change, then I want to tell you, go out and find a spot where you need to hire a coach. Maybe it's in your expertise because you want to grow and be better at that area. Awesome. Maybe it's outside your expertise. That's a spot where we come in. And you need to build the business so that you can stay in your zone of genius and learn how to manage others around you and get your operations effective. Would be happy to help you out there too.

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All right. I'm going to switch it up for a fun question. Now, if you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of less of, or differently with regards to your professional career?

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Not everyone, but some of us. But the first time I left that job and went to the next job, I figured out that a lot of those friends and acquaintances were friends of like proximity, because I saw them every day because they were in the office together. Cause our cubicles were close together.

I hadn't necessarily fostered an additional relationship step. It's probably not even huge, but I hadn't developed the discipline around that. So if I go back and talk to my 20 year old self, I was still in college. It's like, hey, some of these folks you're in classes with now are relationships that you can call up and sort of shoot the breeze and talk about how your team's doing in the tournament. That's fine. But you can also find out, hey, how's your career path going? I'm having this challenge. You can start going to the point about seeking advice and making change. You can start connecting in now because you are not alone.

The biggest myth that goes on with entrepreneurs is that we're doing it alone. And that's because we feel lonely, because others don't really understand us. But if you start building yourself with a network early in college, in your first professional career role, whatever that is, and you look at that network, not just so I can find someone to watch a movie with or play basketball with, or hang out with on a Friday night, but that there's a little bit deeper relationship that spans other areas. I think that can really make a huge difference. And if I were to go back and do it again, I try not to have regrets because today's the only day we have, but I've built my network and my relationship set more in the last year and change than, honestly, probably the entirety of the rest of my life combined, but it's because I was more intentional about it and knew the value of it.

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[00:17:51] Brent Halfwassen: Oh, my goodness. We're going to be on almost episode, you're going to have 400 in the can.

How has your podcast evolved over time? Because that's a lot of opportunity for you to learn and grow. And by the way, congratulations, because that is a serious landmark.

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I've leveraged marketing automation from an efficiency standpoint for communication scheduling, announcement related to the show creating awareness for listeners and whatnot. Yeah, and I feel overall, I've gotten more comfortable and confident with podcasting um, not only hosting, but also being a guest on other people's shows.

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[00:19:09] Lori Highby: Yeah. Yeah. I should listen to episode one. Thank you for that. All right. Any final words of wisdom you'd like to share with our listeners?

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[00:20:04] Lori Highby: Yeah, I love that. That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, which is do something your future self will thank you for.

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[00:20:13] Lori Highby: All right. Speaking of any if anyone was interested in getting in contact with you, what's the best way that they can reach you?

They can go on our website, mkebusinesscoach. com and click the button to contact us and schedule some time directly with us. You know, alternatively, they can certainly feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, which is another place that I hang out a bunch. And I absolutely love to have an initial conversation and not only see if there's a way I can help you, but see if there's a way I can connect to you.

There may be someone in my network when we talk. That I can just say, it's hard to turn off the coach. We talked about this a little bit, but there may be someone in my network that I say, you should talk to this person and consider asking them this question. And if I can give you that gift, I'd be honored to have the conversation.

All right. That's awesome. We'll include that information in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Brent.

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[00:21:13] Lori Highby: Oh, thank you so much. All right. This wraps up our episode of Social Capital. Huge thank you for Brent to taking the time to connect with us. If you have a burning marketing or a relationship question, reach out. I'd love to answer it on the show. And as mentioned before, connect with me, connect with Brent on LinkedIn. Both of us would love to connect with you.

All right. Hope you enjoyed today's show. I want you to go out there and get noticed.

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