How Business Coaching Can Unlock Revenue

0:00Welcome to Enterprise Radio, the signature show of the Enterprise Podcast Network, featuring some of the most prominent business professionals in the world today. And now your host, Eric Dye. This is Eric Dye and once again welcome to Enterprise Radio, a part of EPN. The Enterprise Podcast Network today, we're visiting with Dr. Bill Sodomund. He is the owner of N3ED.com and is a certified business and leadership coach and Mr. Sodomund, we thank you for joining us here today on Enterprise Radio. Hey, thank you, Eric and it's great to be here. And certainly do appreciate your time. Thanks for spending a moment with us here today. So for starters, what's the difference between a mentor and a coach? Let's start there. I get this question a lot, Eric. And a mentor typically shares their experience and advice based on their own career path. Coach's focus on helping the executive think better, decide better, and perform better by asking strategic questions and building structured improvement systems.

1:00Mentors work from their experience, their advice is often informal in relationship driven, and it's framed by here's what worked for me. Where coaches focus on performance, it's structured with appointments and regular deliverables that the client needs to work on. He's used framework and coaches help executives uncover their own insights and another great thing about coaching is it focuses on measurable business outcomes where a mentor might overlook those. Thanks for setting us straight on the differences between a mentor and a coach and tell me why do executives need a business coach? We'd love to hear your feedback on that. There are three things that executives face. First one is isolation, the higher you go in an organization, the fewer people you've got on your peer network who can give honest feedback to you. A coach serves as a trusted advisor and a confidential thinking partner.

2:04The second piece is leaders make high impact decisions affecting revenue, people in strategy and those are complex decisions. Learning helps improve the clarity and strategic thinking around those decisions so that executives can perform better not only for themselves but for their business. The third and for me one of the most important pieces is even high performers have habits or assumptions that limit growth. They've got blind spots and there could be areas where they typically don't look or it could be things that they do well that they take for granted. Everybody's got their own strengths and we often take it for granted that I can lift this piece of furniture, for example, or I can do a financial breakdown of a company really easily. They just go ahead and do it.

3:05I certainly do appreciate your feedback on that. I'm certainly a fan of having a business coach have certainly implemented that in my business for some years and it's a different smaker for sure. Thanks for your feedback. Now how can executives build effective practices that improve their value to business? Touch on that. Executives increase their value when they deliberately improve how they think, plan and act. This step is to develop clear goals and these need to be written goals that help provide clarity, focus and energy for achievement. Write down your goals daily and focus on measurable outcomes. Some people call these smart goals. Another area you can do is hope focus on high value activities because not all work is equal impact. Executives need to concentrate on the 20% of activities that produce 80% of their results and ask themselves regularly what activities create the greatest impact for their business.

4:07Number three in my mind is working on your area of excellence. Leaders deliver the greatest value when they operate in their unique strengths and competencies and the signs that you're in your area of excellence or high energy, exceptional performance, strong results and that motivation for continuous improvement that's so important. I appreciate what you do in the space, certainly appreciate your joining us here today as well. We're speaking with Dr. Bill Sodomon, the owner of N3ED.com and is a certified business and leadership. Coaching is joined us here today on Enterprise Radio, a part of EPN, the enterprise podcast. Now we're now continuing on. How long does a coaching engagement take to be effective? I'm sure there are questions on that from the listeners. Touch on that if you would as well. It's often see results quickly, but meaningful transformation can take anywhere from six to 12 months. That initial phase of the engagement, the first 90 days helps provide clarity, goal alignment,

5:07identification of constraints that are holding you back and some initial productivity improvements. The growth phase comes next for the next three months going to the six month mark and that focuses on building strategic thinking, productivity habits, leadership effectiveness and accountability systems. And finally, there's a transformation phase that happens when strategic planning becomes a natural part of the executive's thinking, when productivity systems become routine, and when their leadership capability expands, and that's another difference that coaches provide is building capability so that many habits that drive performance can become automatic. You know, about 95% of your daily actions are habit driven, so a sustained improvement requires habit change, and it takes at least 40 days to create a new habit.

6:12It certainly does, and a great point made right there on that, that certainly says it all. Now what's the one thing that executives can do right now to improve their performance? If I had to recommend a single habit, it would be to write down your goals every day. This practice immediately improves your focus and your decision making because it helps clarify priorities, it activates your subconscious problem solving ability, and it increases motivation and energy. Successful leaders constantly think about their goals and how to achieve them, so every morning, right down, 10 goals for your business and career, your most important goal, and the one action you must take today. This works because goals direct your attention, attention drives behavior, and behavior drives results. Without clear goals, we're going to drift as people. With goals, we move with intention. And I hope the listeners heard you loud and clear on that, really do appreciate your advice in those regards. As we conclude, any closing thoughts, a final word, or anything else you'd like to

7:16draw our attention to as we conclude today. Eric, one thing that I often counsel executives on is how they spend their day. They need to focus more on high value work than the work that they're comfortable with. And I frame this as the role of the technician who's fighting fires, who's dealing with issues that happened in the past. It's tempting. It can be fun and a real rush to solve these problems, but executives need to ask themselves, would they go ahead and pay themselves their own hourly rate for getting that work done? And chances are, the answer is no. And that's a sign that the executive needs to focus on the present and the future, especially with future orientation. It's important to block out time on your schedule. I recommend four hours every week to focus on strategic issues and to lock down your

8:21attention to pay some mind to what's going to happen in the future with your business. Once again, Dr. Sodom and we thank you for spending a moment with us here today. Thank you so much for those concluding remarks as well. Certainly noted, if listeners wanted to tap into your services, where's the best place online to get for their details? Yes, it's n3ed.com. And of course, listeners, as always, you can access this link within the show notes of this broadcast for your convenience. Again, Dr. Sodom and all the best, and thanks for joining us here today on Enterprise Radio. You're welcome. Marik here. It was a pleasure. And my pleasure as well. Again, we've been speaking with Dr. Bill Sodom in the honor of n3ed.com and is a certified business and leadership coach. And again, for all the details, visit n3ed.com and that wraps up another episode of Enterprise Radio. And we hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. If you have any thoughts, questions, or just want to say hello, we'd love to hear from you.

9:21And remember, you can always catch up on previous episodes at ePodcastnetwork.com and stay connected with us on social media, find us on Facebook, Instagram, and X at ePodcast network to join the EP and community. And a big thank you to our guest today, Dr. Bill Sodom and for sharing their wisdom and experiences. And of course, thank you, dear listeners, for tuning in. Your support means everything to us. And before we say goodbye, don't forget to subscribe at ePodcastnetwork.com or wherever you get your podcast, rate and leave a review. Your feedback helps us improve and brings more amazing content to your ears. And a quick reminder that new episodes go out every day. Also, stay curious, stay inspired. And until next time, this is Eric Dai signing off from Enterprise Radio. Take care and we'll catch you on the airwaves real soon. Thanks for listening to Enterprise Radio. To subscribe to more of our programming, visit ePodcastnetwork.com.