Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to create wealth through franchising podcast and Kim Daily TV. I am your host, Kim Daly. I want to educate, motivate, and inspire your business ownership journey by interviewing CEOs, leaders, sales coaches, and exceptional franchisees to learn their valuable insights and strategies that we can apply to our own business ownership dreams. Now onto the show.
Welcome back to create wealth through franchising podcast and Kim Daily TV. Today, our special guest is another amazing focal point coach. His name is Nick Marinello from New Jersey. Nick, welcome to the studio of Kim Daily TV.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Thanks, Kim. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: I am excited to have you here today because my followers love to know the inside secrets of what makes businesses successful or why businesses fail. So before we dive in to the topic at hand, which we're going to talk about business coaching today, let's start with your transition story. Because as a focal point franchisee, you're also a franchisee. So what was happening in your life that you were solving for when you said, I'm going to go become a franchisee of focal point coaching?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Sure. So I started back on Wall street back in the 80s as a smile and dial stockbroker, and I progressed into management until I started my own investment firm. So I've been an entrepreneur pretty much, I guess, since about 1990. And I built several firms.
Investment firms sold it, built a technology company that was also in financial services, and I sold that back in 2011. And then after that, I decided, okay, what's next in life? And I didn't want to start another business from scratch because I know all the aches and pains that that can happen comes along with that. So I hired a consultant to bring deals to me. I thought I might want to buy a small business and build it on my own. And then he came back and said, you're really good at finding reasons not to buy anything. I'm showing you. Did you ever think about business coaching? And I said, sure, I thought about it. I do it a little bit here and there. But he said, he represents, like you, he's a franchise consultant. I represent a company called Focal Point, which was founded by Brian Tracy, and I've been a big Brian Tracy fan my whole career. I had no idea focal point existed. Frankly, I heard Brian speak in the old Brendan Byrne arena in the Metallands, probably in 1991. And from that time, I bought his tapes. I bought his books, his tapes. I just dated myself. Cassette tapes.
That was an opportunity to take a closer look. He got my interest.
I bought the franchise in 2015. So I've been doing this now for nine plus years, my friends asked me, of all people, why would you buy a franchise? You started several businesses. So it wasn't that I needed to know how to start a business. I knew how to do that. And I knew all the aches and pains that came along with doing that. Really what I said is, I want to be a world class coach. And in order to do that, you could be a 300 plus batting average in major league baseball and get to the hall of Fame. But doesn't make you a good batting coach. Right. So I needed to learn the ins and outs of coaching. I wanted to be associated with an organization that was passionate about executive and business coaching and focal point fit the bill. So since that time, I've enjoyed a great career as a business coach.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: It's very cool thing. I love it. And you know what I love? I'm smiling over here for those who are watching the video. I'm like smiling and cheering as he's talking. Because as I always say, the easiest people to convince of the value proposition of a franchise are former entrepreneurs.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of scars on this body.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: It's so good when people are like, I'm too smart. I don't need a franchise. I'm like, no, smart people choose franchise.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Leverage, and I love it. You've said some things that some other focal point coaches have said. Just buying those ready made tools, getting the coaching for yourself on how to become that world class coach that you now are after all these years, and congratulations on all your success. I mean, thank you. Doing this for so many years. It's very inspiring.
Okay, so with that introduction, let me ask you this. Why do you think business owners need a business coach?
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Well, it boils down to a couple of things. Right? It's very lonely at the top. You heard that expression, right? So when you are a business owner, if you don't have a board to go to, if you don't have a trusted partner to go to, it's very difficult sometimes to see the forest through the trees. So you need somebody who's going to be there to create the clarity that you need to have to make good, effective decisions. And working with a coach, whether it be me or one of my colleagues or any of the other awesome coaches that are out there, we are in a position to have an unbiased, unemotional view of your business, ask really good questions, dive deep into what are the heart of the issues, and then really deliver a program that's focused on achieving your definition of success and what I realized in business over the years. And again, I had my own companies for 20 plus years.
Everybody has different definitions of success. It's not always about the money, okay? It is very often about a quality of life. It's a plan for the future, just creating generational wealth, perhaps, but everybody has a different definition. And sometimes you need somebody to pick away at that and to really get you to focus on what's important to you. And a business coach is trained to do that. We are the masses of asking questions.
We have a whole program called curious coaches, right. How to keep peeling away the young until you really get to the core of what a person wants to achieve in life. So it's an important component of building a business.
It's a lonely position being as an entrepreneur. If you don't have a team to go to or a trusted advisor.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: And if you're inside a franchise, yes, you have the collective mastermind of the other franchisees, but those other franchisees don't necessarily have your vision in their mind when you're going to them for help. Right? And I think it's also a misnomer that your franchiseor is your business coach. I think they're good tactical coaches. Like, they're going to teach you how to run the business, but I don't think they're mindset coaches. They're strategy coaches. They're visionary coaches. Would you agree with that, Nick?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: 100%. There has to be a congruity between your personal values, your personal vision, your personal mission with the business, okay? I always looked at my business as it was strictly a vehicle to get me to where I wanted to go in life, right? So the franchiseor is really good at what they do.
They have it down to a science, right. However, that science is not necessarily 100% congruent with your personal goals. So you have to be able to take both of them, put them together and create a plan. And it only happens through spending the time really doing a lot of introspection and determining how hard do I want to work.
We ask a lot of questions, like, if you were to start this over again tomorrow, what would you do differently, right? And the zero based thinking type of, if, God forbid, the place burned down, you had to open up across the street, who would you bring? The same people with you? Would you bring the same products? What would you do differently? And asking those types of questions gets people to really think about what's important.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Hey, daily Coach fans, if you're loving this episode, please do me a quick favor. And leave me a five star rating and a short review. Your feedback fuels my growth and rankings and shows others that this podcast is valuable. Now back to the show.
Okay, so you love to focus on your area of awesomeness. So a business owner walks in, tell the audience, bring us a little bit into your practice and how you strategically work with your clients.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah, we have a lot of different cliches in business coaching, right. One of them is, anything is possible, but everything is not right. So we can't do everything. We have to focus on, really, what is our area of awesomeness? What are we really good at? What do we enjoy, and how do you determine what that is? I mean, very often we go through life and we have our head down and we keep doing things over and over. It's not always necessarily the most effective and efficient ways of building a business or achieving success personally. So we do a fair amount of assessments, a strategic business review with respect to really, where does the energy come from? What gets you up in the morning gets you excited.
And it's something where if people spend the time and they go through their day, if they did a daily audit of all the things that they're doing throughout the day, and then they start to categorize it, is this something that I'm awful at or I do not like doing? Is this something that I'm adequate at, that I do it? I don't really enjoy it, but what is it that I'm awesome at? Right. What is it that I do that I get excited that people around me can see the energy emulating from me? What is that? And once we determine that, then we have to say, okay, how do we do more of it? How do we do more of this and less of that? Right. Anything is possible, but everything is not. So we have to push aside, delegate, eliminate, whatever it might be, the things that are not in our area of awesomeness, so that we can apply the 80 20 rule. Right. The Pareto's principle, where 80% of our success is going to come from this area that we're working on, let's make sure we're doing more of it. And so it's a process. It doesn't happen overnight, but it also doesn't take that long. With the right questions and with the right tools, you can get to that pretty quickly.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Now, when you start uncovering that, do you ever uncover that somebody bought the wrong business for their skill set, or is there no such thing?
[00:10:23] Speaker B: No, it happens. There are times when people think they need to be a certain way to achieve success. They look at others that might have achieved success, and their personalities, their behavior styles are different. Doesn't mean you can't do it, just means you have to do it differently. Right. So you need to surround yourself, possibly with different sets of talent. Right. So we're very big into disc assessments, as you probably are familiar with. Right. So there are certain people who are drivers who are.
And you and I have that in common. We get along famously without thinking about it. But you know what? There are High C's, High S's that are not necessarily going to be.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: They're not going to be able to run a business like you and I would. Right. Not that they can't be successful. They absolutely can. But they have to be aware that, you know what, in the sales department, possibly, I need somebody who's a high I or a high d who's going to be out there, who's going to be much more driven with respect to influencing people's opinions. And I can run the operations. I can do the. As a high c, I'm going to be very compliant. I'm going to be focused on details, but that's good.
Bill Gates is a high c. Right. Pretty successful. Doesn't mean that I'm like him at. Okay. With any respect, he's got a few more bucks than me, too. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your style is. Your behavioral style is you can be successful. You just have to be aware of it first. All right. And then surround yourself with what you might need that you are not able to do yourself. That's all.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: It's really good. And hopefully, if you're out there listening and you're thinking about investing in a franchise, you'll work with someone like, you know, who can start this process for you. Because I do a lot of what Nick does, too. But in terms of matching you to the right business. Right. We spend so much time talking about what's the right business. It's not the one that your community needs. It's not necessarily, well, I love to work out, so I should own the gym. It's the one that matches your goals. Like Nick said, the business is the vehicle driving outcomes in your life. And we want to align the business to those outcomes, but we also want to align the business to the key skills that you have. If you are not a salesperson, I don't want to put you in a business where you have to wake up and drive sales every day because that's going to feel like an albatross around your neck, strangling you, right? You've got to put yourself in the seat. That's going to make you feel most successful.
The other side of that, though, I think as a business owner, the great challenge that we maybe take on in this personal development playground is you can learn those other skills over time. Right? Like a lot of times people say, I'm nervous about hiring people. I don't know what kind of leader I would want to be. And I'm like, great, you get to create the leader that you want to be. Go read some books, watch some podcasts. Think about it. Think about when you've had a great boss or a crappy boss and put that together on paper and create the leader that you want to be in your future. Okay? So when you're working strategically with a coach, I mean, with a business owner, are you able to connect to really get people bought in here? Are you able to connect the work that you do with tangible outcome? Or is it like, okay, if you invest money with a coach, you're going to get this growth financially? Or are some of what you get? What do I want to say? More intangible. Like, I was stressed out. Business owner, I never really felt like I had it all together or organized. And then I worked with Nick or I worked with a good coach, and now I'm just like, it's peace of mind. Is it all of.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: You know, if there's metrics associated with the growth, okay, sales, earnings and so forth, that's easy, right? We can always sit back and create the return on investment from that perspective. But often there are times when there are other things. You might have an entrepreneur that's working 60, 70 hours weeks and their health is failing, their relationships are failing because they're spending too much time working. That's where they need the help. So it's not as a bottom line number on the balance sheet that's going to change, but it is going to be quality of life. Quick story. I had one of my clients going back probably about seven years ago. We met for the first time at a diner, and I was going through my strategic business review questions and so forth. And we sat there and I said, all right, so really, what else would make you happy at the end of the year? What would make this conversation say, wow, we had a great year, Nick, what else has to happen? And he said, you know what, to be honest with you, I'd like to have a better relationship with my daughter. He goes, but I don't think you're going to be able to help me with that. And I said, interesting. Okay. So one of the things that I focused on was getting him to actually get more time with his daughter. He scheduled on his calendar Hannah time. That was his daughter's name, or is his daughter's name. And about a year into our relationship wasn't even probably nine months. He says, you know, I laughed at you with the diner when you said, you can help me with my daughter. He says, but son of a gun. He goes, you know what? My relationship with my daughter is fabulous because I spent time with her now. And I actually taught him to basically schedule time with Hannah.
So you get those stories that make you feel good about what you do. It's beyond money. Okay, we all can make money, all right? But what good is it if you don't have relationships, if you don't have health? So it's all those things that we look at. We do try to focus on a well balanced entrepreneur.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: I really like it for those listeners out there. I think when you're in a business, there can be a tendency to have a scarcity mindset around. It's very easy to do. I mean, I've been a successful business owner for many years, and I spend a lot of time focused on Kim. What are you thinking about? Right, because that scarcity of whether it's lack of time, oh, I have to be busy or I'm not being productive. There's just so many lies that we tell ourselves. I know I do it. I fall into these traps all the time. And having somebody who can hold you accountable and then work with you, creating a plan that gives you comfort. I go back to my personal training days. Nick. It reminds me of people who kind of go into the gym and they watch what other people do. That's your business owner kind of watching what everybody else is doing. Like, I'm just going to go do that versus someone who's very intentional. Like, I have these goals and I'm going to pay you. Kim, the personal trainer, help me get there. And there's peace of mind immediately because you're surrendering, if you will, to a subject matter expert that's going to coach and guide you. It doesn't mean you're not showing up and executing and doing the work, but it means you're being led or you're being guided. And I think sometimes that alone when you're a business owner, that feeling of when you say it's lonely, I think that is the camaraderie that many business owners actually need. And it's such a subtle thing in your mind, right, to have somebody in your corner that's like, no, you are on track.
It can be the difference between doing it consistently or being, like, all over the place because your thoughts are so inconsistent. Would you agree with that, Nick?
[00:17:42] Speaker B: I would 100% agree with that. And it all comes down to, you have to have strategy before tactics, okay? And sometimes I put this up on the whiteboard in my client's office, and I'll put strategy like a rainbow over a bunch of tactics underneath. I said, before we get to tactics and the things we're going to do, let's see, what's the picture look like, right? What's the end of the rainbow look like? And then we can determine what we're going to do to get there. And again, it's not just the business, especially the small business owners. I enjoy working with small business owners. My clients range pretty much from like two to $50 million in size. And the focus very often is quality of life because they've gone to a certain point in the business, they've plateaued. And the only thing they know how to do is put the head down and work. Right. And that's not necessarily why they started the business to begin with. It's not necessarily to work yourself to death. It's to learn how to scale it, learn how to free up time, learn how to enjoy the money that you're making. And that doesn't happen necessarily in business school. That happens, really when you're out there in the real world and you're actually making decisions that are affecting your life, your family's life, your employees lives.
And it's a different mindset. It's a different way of looking at the.
Goldsmith said, we'll got you here. We'll get you there. It's so true. You have to think differently as the business grows, right? Otherwise, you just have your head down and you're just being a technician and you bought yourself a job.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Hey, daily coach fans, if you're ready to begin your own journey to find the perfect franchise, please email me right now at inquire at KimDaily TV. My services are totally free for you. That's inquire at Kimdaily TV. Now back to the show.
Okay, so practically, when people work with a coach, we haven't addressed this at all in any of the other coaching videos that we've, or interviews I've done. What does that look like? Do clients meet with you once a week, once a month? And how long do they stay with you on average, or does it vary?
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it does vary. I mean, in the perfect world, yeah. We have a relationship where we go up what we call the proverbial stack. Right. We start with all clarity and we get into effectiveness, and then we scale the business and develop your leadership skills that you're on top of the pyramid. Right.
Very often there's a specific problem that they've identified that they said, okay, I probably should get some help here. Right. And so what we try to do is focus on wins early on getting wins. Right. Okay. What can we do to, number one, gain the confidence of the client, because that's so important. Right. We want to show him or her that, you know what, working with me, we're going to solve some issues. Right. So we like to leverage strengths, and we like to focus on immediate issues that we can probably fix pretty quickly because we have a different perspective. Once that happens, then we can look at a bigger picture if they want to continue in a larger program. But I like to fix problems first. Again, for two reasons. One, selfish. I want to make sure that you have confidence in me, that you like working with me, that you feel like, you know what? You could pick up the phone and call me in between sessions, which are typically once a week. We'll work 60 to 90 minutes a week with each other. There's takeaways. We try to make three little incremental changes from week to week.
What we've learned is no more than two or three objectives for that week. If you give an entrepreneur more than that, they'll do none of it. So you have to focus on doing small things that have an impact, not just anything. There are key elements that we want to focus on.
I have some clients that have been with me for seven years. We do week to week, but then it goes to maybe biweekly. And then I have a couple of handful of clients that we check in quarterly.
I'm kind of like on their advisory board at this point, where basically if they have something that happens in between sessions, they'll call me and run it by me. But, yeah, it depends on the client.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: I really like it. Great things are always done in small ways. It's like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Exactly right.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: So do you sometimes with people, if you're being kind of snarky, if someone says, what do you do? Do you say, I'm a life coach. I'm a marriage counselor.
Do you find that you spend a lot of time because a business has such a way of impacting someone's entire life. Like you mentioned, their health, their relationships. Find that just by fixing the business and helping free up time or whatever, you might help somebody actually change their entire life by making time to have better relationships or get to the gym because they're more organized or they're delegating instead of, like, head down doing it all.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not a life coach. I don't tell people I'm going to come in there.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: I'm joking.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: No, but your point you're making is good because there's a lot of bleed over between their personal life and their business, right?
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: We're business experts at focal point. I'm really good at growing business. Right. But I do know that that touches so many other areas of our life. So when people ask me what I do, I pretty much tell them I work with small to mid sized business owners to help them get their business and therefore their life to the next level. Okay. Build a better business, live a better life is my tagline, and I believe that. Okay. Again, I'm not a life coach. I'm not a priest. Okay? I'm not somebody who's going to necessarily dive into those areas. But I do know that if I help you make more money, do less time in the office, focus on what's important in life, then I am successful. That's my goal. And if it happens that we double, triple the size of your business, that's great. Okay. But you know what? If we grow up by 20% and your life became so much better because you now are delegating better, you're eliminating things.
That's great, too. So it depends on the client.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Amazing.
Build a better business, live a better life. Spoken from the master focal point coach. Nick, thank you so much for being our special guest today here on Kim Daily TV.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: It was a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. And I wish everybody the best if I can help anybody out.
Kim, tell them how to reach me.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: No, you tell him how to reach you. That's a great one. Yeah. So we will put his website address in the show notes. But is there special any call to action you want to put out there, Nick? Or just have them follow the email or the website address?
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Well, that works. I have a business scorecard that's on my site. So if you go there, you can answer some quick questions. It'll identify some gaps, possibly in your business, and it helps you focus.
And then from there, if you'd like to have a further conversation, love to have it always looking to help people live a better life.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Love it. I love it so much. Thank you so much. Well, for those who are sitting on the sideline thinking, I got to get in this game. I want to become a business owner so I can one day hire Nick. You know that I want to be your daily coach. Please follow the email on the screen right now or reach directly out to Inquirer at KimDaily TV. That's Inquire at Kimdaily TV. And until next time, my name is Kim Daily, and I want to be your daily coach.
You can find more content just like this on my YouTube channel at KimDaily TV. And if you're inspired to take the next step to explore franchises match to you, please email me right now at Inquirer. At kimdaily TV. That's inquire at KimDaily TV.
