PETER LECKEMBY (00:01)
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Business Growth Blueprint. Today, my guest is Ryan McKinney. Ryan is a seasoned business coach with over 25 years of experience in leadership, sales, marketing, and business ownership. Specializes in helping small business owners and solopreneurs accelerate profitability and scale their businesses. Ryan provides personalized results-driven coaching designed to deliver fast, measurable outcomes.
His approach focuses on helping clients build self-discipline and leadership and achieve sustainable business growth without sacrificing time with family. Ryan's a great colleague and we have a fantastic conversation today, pretty wide ranging conversation where we talk about a lot of topics and no doubt anybody running a business, whether you're a solopreneur or you got a hundred person team, we'll get some great value out of the conversation with Ryan and we'll make sure all of Ryan's links are in the show notes. So without further ado, let's get on to the episode.
PETER LECKEMBY (01:18)
Ryan, welcome to the podcast.
Ryan McKinney (01:21)
Hey man, what's going on Peter?
PETER LECKEMBY (01:22)
You know, it's a good day here. Looking forward to a great conversation and getting to know you a little bit better and sharing you with my world and hopefully your world as well as we get going.
Ryan McKinney (01:31)
Yeah, absolutely. And I've been following your world since you started the podcast. Some pretty awesome guests. I'm grateful to be amongst the folks that you've had on the show already. So this is pretty cool.
PETER LECKEMBY (01:41)
thank you. Yeah. I'm looking forward to just getting more business owners that, you know, may not be out there on the big podcasts that are at the top of the echelon and get some more great voices out there and add value and just create good content for business owners that they can apply and they can do something with in their businesses. So yeah, it's been a fun learning journey.
Ryan McKinney (02:04)
Yeah, I think that's the key to it is things that they can apply and learn. I've picked up quite a few things from your show already. And that's what I see a lot of out there, quite honestly, is there's a bunch of ethereal stuff. There's a lot of, hey, this could really work in your business if you did X, Y, and Z. But one of the things that I hear on your podcast a lot and kind of got me excited about preparing for today is that
It's tactical things. It's people can use what they're learning on your show. And that's what I love about it.
PETER LECKEMBY (02:35)
Yeah, I know, John Maxwell, author and speaker, he talks about putting the cookies on the lower shelf, put it there where everybody can just reach it and grab it. So keeping it simple. so kind of to start us off, tell us a little bit about your career journey, right? You weren't born a coach. So tell us a little bit about that journey.
Ryan McKinney (02:42)
Yeah, I like that.
Definitely not born a coach. I've always been a personal and professional development junkie kind of person. Like I've always read the books and all that kind of stuff. a, I'll get into kind of the career track, but just to set it up a little bit. My dad was in business all his life and you know, he, there a lot of those just kind of lessons that you learn being around somebody and just soaking up a lot of just.
Things that he was going through at the time and things he was learning I was picking up at the same time at a very young age just you know being around to kind of ride shotgun with him so to speak on a lot of Calls he was going on and that kind of stuff in his world. So it was pretty cool to start off that way
I was in college and got a job working as an installer for a company and I ended up selling more as an installer than the salespeople were selling on their ancillary products and things like that. And I didn't realize at the time, I can look back at it now and go, okay, God was working in me and kind of helping me develop my own style with respect to business and sales and all that.
but it was a much more of an informative kind of supportive.
create buying opportunities for people as opposed to a salesperson. And I think that that's just stuck with me, but that was early on in my career. I did so well, they offered me a stake in the business, quite honestly, because they couldn't pay me enough to keep me around. So they offered me a stake in the business. when I sold my interest in that business, I think I had enough money to buy a stake and that was about it. So at least I didn't owe anything. Yeah, didn't owe anything, but didn't
PETER LECKEMBY (04:25)
lucrative lucrative
Ryan McKinney (04:29)
didn't make a million bucks either. I went into business with another guy and we ran a business for a couple of years and we ran into a problem that a lot of business owners run into, which is we grew too fast. We didn't know how to scale the infrastructure of the business to support the sales we were getting and we quickly figured out that wasn't gonna work. So he decided to go back to school and get his degree in
and get his education in land development and business development. And I went back and got my degree in marketing. And when I left school, that was when I took off on my adventure into corporate America. So the next 10 years, I worked in the financial services industry. And I did everything you could do for a bank. I was a collector at one point. I was a loan officer.
I was a commercial lender, was a market leader, was a regional sales manager, VP, I did everything you could do, left banking to move to Charlotte and got a job working in the manufacturing world, but not doing manufacturing, doing strategic sales and operations planning. So I worked with the C-suite, big, the divisional bosses, the SVPs of the different areas, helping them all play nicely in the sandbox together. And then,
getting them to look down the road a little bit. And I did all of that work over the course of 20 years. About four years before I left corporate, actually, yeah, about four years before I left corporate, my career wasn't growing fast enough for me. I was getting promoted every couple of years, two or three years, but I wasn't getting where I wanted to go. So I hired a coach. And the coach helped me take all of that professional development junkie stuff I had been cataloging over.
helped me take all of the things that I couldn't see myself and show them to me and then create a plan. And in six months, she had my life turned around, my work turned around, my profession turned around. I didn't know it was backwards, but I was doing things that were getting in my own way. A year later, the same company that I was working for that had turned me down for a couple of jobs before, tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, we want you to go run this project. We want you to go hire 12 people.
and we want you to do it your way. And I thought, wow, this works. And my coach asked me, she said, what do you want to do next? You got everything you wanted. I said, I want to do what you just did. And that was where my coaching career was born. Went to school for, I got my certification in professional coaching, and then got an accreditation from the IFC and was doing more leadership mindset coaching stuff.
And then me and corporate America broke up a few years back and I said, Hey, I've got all these skills. Why go back and work for somebody else? I want to work for myself again. I want to do that. What could I do? And prayed about it. Talked to my wife about it. It's a funny part right here. Talked to my wife and she said, and the people listening won't be able to see this, but there was this kind of chopping motion that she did with her hands. said, I'm to need to see that in PowerPoint.
So my wife's asking for a business plan, a business banker would. So I gave her one. And that's where my coaching career got kicked off. And I ended up very quickly finding about six clients. I was hoping to get three in the first year. I got six in the first 90 days. And I haven't looked back.
PETER LECKEMBY (08:01)
I love that story. It's fascinating. You talk about the experience with a professional coach being that, that catalyst. And, know, I remember a similar experience after I left my retail career, you know, burnt out and exhausted and the power of what professional coaching did that I went and got my certification. you know, you talk about breaking up with corporate and.
saying, here it is. And the conversation with your wife, my wife and I had a very similar conversation. She's the one that's like, hey, you're entrepreneurial, maybe go do something with this.
you talked about having some early success out of the gates. What are some of the hurdles you had to overcome during that time?
Ryan McKinney (08:38)
You know, thinking through that biggest hurdle without a doubt, unequivocally, I wouldn't have told you this then. It was me. I was in the way again. It was me again. look, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me. You know, as the modern philosopher Taylor Swift says that it was fear. It was a big, big challenge with fear. And we all face that. All business owners face that. But certainly if you're an entrepreneur,
you may have learned to stare it down and you may have learned it, but you're still gonna face it. And I I kept telling myself some of the things I'd learned along the way is like, I'm not gonna let fear, failure, obstacles or success stop me. And those are the things that would typically stop me in the past.
A lot of people say well it was different for you had to do it because you're supporting your family and you're the you know You're the breadwinner and all that kind of stuff. So you had to make it work and I think well Yeah, but even if I wasn't I think you have to get to that point right as a business owner
PETER LECKEMBY (09:40)
Yeah. Two things you said were interesting. know, fear of success. That's an interesting one I want to dig into in a minute. But even before that, you you worked in collections. I mean, that's a tough gig. Like those are some rough calls and I'm sure you took some abuse and could tell some great stories. But you didn't have the security blanket of a corporation when, now that you're out on your own. And so you have to...
You know, yes, I can do anything when I've got the backing of a paycheck coming in and I can make any phone call. Now it's on me. I've got to do that. But, tell me a little bit more about fear of success, how you said that, that, or, how success had maybe stopped you in the past.
Ryan McKinney (10:21)
Yeah, mean, a couple of ways. One, before success happens, we end up self-sabotaging because we're subconsciously nervous about what change will come as a result of success. That's certainly one thing that kind of flies under the radar. A lot of people don't know and don't know to look out for, especially as entrepreneurs, small business owners.
But certainly people in our industry as well, that we don't necessarily know that that's what's happening, but it's real. But for me, the fear of success was not getting lazy, but more settling into complacency. Essentially saying,
I figured this out. I've got this. I'll get to that later. I'll do those kind of things. And it's really that feeling is the enemy of consistency. Right? So that feeling, that complacency is just like, I'm here, I've made it, I've done it. you know, success is a destination. It's not a journey kind of thing. And consistency says, I consistently do.
what others will not do so I can consistently have what others do not have. And that is what I have to remind myself of often, right? Just because I'm human, I'm a human being, so.
PETER LECKEMBY (11:39)
Well, in coming out of the gate, getting six clients first 90 days, the tendency for a lot of folks is I'm going to coach these six clients and we're just going to let this ride. And you've got to make that shift from, and I've been talking to a lot of business owners about this, making the shift from tactical practitioner of the thing to an entrepreneur. And it's a mindset difference. know, coaches think like, I'm a coach. We'll know you're an entrepreneur who provides coaching services.
You're not a landscaper. You're an entrepreneur who delivers landscaping services and making that shift into a business owner mindset is something that's pretty significant. Because when those six clients were done, if you aren't doing lead generation, you've got no more business left.
Ryan McKinney (12:21)
Correct. Yeah, I mean, in what I find a lot of times with my entrepreneurial, well, my solopreneur clients is they will end up creating the next job. Right. And the only difference is, is now they've got a boss who's meaner than their last one, which happens to be themselves. Right. You know, the solopreneur is the, like they were, they, are the worst boss for ourselves because we will beat ourselves up and there are no limits. There's no HR department that's going to get mad at you for talking to yourself the way you do.
But yeah, absolutely, that can be a huge challenge.
PETER LECKEMBY (12:53)
Yeah. So what is something maybe you, when you started out that, God, wish, I wish I would have known that at the beginning and you had to learn it through, you know, stubbing your toe or hitting your head.
Ryan McKinney (13:02)
Stubbing my toe, hitting my head, being told a thousand times, denying it, fighting it, all of the things was to hire help for what I need help for. And I wish I would have done it right out of the gate. I would have been a year ahead of where I am now, but hiring an executive assistant, someone that can handle some of the lower level tasks, not because they're lower level people.
but because you need somebody to handle lower level tasks. They are time intensive things. And I'm talking silly things. Like they're not silly. They are simple. like managing my calendar, right? You get into Dan Martel's book, Buy Back Your Time. Fantastic book, right? He gives a formula for what to, essentially what to buy back your time on first.
and kind of how to do it. It's a fantastic read. See, it's a good listen to. Not all good business books are good listens, but it's a good listen to. But the first thing I did was hire somebody to, well, that's not fair. I hired somebody to help me, but I had them help me do the things that I didn't like to do first. Like,
putting presentations together. I did that for years, did it for two decades, put presentations together. So I ended up hiring someone whose specialty was doing that. And it was helpful, but I still spent a ton of my time dealing with my calendar, putting social media stuff together, dealing with my email inbox, all that kind of stuff. And as soon as I flipped that and went from hiring somebody to do my presentations to hiring somebody to handle the calendar,
the email, the social media marketing, my presentations got better. My hair got darker, I think. It got a lot less gray. And my quality of what I delivered to my clients got better. I was able to go deeper with each one of my clients and therefore demand more from the marketplace. So it's just a big turnaround. I wish I'd have known that sooner
PETER LECKEMBY (15:12)
You know, it's fascinating business owners, you you talk to some that are out there that they may have 10, 12 employees and they're still doing some of that work that is not the most effective use of their time. And, know, I hear it a lot. I'm constantly fighting fires. I'm stuck in the weeds. I'm having to deal with X, Y, or Z. And they're not doing some of those other ones like critical customer follow-up. They've got a big client job that's going south and they're not the ones handling that.
They've delegated that out of somebody, but they're responding to their inbox or, you know, scheduling appointments.
Ryan McKinney (15:47)
Yeah, I usually when some of my wife calls me a smart aleck, that's not what she calls me, but we'll call it a smart aleck for the show. I'm sure it's a family show. she calls me that sometimes, but sometimes I'll ask my clients and I'll say, you know, we've had a look at their revenue. We've had a look at their earnings. We have a look at what they're paying themselves. Usually not enough that they're paying themselves, but they're still earning a salary. And I'll take that salary and I will, you know, divide it up and say, Hey,
You know, would you pay somebody X number of thousands of dollars a month to manage your email and your calendar for you? And they would say no. And I said, well, why are you paying yourself that?
Why are you paying yourself that money to do that? And when they start realizing that, my gosh, I'm spending that money to do that. I'm just spending it on me and I'm tired and I'm doing it myself and I'm not getting to the other things. That was a game changer on the mindset shift for me. If you're gonna earn that much money and you're gonna do that on your, it doesn't mean that it's a menial task and it's beneath me. I mean, I still check my email. I still manage my calendar, but now,
I have somebody do those things for me so that I can free up time.
PETER LECKEMBY (16:57)
Yeah. How much time would you say you've freed up in your life through some of those processes?
Ryan McKinney (17:02)
my gosh. It would probably be worth doing an actual time study on. I would say I got half my week back, easy. I mean, easily half my week back and it cost me 500 bucks a month.
PETER LECKEMBY (17:15)
the power of small levers across your business. Now you can focus more on client delivery. You can focus more on whether it's onboarding, client care, lead generation marketing, whatever other things need your strategic mind, your thinking on that part of the business.
Ryan McKinney (17:29)
Please.
And know, Peter, I got that. What really started me down that road, I just thought about this. There was another friend of mine, she's a coach as well. She's in the mindset, she's in the leadership mindset space for female CEOs. That's her market, her niche. But she and I are good friends, we just kind of go back and forth and she, you we always.
provide a little unprovoked coaching to each other sometimes. It's a little game we play. But she's awesome. And she said, you know, this was before I hired somebody to do that. She said, what you're dealing with is something called busyness for significance. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, you're doing the work because you think it makes you an important part of the business.
And I was like, I don't think so. She goes, OK, we'll stop doing it then. And she's like, there you go. She says, when you can let it go, you're no longer doing it for significance. You're no longer doing it to say, I'm the reason this is happening. And when you can let that go, you'll be able to simplify in order to amplify. And that's been my theme for this year, by the way.
PETER LECKEMBY (18:40)
simplify in order to amplify. That's a good theme. I think there's a lot of business owners out there that are probably in that same boat is if I have to do it, I have to do it. have to do it versus letting it go and focusing on the work. You know, you got to 80 20 everything in your business and, and then install systems that are repeatable. Cause I think that's something else is how do you create consistent repeatable outcomes? Things like automations, things like.
Well, there's just training, you know, talking to a business owner who wants to grow. He's got a ton of business and he knows he needs to hire somebody. His son is set up to take on kind of his role as the owner, but the hesitance to let his son lead the project meeting or to lead the next team training. What's stopping you? Well, he's not quite ready. Well, a scale of one to 10, how ready is he? Well, he's probably a seven, maybe an eight.
Ryan McKinney (19:09)
Mm.
Yeah.
PETER LECKEMBY (19:39)
What do you need for him to actually be ready? Are you waiting for him to be a 10? Because until you let him do it, he may never get there. So recognize where that business owner is getting in his own way and preventing his own success.
Ryan McKinney (19:51)
100%. And a lot of times it's interesting because it's by the way, it's easy to arm chair quarterback people that aren't here right now. So forgive me for anybody else that hears this and thinks that I'm judging in any way. I'm not, I'm just saying this is a statement of objective fact is often what I recognized is business owners, they will, they don't allow someone to gradually increase the level of risk that they're responsible for.
PETER LECKEMBY (19:59)
Yeah.
Ryan McKinney (20:20)
that's either an all or nothing. It's like, well, I'm going to put them in charge of the annual meeting where they're going to deliver the budget to everybody and they're not ready for that. Well, of course they're not because you haven't put them in charge of something smaller first, right? Like, let's take that and say where the risk is low. In other words, where the stakeholders can't be harmed in some way or it's not going to create some kind of backlash, allow them to take charge and develop the confidence and growth.
and then slowly ratchet up that level of risk that comes with what they're doing at the same time the responsibility is ratcheted up. And then they will be ready. But if you don't ever start, they never get there.
PETER LECKEMBY (20:58)
Yep. Well, you said, you know, you don't want armchair quarterback anybody and it's easy. Yeah. Sitting in this seat to go, this and this and this. We're guilty of the same things. We were, we're to make the same mistakes. Like you said, you learned the lesson of letting go of your calendar. A lot of it comes through trial and error. It's those failures that teach you, but it's also the value of, you you mentioned your conversation with your friend and coaching each other. You know, as a coach, how much value do you put on
Ryan McKinney (21:15)
Mm-hmm.
PETER LECKEMBY (21:26)
having a coach and working with a coach yourself.
Ryan McKinney (21:28)
Yeah, it's a tremendous amount of value. I talked about, and it's a good point of clarification, when we coach each other as friends or whatever, that's very different than when you invest in it. And when you think about that as a business owner, there's two ways to approach working with a coach. One is as an expense.
And if it's an expense, you think about an expense as something that you pay for and you no longer have the ability to reap any rewards from it. You've used it up. That's why rent is an expense. That's why utilities are an expense. But coaching is actually an investment. If you are not going to get a return on your investment from working with a coach, then don't do it.
But when you can flip your mindset and see that I'm going to reap a benefit, I'm going to get a return on my investment from doing this, it becomes, it's a powerful motivator. It's the reason that I pay for a coach today. And it's the reason that I invest as much as I do in coaching from a monetary standpoint is because every time I've done it, every time I've done it, I get at least a 10 X return, at least a 10 X. And I am, you know,
I want my clients to get that same type of return. And do they always? No, I mean, some people it's not quite as much, but we always want to be able to recoup what you get from an investment at least. But most of my clients are seeing a five, six times return shooting for 10. Some of them are getting more than 10. And I want to get that from my coach.
So that's, mean, quite honestly, that's the way I approach it is you've got to look at it as, and I won't take a client on unless they can get over. It's silly, but I call it commitment mountain. And that's what climbing commitment mountain looks like is you've got to be, you've got to get to a place where you can see it as an investment.
PETER LECKEMBY (23:26)
Absolutely. when you're interviewing coaches, there's three or four key questions you should ask every coach. One of those is, are you currently working with a coach or have you recently worked with a coach? Cause that's going to, that's going to be a big differentiator. And clearly,
seeing your business growth and like it's testimony that you are willing to invest in and live in integrity to true coaching.
Ryan McKinney (23:45)
Yeah. And to your point, it's, I just finished up my book and it's going to be coming out. And that's a big part of what it's about is not, hiring a coach, but like connecting the dots is the title of the book. And it's called connecting the dots, your clear path to profit. And ultimately it takes people from.
this idea of the nebulous idea of, that's a great business idea, and fast tracks it all the way down to the tactical moves that they need to make in order to generate revenue, profit and new income streams in their business. And we talk about like my key three pillars are essentially self leadership, self mastery, self leadership.
and falls kind of in the mindset space, overcoming your limiting beliefs, all this stuff. We wanna make sure we're doing that. But I also work in the second pillar of what I do is around leadership and that's around getting other people to rise to the occasion, raising the tide, so to speak. And then the third place is this business mastery place. And that's where you're marketing, your sales, operations, management, finance.
those key components of business and kind of getting into the nuts and bolts of that. And as we go, well, I'm drawing this in the air, drawing my graph in the air, my friends would laugh at me because I always draw graphs. But for those of you listening, like there's this wide expanse where it's ambiguous on what people are doing. And we've got to connect the dots that bring it down to why it makes a good return on investment.
And being able to do that step by step understanding all of those components is it's so powerful when we do that.
PETER LECKEMBY (25:30)
Yeah, I think you and I have a little bit of a similar approach to things, thinking about mindset. You to get the mindset right. Skill sets, you got to be able to actually do the thing. And then there's tool set because I think for anything in business, you need the right tools to do the job. And I think everybody can appreciate that. But a lot of times the entry point is going to be around the skill set. Like I need to know, maybe it's, I need to know marketing or I need to know, build a sales funnel, or I need to...
whatever the kind of in marketing and say the bleeding neck, right? Whatever the big problem is, that's the entry point. But it's from there that you diagnose, like there's some mindset things, know, just a simple conversation around pricing strategy, asking a business owner to raise their prices will expose quite possibly some very limiting beliefs around money, their worth, their market value, things like that. And there's some coaching that's needed, you know, just flip the switch and the price on the menu changes.
Ryan McKinney (26:26)
That's right. And I mean, the most pushback I get is around that. When I'm offering up something, hey, let's work on this. Let's do this. When we talk, I can mention pricing, not even raising them, but just mention pricing. And you start to see this kind of wincing, shoulders raise up close to their ears kind of thing. And that's not raising or lowering. It's just talking, just the word pricing. And I...
PETER LECKEMBY (26:42)
Fidgety. Yeah.
Ryan McKinney (26:50)
I always share with them, say, you know, can just observing what's going on when I say the word pricing and I'll say, you know, I just noticed that your shoulders got a lot closer to your ears. Like he's got this, there's, can read anxiety off of you. Like, yeah, it's just a, you know, it's a conversation I just don't like to get into or whatever their reason. And I'll say, every time you mention your price to a client or a customer, they feel that.
Just so you know, you're delivering that energy every time you deliver a price. And they're like, my gosh, are you serious? I'm like, yes. Like I'm picking up on it because I'm here to notice it. They pick up on it and don't know what to call it. So they just call it off. And they're like, my gosh. So that's a big thing for people just to get comfortable with the pricing piece of them.
PETER LECKEMBY (27:41)
Yeah, fascinating how just things we're not aware of impact how we lead our business and can really impact our success. thinking about your clients, what are some of the kind of key things that you like to do to really help them? You talked about like some of the business mastery components. Are there key things that you kind of start with in that space?
Ryan McKinney (28:06)
Yeah, mean, we'll do an assessment of sorts, and we'll go through and we'll talk about just getting some key things of what's going on in the business these days. Like, how does it look? Where does it stand today? What did you think it would look like? Where do you want it to be? We get a lot of the assessment-y type questions answered, and then deliver some things that I think we can work on.
But when it comes down to the business mastery, a lot of times people really want to start working in the marketing place because they're like, hey, if I can just get more leads, everything will get fixed. Because then I can do this or if I can just convert more sales, everything will get better. And it's this old mentality of if I've got more money, these problems go away. And I usually just ask them, how's that working for you? Because most of the time it's not more leads or more conversions to start with.
Most of the time it's about ironing out some of the things that are giving them challenges already that they haven't thought about. But a lot of times it can be delegation stuff, right? And what ends up happening when they think, hey, more money, the problems go away, it ends up being more money, more problems. And because they also don't realize this, but the underlying psychology of what's going on is, I mentioned it earlier, right? It's like, if I get more leads,
That means I'm going to have more work and I'm already overworked. When am I going to hire somebody when I get more leads? And it's this circular argument that they get in. So what I like to do is I like to come in and assess the operational side of things. how are they? Usually what's happening is they're taking too much on their shoulders. Surprise, I've lived that myself. Or they've got such inefficiencies in the way that they're delivering the marketing or the sales.
that they could actually take a load off of everyone, do more, and offer more value to the client. So a lot of times it's really about observing the way that they're doing business to start with.
PETER LECKEMBY (30:09)
Yeah, you just add more leads, more clients to a clunky process. It's just going to magnify the inefficiencies, magnify the pain points. You got to solve some of that downstream stuff first.
Ryan McKinney (30:19)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, so I love this. heard somebody say that. can't remember where heard it, but essentially it's like, you know, if you can improve each sale, improve the efficiency of each sale by 10 % and that adds a dollar per sale, right? Well, if you do 100 more sales, you made 100 more dollars. But if you're already inefficient and it's costing you money per sale, the more sales you get, it's going to cost you $100.
So it just costs you more the more when inefficiency just bleeds out and cost way more, the more work you do. And people aren't realizing that they're still chasing the revenue dream. And they're saying, hey, you know what, make more money. And if I make more money, these problems go away. And when I sit down and say, you know, you could have a seven figure big business with a 10 % profit. Or you could have.
a half a million dollar business with a 20 % profit and do a lot less work, same money that you take home. And that's usually an eye opener too, when people really start getting away from the rhetoric that they've heard, they've been teaching themselves for so long, it can be an eye opener for them.
PETER LECKEMBY (31:35)
Yeah, I love that line. I focused uses, you know, revenue, feed your ego, profit, feed your family. And everybody's chasing the revenue. Give me more money, more clients. Let me scale, let me grow. Let's just fix your operations. What if you just tightened that up and doubled your net margin?
Ryan McKinney (31:42)
That's right. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
PETER LECKEMBY (31:56)
Yeah. So what are the big goals that you've got over the next 12, 24 months? What are some things you're looking forward to?
Ryan McKinney (32:04)
Big goals. You know, I'm at the place where I've gotten the, I'm addicted to hiring people. Like I'm ready to start growing my business at this point in time. I've got some ideas. I still need to get really, really good in my own operations around the delegation that I've started to do in the last six, eight months. That's been really helpful for my business. It's allowed me to grow in scale to where I'm at now, which is a good spot.
In the next couple of years, what I want to do is bring on a junior coach slash consultant, someone who is not, maybe not, hasn't perfected what they want to be as a salesperson or a marketer, but need work and they want to grow and learn how to do that.
And I also want to bring on a commission salesperson that can feed them. my goal here, the way I see this happening is, is I'm going to continue doing business as usual for me. But if I can create a business within my business for those two people that feeds them both, and I get a little bit to manage the administration side of that, then I've got a scalable business model. And I could do that again and again, and then start, pardon me, to grow out an agency that does that very well.
PETER LECKEMBY (33:22)
That's exciting. You said, I'm addicted to hiring. What is it that connected? Like what created that for you?
Ryan McKinney (33:28)
It was, mean, the initial part is like the relief of, man, I can actually, I've got time to think. Like I can, you know, this is exciting. So not gonna lie about that. But once the relief kind of wears off, you're like, okay, but this is cool. Now you can really progressively think about where your business can go. You can really start to say, okay, well, if I could do this.
then why can't I do that here? And you start to, I mean, it kind of comes back to Martel's book, right? It's like, you really get excited about what you're able to do when you've got the time to do it. And you think to yourself, it's just two minutes. I mean, you just, you know, you just did a calendar invite. It was only a few minutes where you got a calendar service that does that like Calendly or something like that. And in my experience, and I teach all my clients that are service-based clients as to,
If you've got a calendar service, when you abdicate the leadership of your time to an app and someone else, just get ready to have no time. Like, Calendly will steal more time than it provides for you. Nothing against Calendly, the brand by itself, or anything like that. It's doing a great job of what it does. But I don't recommend that people use it for all of their calendar management only. I think you need a human that can have a human touch and do that.
It's not that expensive.
PETER LECKEMBY (34:47)
Yeah, that's a great tip. And honestly, those calendar apps are great as long as they've got boundaries to operate in. And then yeah, you need some human intervention. If you're like, hey, I need strategic time Monday morning. If you don't honor that, somebody will fill it for you and you probably aren't going to like the outcome.
Ryan McKinney (35:05)
Yeah, and I still, I mean, I use a calendar app for my chats and that kind of thing, but I have designated times during the week that people can do that. I do not abdicate my leadership of my time fully for my calendar. I've got, there's a few spaces on the calendar that can do that throughout the week and that's when we get together.
PETER LECKEMBY (35:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yep. Yeah. Do you have a time of day where it's, this is my me time? This is my focus time.
Ryan McKinney (35:29)
I do. I'm a morning person. I didn't know that when I was in my 20s. I didn't even know morning existed back then. now as I'm approaching 50, I'm definitely a morning person. I've been a morning person for a while. But my time is that kind of six to eight in the morning. That's when I got my coffee. I'm reading. I'm capturing notes on stuff. I'm just kind of getting prepared for the day. That's my me time. Yeah.
PETER LECKEMBY (35:57)
Nice.
Ryan McKinney (35:57)
And I do a good bit of working out, so my workouts, they start usually around 5.30. So I'm up by five. Get my workout in by 5.30, typically home by 6.15 or 6.30, and then get into my routine for the day.
PETER LECKEMBY (36:14)
I love that. So Ryan, as a coach, you've got clients that you're working with. It's, you know, as we're recording this, are at on, you know, November 12th, 2024. We just had a fairly large election in the country here last week. Regardless of what side, we're not going to get into that in this conversation, but it creates unease in some people and some, you know, there's going to be pretty significant shift potentially. How are you preparing your clients for that?
Ryan McKinney (36:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a great question. When you think about the political landscape, again, regardless of who you voted for, who you wanted, who's in there, all that, that really doesn't matter. Anytime there is change on a political landscape, a legal landscape, or a commercial landscape, there's going to be, there's the potential for disruption in the marketplace, right, in any one of those. So...
with changing in the marketplace, what I'm coaching my clients around is to remain adaptable. We've been talking about that. We've known the we've known the election is coming for a long time. We've known that there was going to be change in leadership, at least for the last three to four months. when Biden stepped down and Harris stepped in at that point in time.
regardless of how the election went, it was going to be a change in leadership. So remain adaptable. Look at your plans over the course of the next few years. And when I work with my clients, we typically have higher level sort of objectives for years two, three through five, essentially. But the next year should have been built with adaptability in mind to start with. Like not necessarily contingencies. You could probably call some of them that, but.
How do we remain adaptable? How do we remain, you know, what would it take for you to say, wow, I was resilient through a huge disruption. And then how do we get you there now as opposed to waiting for it to happen? And ultimately kind of coming back and working with my clients in a workshop base, a lot of them are working on how to.
get their teams to raise the tide, get the leadership up and going. Many of them were kind of cautious about making business decisions, investments, that kind of thing. after the election, they had a contingency plan for which way to go. So yeah, I'd say adaptability and resiliency.
PETER LECKEMBY (38:43)
It's so key. know, you're thinking about, regardless of the change, there's different, different types of businesses may have to adapt in different ways. But like you said, we've known when the election was going to be, you knew you were going to have some change and the apple cart might be getting upset a little bit. If you're just now starting to think about that, you're a little bit behind now. How are you going to adapt and how are you going to, you know, work through that? I think this is another kind of key point of the value of working with a coach as a business owner.
You know, what my mentor, you know, the, in the coaching space talks about, you can't see the picture when you're in the frame. And as the business owner, you, mean, you're in, you're in it. Even if you're a strategic business owner who's, you know, very entrepreneurial in their mindset, you're still in, in the frame and having that, that coach, that advisor that can help you look at things a different way and just kind of talk through things a little bit less object or a little more objectively, because they're not emotionally attached to the business is, is super valuable right now.
Ryan McKinney (39:40)
Yeah, it's a good, you brought up something that made me think about something I go over with my clients. A lot of times, entrepreneurs, small business owners, like that mindset, it's easy to be isolated and feel like you're an island, Often you are trying to be the cheerleader in times that are tough.
You're trying to put on a good face at home, right? It's like, hey, the market may not have been as kind as you'd like it to have been, but you don't want to like share that news with what's going on in your family because you don't want to get them upset or anything like that. A lot of times business owners, don't have anybody at work to talk to because their direct reports still need to see them as the steady rock and all that good stuff. They're certainly not going to call your competitors.
and ask them how they're doing and ask for some advice on what to do. And I've had people that hire me because I can be a confidant. I can be that second set of eyes and ears, look at something, and not just to have someone to talk to, but that has been a major reason that people do that and being able to develop that credibility and trust with them so that they can go, you know what, this is what's going on in my business and I am terrified.
Just the ability to tell somebody that they're terrified. you can watch the weight just drip off of them. It's amazing. And then when you throw some empowering questions at them, like, okay, let's understand. Like anybody's gonna be that way. What are you gonna do next? What are your thoughts? What are you thinking? Just something as simple as that. Having somebody to bounce that idea back and forth. And then by the way, for those listening that are wondering if that's what a business coach does.
That is not even close to everything that we do, but it's a component of it and it's a valuable component because it allows people to release all that stuff, that tension and issues and challenges that they've got so they can get focused on what to do next.
PETER LECKEMBY (41:41)
Yeah, we don't have enough time to cover all the benefits of hiring a professional coach and what that can do for your business. but there's significant ones that is, that is a huge one. You know, something else that as you were talking, you know, this time of this time in history, right? We're about to undergo some significant changes. That's the guarantee every single time it has created opportunities for businesses to innovate, become more efficient.
create a new value proposition, whatever it is, there are, through these great times of change, are great times of prosperity for business owners who have that adaptability, that resiliency, and are looking to take advantage of that and capitalize on it.
Ryan McKinney (42:22)
Every historic change has produced millionaires and paupers It really comes down to the way that you view it and see it. Creating the mindset for yourself or having somebody help you create the mindset that there's opportunity and everything. I got this really cool, I gave this to my daughter when she headed off to college this year, but somebody gave me a rock.
And it's one of these like smooth polished rocks and it's really flat. And on one side of it, it says problem. And on the other side, it says solution. And the lesson is, is that they're both on the same rock. It really depends on what you want to see when you look at it. If you want to see the solution, you flip it to the solution side. If you want to keep focusing on the problem, you can stay focused on the problem side. And it's no different for us with changes like what are happening now.
in our world, right? We can look at the solution side of things. We can look at what opportunities are about to arise. To your point, how do we add value in this opportunity as opposed to, the way I had my business structured, the things I was doing before doesn't work anymore. Now what am I going to do? Like we could, we get a choice. You get to look at it either way, right? So if you get to look at it either way and one turns out awesome and one doesn't, pick the one that turns out awesome, not super hard.
PETER LECKEMBY (43:44)
easy to say, and then there's that fear that comes in and it can be handcuffed. So we build our own prisons. So this is the business growth blueprint, What's maybe one or two things that if a business owner's listening to this that they could take to heart and really experience growth maybe by the end of this week, quite frankly.
Ryan McKinney (43:51)
Yep.
you know, I would take, I think that's a good topical thing to look at. I would say, you know, look at your industry and ask yourself, break it down into these five buckets, marketing, sales, operations, management, the, the, the working on the business, the, you run the business and the financial piece and ask yourself what opportunities are here.
what opportunities are arising because of somebody else's problem or challenge that I can solve and do that in each one of those in earnest. Ask yourself what problems my clients or customers will be facing as because of what's going on in the world today in these areas, in marketing, sales, operations, all those kinds of things. And then what opportunities exist for somebody who's willing to support that problem. And I think it'll help you turn it around.
PETER LECKEMBY (44:57)
That is great advice. Just taking some time to think, which is the, frankly, I I was so guilty of this is, you know, sitting and thinking, like, well, no, I can be doing something. I can be working on something. And that time to think was, was 10 X more valuable than whatever it was I was going to be doing. And it took a long time to learn that lesson. That was a, that was a painful lesson, but that's, that's some great advice right there.
Ryan McKinney (45:23)
Yeah, awesome.
PETER LECKEMBY (45:25)
Something else that popped up as you were saying that, thinking about these five areas for your business. You've done some work around this, obviously being a professional coach. But making that time is often the last thing that we do as a leader. How do you make that shift?
Ryan McKinney (45:41)
Mm-hmm.
So I have been working on what most people would call time management for the last 15 years, recognizing I am a very excited and driven person, and I like to accomplish and do a lot of different things.
there's never been enough time to do them all. So I've always been looking for ways to create more time and more space on my calendar. And then the interesting thing is, like anybody else that's like me, we fill up all that white space on our calendar with more stuff, right? So it's a good question. But I have a process that I use. I've developed this over the course of the last 15 or 20 years. And now I call it Fire Time Management.
and the FIRE stands for Future and Follow-Up, stands for Initiatives and Responsibilities, and then it stands for Execution. And I block off two hours on my calendar every week to do nothing but review what happened this week and get ready for the next two to three weeks.
And I use that formula that I've got in the fire time management. There's a lot more to it. If anybody wants some information on it, I'm happy to share with them. But I go through that, and I get ready. I understand what's coming down the road before it happens, and I make time by planning the time. I just set it aside, and I've.
I have mentally whipped myself into shape to think of it like a doctor's appointment or a dental appointment or something else that's got some severity to it and I honor it.
PETER LECKEMBY (47:24)
Two hours a week, it's very doable. There's an experiment for everybody listening to this. Find those two hours where you can do that exercise. think there's a lot that we've covered today that if you apply these little things, can make really significant shifts in your business without question.
Ryan McKinney (47:26)
two hours a week.
And Peter, let me tell you one more thing about that. If the listeners are going to go look for the two hours, your inner critic is going to tell you, your gremlin in your head is going to tell you, there's no way I can find two consecutive hours on my calendar. If you're a business owner, I guarantee you just thought that. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go out on your calendar as far as you need to into the future to find two consecutive hours.
and block it now. I don't care if it's a month from now or two months from now. Go out there and block the two hours and then honor it when it shows up that week. If it takes that long to get there, that's okay. But I promise you, you can find two hours.
PETER LECKEMBY (48:23)
Sometimes it may be early in the morning when you're not a morning person, it may be late at night if you're not a night owl just to get it. And once you do it the first time and get the benefit, you might be, you know what? I don't need to be in that meeting or I don't need to go do X, Y or Z and you'll find the time miraculously. So.
Ryan McKinney (48:30)
That's right.
If you were, so my clients, just to let you know, when I do that exercise with my clients, I make them find an eight hour day. Cause the first time you do that, they just to have the space, just to have a space, go find an eight hour day to just go collect all the stuff that's been the backlog, do all this. Cause it takes a little while. I'm not saying that the listeners need to do that, but I have them go find an eight hour day and they fight me tooth and nail. And then they thank me.
over and over and over again. And then they start looking for eight hour days. I've recently implemented the 13th week sabbatical and taking short sprints of 12 weeks at a time and then taking a week off. And, you know, so I had a spoonful of my own medicine. I'm telling somebody else to go find eight hours on the day and I had to go find a week, which was really not
as hard as I thought it would be. And I got addicted to that too, by the way. anyway.
PETER LECKEMBY (49:42)
Well, that's such huge advice. And I'm looking at my own calendar thinking how I can implement that into my world. That was a huge aha for me. I loved that you shared that. I know we're getting close here on time. I want to honor your time. Ryan, what's something maybe people don't know about you that might surprise them?
Ryan McKinney (49:56)
People that are close to me know, I am in, it sounds silly when I say it, but I'm an endurance athlete. So I've run a couple of ultra marathons. I've done some pretty extreme endurance events and.
I think there's something magical about doing difficult things on purpose. And it can certainly help you to get clear on what's coming next. Also can help you get clear on what's been hanging on to you for a long time. But yeah, they may not know that. But yeah, that's one of my things.
PETER LECKEMBY (50:32)
I love that. I ran a marathon for the first time last year and it was, it can almost become addicting. It's, it's fascinating. Love that. Well, Ryan, I really do appreciate the time. know our listeners will get a ton of value out of this conversation. So I want to thank you for making the time. And I definitely respect, you know, all the value that you bring in the community. We're a part of and your expertise and wisdom. So I've learned a lot from you and looking forward to sharing that with a bunch of other people.
Ryan McKinney (50:40)
It is, it is. Very cool.
Peter, this was a blast, man. Thank you for the opportunity. Anytime that you will have me back, I'd be glad to come back. And any of the listeners that, you know, if there's something I said out there, they want some information, just let me know. I'm happy to share anything I can.
PETER LECKEMBY (51:13)
Yeah, and I'll definitely put all your links and all your information in the show notes so everybody knows where to track you down. And yeah, maybe we'll do a regular coaches corner kind of set up on this. We'll make this a recurrent thing. Right on Ryan. I appreciate you and we will talk to you soon.
Ryan McKinney (51:22)
Heck yeah, man, that'd be awesome.
Amen. Peace.