Episode Transcript
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You were listening to Be to Be
Revenue Acceleration, a podcast dedicated to helping
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stuffware executives stay on the cutting edge
of sales and marketing in their industry.
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Let's give them to the show.
Hi, welcome to Be to Be a
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Revenue Acceleration. My name is Omi
and I'm here today with Richard faith Fields,
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founder and director at Realize. How
are you doing today, Richards?
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Hey, I'm very oh good.
Um, they're likely to be on your
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podcast right and of course it's Friday
and the weather's looking good for the weekend.
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Absolutely nothing to complain about, so
you and I know it shows are
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quite a lot. In fact,
you've been you've been advising me for a
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little while. You've been taming me, as we like to say, from
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time to time. You've been helping
me to be a something board and all
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that sort of great stuff. And
today we will be speaking about how to
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coach founders effectively. But before we
get going, UM, for the people
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who do not know you, would
you mind just introducing yourself, what you've
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done in the past and what you
are doing also that's realized, so introducing
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realizing in the same God please sure. So Hi, everyone, I'm Richard
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Fifield, not many years of I
describe it as coaching, mentoring and advising
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founders entrepreneurs only managed businesses and people
managing those businesses primarily to help them others
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start grow or helped it successfully,
but sometimes just keep on being successful.
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Started way back in accounting, very
daily and small and international firms work through
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due diligence and corporate finance. Worked
on lots of coll finance deals of every
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conceivable type. Been involved in running
a large financial outsourcing business which was led
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to being in a global networks and
went around the world a sort of different
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countries and cultures. Had roles and
consultancy helping businesses to grow, been board
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member, a ball member of many
times still still are non exect and a
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public company director. So really,
underneath all of these wonderful job to idols,
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I had a massive interested in interesting
people and how certain people achieved more
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impact than others. So along the
way I started to train myself and get
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trained on a lot of psychology related
areas, and I still could train today
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on on sort of behavior psychology,
and that led into coaching, and that
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then led into further roles around working
on strategy ball performance and helping good people
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progress their careers within smaller large businesses
to be honest and that eventually lad about
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twelve years ago into starting realized capital
and realized capital is here to help we
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call it ambitious entrepreneurs or ambitious founders
to start, scale and exit their business.
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The differentiator for us is that we
tend to go on the journey with
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these founders and help them move up
a growth curve as opposed to giving a
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point piece of advice. And what
seems to resonate with people is the mix
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of wild and wild wild. That's
could be it for audience wide business experience
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plus technical excellence. We try and
set's technically excellent and very professional what we
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do, but plus the emotional support
that we provide the founders along that growth
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journey. And the coaching is my
way of providing that emotional support and it
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seems to be working with the people
that we that we engage with. So
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here I am Richard Fifield. I
coach. I do a bit of mentoring
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and advise founders, business owners,
senior teams to primarily help them to improve
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their business situation towards a business goal. So that's pretty yeah, absolutely that's
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exactly what you're doing for us.
So I can I can vet for your
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for your introduction. So Bob's as
described couching as a secret startup superpower,
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you know that can and founders accelerate
the business growth and develop as kills.
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I'd like you to share your inn
and as to wise, the right type
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of coaching so important when it comes
to founders, because you see, coaching
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could be able across your company and
you could coach accountants, you could coach
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sales people, you could coach marketing
people. But you know, founders like
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a you know that sort of this
is that and particularly ambitious in ambitious startup
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um that maybe a little bit more
complex to approach. So I'd like to
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understand, you know, the type
of coaching was the right type of cotching.
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Yeah, it's interesting. Is this
the right question? I'm thinking it
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might be refrained as can coaching help
founders or business owners achieve their goals,
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whatever their goals are. But the
answer for me is in terms of coaching
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in respect to founders, the answer
is everyone can benefit from coaching to help
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access more of their potential. And
why wouldn't you There's enough evidence out there
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to show that that coaching works.
The old cliche of you need a coach
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because you were struggling, I think
it's gone or going. I think that's
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a thing of the past. Now
everyone sees it's an opportunity to to improve
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what they're doing or better themselves.
However, one thing I did want to
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mention hear Ray is is to get
clear on what coaching is. We've got
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these terms coaching, mentoring, advising, consulting, therapy, counseling. They're
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all often and they can be used
interchangeably. And my way of looking at
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this is to be clear on these
different terms. And so coaching, I
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think is a set of processes and
tools to support somebody on their journey to
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maximize their potential. And it's really
getting that person to be better, able
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to use their internal sort of resources
to move forward, perhaps overcoming some sort
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of limiting beliefs, and it's more
about asking great questions of the person.
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Mentoring is more context driven and about
sharing the mentors expertise and knowledge, so
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you know you tend to go in
this situation. I've been around the block
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many times and this is what I
would do. The coach is very much
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around how could you find the answer
to this question and move forward. Advising
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is really the expert in the room. You should be able to find an
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execute on a solution. I won't
go into therapy and counseling in this in
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this discussion, but you know,
sometimes you have a more serious position actually,
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and you may need to go to
those sorts of places. But the
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theory is that coaching is more powerful
because it's empowering you to find the resources
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within yourself to do something and move
forward. And a good example of that
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is when you're working with founders,
if you actually keep saying to them how
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I would do it, and whether
you use that language or not, it's
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all about how I would you know, I've been here, you should do
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it this way, you should do
it this way. You often hit roadblocks
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and they don't they start not to
listen to you, or they don't do
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what you're doing. However, if
you start to get under the skin of
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them and say, you know,
if you had all the resources you had
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you you that are available to you
right now, how would you solve this
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solution? And often you get a
more thoughtful, processed kind of response,
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and it often unlocks them and moves
them forward, So you need to be
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clear on what you're using with the
founder. So my version of the right
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type of coaching to answer your question
is as a business coach, to fight
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to use the right mix of coaching, mentoring and advising to help you get
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where you want to get to.
So you know, it's it's just being
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you know, I'm not I'm pretty
agnostic on on the on the coaching.
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I mean, I do coach people
in sales situations or you know, when
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they're looking at a difficult conflict situation. But you know, you just need
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to choose your tool and your method
appropriately. Yeah, And as an example,
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so yesterday I was, you know, meeting with co founders and the
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realized job was to provide support to
the founders and and they're board to agree
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and to deliver on a business plan
nice and straightforward. So we use some
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coaching when discussing confidence issues around the
co founders because they were really worried whether
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they could actually deliver on their roles
of CEO and and and cheap people officer
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and could keep cheat the business plan. But then we use mentoring when it
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was talking around set of strategies and
pipeline management. And then advising when we
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had to look at a cash flow
and figure out how much resource they had
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to keep going and use their cash
effectively. So the big learning for me
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over the years is the coaching process
is often the oil that keeps the founders
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lubricated or empowered to deal with the
day to day business challenges. So it's
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around circumstances about what's the right time. So I think it's around the mix
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of stars that you use to get
the right result, a trade of your
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couch myself to make tim and as
you know, because you and I have
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spoken to that alert, you know
is feeling a little bit of insecurity sometimes
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because I'm like good, I can't
couch. I keep on jumping in the
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advisor role because they don't have the
time. And if you're come to me
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with a problem, instead of asking
you what you would do if you had
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all the right resources, as you
just mentioned, you can tune it back
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to them, so you make them
feel I would go straight into the solution.
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Let me fix it. I know, I think I know better and
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I'm gonna try to fix it.
And I'm still I'm still chasing that that
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that devil at the moment, you
know, it's just like trying to get
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that off my head and thanking God, you know, Okay, what do
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they want? And they come the
way I look at it now and I
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think you and I spoke about it. It's like, well, if someone
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comes to me, do they want
to vent? And basically I'm just gonna
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listen to them. And the great
example of that, I was in a
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in Chicago, just getting to the
airports, kind of working with my phone.
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My Heirsettset's not fully working, but
I'm calling. My wife's telling me
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she's got something going on at work, etcetera, etcetera. I don't really
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hear what she's saying. I'm waiting
for my luggage and trying to find the
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belt on which she would be etcetera, etcetera. Five minutes later, I'm
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like, Okay, I don't really
know what she's talking about, so I'm
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gonna just say nothing. That's so
bad because if she asked me a question,
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if I was listening, I'm done. And then she said, you,
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you know what, that was so
good to talk to you. It's
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good you didn't jumping. I feel
so much better now, thank you so
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much. Oh my god, that
was good and I'm like, wow,
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because trust me, if you would
have known the particularly because he was related
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to work, I would have probably
jump in with my opinion as to what
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the manager is doing or whatever.
That's somewhat painting, okay, And some
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where people just want that, and
then people want fixing. So that's that's
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what the people are like, because
you know they come to you, and
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you feel good when you are giving
them solutions. But I feel now that
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the people that come to you and
get solutions, unfortunately what you're doing,
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you're not giving them a favor by
fixing their issue. And sometimes advising too
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much could come in in my eyes, and I like your opinion on that
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in a minute, but could come
as a as a contrary of coaching,
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because if you give your the solution
too quickly, you then do not earler
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people to have the sort of sort
process of looking for the solution themselves have
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it, okay, And so but
sometimes you know, people come from fixing,
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and now I'm trying to keep them
at at arm length when someone come
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to me for fixing, because actually
could be a bit of complacency. I'm
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gonna him and just gonna get fun
advice. And now I'm trying to I'm
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trying to don it into more.
You know, I guess what you've been
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doing with me, which is well, but what would you do? What
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are your thols? What are your
options? What happened if you do nothing?
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What epen? If you do something? You know? What apen?
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If you fail? You know?
And asking this questions I think actually end
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people to develop. And then the
last part is obviously the coaching. Well
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where where Well, it's quite interesting, but what do you think about that
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contrast of advising and coaching and you
know, too quickly could come into the
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developing that you agree or well,
I think it's the knob of the whole
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issue here. I remember we are
talking about or I'm talking about more business
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coaching. Yeah, and must coaching
is attached to goals. You know,
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you tend to set a goal or
vest nation with a client or a coach.
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Years it's called it's a really interesting
conflict in the sense that business is
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under real pressure. You've got to
move quickly, you've got to get stuff
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done. Competitors you know, are
snappi at your heels. So often the
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best way to run a business is
to be very advisory mentoring, right,
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come on, we've got to fix
it. Crack on. This is the
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way to do it, and move
on. You know, get this.
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People like to learn. Most learning
is around just watching somebody else and copying
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what they're doing, so that can
be really, really useful. So and
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that's probably most of the time in
the business. However, there are times
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when the business gets a bit stuck, or an individual gets a bit stuck,
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and that fixing style isn't working,
or people aren't listening, or the
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business isn't moving forward as it should
be. So you look around and you
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go, what what else can I
do? And that's when you might use
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maybe an outside mentor. Let's do
the middle one. This you've been advising
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and fixing. Let's get a mentor
in and a sales mentor might come in
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who's built another great sales organization and
give you a sort of boost, a
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sort of injection in your arm to
go right, here's some new sales ideas.
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Away. You go again, and
you move forward and the business gets
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competitive. But then it's suddenly you
still step. You get stuck again,
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and you're starting to say, actually, that person is not doing well in
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the role. I'm struggling myself.
I am having a work life balance crisis.
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I'm you know, I'm losing my
confidence. I don't something's not right
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here, and that's when the coaching
can often help because it's a different process
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and it's really about standing back and
your your experience with your wife is one
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of the great things around the power
of coaching is you don't actually have to
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say anything most of the time,
and you can just listen and if you
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are a good listener that the coaching
or the client goes wow. That was
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really important for me because I just
wanted a safe space and I would use
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that phrase actually a safe space to
talk where I'm not going to be judged
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and I'm not going to be told
what to do, and I can just
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run my mind, you know,
bring bring the stuff in my mind out
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into the open. And if you
start to talk about things in the open,
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you tend to find kind of ways
to move forward. So I think
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there's as so difficult. And also
you've got to be quite good and have
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been trained to do some some really
good coaching, because you can't just be
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a coach overnight, although we can
all have a go at it. We
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just need to listen, which is
fantastic so yeah, I think there's there's
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a great adage in the in the
this kind of world that says, taming
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your advice monster. And there's some
guys, a guy that's write a lot
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of books around that, and that's
part of it. You tame your advice
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monster. You stand back, you
ask some intelligent questions, and you often
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get people to move forward much more
quickly. So, you know, advising
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a lot of the time because it's
business mentoring, yeah, you know,
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telling you what to do that can
really push people forward. But sometimes coaching
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is the way to get to get
progress. Another thing that obviously you've got
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the people element, that you've got
the company's elements, and then but you're
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always the organization you work with,
which are pretty much like you know,
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startups or startups wanted to be your
scale up or scale up, wanting to
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go and po or wanting to get
to an exit and all the stuff.
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Great things. So I'd like to
move the conversation more towards the different stages
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of growth because I would expect that
are me in my experience, the the
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gap of confidence sometimes come from the
first you've got to go to the next
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step on the staircase and it's exactly
what you are saying at the outset of
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the conversation, you know, with
your meeting yesterday, where you are these
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two these two founders around the table
and they look at the business plan for
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next year and then I woh,
oh my god, this is this is
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a stressful one and that can a
little bit, particularly when you just look
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at the end and don't focus on
the process. But I'd like your opinion
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on the different stages that you've seen
from the company perspective, and what are
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the common challenges that you've seen a
different growth stage. Basically, yeah,
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yeah, but I think it's it's
a really good question, um and R.
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At the start of your your question
there you talking about what everyone was
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different, and I do think everyone
does come to a situation completely different and
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unique. They have a whole set
of life experiences that you can never replicate
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because the dynamics are just huge.
However, having said that, there are
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particular themes, if I put it
like that, but emerge as you're going
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through that growth journey from start to
scale to wexit and then keeping the business
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going. Um is staying successful.
Um So, so some of these themes
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that arise so in the startup phase. Um, it's really you know,
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it's the unconscious incompetence. You know, I've got a real passion, I've
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got a great idea, I'm cracking
on with everything, but I just simply
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don't know what to do next and
what's around corners. And you often take
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a more mentoring approach in that,
in that example where just say, look,
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actually watch out. If you don't
sort your finances out, or you
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don't get your castleted out, or
you don't you know, pay attention to
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people or whatever, you are going
to hit a big kind of problem later.
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So there's this kind of not knowing
what happens, and so there's a
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lot of just saying, right,
let's just look at what might be around
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the next corner and let's plan for
it. Another big thing in the early
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stage is how do I actually get
the business away from me? Because I'm
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the first person that started I maybe
one or two or three. But as
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I get a little bit of growth, how do I actually get take all
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of that role accountability away from me
and start to delegate. And so you
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really have that big issue about you
know that, how do you recruit your
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first employee, how do you make
that talent work because it's often a big
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cash here, it's a big risk. How do you then sort of delegate
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some of your role to the next
person, And so it's that kind of
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thing. At the start level,
there's also conflict in your head. Was
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this the right thing that I really
wanted to do? Can I really grow
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this business? Can I manage all
of these horrible things that hit me from
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sales, operations, people, et
cetera. So very much, very much
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coaching the individual here because it's their
business and they are so inextricably linked with
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the business um and it's more about
giving them confidence to say, don't worry.
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Everyone has been in your position,
you know, be comfortable with not
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knowing what you don't know. We're
here and others are here just to help
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you along that journey and just keep
the faith. Basically, keep doing good,
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sensible, sound business practices and keep
your passion alive and it will be
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okay. So that's the sort of
start stage. Get into the growth stage,
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of course, suddenly everything you know, there's a lot more to play
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for here. You're probably a bit
bigger. You may be growing and may
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have bigger problems, but there's probably
more people around, and now you start
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to get conflicts appearing, and conflict
is the thing that a lot of the
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coaching is around. So I've got
a conflict with my founders. Suddenly that
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founder I started with isn't quite good
enough to grow the business, or indeed
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I might not be good enough to
grow the business. So I'm sort of
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you know, there's lots of arguments
happening, or arguments by um, you
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know, walking away and not not
actually engaging, and communication drops off.
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Maybe your shareholders, you might have
raised some money by this time, they
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also might be conflicting saying, well, actually you're not growing enough, or
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this isn't going in the right way. You tend too often, you might
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be a bit older as well.
As you grow. You have worked life
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balance things that get in the way. Family often gets in the way,
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and you're trying to balance that sort
of you know, juggling getting back to
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see maybe a new baby or a
new spouse or something like that. And
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so there's lots of conflicts appearing,
and then you're at that great position.
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The only way to grow a business
the time is letting go, and delegation
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is really heighted. At that point. You've got to find smarter people than
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yourself, probably to grow the business
ones and you've got to become the best
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person at finding, attracting and retaining
talent, which may not have been the
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reason you've started it. You may
be a techie, you may be a
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sales guy. Suddenly it's a heightened
kind of need to to manage people.
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And then you've got the pressure on
you of you will innevitably hit a crisis
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if growth, the risk that you've
brought, you've built up as a startup
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comes back to bite you. You
know, maybe it's cash, maybe it's
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a client issue, maybe it's a
people issue. And you've got to drag
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yourself through all of these kind of
crisis in inverted comments, because every business
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has them. And then you hit
resilience in positive syndrome confidence. Those sorts
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of things surface in the growth stage. And then finally, I think at
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this stage, you've got to get
into this scale up thinking. I don't
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no way. We've spoken about changing
your your thinking from scale startup to scale
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up, but in the scale up
mode, it's all about smarter people.
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Smarter process is smarter tech to drive
that kind of to power the growth that
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you might get If you continue to
sell, and often that isn't the skill
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of the of the founders. You
know, you didn't drive the business,
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didn't start the business because you were
brilliant process or maybe you were a techie,
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or you were brilliant people. You
just had a brilliant idea. So
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it's a different sort of coaching required
at that stage. You might also be
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questioning whether you s to be staying
in the business at this point, so
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there's a there's a should I stay
or should I go type of coaching as
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well. So that's when you're going
into growth, it's a bit easier in
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the center that question of shoe I
staying or should I go comes to the
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fore. So should I continue on
this journey because I love it and I
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can build it much bigger? Or
actually, this is an opportunity for me
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to jump off and realize some some
some cash or get back my energy and
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time because energy is decreasing often through
this journey, because it gets tougher and
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tougher. Um so and here as
well, more and more conflicts with shareholders,
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investors, potential buyers. So the
coaching there is often around um that
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point of look, is it my
baby? And do I really want to
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go on with it, or actually, am I the right person and there's
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something better for me to go onto. So it's that type of coaching.
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So that's the sort of you know, sort of headlines of where you might
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take someone on the journey. Superous, fool and definitely some of the example
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as you use, definitely you myself
having I've been gone through the process,
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so so so some of these changes
are unique us all um, you know,
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and they will be company based.
We spoke about the individual. Now
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I'd like to move to something slightly
different, you know, nationally te gender.
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So for example, let's let's look
at gender for one, and know
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that you and I spoke about it, But do you believe that female and
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male founders need to be cooked differently
because of the gender or do you think
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everything should be based on the personality? Yeah, it's a it's a great
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question, and it's a it's a
somewhat tricky area. Um. As a
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precursor to the answer, I think
generally, in the past the world has
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been dominated and biased towards men,
and there's any doubts about that, and
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this has a bearing on the coaching
for the for the people that come forward,
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be their men or women. But
that's certainly changing and I think accelerating
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for the better. And this includes
for ethnic minorities as well, so that
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the world is becoming more I hope, more balanced and and and everyone has
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the opportunity to progress towards, you
know, the destination of their choice.
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And I think that is getting easier, although there's still a way to go.
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But the thing around female founders or
gender, I just take the position
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of not a male or a female. It's it's actually the person and the
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human that you start with and you
start coaching UM. But they bring with
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them their life experiences, UM,
and so they may have particular issues around
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being, for example, a female
founder, an ex issue of I can't
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raise money because people don't take me
seriously, that type of sort sort of
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issue. But I always just say
the view that they're a human being and
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they're a person, And because I
worked with lots of female founders, and
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this week I've been working with four
female founders, and the issues are wide
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and varied, and it's not a
it's not a done deal that all female
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founders find it difficult to raise money. It's not have done deal that all
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female fanners can't manage work life balance. You know, they're all very different
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characters, and as all the men
are that that that I coach, and
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you've just got to listen to what
the particular issue is and then find a
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way a way through it. At
the end of the day, you're treating
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everyone with I hope, tolerance,
respect, dignity, and just trying to
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do your best to help and move
forward. And there is there is a
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bit of impost syndrome, which is
a typical thing that's raised at this point
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that floats around that because I'm a
certain person, I'm going to have a
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difficult time. And actually some of
that is a limiting belief. Is not
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necessary that if you're an ethnic minority, or a female founder, or you're
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old for example, whatever it might
be, that you might necessarily face some
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of the clichee things that you that
you hear about. So I tend to
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be coaching the person, not the
gender, race or whatever. But I
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do accept that there are some significant
things in there that you have to You
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have to be aware of what advice
would you have given when coaching someone to
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to a founder? Is there a
specific career as what people struggle the musch
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from your perspective, and it also
is that people are the founders that actually
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want to be cooked, but actually
don't respond to coaching. Yeah, I
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mean, you know it is everybody
coaching, but I think they probably are.
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But there is, particularly at my
part of coaching business coaching, if
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somebody just doesn't want to be coached, you know, you have my experience
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as you move on quickly. Um. But generally nowadays people are far more
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receptive to coaching. It's a really
interesting one because the question is framed about
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giving advice. I think you mentioned
the word advice. Now theoretically the coaching
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type of process is not around advice. The mentoring and obviously the advising is
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around advice. Um. And actually
what's hard for one person is not necessarily
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hard for another. So there's lots
of dynamics in this. But might might
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to answer the question from a business
coaching perspective that I think the biggest thing
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that found us find difficult or advice
to take is letting go. And it's
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letting go of their role of being
involved with everything of decision making of their
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equity or their or their their reward, letting go of the business. If
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if they need to sell it or
part of the business, or letting go
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of a of a strategy that's close
to their hearts which may which may not
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be working. So that whole letting
go is something that's particularly difficult for for
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founders and business owners to take on
board. And there's a real sort of
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dichotomy here that what you don't want
founders to take advice readily. You don't
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want entrepreneurs to take advice readily.
You want them to push back. You
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want them to push the envelope because
they're the ones that create new value and
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new jobs, and so doing the
same thing that somebody else did actually may
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not move the needle forward and may
not create new value it. So you
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always want them to push back on
you and be tough on you as a
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coach, mentor advisor, as you
might be tough on them to say,
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you know, we really need to
consider this because somehow we're stuck. So
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I thought I was thinking about this
and just thinking around. So several people
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have asked me this question, and
I think coaching is often about creating constructive
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tension. I think there is a
tension in there about should I take this
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advice? For example, should I
let go, Should I invest? Should
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I change my behavior? But you
know, I'm not sure I want to
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and it feels uncomfortable. But it's
in that space that the best decisions are
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made. So we've got to create
some tension to get good decisions in the
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coaching process. So that's what I
that's kind of my style, a little
399
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bit more challenging and creating a little
bit of constructive tention because I believe that
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that often moves people forward. Now
I agree with you, a bit of
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friction. It's always good to to
move the needle. So thank you so
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much for you. It's Richards.
If anyone wants to connect with you,
403
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and and you know, for anyone
listening a Toperatics richality, he's helping us.
404
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He's helping me personally. He's also
sharing our boards, so he's doing
405
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lots of bits and pieces and emping
us to to become a little bit more
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of a scale up as part of
the processes we as we as we discussed.
407
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But if anyone wants to engage with
you, get some couching, some
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mentoring, some advising. I would
like to engage with Realized as a business
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00:28:29.400 --> 00:28:33.279
and see how Realized could help them
to to to get closer to their goal.
410
00:28:33.839 --> 00:28:36.200
What's the best way to get hold
of your Richard. Yeah, I
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00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:40.279
mean I think I've got a very
simple email address. It's Richard realized,
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00:28:40.319 --> 00:28:44.680
not based that's realized with an S
because we're not American and pers with the
413
00:28:44.759 --> 00:28:48.559
Z. Obviously they can get me
through your ay or just google me Richard
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00:28:48.599 --> 00:28:53.000
Fifield and on LinkedIn. Um.
We delighted to to speak to anyone.
415
00:28:53.400 --> 00:28:57.279
UM, and it's really it's great
to be on the podcast right, really
416
00:28:57.319 --> 00:29:00.799
enjoyed it and hopefully that was useful. Now it's goods course, thank you
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00:29:00.920 --> 00:29:03.119
so much for our time. And
yeah, it was great to have on
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00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:08.279
this show today. Okay, thanks
everyone. Bye. You've been listening to
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00:29:08.440 --> 00:29:12.400
BE to BE revenue acceleration. To
ensure that you never miss an episode,
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00:29:12.640 --> 00:29:17.400
subscribe to the show in your favorite
podcast player. Thank you so much for
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00:29:17.519 --> 00:29:18.000
listening. Until next time,
