The Crucial Essence of Self-Leadership

This episode of The Small Business Show brings you a  chat with leadership coach Andy Hite. With substantial experience guiding entrepreneurs through their transformational journey, Andy shares his insights on the pivotal role mindset plays in entrepreneurial success – from self-leadership to the art of delegation.

Andy explores the concept of competing commitments that often tug entrepreneurs in opposite directions, hindering progress. He delves into concepts of effective delegation and trust-building, describing this as a shift far beyond mere task management. According to Andy, the ideal relationship between work and personal life is akin to a dance - sometimes led by work, sometimes by the individual's personal life. Leaders are encouraged to proactively seek feedback, a crucial element of reflective practice, paving the way for incremental improvements. Finally, the audience gains insights into the importance of selecting the right coach, learning to weigh costs against potential value, and considering one's readiness for growth before embarking on the coaching journey.

Contact Andy Hite

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-hite/
https://www.scalingminds.com

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Transcript

0:16

And growing a small business. The Small Business Show is the official podcast of Carruda promo and branding solutions. Hello, everyone. You're listening to the Small Business show. My name is Swayer Ho. You can also call me the Promo Guy. Today. My guest is Andy Hyde. He's a recognized leadership coach who support entrepreneurs, executives and their teams as they navigate the world building lives and businesses filled with prosperity, meaning and freedom. Thank you for joining us today, Andy. Hey, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to see where we go in the conversation. Yeah, same here. So I wanted to ask you a question for being a coach. And you didn't start out as a coach. Right. So wanted to find out the backstory a little bit more. Why did you decide to become a coach and what do you like most about what you do? Yeah, so my previous life prior to coaching seems like completely opposite. Most of my professional life in my twenty s and thirty s and early 40s was in theater. I started out as an actor in Chicago, on Chicago stages all over Chicagoland area, professional union actor for about six years. And then I sort of retired being on stage and started producing theater. I was artistic director of the theater for 18 years. There's really no direct leap from that to this. How I got into coaching is I've always loved personal and professional development. I started working with a coach during my other career, previous career, and I just fell in love with it. I was in awe of what I was able to accomplish, what I was learning, and then how I was able to help others, my team, my friends, colleagues. And I started dabbling. As I do, when I find an interest, I kind of obsess a little bit. So I started dabbling and one thing led to another. People started to ask for assistance. Then people started saying, I'll pay you. And I'm like, I'll take it. I really started to fall in love with the work. Andy Hite felt like the reason I made the shift is I really felt like I have a talent for this and I can really make an impact and create a legacy for myself. So we set up, my wife and I, a little bit of a runway, and then we left a previous career. Started this business about five years ago or so with a big old doughnut, and we've been building it ever since. Well, that's the classic entrepreneur journey, right? So thank you for sharing, Andy. And I like that the fact that it's not something that is your profession, right. For a long time, and you decided that, this is what I like to do. I'm good at it, and people will actually pay me for it. So I will make that into a business. I knew that I would retire working in the arts. I loved it, and I felt like I was good at it. And then when this sort of voice started chiming in saying, you need to be doing this. This is what you're really meant to be doing. Now, I fought it for a while. I'm like, Hell no, I'm not going to start a business. I'm not going to leave everything that I've created up to this point to start all over in my early 40s. But the voice just became so strong, and as I dabbled in the work and I really saw how I was able to make a difference in people's lives and in their businesses, it just became so loud, I couldn't ignore it. So let's talk about the importance of self leadership, what it is, why is it important, and can you give us some examples for having good self leadership? Looks like absolutely. For me, we have this big, broad umbrella of leadership, right? What does it mean? I always look at it in four different ways. There are leaders who are directors, vice presidents in the C suite, but they still have somebody over them. And so we have to learn how to lead up. How do we have conversations and lead up oftentimes have peers on our level? How do we lead sideways? The classic thought of leadership is how do we lead our teams, which is leading down? And I think there is a fourth component, which is self leadership. And in fact, I believe this is the most important component of all of them, because I'm sure you've heard the phrase, leaders go first, leaders eat last. They become selfless. I think the more that we as leaders do the work and are conscious and are investing in ourselves and our growth, the more that we're able to take that out into the world with those around us and help them do the same. So self leadership really is raising your hand, saying, I'm willing to go first in an effort to improve myself as a person, as a leader, so that I can really make an impact in my teams, in my organization, and in my business. Yeah, I really love what you just described, and I'm going to use a medical term and I'm probably going to butcher. I went to a chiropractor before, and what she does is she only fixed the Atlas Bone, which is the top most bone on a spine. She said that if your Atlas Bone is misaligned, all the rest of your body will be messed up. So she actually does fix the top and then the rest just follow. So kind of like that your example. If you as a leader, don't do self improvement. You are slouching. You are getting late to work, you're not motivated. Then what do you think about the rest of the company? They look up to you. They see that's the way that you act. Maybe we could just relax a little bit and maybe don't care as much as you are 100%. The bare minimum is for the leader, the founder, the CEO to be modeling that which he or she expects from everyone else. Right. That's the bare minimum. And if they want their people, their business to rise to the next level and then the next level and the next level often. Marshall Goldsmith has a book which I love. What got you here won't get you there. Right. And we're often wanting from the people around us to up level. Well, we have to start that process ourselves. The old guys, the stoics of the world, they knew something. I think it was Epictetus that said, know thyself. The most basic principle is to start and know who you are, what drives you, what motivates you, what your thoughts and beliefs and patterns and perspectives and mindset is. The more that we can do that work here and incrementally grow, the more that we're able to make influence on the outside. What do you ask this question? I think small business professionals, myself included, are really money driven. Let's keep it that way. Yeah. So a million dollar goal. According to Small Business Administration, most businesses fell within the past year or two. And then I think it's less than 10% of those company ever make past the million dollar mark. 4%. Yeah. 4%. Wow. Okay, so how should we set that goal? And with help of a coach or with our leadership, how do we go past that goal? Yeah. So there's several different ways and directions we could go with this question. I think the basic a lot of people will come in and they're setting at 5600,000 and they want to get to a million. And people come in at 3 million and they want to get to ten. My first question is why? Good. It sounds good, everyone. Right? And then we do like an exercise to get down to really what do we want? And I think that that's super important because money isn't going to bring you anything. Most people ultimately what they want is security and freedom, which will then get some level of enjoyment and happiness. Right? So it's really starting there. Why do you want it? And then is this vehicle that you've chosen, this business, this organization, do you believe in it? Do you love it? Because your why can't be money. It has to be something bigger than that. If you really hope to build something meaningful right. You have to invest more in what you're doing and the product or service that you believe in and why you believe in it than you do about hitting any number. What we find is typically the thing that gets in entrepreneurs way is just the six inches between here and here. For those that are just listening, it's between your ears. Right. It's your mindset. Oftentimes it's really as simple as do I believe that I can do it? Do I believe I can create a million dollar business or ten or 50 or 100 million dollar business or beyond. And oftentimes we want to say that we do and we want to act as if we do, but there's some underlying, perhaps even hidden beliefs that get in the way. And that's what someone like me and the kind of coaching that I do really helps business leaders discover. I really like what you said, Andy. I've had coaches and I have talked to coaches myself, and I think you're the only one that brings that question. Why do you want that goal? Like, you asked why. So maybe it's a round number or maybe our neighbor is doing it or maybe our competitor is doing that, but do you really want it? And obviously, as you know, if you go to a certain level, a million, 10 million or 100 million, then that means different responsibility, it could mean different lifestyle, or it could mean the time that you spend with your family or your hobby. Are you willing to do that? Sometimes the answer will be no. And sometimes, if you ask me, it will be a hard no because I like my family and my hobby. So maybe there are certain ways, certain lifestyle, certain work requirement that I'm not going to jump in. So I think that's a very important question. And that goes back to what you said on self leadership. Like, you have to believe in it. And along the line, I talk to a lot of entrepreneur. They are hitting the goal, they're hitting the dollar goal, but then their life is a mess. Yeah, I wouldn't say that most of my clients or people I work with are a mess, but I work with a lot of people that are successful but are still wanting more. Right. And oftentimes we have to align what it is in their values and in their ultimate whys. Right. Beyond the $5 million business, what's missing? It's usually an alignment of a value. And truly, like, a lot of folks are driven, pushed to earn rather than called to earn, if that distinction makes difference. And so when they get to the $5 million mark, it's because they were doing it from survival and reaction, because they really want this, say, for example, security. And there's really not a lot of peace in being pushed towards something to have to earn X amount just to feel safe. And that's why we want to realign the values and the why, because a why will pull you, it will captivate you, it'll wake you up in the morning because you're excited to do something rather than waking up like, oh, crap, I got to go and make a sale today, or that kind of thing. We always want to find the thing that's going to compel us and pull us forward rather than the thing that's going to push us from a place of fear into action. Yeah, because I think if you find out the why, then you also, I think, ask the follow up question what are you willing to do and what are you willing to sacrifice? I'll use that word because you can have both. Sometime you have to put into work, or you have to do a certain resource or maybe study more or do things that needs to be done. Then you're giving up some of the things that you might be enjoy doing. It's nice to when people say, I have it all, but then when you ask them a couple more follow up questions, they don't have it all. Very few kind of have it all figured out. We talk about this thing called work life balance, and I kind of hate that because I don't think it exists. And I think it actually creates a dissonance in people because they can't find it, because it doesn't exist. The way I like to reframe it for folks that I work with, it's a dance. Sometimes this is going to lead. Sometimes that's going to lead. If you're in the middle of a product launch, you're probably going to work 70 hours a week, but that's okay. And we want to empower that because of why we're doing it. Again, back to why. And then once that's out and the team is running, then we could maybe pull back to 30. So it's hours a week. So it's a dance rather than this idea or misconception, I think, of a balance between life and work in the entrepreneurial world. I don't think it exists. Yeah, because if something or someone needs to pull your attention in a small business world you're going all in, you can't just say, wait, I have to do something. Can you hold for like a couple of hours? So we don't have that luxury. Let's just keep it that way. Not many are able to set it up the way. Tim Ferriss, the book, the Four Hour work week. Not many people are able to do it to that degree. Yeah, that takes a different kind of personality, and I actually have guests who are specialized in that way. But if you're running a small business, it could be possible. You could open up the discussion. But I think the most important I wanted to bring the listener to know, to find out is what sort of mindset do we need to have? You talk about self leadership, we talk about mindset. And can you give us some example for entrepreneurial success? Just because our mindset has changed, our business is the same, but how we think can actually improve or pull us back, right? Yeah. Well, back to your example of some are able to create the Four Hour Work Week. It takes a specific mindset for that. And the reason that some people aren't or can't is because they have what I call competing commitments, which in and of itself is a mindset. So, for example, you have a leader that is too controlling. They need to have their hand in every little piece of the business because it's what keeps them safe. They have a competing commitment of remaining safe by keeping their hand in every part. Well, they will never create a four hour work week because they can't pull back. They can't just delegate, hire, and trust the people that they have to run that business, those departments. And so there their mindset is sort of lost in this competing commitment of needing to control. And we have all kinds of flavors. We have the perfectionist, we have the self doubter, we have the controller. Like there's a thousand flavors of what this is. And where self leadership comes in is really this is the moment where we work with somebody. It could be a mentor, it could be a counselor, it could be a coach, it could be a really smart friend to help us see those things that we cannot see so that we can start to make incremental shifts. Right. If a mentor says, listen, you're going to have to pull back from you're the CEO, and you have to pull back from doing all the marketing and all the sales if you want to scale your business, that's great information. Then we need to look and see, well, what's motivating us to get in there and how do we dial that back so that we can delegate and pull back, if that makes sense. Yeah. Entrepreneur are controlling. And even if you mentioned Tim Ferriss, I was listening to one of his recent episode. He has this podcast. I don't know for how long right now, but he said that until maybe a couple of years ago, he has the final cut. He wants to control how his podcast sound like. And he already worked with a manager professional to edit his sound. He said it took him really long time to really let go for the controlling part for it. The editor is not 100% Tim Ferriss, but it's 85 90%, and that's good enough. Back to your example. If you find that I don't like accounting, I shouldn't be moving boxes. Like if you're a CEO, yes, you have to get your hands on, but that's not really your job to move boxes and deliver product unless that's your business. Right. So how would you suggest that we give up or delegate some of the tasks that we don't do and focus on what we are good at for the company? Yeah, well, I mean, simply put, do that. Know where you're talented, know where you're not, know where your time is best spent. Again, if you're the CEO, if you're the founder, it's akin to being captain of the ship. You shouldn't be mopping the decks and you shouldn't be doing all the other things because that means you're not at the helm. And so doing the work to get out of the day to day so that you can helm the ship. Now, a lot of work, typically from a self leadership lens is required because most people have a really hard time letting go, usually because of their competing commitments. Well, I don't trust that my team can handle it and deliver to the quality or I need to be in there and make sure that X, Y or Z is done or any number of reasons. But that is what's required. So jumping into the work of self leadership, look in the mirror. One of the things that people ask what is one thing I could do? One thing you could do is go to a mentor, a colleague, a boss, ask them one thing that you're doing very very well and then take that in. And then ask them what is one thing that I should be doing better in order to achieve the results that I want. Take it in and practice it. That is the art on some small level of self leadership. It's being reflective. It is working to improve some quality of who you are and how you show up and how you relate. And when we do that incrementally 1% per day, we end up growing who we are, which will in turn grow the capacity of what we can create. Yeah, kind of like the example Malcolm Gladwell is saying you have to do certain things with 10,000 hours to get better. And then like I'm quoting Bruce Lee now, he does not afraid that opponent who know 10,000 kicks, he is afraid of opponent that practice the same kicks 10,000 times. So maybe the first day when you do things that you're not good at or need to work on, it sucks, right? You really look bad at it, people might make fun of you, but if you keep working on it, keep improving it even less than 1% every single day, then slowly and slowly you get better. Well, that in and of itself is a mindset shift. That is a growth mindset. To quote the queen Carol Dweck of the term mindset, right? That we are not a fixed individual, that with time and intention and energy we can grow who we are and how we show up in the world. And so those that adopt that growth mindset and practice it, here's the key practice it every day it is guaranteed that you will become a new level of leader, business owner and your results will rise. Want to ask you this question, Andy. And there are different style of coaching, right? There are different personality of the coaches. There are coaches that ask you a lot of questions that make you figure it out by yourself. There are coaches that really hands on and there are coaches really like to smack you, right, you're not doing it right and they actually tell you how it should be done. So how do we find out and then connect with the right coach that can help us do what we do. And I think that's like a hard question, right? Such a good question. Swire like such a good question. I mean, for those that are on LinkedIn, if you search coach, I think you're going to find upwards of about 4 million, right. People that call themselves coaches. And within that designation, there's a lot of different people and a lot of different deliverables and a lot of different philosophies. I like to break it down into two camps. There's what I call coaching and then there's consulting. Now I'm using coaching. The International Coaching Federation's definition of coaching. Right. And so on the one hand with consulting, you have somebody that has gone down this road. They have a system, they have a methodology, they have a product, they have a knowledge that they're going to come in and help you implement. They're basically telling you what to do and how. Right. Akin to give a man a fish he eats for a day. Now, this is not a slam on consultants. I use consultants myself and I am in fact m one. We are scaling minds, coaching and consulting, but I think the distinction is helpful. Coaching, on the other hand, is I relate it to teach people to fish and then they learn themselves and then they ultimately grow. This kind of coach is going to, as you say, ask a lot of questions. They're going to ask you to be very self reflective. They're going to reflect back to you things that you didn't know about yourself, what we call blind spots. And it's really in that realm that we're able to grow the capacity of who we are as a human, not just what we do as a business leader. And so the coach, especially with what I do, I am most interested in helping my clients connect and grow who they are so that they have the capacity to attempt and achieve things they've never done before. For small business owner and like you said, that's a mind boggling number, like 4 million just on LinkedIn. I'm sure that if you do a Google search, then it'll be crazy. How do we throw a stone and you're going to hit a coach, somebody that calls themselves coach. How do we know the style? It's just a personality fit. Or if we like the style of the coach that we're going to be working with, kind of like personal training, right? There are coaches that train you in a certain style of beach body. There are coaches training you with bodybuilding. Or whatever that it is such a good question. I recommend anyone that feels like they want the support of someone else, whether that be a coach or a consultant. Spend time with them, ask them how they work and what the deliverables are and how they're different than, say, other coaches and consultants that are out there. Are you going to just work with my business, my numbers, my marketing and tell me what to do, or are you really looking at my head, my heart, in addition to those things? Which is more the coaching, what I do with folks, because I think the rapport is incredibly important. I think it's among the most important things is how we relate as two humans. As we're talking, I usually spend 90 minutes with an interested prospect and actually coach because I want to know, is this person coachable? Are they looking for what I do? Am I the right person that can support them in what they want to achieve? Do they even know what they want to achieve? Are they looking to just not feel the pain anymore? Are they looking to grow? So there's a lot of questions that I look to answer just by getting in a 90 minutes coaching conversation with someone. And I would assert that 99% of everyone who's participated in a session like that with me has walked away learning something new about themselves that they never knew what about. On the flip side, let's say we wanted to speak to a potential coach or someone who can help us. Are there questions that we should ask? Because, like you said, you have to be able to connect with the person. I have had the experience that I don't really trust that person, so then I kind of still have a wall, and I won't be sharing all the information that I was supposed to, which you kind of have to before that person can really know what's going on in your head to help you, right? Yeah. Are you wearing some of your own branded stuff? I am, yes. Yeah. So you are a promo guy who believes in promo, right? You believe, hey, if I wear my branded stuff and I give it away, people are going to know who I am. You believe in what you do? One of the things that I always recommend prospects to do when they're interviewing coaches is ask them, are you working with a coach? Have you worked with a coach? And if they say no, I wouldn't say it's a blanket, I wouldn't work with them. But I'd be curious, right, if I tell you that I can help you grow your business basic grow who you are as a person, which includes your level of happiness, your level of enjoyment, the relationships around you. If I tell you that I can do that, wouldn't you be curious if I want that for myself? I've worked with a coach, a couple of them straight, for six years. And I will always work with a coach because I believe in its power to continue to help me up level who I am. And the better I get as a person back to self leadership, the better coach I can be to the people that I work with. So that's one thing I always like as a litmus test. Do you have a coach do you work with a coach? Tell me about that. What do you get from it? And if not, take that as a piece of data. But yeah, then I would ask how do you work? What does it look like? What are some success stories that you can share? Are there any past clients of yours that I can speak with? I tell anybody I talk to. I have like over three dozen testimonials on my website. You can probably call any single person if you can find them and I'll give you their names and ask them about our work together. And I believe they're going to really give a glowing review of the work that we did and the results that they got. That's a great question, Andy. That's such an open ended question to you. And you won't offend the coach or whoever that you're interviewing. Tell me your own coaching experience and then just let them talk. And then you will be able to find out what does he or she believes in and then what kind of methodology that they embrace. And that's such a good question. Yeah. Another thing that you can ask, and again, I don't think that this is a deal breaker, but what's your methodology? Right? Some coaches, they just take you through a system. There's nothing wrong with that. The only thing is I believe that if we go through a system, it is somewhat limiting the absolute results that a person can get. Right. Because it's just answering a few or a number of questions, so to speak, versus what someone like me does is whatever is in front of us, we pull whatever tools we need out of our vast toolbox to work with that person in that moment. Every encounter, every client, every conversation is bespoke. Last question. And I think this is trying to ask this question nicely, but are there ways or how should you value the coaching? Because obviously if you could get the best coach possible but you cannot afford, that doesn't really help you. So for those of us who really like to grow and then seemingly there's a really good coach, but then maybe out of our price range, are you in the camp that say it's all worth the money, it's going to get it back? How do you balance it? Am I asking the right question? Absolutely. Because there are coaches that charge $100, $50 per session. And I know coaches that charge $30,000 plus for. I mean, I know one guy who charges a million a year. Wow. Question it. But there's everything in between. What I would say is whatever you can afford, find somebody that can come to me. Truthfully, if my prices are outside of your budget, I have a rolodex of coaches that I refer to. The thing that is most interesting to me is that to your question, people get the support that they want and some amount of coaching is better. Than none. There is always the coach out there that can help you get to the next level and then the next level and then the next level. Yeah. I mean, my first coach $4,000 for six months, and then my second coach was $50,000 a year. And then we just keep going. Thank you for answering that question. I think that's really valuable. But before you do that, you have to ask yourself or maybe talk to someone, why do you want to do that? Yeah. And it's not required of everyone, right? Not everybody is at that point where they want to embark on that journey, but those that are feeling the call and want to explore that, I highly recommend it because I have literally seen lives change, business change, relationships change, all of it. So, Andy, I think we are getting to the point know, listen to Paulie, have individual questions who want to reach out to you. Can you let us know what's the best way to find you? Yeah. So I play in two spaces. I'm on LinkedIn a lot, so you can find me pretty easily by searching Andy Height. And we're scaling minds and then our website, Scalingminds.com. We've set aside a page specifically for your listeners. If they go to Small Business Show, there's some goodies there. There's a couple of assessments that might be helpful. An entrepreneurial readiness assessment, a leadership assessment. There's also an Authentic Leadership Handbook that I've written for those that are really interested in going deep into leadership. And then anybody that might be interested in having a conversation with me, there's a link, and we can jump into that 90 minutes that I mentioned earlier. We could just do some coaching, see if it's a fit, see if you even like coaching. Thank you so much for all the information, and I'll definitely include that on the show notes. Love all the questions. And thank you for answering all the questions I'm throwing at you. Hey, man, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the conversation. Take care. Yeah. Thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends or colleagues who might benefit from the conversation. Any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you.

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