Delve into coaching’s impact on scaling success with expert Bill Gallagher, highlighting perspective shifts for business growth.
Resources:
- Scaling Up Website
- Bill Gallagher’s Podcast
- All-Star Live Dental Training Events
- Dental Coaching
- Dental Practice Growth Webinar
About Bill Gallagher
Bill Gallagher is a highly rated business coach whose passion is helping CEOs and entrepreneurs manage growth better; restore time, order and sanity to their lives—and get growing again or growing faster. With more than 36 years of entrepreneurial and executive experience and 18 years coaching and training leaders who want to improve their leadership and performance, he now works with leaders and teams in over 28 cities and 13 countries. He has led four companies as CEO/owner and was a partner/executive in two others as they grew from startup to more than $500 million in annual revenue.
About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
About Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Here’s your host, Alex Nottingham. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. The topic is the impact of coaching on scaling success. Our guest is Bill Gallagher. Bill is a top rated business coach with 36 years of experience specializing in helping CEOs and entrepreneurs achieve accelerated growth.
00:27
regain work-life balance and optimize leadership skills. He has a track record of success as CEO of four companies and a partner in two other. He is also the host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Please welcome back Bill. Thanks for having me back. Excellent, good to have you. We had you in the last episode. We talked about the three secrets of companies that really scale and that last piece was all about coaching.
00:57
Yes. And we’re going to talk about coaching. I had a whole both of you back because we have our president of coaching, Eric Vickery on the call. And I know you guys want to get into the coaching stuff and we have plenty of time to do that right now. Plus some follow-up questions. So right out the gate, let’s talk about what is the impact. And I can ask both of you, what do you find the impact coaching has been on scaling a business? Well, let me start as I like to do with
01:27
a story, right? I could actually tell lots of stories about coaching and being coached. So when I think about all the different things that I’ve undertaken in my life, they all have some kind of coach. I’ve had a financial coach to help me when I was stepping up to some new things or when I made some money. I had a different financial coach when I was on the brink of a bankruptcy who helped me work.
01:53
through the other side of it, right? They didn’t get me out of it, they coached me through it. When I decided to take on my fitness, I started running triathlons and I did 45 triathlons and marathons. But when I first went out to swim in the open water, I’m like, I don’t really know how to, I’ve never been a great swimmer. I had embarrassing moments as a kid and I, like, so I got a coach who taught me how to swim and how to get better at it. And I’m still a mediocre swimmer, but I can swim for miles in the ocean.
02:22
Right? Like, so I might be slow, but I’ll get there. And in every pursuit, running triathlon, writing, speaking, facilitating, coaching, I’ve had a coach for coaching. Um, like, you know, every business coach, uh, told me to straighten my business out and clean things up. Um, you know, I’ve had coaches in every realm of life and I’m always getting new coaches and the two most recent coaches I had one as a writing coach.
02:52
And I actually went through three because the first couple weren’t quite fitting. It was a hard process. So I found somebody who made the whole thing a little bit easier for me. And I settled on somebody I liked. And they would call themselves an editor, right? They’re a developmental editor, but I tend to think of them as coaching me through it because they’re not doing, it’s not a ghost writer, right? I’m doing the writing. But that’s the kind of thing that I think of. And then I also took up this new sport called wing foil surfing.
03:21
where you stand in a hydrofoil surfboard and then you hold a wing in your hand and you harness the wind. And it’s really kind of awkward to do. And at first it’s exhausting because you’re not using your balance right. But you get a coach and you break it down. You’re like, learn to control the wing and learn to control the foil and then start to put them together. And now let’s learn how to do this turn and that turn. And then pretty soon you’re out in big wind out in the fiercest places and it’s awesome.
03:48
And you feel like a badass doing something that, you know, you could only imagine doing beforehand that you just saw in pictures and video, right? A coach helps you to get there and they don’t do it for you. They help you to do it. And there’s a different, there’s a, you know, there’s times I’m like, don’t coach me to create a funnel for my marketing. Just go create that thing for me. I don’t want to become an expert in that. Like there’s times when you want something done for you. And then there’s times when you want it done.
04:16
you want to be coached to do it because it’s going to be core to who you are. So I decided I wanted to write my own book. So I got a writing coach. I didn’t hire a ghost writer.
04:27
It’s a different approach. And then you got to figure out what kind of a coach are you going to empower? And look, we’ve all had coaches at different points where they were irritating to us. And if you think about it, like since you were a little kid, your mom’s been trying to tell you what to do, you know, how to straighten up and fly ride and that kind of thing. And, and it’s not easy to take that advice. And it’s even harder later to take it from your spouse, business partners and other kinds of people. But so.
04:54
There’s something willful about choosing a coach, empowering them as your coach, and you’re saying, coach, give me some feedback. Tell me what I’m doing wrong, tell me what I can’t see. Because you can’t see the way you’re swinging your golf club or your tennis racket. You can’t see the way you’re holding your wing foil. You need some feedback from somebody to tell you what you’re doing that you can’t see on yourself, right? The other phrase is, we’ll never, it’s really hard to read the label from inside the jar.
05:24
Right? And, and the other one that I really love is that, um, we’ll never really know who discovered water, but you can be damn sure it wasn’t a fish. Um, right? So we all operate in our businesses doing things the way, and we don’t even notice the water that we’re swimming in the way that we operate, but a coach outside your world can go, you know, kind of funny you guys do that in this business. You know, I know it’s a medical thing and it’s fancy and all that, but when I go get my hair cut, this is what she does when I leave.
05:53
And why do you make it so hard? Why is this a problem? And then they can stop and go, you know, because everyone always does that. Maybe we shouldn’t. That’s how they taught us how to do it. I sum it up like this, Bill, the coach is a person you’re paying money to, to tell you the things that you could be doing better. And it’s this fine line as a coach that you’re walking saying, if I push too much, can they handle it? Or are they gonna fire me as a coach? And if I don’t push hard enough,
06:20
Are they gonna go, oh, they don’t really have anything for me. I’ve been fired many times as a coach, and I’m probably just about to get fired again anytime now. But I’m often telling people, listen, you brought me in here because of X, Y, and Z, and I see all that right there with you. And that’s great news because it’s much easier to work on you than anyone else. So let’s start there. And there are sometimes people who get out of my office. I hired you to work on my team, not me.
06:50
And I’ve already grown my company over $300 million and who the hell are you? And, you know, Yeah. So just some basics coaching. One of the things we know is little, little things done well, equal big results. Consistent changes over time. And here’s what happens. And I just would love your insight on this as, as an expert coach, we teach exactly, we coach exactly how to do things, obviously variety in that based upon the client.
07:19
Simple things, most basic thing is like how to answer the phone. And we preach it and we train it, we preach it and we train it over and over and over and over again. And yet the client will look at the coach and say, hey, how come my team is still saying it the wrong way? How come they’re still doing X the wrong way? As a coach, how do you, I don’t wanna fill in the blank here. How do you handle that as a coach? That’s really, really obvious. Why does anybody do
07:49
the things, the way they do them. Habits, personality, fears. Yeah, and why do they have those habits? Why does one person get off the couch and go to the gym and one person play the next episode? The way they’re wired, their DNA, the way they grow up. Motivation, discipline. Yeah. So I’m gonna say something maybe a little bit radical. It’s because the way each of them sees the world and themselves in the world is different.
08:18
So one person sees themself as an athlete full of potential, sees that workout being a particular way, and the other person is like, I’m gonna die of a heart attack anyway, life is short, I can’t wait to see how succession ends, right? They’re just different ways of working the world. So if you wanna change the way that people answer the phone or do whatever.
08:44
You want to change the way they see the customer and the business as a whole and alter or expand from their present view, which is limited to the things they’ve already considered in their view of themselves. So I might give them a customer perspective. I might show them what happens to the whole life cycle of the business. Any of those kinds of things that alter the way they see the world will alter their actions to fit that new view naturally, effortlessly.
09:13
And then new actions will deliver new performance outcomes. Now the performance outcomes could be worse, depending on what they saw or whatever, but it’ll be different, right? And we could keep optimizing that. So one simple thing, like I think about, I used to go to this one dentist office all the time and the way the staff interacted with me, I just always thought, God, these are lazy people that could give a crap about me. The way they like visited with each other,
09:42
And I’m like, hey, I’m here. Regard me, like pay attention to me. They’d like be all friendly. And then they’d be like, so what do you want to come back in? I’m like, wow, where’s all that personality and stuff? I feel like, you know, like nothing, like you don’t care about me at all. And you’re annoyed and you’re not helpful and you’re not funny. And, and then you turn back your friend, you’d be super funny again. And like, yeah, I wanted out of there.
10:08
And another one, I felt like I was always being upsold. Oh, this is very serious. Oh, you need to get this. Oh, no, we need to go deep on this one. Like always being upsold. And interestingly enough, then I go to the next dentist and they’re like, yeah, your gums are fine. You’re doing great. This is the best word. I have a question for, so this is where I was itching from the last episode to ask these questions. So you’re both welcome to chime in. We’ll start with Bill.
10:37
In terms of when you’re scaling up a business, you’re making changes. So at the end of the day, it’s a change if you’re growing. How do you handle team members or leadership team members or partners that are having difficulty with change? Well, nobody really likes change. That’s fundamentally human. Except what is it the only babies like being changed? They’re diapers and all that. Actually, I was just.
11:05
with my granddaughter, my first granddaughter last night and this morning, and she does not at all like being changed. Suddenly cold air hits her in the ass. And they like, they like how they feel after their change. Right. And, and so to adults, we like having breakthroughs, but nobody likes to punch through a barrier. So the interesting thing, everybody loves a breakthrough, but nobody likes to, to.
11:33
to encounter a barrier and encountering a barrier is fundamental to a breakthrough. Now when you find yourself on the other side of it, it’s, oh thank God, I just had a breakthrough. It’s amazing. But before you get there, you’ve got to go find it. So if you want to have breakthroughs and that feels great to you, then get curious about what are the barriers and and see if you can push through them, right? But that’s gonna be uncomfortable. And if you know like on the other side of this is a breakthrough. So
12:01
I’ll share a triathlon story again. So I was starting to do triathlons many years ago and I had to get good at the outdoor swimming. I got some basic instruction, that kind of thing, but now I needed to practice on my own. But I got there late because I was working and because whatever and it’s now the wrong time of year and the sun’s gone down. It’s drizzly foggy in San Francisco. It’s cold and alone. I’m cold alone in the dark, you know, not…
12:31
dark dark, but definitely in the sunset. And I’ve got to go swim in the bay by myself. Now, I was in protected area enough that that was not dangerous really, but it felt awful. So I just thought about it and I thought, okay, well this goes two ways. One is I quit now and then I have to think about how I organize so that I am swimming in the optimal time instead of this awkward time.
12:58
And then I’ve got to make excuses about why quit and maybe lie a little bit. So I don’t sound like such a wimp or I could go out in this miserable afternoon and do this miserable damn swim. And then tomorrow I could brag about what a bad ass I am that I went through the miserableness of it. And I’m like, Oh, this is great. The worst this is the better my stories are tomorrow. And I love to brag, right? Like love bragging about what a bad ass I am.
13:25
So I went and swam and I’m like, wow, this is miserable. Good stories for tomorrow. And wow, it was so cold. My feet are frozen. My hands are frozen. My face is frozen. It’s hard to breathe. I’m half a mile in. Wow. Good stories for tomorrow. Yeah. I can’t wait to, I better brag about this cause this sucks right now. So we use- I like my looking forward to the break, breakthrough. I like that. Yeah, looking for the breakthrough.
13:48
We use the results formula, right? The results you’re getting come from the actions you’re taking, the actions you’re taking come from the beliefs that you have about the world and around you, which is exactly what you’re talking about. How do I see things? The beliefs come from the way you see things, right? That’s right. That viewpoint you have, and I think where limitations of coaching or virtual coaching or leadership, lack of leadership with a dentist who’s just focused on their mouth, they don’t, we, I’ll just all include myself as a guilty party here, we don’t know how to actually.
14:18
get in conversation enough back to the Rockefeller, having the meeting, having the vision, having the tactics, all of that, to really sit with someone and say, okay, I’m gonna help you as an individual one-on-one get that belief, how you see yourself in this world, to change so that I can eventually get the action to change. Yeah, here’s the thing though. The pitfall is people try to like, they try to turn it into some affirmation or they try to convince themselves of something.
14:47
So I’m like, oh, I feel weak. And so I’m gonna go, I’m strong, I’m strong, I’m strong. But the whole time I feel like I’m lying to myself. And maybe eventually I buy into it enough. But another way is to think of something else that’s actually possible and available. Try on a new perspective. So there’s a few things that could be done. Okay, I need to be strong right now, but I’m not feeling strong. What am I? What could I be? Oh, well, I’m creative. All right, I’m gonna be creative, right? Because I can’t be strong right now.
15:17
So you could bring in some other way of being that’s actually available for you without faking it, without doing a power move or some other BS to try to psych yourself up into something that’s not totally sustainable, and instead just think about what else is possible. And when we think about like, how do we change the way we see the world? Well, one of them is I could describe and imagine and create a new future for myself by simply imagining a new direction.
15:44
not one that’s impossible, but one that I see possible that’s of interest, that’ll require some changes. And now having created a new vision for my future, I could start to map back out onto the present. And another way to do it is to actually commit to something. So I sign up for something, I sign a contract, I say I do, I take a job, I hire someone. Any time that you commit yourself powerfully alters your view of yourself in the future. So I think about going on vacation.
16:13
interesting, that’s fun. I commit to going on vacation by buying tickets. Now I start to think about, okay, I’m going to be in Hawaii, right? Like I’m altered by that thing. I date someone, I think about a future with them, and then I say, would you marry me? And they say, I do. And we stand in front of our families and communities and we sign contracts and suddenly like, oh my god, oh now I have to deal with that for the rest of my life, right? And things change, not always for the good. It could be a struggle.
16:42
It pays off in the end. I’ll be married 29 years this year It takes something to go through all of right the ups and downs new grandfather 29 years married There’s a reward that comes from it. So Articulate a new vision for the future for yourself for your team for your business that changes your view alters your beliefs and shifts things Commit to something consistent with that vision that also does something
17:12
Powerfully declare yourself right publicly powerfully declare yourself to tackle something like we’re gonna Transform dental health in this community for this group for this kind of thing. We’re gonna eliminate fear from people’s thoughts about dentistry and And then lead to better dental health outcomes, you know I never want somebody to have what my mom had or like that kind of thing that my mom has struggled with some dental issues
17:40
So, you know, like there are things that you can do to alter your view of yourself and your beliefs and they and there are more powerful ways to do that than simply psyching yourself
17:54
Who is Bill, who’s a good candidate? Who’s not a good candidate for coaching or who will do well with coaching anyone is a good candidate for coaching. If they’ll willfully take on coaching and make their coach, their coach by giving their coach permission saying, Hey, coach me. Hey, I’d like coaching on this. So coaching is unnatural for most of us, but if you willfully hire, commit.
18:22
connect, request coaching, and then, you know, just because you paid money doesn’t mean you’re really open to coaching. I’ve had people pay me lots and lots of money and then reject the coaching. So I pay the money, I commit, or maybe your coach is a volunteer, great. But then you have to say, hey, please coach me. And then you have to go and say, okay, that sounds uncomfortable, but I’m gonna try it. But if you get a coach and you’re like, I wanna be a champion, and you get onto the team and,
18:51
And you get the top coach and the coach says, okay, you’ve got Super Bowl dreams, great. We’re gonna go to the Super Bowl. This team’s going to the Super Bowl and you could be on us and you could help us get there. And then, okay, go run through the tires. And you’re like, yeah, that’s not really my path. And I feel like if I’m authentic and I’m speaking my truth and tires aren’t for me and not my journey, F you and your stupid view of yourself. Your coach said, run through the damn tires. Go run through the tires or quit the team.
19:20
but stop arguing with your coach. And it’s interesting how sometimes I hear you might blame the coach. The coach didn’t get it done and let me do another coach to get it done. And I like what you said, commitment. And that’s the difference between a doer versus a dabbler. I had this a lot of times over the last 10 years, somebody’s in there like, we love this scaling up framework and that kind of thing. And, and it’s great for us to set our priorities. And then we start working on the thing. They’re like, Hey,
19:49
What about this OKR system? I really feel like OKRs are maybe more what you need. You know, I’m a scaling up coach. We talk about priorities. It’s the same thing, but it’s just a different language. You’re moving deck chairs on the Titanic, as they say. Now, there’s pros and cons, and there’s fine points about OKRs versus priorities, and I even have some teams that use them. But if you’re the sort of person that’s gonna hire a scaling up coach and then debate OKRs or some other system, or what is it like, continually change stuff,
20:18
stop it, just pick a direction and then empower that coach and run it out. And then it’ll have outlived itself and you can move on to the next thing. Right. But one of the arguing with your coach, I wrote a book with Brian Tracy, love Brian Tracy. And he, he says is really key to have long-term perspective. And, and that’s what we’re talking about here. Cause like, I was gonna ask you about the EOS framework.
20:42
Right. And that’s very similar to scaling up. You know, it’s fantastic framework, right? Cause it’s a whole rip off of scaling up and, and Gino in his first book used to say, Hey, I learned from Vern Harnish and he was one of the coaches he learned from Vern Harnish and then he rebranded all this stuff, but it’s fantastic stuff. And you should do it. If you’re doing it, if you’ve been thinking about it, it’s fine. It’s a far more limited set than what we do. Well, scaling up is scaling up is really about big growth and it’s a open living framework. The difference is.
21:12
Gino took his stuff and he said, he renamed everything. He cut out some of the good things that we did. And he’s like, this is my operating system. Well, we’re for more of an open framework and we’re about big growth, not just getting out of your business. And the main problem they solved, and it’s very popular with people because it takes somebody who’s totally in their business and gets them out working more on the business and empowers the team. And getting that systematically done is fantastic work. It’s part of what we do with different terms.
21:42
But it’s just not all we do. Well, that’s kind of what you’re saying is a lot of these frameworks. Again, we, we had this discussion in our first podcast that it was built from somebody else and somebody else and so on. And like using analogy of shifting chairs, find something that makes sense. It has a good credentialing and stick with it. We’re always looking for you. Keep using it. My problem with it is like the, the lack of, of, um, acknowledging intellectual property creators, right? The lack of. Like.
22:13
calling it their own thing and the way they compete. That’s the thing that I, but the work itself, fantastic. Go use it. Start a fire going on here. It’s fine, like, you know, and it’s great. I know lots of people that use it and they’re very happy with it. And if that’s working for you, keep at it. Yeah, so Eric, do you want to jump in? You know, I don’t want to jump in as much as a question. I just want to say thank you for your insight. I really appreciate your podcast. The work that you guys are doing is awesome.
22:42
We love taking things outside of dentistry, bringing it into dentistry, like you said, finding what’s working from a subway or whatever. What we need are other voices in our world that says, look, don’t be so stubborn. Learn how to be flexible with your business because if you’re not growing, you’re declining, right? And there’s gotta be change. There’s gotta be breakthroughs, there’s barriers to do that. So what are some things? Think bigger. I did have a question for you. Why is Harry in the…
23:11
B-H-A-G, why is that word in there? Why is it just big audacious goals? So it’s the idea of like the scary monster in the closet. Oh, gotcha. Big, hairy, audacious. Big and hairy is like a scary monster, right? Got it, okay. It’s hairy, and maybe there’s more to that hairy word, but it’s the idea of, I have no idea how to do this. It’s uncomfortable.
23:38
I’m a little afraid of this thing, this big, hairy, audacious goal. I had a guy, one of our clients valued over a billion dollars. He’s like, he created this huge thing. He’s like, I don’t even know if I can do that. I don’t know if I wanna do that. I don’t even know how to do that. I’m like, exactly, great. When I created my big, hairy, audacious goal was to help five million business leaders before I retire. And at the time, I was working with 75 people at a time for a year.
24:07
right, and then doing a handful of workshops. There was no way that I got to five million, but five million was possible for someone, just not me at that point. And I’m like, but that was big enough for my ego. So my ego, I wanted to be able to say at the end of my career that that was a number big enough that I could say I impacted five million, I’m done, I’m ready to retire. And so I…
24:31
And I thought, and if I get to that, there’ll be some financial rewards that come along with it, but it’s the impact that mattered most to me and that everybody wants me to win, right? So the money is nice for me, for my wife, for my family, but the impact, everybody wants that. Like help 5 million business leaders, fantastic, right? So I’m working with my 75 or so at a time and chugging along and that kind of thing, doing a couple of workshops. And I’m like, how do I get to 5 million? Well, who else gets to 5 million? What do they do?
25:00
I’m like, well, they write books and they have shows and they have things like that. And, uh, and, uh, they have blogs and they have newsletters and, and my foreign mate, um, at the time, a guy by the name of Jordan Harbinger, who’s a top business podcast, a podcaster said, Bill, you have a background in radio. You should have a show. Why, why write a blog? Have a radio show. Like you had a great radio show. You were a radio executive. I’m like, oh yeah, that, that makes perfect sense. So I started a show. And, uh,
25:30
And like it’s been fantastic ever since then. And I love doing my show, right? But now this year. I thought you, I thought you were just born with that voice. Yes. You know it’s funny. I, in, in the beginning, I hate it. Like as a 20 year old on the radio, I hated my voice. And I listened back to some old recordings, right? Mic drops from the, from that time. And.
25:57
I’m like, wow, that’s so cringy. Listen to that 20-year-old kid there on the radio. But I’m good with my voice today. I’m very happy with it. But I had radio. I had the background. I knew how to be live. I knew how to talk, that kind of thing. So I did that. Now, this year, as I finish 10 years of coaching full time, I should hit a million. So my first million impacted between
26:24
my shows, my workshops, my programs, like all of it, I should exceed a million this year, right? That’s unbelievable when I think back 10 years ago. Now it seems very normal and natural. And I can see now, moving through five million, and maybe the number could get even bigger, right, before I retire. Because I’m 58 now, and I could see working maybe another 20 years.
26:51
Well, we appreciate you. We appreciate your voice. We appreciate your podcast, scalingupcoach or scalingcoach.com and scalingupbusiness podcast. Yeah. Thank you, Bill Gallagher. And remember to follow us on Apple podcast, Spotify and YouTube. Get your episodes as they are released, share with your friends. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online.
27:21
at AllStarDentalAcademy.com.
