Danny CreedBusiness Coach Danny Creed is a recognized expert in sales, management, start-up business strategic planning and marketing. Coach Dan has over 12,000 recommendations and has logged to over 14,000 business coaching, consulting and training hours and growing. He has been involved with 14 successful start-up businesses and over 400 business turnarounds. In this episode of In The Clear, he and Justin Recla discuss due diligence and its huge involvement in the business coaching world. You’ll learn what you should be communicating to your business prospects and what your clients are expecting to gain from you.

Welcome to the In the Clear Podcast. I am your host, Justin Recla, and today we are talking to business coach Danny Creed. Danny is just a neat, neat guy. You’re gonna love his energy, and I’m excited to have him on the show because we just connected at … we were connected here at Phoenix, at Refer.com, an event that he had here in town. We just automatically clicked. We had some great conversation before the show, so I’m excited to welcome Danny to the show. Danny, thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Justin. It’s a real pleasure to be here. I mean that, because the world needs more shows like this.

I appreciate that. I’m super-excited to have you on the show because as a business coach, based on the conversation that we’ve had, you get the importance of due diligence. As a matter of fact, we were even talking about making sure people are who they say they are and can do what they say they can do, and so forth. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about your experience in the business coach world?

Sure. First of all, just little background. It just seems like a lot of people in business coaching, and coaching, have just decided to call themselves that. It’s kind of the nom du jour these days. In particular, in the business coaching world, a lot of people who play in that space have never owned a business, so that just doesn’t quite seem right, to charge somebody to help them grow their business if you’ve never owned a business. I’ve got 14,000 hours of logged business coaching and consulting and training. I’ve done fourteen startup businesses myself, and all of them have been successful. Some didn’t make any money, but we didn’t lose any money either.

I’ve been a part of … I’m very proud to have been a part of over 400 turnaround businesses, and that number’s right. I counted. It was a little over 400. Some of them made it, some of them didn’t. But with that came just an incredible amount of knowledge that I acquired, so when I work with a business coaching client, I’m there to help them define what success means to them, and then use … I spoke to a gentleman just this morning, Justin. And he said, “So why should I hire you?” And I said, “Well, the number one reason is, I’ve already made the mistakes. I know what doesn’t work, which is gonna save you … in some cases can save business owners and startups, entrepreneurs … save them millions of dollars. I can help to understand what doesn’t work and then what does work.” But-

Yeah. No need to recreate the wheel, right?

Oh, boy, I’m telling you. So, you know, when we talk about transparency … real quick and we can talk about it more if you want, but I used to get very upset when I got to a prospect and I said, “You know, let’s talk about this,” and they said, “Well, I’ve already used a coach and it didn’t work.” So then, my first question is always, “What kind of coach was it?” And they turn pale and they get sick and … because they’d never asked that question.

So what I did was create a checklist of eight questions that they need to ask anybody they’re interviewing if they are interested in acquiring a coach, and these eight questions just are due diligence. It’s just that transparency. You deserve … if you’re a business owner, an entrepreneur, an executive, you deserve to have all the details before you spend your hard-earned money. So it’s just something that’s real important to me because I’ve worked very hard and all the years of my 14 startups … all those years, I always carried … no matter how big the business got … I always carry an account list.

I always went to all the trade shows, and I know you believe in the hands-on side yourself, and I’m telling you, you’ve got to be careful. You gotta do the due diligence, and you have to look for the transparency of that person that calls themselves a coach to be sure you’re getting the right person. That make sense?

It makes perfect sense. I mean, that’s the world that we eat, breathe and sleep and it’s one of the reasons why we created the Clear Business Directory, because the saying that we have is because of the internet, anybody and everybody can be a self-proclaimed expert-

There you go.

… and when it’s so easy to make your own website, it’s so easy to put your own profile on LinkedIn, it’s easy to hide behind that digital signature, and if a person is a really good salesperson, next thing you know, the client … and we get all the horror stories … has gotten involved with somebody that wasn’t who they say they were.

That’s right.

You’re so spot-on in the fact that when … I love that question: “Well, what kind of coach did you hire?”

Yeah.

Well, you immediately know … If they cringe, you know they didn’t do their due diligence, and they got sold in that feel-good moment because a lot of businesses … especially startups … are looking for … they’re looking for that savior of, “Please help me. Who’s gonna help me do this?”

Well, what I’ve learned is that what I … what I work with a client on a business coaching client is somebody who … You can’t sell this service, but what you can do, you can allow a lot of people to buy it from you.

Yeah.

You know? What I mean by that is that you’ve gotta be a world-class listener. We’ve learned this. I’m associated with … One of my partners is Brian Tracy, the famed business and development expert. He’s known as the top in the history of man. I mean … and he’s just … Brian and Zig Ziglar and these guys were my mentors, and we find that people just … When you go out there … I’ve collected all this and I found … So far I’ve got 46 different ways you can call yourself a coach. I found a guy the other day, called himself a happiness coach. Well, what does that mean? So anyway, what people are looking for is hope.

Yup.

They want hope, and they want that hope with passion. So they don’t … We’ve learned that you can’t … what people don’t want today is to be told anything. In fact, just as a side note, Justin, I believe … you talk about selling … I believe in today’s world that the elevator pitch that they always teach salespeople to do … The elevator pitch is completely dead-

Yeah.

… and the reason why it’s dead is if you define the elevator pitch as, “What do you tell your perfect prospect if you’re locked in an elevator with them for one minute?” Well, the problem is, in today’s world … and you know this as well as anybody, how technology has changed and how fast it’s changing and all of that … Today, no one wants to be told anything. I was in a seminar in Idaho and the guy says, “Look, I can sit in my pajamas at midnight with a can of beer and buy stuff from Paris.” Nobody needs to be told anything. The missing ingredient in world business today is the art of listening. Nobody listens.

I absolutely love that you’re highlighting that. I absolutely highlight that you’re … that you’re highlighting that. You’re right. It is such an important piece in the effective communication process that most sales folks miss because they’re just wanting to push, push, push.

If you would interview me, or any of your listeners would interview me, I guarantee I would share with you what my “Why” is, if you’ve ever heard of, “Watch your why.” I’d share with you why I do what I do, and then I always followed up with, “But I’m not right for everyone, so what I’d like to do is ask you a few questions to see if it makes sense that we ought to be working together.” See, that’s the missing element in business today. How do I know if we’re a good fit, or if I can even help you if I don’t ask you some questions and shut up and listen. That just burns me to no end, when people say, “Let me tell you all the reasons why you ought to hire me.” Well, how do they know?

Absolutely love it, and I want to get into this a little more deeper as to who you like to work with-

Sure.

… after our break, but before we go on break, Danny, can you share with us, where can our listeners find you?

I’m on the web at www.realworldbusinesscoach.com and if anybody wants to send me an email or anything it’s dcreed@focalpointcoaching.com.

Fantastic, and if you are just joining us, we are speaking with business coach Danny Creed and we will be right back, right after this break.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the In the Clear podcast on iTunes.