In this episode of the Book More Show, I chat with Jim Vaselopulos, a seasoned business advisor and executive coach whose career path highlights the power of purposeful transformation.

Jim’s journey, from engineering to entrepreneurship and ultimately to coaching, illustrates how each step can build toward discovering true passion. A casual suggestion led him to consider coaching seriously, and he shares how this shift allowed him to find fulfillment in helping others clarify their goals and navigate their careers with intention.

Writing plays a central role in Jim’s approach, serving as a tool to sharpen ideas and communicate effectively. We discuss the discipline required to distill complex thoughts into clear messages in business presentations or book writing. Jim emphasizes the power of storytelling to demystify challenging concepts and connect with readers on a deeper level, underscoring the value of structured thinking for enhancing communication across multiple platforms.

Jim also highlights the importance of aligning business values with client attraction. He views a well-crafted book as more than a marketing tool—a bridge connecting businesses with like-minded individuals. Through individualized coaching, Jim creates strategies supporting business growth while providing the external perspective needed to recognize new opportunities.

As we wrap up, we reflect on Jim’s insights into intentional career paths, and I look forward to more inspiring conversations ahead.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1. I discuss the career journey of Jim Vaselopulos, highlighting his transition from engineering to entrepreneurship and eventually to his passion for coaching.

2. Jim emphasizes the importance of intentionality in career choices, reflecting on how a casual suggestion led him to pursue coaching full-time.

3. We explore the transformative power of writing, with Jim explaining how it can clarify thoughts and enhance communication in business.

4. Jim shares insights on storytelling, demonstrating how relatable narratives can simplify complex business concepts and foster connections with readers.

5. The discussion highlights the significance of aligning business values with client attraction, using a book as a tool to create authentic connections.

6. Jim talks about individualized coaching strategies, emphasizing the need for bespoke solutions tailored to each client's unique situation.

7. I reflect on the benefits of having an external perspective in business, which can help in recognizing patterns and opportunities free from biases.

8. Jim discusses the role of intentionality in business growth, detailing how clear decision-making leads to fulfilling and purpose-driven careers.

9. We touch on the idea of coaching as a means to enhance performance, similar to how athletes use coaches to improve their skills.

10. In closing, I express gratitude for Jim's insights and look forward to future collaborations, providing links for further exploration in the show notes.

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TRANSCRIPT

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here today, joined by Jim Vasilopoulos. Jim, how's it going? Buddy? Going great.

Jim: Thank you for having me.

Stuart: Pleasure. Actually, I'm pretty excited about the way this is going to go. We had a great conversation a week or two ago. I really love your approach, generally speaking, and what you guys are doing, and then you're also using a book out there as well, so I thought this was going to be the perfect match for the audience, not only to kind of introduce them to you and your world, but also talk about using the book as a conversation starter and hopefully encourage a couple of people to kind of jump off the fence and turn their idea into something as well. Why don't we start with a bit of intro, then give everyone kind of the gym story what brought you to this place and the organization and how you help people.

Jim: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think all of these like stories are always like kind of boring, you know. But I think what's interesting, you know, is that you know your life's journey never really takes a path you intended. So you know you go through life and you end up where you are and you know hopefully you're happy with that If you don't have been somewhat intentional along the way. I now am currently a business advisor and executive coach. It's a career that I love and enjoy. It's a career that I certainly don't need to do right now, at this point in my life, but I enjoy what I do so much that I'm going to do it as long as God gives me the faculties to be able to do that.

You know how you get to this point. Well, you know just all these crazy experiences. You know starting off as an engineer in a big company, and then you know moving into entrepreneurship, through, you know, whatever set of circumstances, and then you know building some companies, some more successful than others, selling a few of them and learning a lot of lessons along the way. And and so, for every you know victory, there's some lessons learned. For every you know failure, there's more lessons learned, and you know it culminates in kind of this rich experience where eventually I get to help other people either avoid a few of the potholes that you know I hit directly and, you know, learn how to navigate it and accelerate their speed towards, you know, whatever success they define for themselves. And so you know, I'm really blessed to be able to be in this kind of role now, because I just find it the most fulfilling aspect of my entire career, which now has been quite a few decades.

Stuart: That was the interesting thing when we were talking the other day the kind of the passion that you've got for helping people now and the fact that it's something that you get the opportunity to do but you're not compelled or forced to do it in any way. It's really that kind of passion project and being able coaching world. Was that an intentional step? Did you plan to make that move for a period of time or was it something? After you'd finished one thing, the next thing came up, kind of organically.

Jim: Yeah, I guess I'd always kind of been doing this on the side, whether it was mentoring employees and guiding people or even my clients. I was often kind of like an advisor to my clients in many ways, and so I thought maybe I'd get here someday. But it was interesting because when I sold the last company I was involved with and I was kind of thinking about what I wanted to do next, I actually stayed on with them for a while and was just kind of selling, because I was like I don't know what I want to do next and I'm not really ready to retire and I thought, well, maybe I'll go run one more company or do one more thing before I go and do this kind of advising or, you know, consulting work. And yeah, I looked around, I talked to some PE companies like hey, we're looking for a CEO and stuff like that and you know, and some of them were intriguing and interesting, but nothing really kind of felt right.

And then I kept on doing what I was doing, helping other people and someone said, you know, you should charge money for that. And I was like, really, you know, okay, and I started doing it and I thought, well, I'll just kind of do this on the side until I find the right thing. And then eventually someone said why don't you do that full time? And I felt really stupid for not having considered that in the first place and I said, well, you know what would that look like? And then I kind of rolled into it full time and I was like, yeah, why do I need to put this interstitial step between me and really what I enjoy the most? So I just dove in and did it and you know, having been an entrepreneur before, you know maybe you know how to swim in deep water, so it wasn't as intimidating. But I don't know why it took someone else to jostle me into thinking like why don't you just accelerate this?

Stuart: But once I did, it's been, as I said earlier, the most fulfilling part of my career. So funny, isn't it? Sometimes you mentally it's the snap to grid problem or the bucket problem Once something enters. Sometimes if I'm introduced to two people at the same time, there's this terrible thing where the names get switched around and it's such a hard thing to try and swap them over. So, going into it thinking that it wasn't the thing, you kind of mentally just carry on down that road and sometimes, as you say, takes that jolt to to reassess it again and pick it up and put it in that different bucket.

Nice that there's that connection, though, because I think it does give a. I don't think it makes it more, but it definitely allows you to focus on the passion elements and the enjoyable elements. When you transition from doing something that you enjoy into turning it into more of a full-time or focused career, it helps you focus on the things that you enjoy about it rather than the work thing, and the work thing comes secondary, or the structure comes secondary to the thing that you enjoy, comes secondary, or the structure comes secondary to the thing that you enjoy and it's almost a backdooring into working in the way that you probably would ideally want to work if you mapped it all out in a roadmap and had a five-year plan.

Jim: Yeah, cause I think there's a fair amount of intentionality in what I do today and you know, down to, I know exactly what work I'm going to say no to. And I'm very clear with people like, yeah, I've got this rule in my coaching practice and you know it's like I don't do homework, like I'm not a traditional consultant, like don't look to me, like hey, review this, or send me a plan, or send me this or that. It's like no, I don't do homework anymore, I coach people. And I coach people when we're, you know, one-on-one, like this, this is great, but everything else I don't do.

But you cannot achieve that level of intentionality which is what makes this enjoyable, okay Unless you have clarity first, which is why you know and that's why you know it's the title of my book Cause I think it's so important, because once you develop clarity, you then have the ability to be very intentional about what matters to you, what doesn't matter, what you want to do, what feeds your soul, what doesn't feed your soul, what drains your energy, what gives you energy.

And so I think you know that process is, you know, important to help people find, you know, their clarity, because only after you have that can you be intentional. And once you're intentional like you're driving the ship you know you've got your hand on the wheel and if you don't, then you know you're kind of a victim of like other people you've abdicated that responsibility to. And I think you know it's not that I found this career. That fits me well. It's nice when you have your hand firmly on the wheel and you know where you're going and things are because of you and your decisions, as opposed to kind of just taking going where the current takes you, which is what most people do, and I think that's why it's fulfilling. So you know, I could be doing any number of probably 10 different careers right now, but the fact that it's very intentionally by design, the one that I enjoy, that feeds my soul, that gives me energy, that is all the fun stuff that I enjoy doing.

Stuart: That's why it's such a good fit yeah, it's a great point, the thought that decisions get made. Decisions are being made and if you're not the one making them, then either someone or something is making them on your behalf and each one of those decisions is a point that you can't get back. You can always travel forwards and there'll be other decisions at the moment, but in that minute that one's passed by, I think it gives as well a lot of this freedom, almost in the specificity of it, the intentionality of it. It's easier if you're not having to make the decision every single time. It's that you're executing on a previously made decision and obviously re-evaluating, but it almost gives you that, like you were saying, the freedom of knowing what to say no to, which leads to something more fulfilling down the track, the walk clarity we were talking.

It's on the shelf just behind you that I can see. We were talking about, just before we started, the idea of using the book as a conversation starter and engaging people with this model. Talk a little bit about how the model maps against your approach to the coaching that you do with people and whether it's a good tool to introduce new ideas or whether it's a good tool for kind of narrowing the scope of what you do. What was the thought behind what went into the content of the book?

Jim: Yeah, I mean, for me maybe it's a little bit different than most, but you know I thought the process of, you know, putting my thoughts on paper was important to me. And you know, what's interesting is that we can have a conversation here verbally and I can put probably contradict myself four or five times and most people would overlook it just because of maybe, if you're skillful, you know, with dialogue, you know you can say things in a certain way and those contradictions can exist. If I were to be giving a PowerPoint, you know I have to have some fidelity between what I'm saying and what's on the slides behind me. But the reality is I can still get away with, you know, relative murder, you know, and what my thought process is. But when you put it on paper and you're not there to defend it, it needs to be clean, okay. And I think that process, whether you do it yourself or with the aid of someone else, is an important part of, like getting your thinking clean. And so for me, really putting things on paper and then actually reading it, like what did I put on paper? And then we read it Do I really believe that? Do I do you know? Does this part of the book contradict this part of the book and that just those two can't coexist. And it's like the difference in watching a movie that has a really tight storyline. You know the, the story runners, you know why are some of these great. You know game of Thrones and you know episodes like that that people love. So you got the story runners really keep the storyline tight.

And I think the importance of any author is to get your thinking well. Once your thinking is well, you can articulate yourself so much better. It's so much easier to make your points succinctly, quickly and to not have it just be this one thought that came up, you know, at the off the tip of your tongue. So much like that intentionality that we were talking about earlier, because I made this decision before and maybe I refined it over time. But the reality is, is I know my true North? This allows you to have kind of your true North as you present your business or your ideas or your philosophy or what's important to you, and I think sometimes that process, whether it's, you know, on your own or with the help of others, can help you define kind of what that true North is. And then you know from a sales perspective. You know, as you're trying to get new clients or grow your business, when you can dial in on that thing, the essence of who you are, and get to it quickly, that just is all the more powerful in your messaging.

And so you know, I think, a book. You know, cause there's what you, the process of writing the book, which is what I'm talking about now. Then there's a whole set of things you can do with the book once you have it. But I would say if we were just covering the process of writing the book and get your thoughts on paper and in giving them air and sunlight, to kind of stand some test in the marketplace and the test through editors and the test through readers is beneficial. Forget about book sales. That in and of itself, if no one ever bought a copy or even read the book I'd be like, the benefit to me was immense.

Stuart: It was worthwhile. It's funny you say that we recorded a show with another client called Gene Donaghy a couple of weeks ago now and he said something very similar. They're going through the process and having to articulate their thinking and how their elements stick together in that coherent way was, for him, a big exercise in hey, I say these things a lot and I can talk and do a presentation at the drop of a hat. But that extra time and attention which, typically, unless you're forced to sit down and go through the exercise, most of us as business owners, are talking to people and doing things off the fly and, as you say, that comes with a certain amount of wiggle room on the things that you say in a moment. But having to have to sit down and go through it and the benefits, I agree, once you've actually had to go through that then allows you to use that same work in multiple different ways. So when you're looking at website, when you're looking at the material that you send out to people, when you're looking at the ways that you talk to someone, having gone through the exercise of really clarifying the thoughts, it has benefits down the track, even if you were to do nothing with the book, which obviously hopefully you do, but it's, yeah, being forced to sit down.

I guess as well as business owners we're not necessarily. No one gives us homework to do. We kind of set our own homework. And if we wouldn't necessarily set ourselves this homework in other in, in other mediums or in other ways, because there's other, more more pressing fires to have to put out, but to having done the work, at least now you've got that clarity of thinking and know the steps through with clarity, particularly with your book, the journey that you're taking people on from the beginning to end. Is that more introducing new ideas to people or new ways of thinking, or is it perhaps things that they kind of already know? They just need to have some structure to it or be reminded to think about things in a certain way?

Jim: Yeah, I think some of the topics that I like to talk about whether it's leadership or you know, you know business or you know just kind of clarity of thinking there's nothing new. Okay, I'm not introducing anything. You could study Buddhist philosophy. You could study, you know, ancient Greek philosophy, you could study all kinds of different things, and like, there's nothing new that I'm saying.

I think what's relevant about writing a book, let's say, in this space, is saying how can I communicate this in a way that is maybe more absorbable for people? So let's think back to maybe in high school we were taking a class and someone made you read the Iliad and the Odyssey or Shakespeare or something like that. And it's one thing to have to deal with iambic pentameter, it's another thing to deal with old English and it just you can't relate to it. You know it just doesn't make sense to you. But then you know you read a different story, you know. You know, like Heart of Darkness was a great book but like and no one realizes that, Apocalypse Now, the movie was based on Heart of Darkness. Well, it was much more relatable. Okay, so the book that I wrote, I wanted it to be relatable people of today or to people who, you know, don't want to go through the process of studying, you know, Buddhist philosophy or ancient Greek philosophy, a stoic philosophy, and so I don't know if there's anything new.

There are things that I say. Here's my perspective on stuff, but the common theme and what I chose to do which was a little bit non-traditional but, I think, becoming more popular is I have a very big non or fiction component here. Okay, and so there are these three characters whose stories we tell and they're not really case, they're kind of case studies. But I call them case stories because they're very rich. They're not just like the kind of case study you'd get in business school or, you know, in Harvard Business Review. It's their case studies that are deep. Yeah, they're stories that are deep and rich that people can identify with, and those stories help communicate some of the concepts that I'm trying to clarify for people to think through. So I could talk to you about like turnover and retention, but when you hear it in the concept of a story, in that framework, with that narrative, it can become richer and more compelling to you and more real and that makes it more actionable for people. And I think one of the nice things is, we have these three case stories in the book, with these rich characters that people can identify with, and then the stories weave together and it's just a beautiful thing to see how they come together.

And I never intended to write this book. I was going to write your standard business book with a bunch of case studies. Then I was frustrated with how case studies never really were deep enough or identifiable enough, and so I started along this path and it just took on a life of its own, and I'm glad that it did, because when I hear feedback from readers at this point, they never talk about like oh my gosh, I love that section on alignment you wrote, or I love that section on strategy. They always say something like oh, when George was dealing with that problem with his staff or his team, or Diana was talking to that gal who quit her company, and you know and what she imparted to her in that exit interview, you know, those types of things are what people remember, and so I'm glad that format was one we chose at the same time. That just happened. That was not an intentional choice, it just kind of happened.

 Stuart: There is an element of storytelling when you think about the people who've got extra special memories, whether they can recall a deck of cards or 50 phone numbers, that idea of the memory palace and having the story that anchors things in place and time. I mean there's so much evidence that people remember stories much more than fact. So christy, who works with us and deals with the majority of the authors in that early stage, is very good at bringing out those stories and asking for examples and develop it. And it's probably slightly out of scope of the work that we do to kind of create that narrative weave, that narrative element all the way through, but certainly to have those stories and actually I'll follow up with her afterward to mention it, but there probably is an opportunity to have that consistency through. So not just a story to anchor this and a story to anchor that, but what are the options to kind of anchor the stories to each other? Through it that resonates with people a little bit more.

I think the other thing that you talked about as well, which is something that we come up a lot and it's something that I really wish you could sometimes you want to shake people and kind of help them get past it or get through it. But this idea that people hold back because they feel like I've got nothing new to say, when to your point, it's not that we're reinventing something completely new, but your take, your story is the three characters that you described through the book and just the fact that people have got your book and they don't have someone else's book or they don't have any other book. So the fact that it exists is still good enough. You don't have to hold back because you don't feel like you've got anything brand new.

Most people aren't looking for that. They're looking for that certainty and that help and the kind of encouragement and persuasion to take that next step. So, like you, my encouragement would be to everyone it's your take on it and the fact that you're starting that conversation. That's the important thing, less so whether this has ever been done before. Did you? When you think about ways of using the book and creating it in the first place, do you write the book with the intention of using it in a particular way, or did you write it knowing that it would be valuable and then the ways to use it kind of revealed themselves once it was done?

Jim: Yeah, I mean, I guess you know I've always been a big fan of musicians who just play whatever music you know they want to play. You know they're not like hey, let me, you know, test the market out. And here's the recipe for a pop single. It's like, you know, I always was amazed at the Beatles are like hey, you know, we are influenced by, you know, indian music, so we're going to make an album that's like. That's that. You know, I don't think anyone was clamoring for that type of music, but you know they said this is what we like. So we're going to write the songs that we like, you know, and you can do, play the music we want to play. And so, in much the same way, like I've got a podcast I've been doing for a long time on leadership with a buddy of mine, jam Rutherford, and like we just bring on the guests we want to talk to. You know, if people want to listen, that's fine, you know, but we just, you know that's what we do. And so, and it works for us because we're doing it, because it comes from a place of passion that's ours and we're not trying to follow a recipe, and you know, and thankfully it makes it more enjoyable for us as we do it. So, you know, when I take a look at the book, it's like this is the book I wanted to write, and if no one ever reads it, that's fine. But it turns out that I think when you bring your passion and your love to something, there will be other people that are like-minded, that are it's going to appeal to and, quite honestly, it's going to help you build the community that is, you know, like-minded to you.

So in business, I mean, it's always easier if you do business with people who share similar values. You know, or at least you know, they don't have to be identical clones of you. I mean that's no fun, but they also are adjacent. You know, if you try and you know if my value proposition is, you know, quality and it's not price. Well, a customer that only buys on price is never going to be a good client for me. Okay. But the reality is you know you're going to attract the people who are closer to your ideal client because they're going to be adjacent, or at least you know, in the same Venn diagram. You know some intersection there. So I think it could be a useful way to attract people.

So I didn't do it intentionally to attract and maybe to some degree so like, here's my values and it's going to be attractive to people who probably see the world somewhat similarly or maybe even better, want to see the world similarly to me, but don't yet, but know that they, that's the direction they're headed. That's probably good, but I think I didn't do it like with a bunch of, like, you know, market case studies. I want to go after CEOs and I want to go after you know people who are, you know, mid-market, you know companies. And this is why, although I will tell you, the three characters I chose to write the stories about were varied, okay, the main character was, you know, a woman leader modeled after, actually, one of my clients and but I wanted her to be she was an entrepreneur, she had a service company. Okay, so I've covered like entrepreneur, service company woman leader. okay

Okay, next one, it has someone heading up sales, because I do a lot of work with people in sales and their organizations. So a new VP for a startup that's in a SaaS software company that is heading up sales and dealing with a bunch of sales issues. Okay, so you know that's intentional because it describes a world that I operate in quite a bit and that I've got a lot of experience with. The last one, the head of a general manager of a big division of a multinational corporation that does manufacturing, and they have a lot of challenges with where they're going, and so these personas map well to the kinds of people I tend to work with. So to that degree, now that you mentioned it, I probably did have more intentionality than you think in picking those personas, but this was just the music I wanted to write, you know.

Stuart: So and that's interesting because your gut feel immediate answer was it was done as a I don't want to say a passion project, but it was the book that you wanted to write. That was first and foremost. And then, in thinking about it a little more, there was okay, maybe there was some degree of orchestration, but that probably came from the clarity that you already had. It was a subconscious selecting of the characters that match the people who you wanted to talk to. So it's a very balanced line between, at both ends of this, the extreme having no intentionality told them, just doing something for the sake of doing something isn't the best use of time and, at the other end of the extreme, being hyper focused and hyper intentional, sometimes you lose the authenticity.

But that piece in the middle of knowing what you want to say, knowing what you want to say sorry, just knocked something off my desk knowing what you want to say and then it naturally coming out. I think that's what helps. As we're talking to people about having a book unless you are a traditional author, writing something to start conversations there's some amount of intentionality around its purpose, its job of work. But by having, by knowing who it is that you want to speak to, ideally thinking about what their questions and challenges are thinking about. How it then plugs into the rest of the system, the conversation that you want to have afterwards, without going too far down the the orchestrated route of artificially stuffing things in there, at least jumping off with that framework, it leads on to yeah and I think it's creating something, yeah, and I think it's that authenticity part is super important.

Jim: but I also there's a component there of like not who I want to go after, but who I want to attract.

You know, who do I want to be like, who do I want to attract through this process? Who do you know, am I putting out the kind of light that's going to gather the kind of moths that I want to see, you know? And so I think that's always the way I look at it, because, you know, a book is a commitment. Okay, it's a commitment to write, but it's also a commitment to read, and even though most people who buy books never even read the books they buy, which is, you know, kind of a hard truth, you know, but the reality is to get someone to commit to even buying a book or even to say, like you know, hey, I'm going to consider reading this if not read it, that's a bit of a commitment. And so what I really like about that is, you know, who are we trying to attract? And I love the fact that I'm just as a little aside for anyone if, do we do the video on this or is it just the audio?

Stuart: video as well. Yeah, okay, so my face always freezes occasionally on the.

Jim: I don't know why, but there's some software update that had frequently. But like, my face always freezes. It never freezes when I'm smiling, it's always like when I have some goofy look on my face, so I just get a kick out of that. But thankfully the audio came through. But in the grand scheme of things, like you know who do you want to attract, and then you know I think the book can be a very useful tool and I think Okay, but you want to see it on people's bookshelves, you want to see it on their desks because it's you could call it a very expensive business card, but the reality is it serves such an important purpose A clarifies your thinking. B it's a discussion topic. C it's going to, you know, demonstrate you as some level of expert on whatever you decide to write the book on.

So you know, if anything, spend a lot of time on your title and your subtitle, because that might be all anyone reads. But even if it's compelling enough and the messaging that is clean enough, that's all it might need to do. I mean and I know it sounds terrible, but think about this how many people do you see on social media today react to an article based on the headline and never having read the article. If you read the rest of the article, you're like your comments are idiotic, because it's clear that you did not read the article. Headlines are compelling, your title, your subtitle should be compelling and that might be all anyone reads. But by virtue of having written a book, people will lend you a certain level of credibility and expertise, saying, well, jim wrote the book on that, stuart wrote the book on that, so obviously he knows something about it. And that is sometimes the leg up or the wedge you need to get the real conversation you're truly seeking.

Stuart: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And this is how a whole premise about conversation starting books versus traditional books. The book isn't the product, the conversation is the product. The book is just the opportunity to start that conversation and for most of us we're not writing fiction where the job of work is to completely I mean the literal job is to entertain someone. It's the words that are the product. People are engaging with us because they want the solution to a problem that they have and that solution most of the time isn't going to come from the pages. That's just the introduction to the solution. So if the book moves them to that next step in the conversation and they jump on Zoom and have a discussion and then become a client, it's done its job. And hopefully all of those other elements you mentioned the credibility, the authority, the fact that it anchors certain talking points that you can refer back to it in the future, whether or not people have read it all of those things just accelerate and amplify the conversation along even faster.

Couldn't agree more To that point the clients that you work with. You mentioned the three characters in the book, kind of touch on that sweet spot of the characters that you work with, the progression as people work with you. Obviously each client is individual, but do you typically find that they follow a path and everyone goes through the same stages? But people might be at different stages, but it's a similar path. Or is it very unique? In no, two clients are the same, I think it's a similar path or is it very unique?

Jim: in no, two clients are the same. I think it's very unique. I mean I think there are a lot of similarities and I even talk about this in my book between you know the parallels you can draw between industries, between people. I mean there, there are always plenty of parallels to draw, but you know there is. I think there's a statement in the book and I quite like this is you know, there's no benefit to helping someone feel less special, okay. And so when you look at it, you say I think everyone you know for me to say like I've got the recipe and I'm going to, you know, fold you into this recipe and we're going to follow this process. Like no one wants to be, you know everyone wants to be lots of.

I want it to be unique you know, I want it to be tailored for me, and so you know, and I've got kind of a higher end service. So you know, people want a bespoke suit, right? They want something that's tailored to them, and so that's what they get. You know, what I will do is I will draw parallels, you know from my experience, and not necessarily throw them in someone's face, but what I will do is draw upon that experience to say, okay, I've seen this pattern before. Here's how we've dealt with in the past, here's how we can apply it here. Here's what might work, here's what might not work. And that's my job is to take that idea and tailor it into that person's particular needs. At that moment and I think that is ideally what I want people to feel when they're working with me is like I'm getting a piece of clothing that's been tailored to my specific needs, and I think that is when, if you're selling bespoke services, they should feel that way.

Do people follow similar patterns? Yes, but we're super complex. We're like the weather. I mean it's not just the business problem I'm dealing with, it's how does my everything that's going on in my life affect that complex? We're like the weather. I mean it's not just the business problem I'm dealing with. It's how does my everything that's going on in my life affect that? What's going on with my kids? What's going on with my spouse? What's going on with my relationships with coworkers? It's so complex.

To say that every situation is boiled down to a few. You know, simple tomes that are repeatable is hard. Now what I do talk about in my book is their business problems, and their business problems and symptoms that are very recurring and you know I help people say here are symptoms that tend to occupy our time and attention that should just be indicators of something else that's deeper. So be aware of when you identify something as a symptom. Let's follow a process to get to a more deeper issue, which is would be the root cause or the core issue at hand. And here's how you can strip away the things that tend to distract us, whether it's our cognitive biases or other things, or our curiosity or our emotions, to get to a deeper level of understanding so that we can find clarity and solve that problem.

And there are problems that are more prevalent than others that you know, and there are symptoms that are more prevalent than others, just like you know fever and you know nausea, or you know medical symptoms that you know you could have for all kinds of different. You know conditions. Or you know medical symptoms that you know you could have for all kinds of different. You know conditions. But you know, just because you have a fever doesn't mean you have the flu, doesn't mean you have COVID, could mean all kinds of things Could be an infection.

So what we need to do is find out what's deeper. But I think it needs to feel tailored for people and it should be tailored to their circumstances, because we're complex, but tailored to the circumstances because we're complex. But when you boil down the process of trying to solve a business problem, here and there there are a lot of patterns we can identify and the sooner we can identify them, the quicker we can get to clarity. The quicker we can get to clarity, the quicker we can get to intentional actions we can take to better our condition or our situation.

Stuart: And that's the benefit of working with someone like you is that faster pattern recognition, because you've seen it multiple times before, kind of as business owners in our own business, even if we've run other businesses before. We're so deep in the weeds of this particular circumstance that even the opportunity to take a breath, if it presented itself, might be clouded by the bias of the situation. And then we've only seen the situation. This might be the first time, or most a handful of times before. So I think that's a real benefit of your experience and expertise is you're not attached to that bias of being stuck in the weeds. You have the time in the call dedicated to look at the broad set of symptoms and the experience of having seen this 10, 20, 100 times before, to help people move forward.

Jim: Yeah, and I really liked that little comment you made at the onset of our discussion like snap to grid. That resonated with me. I liked that one, but I needed someone to help me because I didn't see something. And then because I was already snapped to grid and they were like, no, what about this? And so I'll never come in and say like I know more about your business than you.

Okay, you know, I work with people who are super bright, super intelligent. They know their business in and out. What I can help you with is maybe look at it something from a different perspective or see something in a different way or observe something, because you are so pre-wired to snap to grid that I can help you say, hey, there's a middle ground here and or there's another idea that maybe you might want to consider. And so I think that you know, I think I'm doing my best work on I'm helping people as a thinking partner and saying you know, let's do this together. I can be a sounding board and a thinking partner and for CEOs. And condemned to be a lonely place because you can't necessarily always be that vulnerable with your team on how to approach things, and so sometimes it helps to have a thinking partner that you can be vulnerable with and share ideas with, and someone who can push back without you know having it look bad to the team you're leading. No baggage.

Stuart: You're just in there for the conversation, not for any outcomes down the track. You're not tied to any. You're invested in any outcomes or decisions one way or the other and there's no baggage being brought into it or judgments. It's just the opportunity to talk about the issue.

Jim: Absolutely.

Stuart: Yeah, it's such a great opportunity.

I think, coming from the UK, there's not a history of that much therapy across there, generally speaking, like couples therapies and I think me and my brother are both in the us now, have been for many years and we both go to therapy with our wives almost as a I don't want to say it's almost as a preventative thing.

But if it's the opportunity of, hey, this is a valuable relationship that we've got, we want to give the time to do the work and from a business perspective, I think, although business coaching has been around for a number of years again it might be a us sorry, uk bias, but it definitely seems to be getting the traction now of founders and business owners and executives understanding that there is a space to have these conversations and it's not a sign that there's a problem. It's a preventative measure to move forward in the best possible way. So it's just really interesting as we've had more conversations over the last. We've been doing this for 10 11 years now, 11 12 years now and there's a couple of coaching books that business coaching books we've done through that period. But it's definitely nice talking to people in 2024 and it'd be much more of a common framework. It it's not the right term, but it's a common talking point and people seem to be much more open to it than in the past.

So I don't know if that's your experience as well.

Jim: I think the you know you said something really important there and I think it's worth you know kind of keying into. You know most people thought like, oh, if I'm, you know, doing therapy, I'm trying to solve a problem. It's like, no, you know, coaching is saying like I've got something that I enjoy, that is going well, but I want it to be great. You know, almost in the athletics mindset, which is, yeah, I might be a pretty good golfer, I might be Tiger Woods, but I still have a coach because I want to be even better version of Tiger Woods tomorrow. You know, serena Williams, all these great players, they all had coaches that helped them take their skills to a new level. And so I think, if you talked about your relationship, it's like, yeah, this is an important relationship, I'm going to take it to even better levels. You know, and I think that's, you know, from a business coaching standpoint, it's not like I'm here to solve problems. I'm not. You know I can help when there's a fire, but I'm not here to be a firefighter. You know you're going to get a turnaround consultant for that.

For me, it's like, hey, we're doing pretty well, but I want to do great. You know, I think I'm. I've got some skills here, I've got a good business, I've got some good opportunity, I've got some runway in front of me. I want to get all of it, I want to seize it, I want to be great and I think that is where the coaching mindset when you look at it more like from an athletic standpoint and what we do with athletics, I mean right now you know we're recording this, it's, we're in the middle of the Olympics. You know all these people are, you know some of these, like Simone Biles, gold medal winner many times over. She's got coaches still Okay, because she wants to be great, which I think she has established with this.

Stuart: Olympics already. But you know that's the way I look at business coaching. Such a great reminder. And again it's that snap to grid problem of people don't even second guess. Thinking about it in an aesthetic sense, it's just every sports person they could think of, they can imagine having a coach ready for them. But in the business sense it's just using that same, just removing that snap to this grid and putting it in a different, being open to the idea of it being in a different bucket. It's funny. I always seem to end the podcast by glancing up at the clock and telling people man, I can't believe how quick time goes. It's become a bit of a meme now that I'm doing it. Yet again, I want to make sure that people have got opportunity to follow up with you and get more details about you and the organization and as they're listening to this and thinking about, that resonates with me great is where I want to go. So when's a good place for people to go to find out more and stay in touch?

Jim: Yeah, I've got a terribly long, complicated last name that most people can't spell, let alone pronounce, and my business is Rafty Advisors. I mean, you can find me at raftyadvisorscom, but most people don't even know how to spell that either, so I made it really easy for everyone. There's a website that talks about my business a little bit, but mostly the book. It's called businesswisdomcom. So if you go to businesswisdomcom, you can find out all about me, all about the book, and then it'll have links to my podcast and all the other things I do. Perfect.

Stuart: Well, I always like the with the name of Stuart Bell. You'd think how complicated could that be, but I've been on enough Zoom calls with people over the last 10 years or so to know that even that name gets confused. So appreciate the easy to remember URL. But to make it even easier for people, I'll put links in the show notes so, whether they're listening on a podcast player or on the website, there'll be a link just below to click straight through and I'll put your LinkedIn link there as well for people who like that channel and make that connection.

But I'd really highly recommend people follow through on that, If not only just to see what it is that you're doing and the way that you're doing it. Obviously this is a bit of a peek behind the curtain from business owners watching all the business owners use a book as a tool, but really just this idea of gaining clarity on the direction that you want to go and being open to the idea of, hey, we're doing good, but we could be doing great, and just a really great resource. And again, thanks for your time.

Jim: Thank you, it's been an honor.

Stuart: Perfect. Well, we'll follow up down the track. It'd be great to do another show at some point before too long, and then, as I say, I'll put links for everyone in the show notes. So thanks for listening, guys. Jim, thanks for your time, and we'll catch everyone in the next one.

Jim: Thank you.