Читать книгу The Top 1% Life - Kathleen Black - Страница 11

It was December 25th, 2015, and I just said goodbye to my children as they left for some holiday time with their dad. I looked around my empty house, the unwrapped presents, the Christmas tree, and the remnants of chocolate wrappers. All I could see, taste, smell, and feel were silence. The silence started to creep into a crack that would become an end, a surrender to the recent months of unravelling. Unravelling sounds calm and beautiful. But, it wasn’t. That final surrender, and what resulted, became the catalyst for some of the best work of my life as well as the quickest business growth.

About five years prior, around 2010, I was ecstatic to start running the first team-specific coaching company for real estate in Canada. I was thrilled at the new challenge and opportunity. Eighteen months into the launch of the new company, I became director of coaching. With issues in two key areas, content and retention, I decided to pull back and strengthen both areas before launching any new growth initiatives. This was a risky move because the company was struggling. Cash flow is king, but client experience is queen, and if I know one thing about sales, it is that people sell what they believe in, both to potential clients and to themselves.

I wanted a company that I, our coaching team, and sales team believed in, and I insisted on a company our clients could believe in. This meant eighteen months of strict content creation and improvement before adding any additional programs, events, or new projects. Luckily, as a single mom selling over sixty houses a year, I knew all about refining systems and the efficiency and mindset needed to excel.

Our sales team manager would often ask me how I sold as many homes as our top producers in half the work hours. Now, I was selling the same plus coaching and running the coaching team. This took a massive amount of patience for me. I had so many dreams and visions for the company. I instantly devoted my foreseeable business future to leading the coaching team. I envisioned a point where I would only coach and no longer sell. I loved helping others to grow and succeed.

Over time, my goal shifted to being the head of all clients. Our mission was to carve the path ahead of our top producing teams to create an ever-increasing cohesive business, building systems to the top that others could easily follow while keeping our top teams thriving. It had to be efficient, profitable, deliver results, and make life better for our clients’ teams, clients, and leaders. We sought to elevate the team platform as the ultimate destination for a new agent, struggling agent, or well-established agent who was sick of doing it all to excel.

These teams started working with me at twenty-five resale deals exceeding 550 units annually. What was unique about this was the level of coaching and training. We sought to transfer knowledge, coach implementation, and maintain what we had built as we scaled into further growth. We were not looking for one-off success stories. It had to be real, consistent, and true. We built with our top clients step-by-step. We effectively reduced the cost of research and testing by 90% or altogether in some areas. We found a massive edge and even started to exceed our own internal best in class baselines. Teams at 300k Gross Commission Income (GCI) exceeded 1 million dollars GCI. Our coaching team mastered the compensation structure, allowing one of our clients to scale to over 1,000 homes sold a year.

The results were easy to see. When most companies were focused on 5 to 10% increases for their coaching clients per year, we sought best-in-class for our clients. We celebrated the doubling of units and gross earnings for clients every year. 10X and 20X business growth became a reality for our network, meaning we grew the businesses to ten and twenty times the size of the business compared to when we first started working with them. Over time, our results became difficult for the real estate industry to relate to and understand.

I always knew that the team concept was its own niche in any sales industry used to celebrating solo producers, but I never realized how vastly different the mentality and the results would be from those living in the team reality. We created our own events and stages when the industry would not welcome us on theirs, and largely, this is still the case today.

Less than a year after accepting my role as director of coaching, things changed again. I was needed as Director of Operations. Now, this title is misleading. Director of Operations was a culmination of Director of Coaching, Director of Marketing, Director of Finance, and Director of Operations all in one. The original Director of Coaching was let go and, as a result, I was getting my feet wet trying to run a whole company with no actual experience or training on running a business, let alone a business in the volatile and competitive coaching industry. Finally, I had the notion to ask to see the books. Now, how a company was able to get about $180k in debt in less than two years is beyond me. There was no line up of others looking to run the company, there was less than no money, and I was starting to understand that the weight of our rebound as a business fell on my shoulders.

In the middle of all of this, two of the three owners wanted out, were wanted out, or both. They each had various director roles, but none of them had all of them.

When we were rebuilding, I only focused on what it would take. I had no space to compare job descriptions, responsibilities, or contemplate the full weight of what I was taking on. If I failed to clean up this mess, it would be me to blame, and if I succeeded, it would not be my name taking that claim either. So, I was back picking up change on the ground, knowing I was relentless enough to find enough for a few quarters. The rest could wait.

My mentality was more like, “Run a business doing what I love? Sign me up!” I was not thinking about the debt or ridiculous amount of responsibilities and tasks. I was focused on the dream.

Taking a massive pay cut, I finally transitioned away from selling homes to continue to build content, support our clients, run national events, and keep it all in the black while we cleared debt.

I had the realization that I was now the company. I literally obtained 50% ownership with 100% decision-making as the two owners transitioned out. I saw the mess that came with multiple owners and wanted no part of it. If I was going to clear the full amount of debt, including the 50% I now owned, and find a way out to where we could grow, I needed to move fast, straight, and reduce sideline interference.

I cleared the debt. We built phenomenal businesses with our clients where their growth was evident and a direct reflection of the new approach of the company. But then my silent partner suddenly grew less silent.

We agreed upfront that I was to earn a “fairer” income once the debt was cleared, the company was on its feet again, and I could forge ahead with my dreams for expansion, being rewarded as we grew. But suddenly, he felt we should go in a different direction. That I should take a pay cut, again, and automate the company so it was more plug and play. I made offer after offer to buy him out, to license the content I already technically owned, and come to some agreement so we could get back to what we should have been doing all along: helping people build their dream business and life.

No offers were countered, and on October 1st, 2015, I arrived at locked doors. I quickly was informed that my clients were told I was fired. Now, anyone who knows about business understands the impossibility of this. I was a 50% owner who was not consulted in firing the CEO, who held 100% decision-making power, and that person, the CEO in question, happened to be me.

None of the legal issues changed the immediate reality that I was scared and thought I lost everything I worked for. Every missed night of my children’s sporting or school events, every missed meal, all the financial sacrifices were for nothing.

How could I look my children in the face? How could I stand tall or proud? I was tricked. Despite the high odds of being screwed, this was a fire sale I had to jump on. Something in me waged the internal war with risk and knew that I was at a disadvantage, but the possibility of building something great and the experience of running my own company was impossible to turn down.

We had sent all ownership agreements to the lawyer long ago, signed by both me and the other silent partner. The ownership was all done, but we still spent months negotiating the prior owner out of the business—a business I needed to run with clients to support. Because of this we had delayed going to the lawyer to officially update the corporate documents.

My life went spinning out of control. I was terrified. The bank delivered old ownership documents without our updated agreements and already froze the accounts. I was enraged, sad, and felt deeply betrayed. I play fair, and this situation did not have an ounce of fair to its name.

To say I was depressed would be a lie. I was too shocked to be depressed. It would come out that the other owner thought I did not have the resources to fight him. He banked on my fear and need to support my children. He banked on me not having the guts or courage to stand up for myself. I was not paid that month as I often would pay our team first, ensuring we had the funds for them first.

My lawyer had to escalate to other specialized lawyers, as “they just don’t see this type of thing. It makes no sense to do this.” It was all taking so much time.

I was lucky to have a little voice that changed it all. A guide appeared this time with an important message. It said, “If you believe in it, and it is right, you do not need to hide or cower. You bank everything you have on it. You bet your house on it and get the resources you need to make this right.” It was this voice combined with a single self-empowering question, “What would you guide your clients to do in a similar situation?” that convinced me, without a doubt, I would stand for my clients and fight beside them. Now, I had to do the same for myself.

Finally, I made it in front of a judge and then to mediation. I literally had to bet my house on hiring that lawyer, paying over $800 an hour for my lawyer alone, day after day and week after week went. Having no resolve was terrifying. I was exhausted. The legal bill was mounting. Finally, we got clear direction from our mediating judge that the ownership agreement may not be in the corporate documents, but there was not a judge in the country that would overturn our ownership agreement or turn a blind eye to the fact that I was running the company as the owner for years.

The tides changed. I accepted an offer to sell my shares, and in an unbelievable change of fate, I also got to keep half of our clients. Both of us were to retain ownership of all intellectual content with the ability to legally start and promote a new company as of December 1st, 2015. The final share exchange and payout would happen January 15th, 2016.

December 1st, I was able to bill in my own name. I had clients who took a chance on me, but I had no income for two months, a stack of expenses, and was still terrified. I was still in shock and, luckily, too terrified not to hit the ground running. Within three weeks, my coaching schedule was more than full. Within two months, I brought in another coach. He came in with two clients paying in packs of two or four hours and using them as needed over weeks or months. He was now full with ongoing clients and we sought to hire another coach within six months.

Upon opening Kathleen Black Coaching & Consulting in 2015, we earned 35% more in gross income in our first full operational year followed by approximately 84% more in our second operating year over the 2015 gross income of my previous company. I went from fear and desperation to quickly scaling a company.