Episode 19 Transcript
Heather:
All right, you guys, welcome Bruce to the show. How's it going?
Bruce Poling:
I'm doing fantastically well today. Thank you for having me.
Heather:
And we were just chatting before you called yourself something interesting because you're from Canada and you live in Australia. What did you call yourself?
Bruce Poling:
Ha! I called myself a Canazi.
Heather:
I freaking love it.
Bruce Poling:
I originally came here in 1986, so long, long, long, long, long time ago.
Heather:
Yeah. You've been here. I haven't beat you quite yet from being from the States originally. And I'm trying to come up with my own AmeriCausy sort of thing. So I'll have a term later to share. But the reason why I reached out to Bruce, you guys, is because in the nature or the spirit of growing your business smarter and trying to bring back a bit more joy into your life and hope and remember why you got into business in the first place. What I think Bruce does incredibly well is niching or niching for us overseas listeners is finding that area of specialty that you want to focus on. So I thought we would start there. Why joinery and joinery coaches?
Bruce Poling:
Good question. I don't think you find your niche. I think it finds you. But you do have to look for it. That's for sure. You know, I'm a cabinet maker by trade and so I've always worked in this industry. But when I when I sold my last business, we were in Canada running a kitchen business in Canada and I sold that. Long story. You can read about it on the website. But the end result is I really wanted to find out what I could do for the rest of my life that I would love doing, that I would have longevity in and would give me purpose and all that fun stuff that we, you know, I think everybody needs to find somehow. I had a bit of a moment, you know, sort of go to the top of the mountain and talk to Joe for a few weeks after I sold my business, because I wasn't really sure what I was gonna do, but I kind of knew that I wanted to do something that would give back to the industry. And it became very, very clear to me that the consultants and coaches that helped me in my business were the people that I wanted to become. So back in about 2003, I said about whatever I needed to do to become the best coach to this industry, to help the industry itself, I guess kind of avoid some of the pain and suffering that I did. And
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
so I've been doing this ever since 2003, 2004, and I haven't wavered. My purpose, my goal has not changed. how I've gone about it has changed a little bit over the years, which has really just strengthened that the niche is the right thing to be in, because sometimes we get kind of, let's say, enticed by other things that are outside of the niche, and you think maybe that's gonna be a good idea until you do it, and you realize, yeah, this feels kinda icky. So every time that's happened to me over the last 20 odd years, I've come back to this. Yeah, in... In short, I want to help people avoid some of the struggles that I went through and maybe fast track the success.
Heather:
Yeah. Do you, with your community and the coaches you work with, do you also try and teach them that too? So find an area of specialty and stick with that.
Bruce Poling:
Yes, 100%. You have to
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
be known for something.
Heather:
Hmm.
Bruce Poling:
Otherwise, you're in that category of everybody else. And then how would a customer or a potential lead choose you over anyone else? Maybe it's just about price. And that's kind of a race to the bottom. I don't wanna be on that race. I wanna be known for something. I wanna be something that is a specialty. So, our clients kind of struggle with this because everybody kind of does kitchens or furniture commercial
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
fit out. But... Everybody needs to be clear on what you're really good at and be okay broadcasting that. Be okay with making that the thing that you tell people about.
Heather:
Well, I have you here and because you're so good at niching, I would like to actually ask you how you start going about that because like you said, you, you work with people and everyone sort of does the similar sort of service or similar offering. Uh, if you were to talk to somebody right now and they're coming to you and they're saying, Bruce, man, I am, I'm stuck. I do not know who to talk to. Who's my market? How do I stand out? Where would you say that they should start to try and work out who that person is?
Bruce Poling:
Great question, Heather. And actually we have a training on this.
Heather:
Ha ha ha,
Bruce Poling:
But in short,
Heather:
Selfless plug.
Bruce Poling:
in short, a niche can be one of two things. It can be a thing. So for example, you could be the best kitchen manufacturer that builds glossy red Japanese inspired style kitchens. And maybe you're the only one that does that. That's a thing that people will know you for. So it can be a thing or it can be a service of some kind. You can be a service of some kind. So the thing with niching though is you just have to pick one. And a lot of people, the misconception about niching that everybody has or most people have is that if I niche that I'm gonna limit my clients. I'm gonna limit how many people I will actually take on board as clients.
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
And when we break down how many someone might actually need in the year. You know, a kitchen place might need 50 or 100, you know, clients throughout the year to be successful. So we market to like 200,000 just to get that 100. And the reality is, once you get one niche nailed, you could have a couple other ones. You don't have to just have one, but you have to have one to start with. You have to be, marketing is really easy when someone identifies you to be an expert in something.
Heather:
true.
Bruce Poling:
And so once you're identified as an expert in something, in our industry it might be shaker kitchens, or it might be renovation work in a certain area. So, you know,
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
a niche could be an area as well. It could be, you know, your niche is an area. So it really is just these misconceptions around being all things to all people, because I can is the right way to go. But in reality, if you're all things to all people, you're not really good at anything.
Heather:
Mm. That's so true. Do you find that within your community, when somebody chooses that niche or that area that they want to be known for that thing or that service, do you find that their business grows quite quickly from there? What
Bruce Poling:
Very,
Heather:
are the main shifts that you find?
Bruce Poling:
yeah, very rapidly. So for example, if we have a client that does renovation work, let's just say that they renovate kitchens, for example, and they're blasting that out to everybody. You know, we renovate kitchens. No specific style or no way that they do it. There are a million and one people renovating kitchens right now. Like, it's just a completely saturated flooded market, which can be a good and a bad thing. But it's definitely a saturated market. If you're able to say, you know, we change people's lifestyles within the Brunswick area in older style homes
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
with shaker style kitchens, now we're getting closer to a niche, now we're getting something. Or it could be that your demographic is your niche. It could be that your niche is a demographic in this particular situation of an older. generation, you know, 55 to 60 years old. Because the other misconception around a niche is, well, you could be 40 to 60 years old. No,
Heather:
Yep.
Bruce Poling:
I'm above the 50 year mark, let's say. And I know that the language that I was using when I was 30 or 40 years old isn't the same as what I'm using now. So for example, when my wife and I were bringing up the kids, we knew we couldn't have nice things. We knew if we were putting something in our house, it had to be indestructible, it had to be durable, it had to be, it had to stand
Heather:
Hehehe
Bruce Poling:
up to abuse, right? That's what the language was that we wanted. So if I'm marketing my renovation business to a demographic of 35 to 40 year olds, we might say something in our marketing that is along the lines of, you know, are you looking for something that's durable and it's gonna stand up to a little bit of wear and tear while the kids can do their thing. Or if you're marketing to a 65 year old, you might say, Well, you can now have nice things. It's now time for you to have that beautiful kitchen that can make you house proud. Very different language, right? So that niching,
Heather:
Totally.
Bruce Poling:
once you get out into the market and use the right language for your niche, and they resonate with that, because they're gonna hear that, they're gonna read it, and they're gonna go, oh, you're speaking my language. It's a little
Heather:
There is so
Bruce Poling:
bit.
Heather:
much gold in that. Yeah, it's making perfect sense around just clarity messaging, but all the different types of niches that you can have, like you're saying anywhere from demographics to areas of specialty. Like you were saying something about a red kitchen top, you know, by the way, I'm learning things about kitchens right now too. So, uh, no, thank you for sharing this value because I try and explain this to people as well that I work with in our business. It's like guys choose. choose what you want to stand for and find the people that you want to work with and be clear on who they are. So I want to change gears a little bit around some, some tangible tips that you can share. So if you think through, um, guys, by the way, Bruce has so much going on in his life and business. He has an amazing podcast as well. So a community of coaches, he works within a marketing agency so much. So through all of that, your community and even your own businesses. What are three tips that you can come up with to help our listeners to grow smarter, to de-stress, to sort of stop that cycle of overwhelm as they scale?
Bruce Poling:
Yeah, you know, business owners and industries are different, of course. So it's different depending on what industry we're talking to and who's picking this up. In many businesses that we work with, someone became a business owner almost through default. Like, oh yeah, I'm a business owner now. I don't wanna listen to the boss anymore, so I'm gonna go out and start my own business. There are no laws against someone starting a business. There's no regulations that say you have to be qualified with your X, Y, and Zs to start a business. So far too many people will, in our industry, spend four years in an apprenticeship to learn how to put square boxes together essentially, but then start a business which is like a million times more complicated than being a tradesman and never do any educational knowledge, never upscale themselves to actually learn how to run a business. Five years go by, 10 years go by, and they're going, this is really hard. And I'm going, yeah, no wonder it's hard, dude. You don't know how to do this.
Heather:
Yeah
Bruce Poling:
It's not that you can't do it, it's just that you never actually learn how to. So that heart is always gonna be there. So first point is be okay looking yourself in the mirror and identifying that you have some skills gaps, that you need to learn more to be able to do more. The more you know, the more you can do. It's kind of a simple graph, right? The more you know on the X axis and the Y axis goes this way, the more you know, the more you're gonna be able to do. And that's a life journey. The more you learn. the farther you're gonna advance yourself in life. So first point is, if you're gonna run a business, first of all, learn how to run a business. And some of that's just foundational. How do you look after your money? How do you do your marketing? How do you build your team? Those sorts of foundational things.
Heather:
Good point. What else?
Bruce Poling:
Point number two, people will always say, I just don't have enough time, quote unquote. And this time thing is probably the biggest killer of people because Heather, you have the same amount of time that I do. Everybody on the face of the planet has the exact same amount of time. So nobody has more or less time, but what people do is they tend to cram too much stuff in the time they have and say, I don't have enough time. All the great geniuses, and I learned this, later than I would like to but thank goodness I finally did learn it that time blocking there's a law called Parkinson's Law. Have you ever heard of Parkinson's Law?
Heather:
I totally know I live by that too and time blocking as well. Yeah,
Bruce Poling:
Okay, so point
Heather:
love
Bruce Poling:
number
Heather:
it.
Bruce Poling:
two is learn Parkinson's law, which is essentially, you know, work will expand to fill the space given to it. So if you start work on a Monday morning and go, okay, well, let's see what happens this week.
Heather:
Hahaha
Bruce Poling:
Stuff is gonna happen. But if you start the week with a, what we call an ideal work week, time blocked, you know, your tasks are put into that week in a structured way. And let's just say that you have something important to do on a regular basis, like pay bills or do your estimating and quoting. If you block time out on a Monday, a Wednesday, and a Friday into two hours, pretty soon, rather than the end of the week going by and going, okay, well, I didn't get all my quotes done and, you know, five days have gone by and I'm still not done, the alternative is two hours, two hours, two hours, there's a total of six hours and you're done. You're done in six hours rather than the week went by. So that's the way that everybody needs to try and structure their week so that you just get... your time back. You're able to... I can't remember who this is. I wish I could credit the person, but someone said to me, if we can start scheduling our week at Wednesday at 12 o'clock, and then the tasks that I do throughout the week, I'm going to first put into towards Wednesday morning, then Wednesday afternoon, and then I'm going to go to Tuesday, and then Thursday, and then to Monday. And so I
Heather:
Yep.
Bruce Poling:
schedule all my tasks that way. Interesting thing happens. Sometimes you have Friday off because maybe... you've got everything done. You actually get an extra day back in your life.
Heather:
It's crazy that you mentioned that because when I started doing time blocking and really taking my time seriously in this fashion, I have Friday most of the day or at least half the day off now every week because of that. And also what I love about it is because I live and breathe by my time blocks on my calendar, I get a sense of accomplishment so I can look back at what I've accomplished and what I've achieved and it's good for calendar audits at the end of the year too to know where you're wasting time. So thank you. Excellent. Love it. I want more. Where else? What other tips do you have?
Bruce Poling:
Well,
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
part of your ethos, Heather, is this, don't wear busy like a badge of honor.
Heather:
Totally, yes, and one of
Bruce Poling:
You
Heather:
our other guests said that, yeah. So
Bruce Poling:
know,
Heather:
that's it.
Bruce Poling:
and it's just this thing, it's like a kind of a comfort thing, right? I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. And I go, why? Why wouldn't you be steady, consistent, you know, and have some time back? So busy, you know, to time block, take that on board. The third thing is, if we're gonna build a business, we have to commit to building a team. We have to learn,
Heather:
Yes.
Bruce Poling:
how is our team? Because you're not gonna build a business on your own. you have to get your team to do it, the people that we work with. For me, a business is a team of people working together. And
Heather:
Mm.
Bruce Poling:
the biggest thing that I've learned is that building my team is the most important and the thing that I'm most proud of. Our clients are amazing, and of course I'm proud of the work they're doing, and that's amazing, but I'm actually most proud of my team because they're just an amazing group of people that do amazing work. And that's the most important thing. And I've learned how to hand off and how to... You know, recently I've been a little bit ill with COVID, so I was down for a couple of weeks, like literally completely out of it, and my team had my back. They had everything
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
looked after, and it's the one thing that makes a business enjoyable. And if you own a business, you know, your business needs to become a profitable investment for you. And
Heather:
Absolutely.
Bruce Poling:
you know, for a lot of people, we still choose to work in the business, but it has to be a choice. And the only way that's gonna become a choice, and your business is gonna become a profitable investment. technically for you is if you have a team that actually is doing the things that the business needs, you might inject yourself in there from time to time, you might be a key part of it, but if you were to leave for a period of time, everything would be fine. That's the key message here.
Heather:
It so is. And gosh, isn't it good when you have a good team? I mean, it really is. You just get to kind of play in your zone of genius and do what fuels your fire and find people that love to be on a team. So, God, it's such a magic thing when that comes together, you know. So, yeah, thank you. And most of our guests share the whole team aspect and not going at it alone is just one of the key things to having community enjoy and getting rid of stress because you kind of go into that little like cycle of, oh my gosh, I have to do everything myself. And you get more stressed and more overwhelmed and you get so caught up in that little bubble that you forget that you can ask for help.
Bruce Poling:
Yeah. Yeah. And it's okay to have somebody else do the stuff you're doing. They may be better at it. They actually do it better than you.
Heather:
I was just talking to my sales guy, shout out to Adam the other day. He was talking to me. He goes, you know, out of all the people I've ever worked with, you just action, whatever I tell you to do. And I'm like, well, why wouldn't I brought you on the team? Because you're so much better at me in this particular area. And I thought that was such an interesting point that he's worked with many people and they literally ask him for advice and he's the expert in that space. And then they never action it. So
Bruce Poling:
Yeah.
Heather:
just
Bruce Poling:
Yeah.
Heather:
something to bring up. Bruce, I want to know more about how you work with people. So let's let's think through. Look, I know you have two areas of your business as well. So I'm happy for you to run with a little case study on both if you want or one or the other. But I want to know how you've helped a client of yours. Kind of bit of case study why they came to you, what were their pain points and what did you do specifically to help them?
Bruce Poling:
Well, the first thing I'd start out by saying is the way that we, let's say the way that we attract clients is the way that everybody should, but most people don't.
Heather:
Huh.
Bruce Poling:
A lot of people that are marketing are trying to get new clients, they're still in hunt mode. Now, you and I are from North America originally, so we know that hunting, it's not easy. Like if you're, my dad was a hunter, I didn't grow up hunting, but I know what it's all about. It's difficult. So if you're trying to go out and find... If you're trying to find people, it's just going to be hard and difficult and expensive. So a long time ago, I committed to a program that I was in that actually taught me about attraction-based marketing, and it completely changed my world. It meant that I might have two phone calls a week as opposed to 20 or 30, but they're still the same two people that I would have won in the 20 or 30 anyway. They're the two people that were serious in the first place. So when we first start a conversation with anyone... It's because they're attracted to us and they've contacted me wanting to learn more. And we really only need two, we only have two requirements from people. Number one, you have to know what you need help with and actually want to solve that problem. Number one. Number two, you have to trust that we can actually help you solve that problem. And we do that by broadcasting a lot of the stuff we do. So our YouTube channel, our podcast. That's sort of us demonstrating that it's not me telling anybody anything because I can tell someone all day long They're not gonna believe me. They're gonna need some proof So our proof is broadcast pretty broadly out there in the world for that reason that it's not You know, we're pretty proud of what our clients are doing and that's the evidence that somebody else could do the same thing
Heather:
Mmm.
Bruce Poling:
and So by the time we actually start working with someone we hit the ground running pretty quickly because we're already over those major Resistant hurdles that you know that a lot of people are still trying to work through So, you know, how do we pick one client? Well, it's gonna sound kind of strange, but we don't have a client in our program that isn't achieving amazing things. But it is true that when you have a group of people, you've got the high performance, you've got the middle ones, and you've got the ones that are going a little bit slower. One of our probably most successful clients, let's say, or the ones that are going the fastest, would be a client in Brisbane by the name of River City. They do commercial work, a lot of their stuff
Heather:
Okay.
Bruce Poling:
is unusual commercial joinery and it's probably the toughest part of the industry to work in where you're working with these commercial builders. Really difficult. And Christian and Hannah are the owners of the business and when they first joined us the weight of the business was kind of on their shoulders and they were sort of in that uncertain mode, business wasn't successful like they wanted it to be and they weren't really sure what the next steps were. Well Christian... is an amazing business owner and his wife Hannah as well. The thing that they did best was they just implemented, they just did stuff. They took on board what we were suggesting, contextualize it and we worked with them to make it suit their business because every business is unique. And they just implemented, knowing full well that, hey, maybe this isn't gonna work the first time, but then the second time it's gonna work better, the third time, the fourth time, by the time we get to maybe the fourth time, we've nailed it.
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
You've got to be prepared to do the first one that may not work and do it without resistance. And they've followed the plan that they created and they continue to follow that plan. And the end result is after two years, they would say that their business has really completely turned around and Christian is now in that place as a business owner that he wants to be where he's got his team and he can kind of go off. He's got his nice new Ram truck that he's driving. Just a fantastic place to be in. They're probably one of the standouts, I would say. We have a number of standouts. I apologize to our client base for not mentioning everybody else, but they're probably one of the standouts that would come to mind first.
Heather:
Excellent. And I love how you started the question as well, where you talked about the different tiers of clients and them whole holistically, I suppose. I like asking this question of people that come on my show because I like the answers I get. They're not quite. black and white and you did
Bruce Poling:
Yeah.
Heather:
- You answered it like I was hoping. So that was really good. I actually want to talk a little bit more when you and I jumped on earlier. And before we hit record, you mentioned to me that you had your own marketing agency because I was
Bruce Poling:
Yeah,
Heather:
complimenting
Bruce Poling:
I guess.
Heather:
you on your fantastic website which guys will obviously. tell you what that website is soon and, and, you know, put it in the show notes. And because I do know, by the way, some of our listeners are in the trade space, a lot of sort of practitioners and beauty space, health, wellness, all of that. So a lot of what you're saying is going to apply, but I don't go back to where I was starting to. So I want to kind of understand this, this, this reason of the marketing agency and when did it come into play, which was first out of the two businesses.
Bruce Poling:
Oh, well, the marketing agency is, it's a fairly recent initiative, two years,
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
two years
Heather:
Okay.
Bruce Poling:
it's been going. But it was, it was a concept of mine probably three or four years ago, pre pandemic, let's say.
Heather:
Okay.
Bruce Poling:
And the pandemic kind of put a little bit of the brakes on some of these initiatives that we all thought we would do. We were, you know, we go through this time of uncertainty with a pandemic.
Heather:
Hehehe
Bruce Poling:
Okay, maybe I won't start that risky thing right now.
Heather:
Yeah, yeah.
Bruce Poling:
But What we've experienced in our coaching program is that we coach people how to market their business, how to go through sales processes and sales conversations
Heather:
Uh.
Bruce Poling:
and how to market their business. Now, that's great as long as a business has somebody in their business to implement that marketing strategy. And we can coach
Heather:
Love
Bruce Poling:
that
Heather:
it.
Bruce Poling:
and we can teach people that really want to take that on board. And for some clients, they do an excellent job. We've got a great client in Adelaide, custom built cabinet makers. Katie, it's a husband and wife team, Ryan and Katie, shout out to Ryan and Katie. Katie's a gun. She just takes on, she's like a sponge of marketing concepts and she implements and gets amazing results. That's fantastic. For a lot of people though, they go, well, that's really cool, but who's going to do it? And so what we've observed over the years is people going external to other agencies and it just fails miserably because a lot of agencies are generalists.
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
And so It's not that the agency that they might go to is bad or can't do it, it's that they go through a six to nine month learning curve of how to market in this particular industry.
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
And that's an expensive education for a client to pay an agency to learn about. And so we've witnessed this time and time and time again where people will try other agencies and it just didn't work or was a bad experience. So we said, well, we're pretty good at marketing ourselves, let's build our own agency. And... The agency is only for people in the joinery industry. And we're niche, we're very specific, and we're really good at what we do. And yeah, it's a lot of fun. I've got an amazing team in the agency, a lot of creative people. A lot of the concepts that we've already implemented are working, and it's a real fun initiative.
Heather:
I love that you've done that and because, and there's obviously a reason why I asked that question because I think that the evolution of your business and understanding that there is a real need for your client base to have additional help was so fantastic. You waited. until you knew that this was so necessary. You already built the client base, already had the community, and it just makes natural sense to where you were heading. I speak to so many people that are like, we all have that entrepreneurial shiny object syndrome, right? We're like, I want to try this. I want to try this. And when I heard you had an agency, I'm like, this is perfect sense. It's perfect sense to have your coaching and then obviously offer them services off the back end of that. So yeah, thank you for that.
Bruce Poling:
Yeah, the majority of our clients in the agency are coaching clients as well. So that's an obvious connection.
Heather:
Yeah. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. So, okay. I want to change to back to overwhelm and thinking
Bruce Poling:
Yeah.
Heather:
back to, back to overwhelm, which all of us know very well, but, um, what's the tip? Like a, like a, I don't know, we call it a mindset, mindset hack, a tool, um, a strategy. What's the tip that you've come across for either yourself or others when they're going in that spiral of overwhelm. You might not even know overwhelm is even anymore. I'm not sure, but if it's maybe
Bruce Poling:
Oh, I'm
Heather:
for a client.
Bruce Poling:
experiencing it lately.
Heather:
Okay, yeah, film me and how do you deal with Bruce? Like when these moments come in and you're spiraling into that mode, what do you do to get yourself out?
Bruce Poling:
Yeah, look, I believe, I believe overwhelm happens when you're just trying to do too many things all at once. You know, I always, people that have heard me say this have probably tired of hearing it, but I always think of, if you're standing on one side of the creek and you wanna get to the other side, and there's no stepping stones across the creek, but you really need to get to the other side, okay? This is kind of overwhelming. I'm gonna get wet, maybe it'll sweep me down the creek, maybe I'll live, maybe I won't. All of a sudden we're in overwhelm because we've thought of all the possible things of how to get to the other side. Now if there's stepping stones that just tell me, okay, I'm just going to take step one and then step two and step three and step four. Really simple, right? Just one step first and then I'm going to get to the other side. I'm not overwhelmed anymore. I just take step one. I'm not thinking about step three when I'm taking step one. I'm just taking step one. Cool. Well, let's just do that. Let's just figure out what you need right now. Don't get yourself overwhelmed with all the stuff you don't need. And people get overwhelmed with all the stuff that they don't need because yes, maybe you wanna do it. Maybe it's necessary in two months time. But right now, there's probably one thing that you need most. Just work on that one. And that removes overwhelm.
Heather:
So
Bruce Poling:
It's hard
Heather:
true.
Bruce Poling:
to do. Yeah.
Heather:
Do you know, I use the story very similar. I like how you're talking about the stepping stones. I often say you want to climb the mountain, right? I
Bruce Poling:
Yeah.
Heather:
know it's so cliche, but like
Bruce Poling:
Yeah.
Heather:
so many people are focused at looking up and they keep looking up and they're like, oh my God, I have so far I have to
Bruce Poling:
So
Heather:
go,
Bruce Poling:
far to go, yeah.
Heather:
right? Yeah, and I always go, just put the foot down one step after another, just like what you were saying. And yeah, it's hard to do because you keep looking up and see that there's, you know, there's so much ahead or this person over here, look how fast. they're going past me or whatever, and you just get so caught up in this noise, and that just adds to it. So that was really good advice. Now, is there anything else that you can think of in your journey as a business owner or with your community that really just stands out through this conversation, something that you can share to help
Bruce Poling:
Life.
Heather:
somebody grow their business?
Bruce Poling:
Yeah, I think, particularly in this day and age coming out of a pandemic and people are changed because of it.
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
Attention spans are now much shorter. And they were always, they were short before the pandemic. But I think that we have to go back to thinking about the long game. I mean, Simon Sinek is a great, I follow
Heather:
It's great.
Bruce Poling:
Simon Sinek in his, you know, when he talks about the infinite game, I think we need to really take that on board that life, life is short, but we want to think What's the long game here? Not just about today. We wanna, you know, we talk with a lot of people about what are you doing today? And we can figure that one out. Then we say, okay, well, what are you doing tomorrow? I'm not sure. So if we don't even know what we're doing tomorrow, how are we gonna know what this journey is gonna look like? So I think we need to slow down. I think we need to unplug a lot. And I'm saying this to you and your listeners, but I'm also saying it to myself. And I think it's time that we just go back to slowing down, slowing down.
Heather:
Yes.
Bruce Poling:
and take it easy, go camping,
Heather:
Yes!
Bruce Poling:
put your feet on the earth, put your bare feet in the ground, start a fire, listen to the creek and don't have the internet. Whatever your thing is like that, we've got to get off the wheel and get back to slowing things down and getting back in touch with the stuff that really creates human. centeredness.
Heather:
I'm glad you said that. Thank you. Um, wow. Do you know, I bought a shirt in my, I, my recent travels to the States where I was catching up with my family and it says slow down on it.
Bruce Poling:
Oh,
Heather:
Whenever
Bruce Poling:
ha.
Heather:
I wear it, whenever I wear it, people always look at it and then they, they get that little like upturned smile on their face. I always look at the reaction I get. And so I think that that's such a beautiful way to enter a conversation. Cause I'm a big believer in exactly what you said. Cause Truly, it, there's just something about human nature and the fastness of the way we live these days that's driving us into extraordinary amounts of anxiety we've never
Bruce Poling:
Yeah,
Heather:
had.
Bruce Poling:
yeah,
Heather:
So
Bruce Poling:
agreed.
Heather:
where do people learn more about you? Okay, well, let me take another question. You have a niche we've already established. Do you only want those? types of people to come and learn more about you? Or do you have sort of generalist business owners that can come and hang out with you too?
Bruce Poling:
Nope, we only, we're
Heather:
Ha
Bruce Poling:
very,
Heather:
ha ha.
Bruce Poling:
very locked in. We work with
Heather:
Trick question.
Bruce Poling:
cabinet manufacturers, joinery manufacturers, furniture, anything
Heather:
Yeah.
Bruce Poling:
in that industry.
Heather:
Excellent.
Bruce Poling:
And that's it, there's no one else. The size of business is usually two years or older, usually with a team. We have
Heather:
Great.
Bruce Poling:
a few smaller programs that are for the startups in the first year or two. Our website describes all of that, thejoinerycoach.com.
Heather:
Yeah. Yep.
Bruce Poling:
The way that we connect with people in many cases is in our Facebook group. We have a Facebook group called the Joinery Business Hub.
Heather:
Yeah, nice.
Bruce Poling:
And in that group, we kind of just jam. We just kind of talk about stuff. And we've got close to a thousand people in that group. And if people want to learn more, then we just have a quick chat. The first step is, you know, let's just have a chat. It's not a sales call. It's just, let's meet. And if I don't feel right for you, then let's not take it any further, right? So. We don't actually have anything to sell until we know that we're a good fit. There's nothing to sell until we can figure out if there's a good sell. And then after that, we just talk about how we can help you. Um, so it's a bit of an evolution, um, in the conversation. Um, but, uh, if people want to connect, uh, with our stuff, our YouTube channel, the journey coach, YouTube channel is extensive. Our podcast, the journey business podcast, common theme here, journey, something. Um, yeah.
Heather:
My gosh, there's so much to learn from your chat. I mean, just across all industries and different types of businesses. But guys, any joinery coaches or people in that space, go check out Bruce, he's amazing. And just your information has been timeless and so valuable to me as well as our listeners. So thank you so much for spending some of that time that we all share together and being here with me for the last 30
Bruce Poling:
Oh,
Heather:
minutes, I appreciate
Bruce Poling:
thank you very
Heather:
it.
Bruce Poling:
much for having me on. I, I, I'm flattered actually, because, um, yeah, it's always, it's always great when someone actually wants to hear what I have to say, cause, um, yeah, it's, it's great to tell my story and, um, yeah, thanks very much, Heather, for having me on your podcast. It's amazing. I've listened to your podcast and I really resonate with, with your message
Heather:
Thank
Bruce Poling:
as well.
Heather:
you.
Bruce Poling:
You know, busy is not a badge of honor. It's, it's not good.
Heather:
No, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here and all the best.
Bruce Poling:
Thank you very much.
