061 — Dr. Sabrina Is a Business Psychologist That Helps Entrepreneurs Take Their Lives Back from Their Biz

hey ABC business people I am here today with another entrepreneur taking action Dr Sabrina Starling Dr Sabrina is a business psychologist that helps entrepreneurs take their lives back from their business and I'm getting this group today on how she does it so stay tuned

[Music] okay all right Dr Sabrina how do you know that the business coach you're considering hiring can deliver and that they'll be a good fit for you so this is such a great question because there's so many coaches out there and when we go looking for a business coach it's overwhelming you don't know who's the right one and what I have learned over the years is it's so important to know that the coach that you're hiring is going to deliver on their results that they are promising because I've lost a lot of money over the years hiring coaches that didn't deliver and so one of the things that I would encourage you is you should always be asking your coach about specific training that they've been through that prepares them to be a professional coach so International coach Federation certifies coaches and that they there's a certain level of training that we have to have so that guarantees right away that somebody's had that training um beyond that though it's not just about the training you want to look for a coach who walks their talk ask them if they do coaching are they currently in coaching and not everybody's always going to be in coaching but they should have been in coaching at some point recently because if you're not in coaching you're not growing anymore as a coach and the other thing to check for is results verify the results are there testimonials on their websites do they look legit I was on another coach's website a couple of weeks ago and there were 10 testimonials but as I scrolled they were repeats so they're really only five testimonials and so that made me think huh I wonder what's going on here um but also look at is it are the are those testimonials really speaking to results that were delivered or are they speaking to I really enjoyed talking to Susie Susie was so nice and caring and that's great it's wonderful to have a coach that's nice and caring but is Susie delivering the results so really look at the results and do those results match up with the results that you want to get and then the other question that I suggest you always pose to a coach is if I'm not succeeding in getting these results how are you going to handle that with me what is that going to look like and you want to hear the coach's response to that that is a really good question I love that because I mean a lot of times they're prepared they have the canned responses you know because when you do sales when you're a service provider doing cells you get the same questions over and over again and it kind of triggers these like canned responses in your brain yeah but that's not one you get a lot you know what would you what are you going to do if it's not working yeah and and the reality is is most people don't move forward with coaching not because they doubt the coach but because they doubt themselves because you've signed up for something in the past and you weren't successful with it and instead of saying oh it was the coach or the training program it becomes about you like there's something wrong with me and so having a plan in place from the get-go with that coach if where if the coach sees you struggling or you see yourself struggling how are you two going to handle it and how's it going to be addressed I feel like people are way too comfortable just chalking things up to learning curves when they invested in something they shouldn't and being like well I mean that happens we're all going to do that it's normal instead of being like why did that happen how can I prevent that from happening in the past like any other area of life you're like hey I touched the stove it burned me how can I not get burned again right like they don't think about it when it comes to these Investments and specifically like coaches courses things along those lines I feel like we're just way too accepting of like well there we go yeah and so coaching and courses are significant Investments and I think that a key question to be asking someone that you're going to invest in is how are things structured to make through make sure that I get through the program and and stick with it what have you done to ensure that because there are a lot of course creators and coaches out there that just get they're great marketers they get people to sign up for the program but the delivery on the back end is well I delivered the content but you know only 20 25 get through the content and usually it's less than that it's like five or ten percent so asking how many people actually finish this and what how do you keep people moving forward through your offering oh that's been one of my soap boxes for years for like course creators and stuff especially it's like the margin that is acceptable for people that actually complete the training and get the result that you promised when it comes to coaches courses and stuff specifically yes it is so low they're like oh well industry standard is five percent of people complete the course I got six I must have done something right it's like what if you were working with that person one-on-one if they were sitting in a classroom with you one-on-one and only six percent of your students managed to get a c or would you consider that acceptable no of course so why is it in your course like what can you do why are they failing pick up the phone call like you know do something Reach Out be like how could I have improved this like can you imagine the impact on somebody's business if they could make a course completion rate even 50 instead of like five or six well and that's like you and I were chatting you and I were chatting ahead of this and that's what we've done at half the potential with our how to hire the best course we and we know we work with really busy business owners and we had to create a course that they could complete and get through because otherwise it's not serving them and so like we have a badge that people want to be featured in our great place to work Spotlight and they have their move forward action steps and they're earning points for completing their action steps from week to week and the other thing is we let people go through the courses many times as they need to to earn their badge and collect their their action steps and so we stick in there we stay with them a lot of that can even be automated nowadays it's like you just have to put the effort into you know how am I gonna have these extra touch points does my audience need these extra touch points where do they need these touch points at where is the fall off did I make this material too complicated like it's not these big like it's gonna cost you an extra 10 hours a month steps it's like just pay attention actually care about if somebody gets through it yes and it's so I love that you've done that with your course because that makes a huge difference when somebody who's got a course actually is paying attention and caring about the completion rate and that just has such a big impact so I love that so those are so much and I think that's partially because you are a business psychologist so you function a little bit different than like a traditional coach can you like speak to that a little bit absolutely so I became a coach after getting my doctorate in Psychology and doing community mental health for five years and I got totally burnt out and I was in that place of okay I cannot do this the rest of my life I have to do something different I've invested a lot in my training through the years and what could I do and so that's where I learned about coaching and I thought this is a great way to repurpose my skill set as a psychologist and I instead of working with people who have a lot of severe mental illness that could work with individuals who are ready to move forward and so all through the coaching programs that we've created at half the potential we really weave in the The Cutting Edge research on positive psychology and how people function at their best what sets us up as individuals to really tap our potential and and that's who I Am Naturally is I when I get into a conversation with people I just want to know what's important to you and how can I support you in making this happen for you because every one of us has unique gifts and talents and when we can work from our strengths and we have results that are clear that we're going towards we can be amazing in what we create and produce but when we are not working from our strengths and we're doing all these things that drain our energy our ability to produce goes down significantly along with our happiness and well-being and so we love taking positive psychology and helping business owners lead learn how to lead effectively and and create great places to work where everyone on the team feels happy to go to work including the business owner and and that comes from creating these safe supported environments and so we're using psychology to solve some of the biggest problems for small business owners I love that and I could tell that that was a big part of your person even like before we hit record because as soon as you came on the very first things you were asking is it's like who is your audience how can I help them what would you like to communicate today and it's like you don't normally see that as a podcast host usually your guests are like okay let me tell you about why I'm awesome and all the things I'm gonna do for people and it's like they kind of dive straight into all about them which is cool that's my goal as a host is to make it all about you that's the point that you don't normally see that out of a guest coming with that like serving and how do we serve your audience how do we serve you mindset so I could tell that that was just it was very natural it was a big part of who you are I'm glad to hear that's kind of uncomfortable that's very much so yes yeah well I mean and that's something that's really important I feel like in a coach because they really have to trust you right like somebody is putting a lot of like you're talking about transforming not just their business but their relationship with their business their relationship with their employees their relationship with themselves and their own life and how their business is having an impact on that like trust is going to be so crucial and if you've got somebody who's all about this is how I work this is what I consider to be important yeah and not what's going to serve you best like that's not in the world and we we weave that in to how we coach because we want to know your personality type we use the people map which is a four quadrant personality measure and so we want to know what's your preferred style of communication how do you connect best with people and we try to adjust and we even we put people into our small groups based on personality and stage in business so that there's a good blend not of all the same personality but different personalities because we need to learn the most successful people in life are able to incorporate the strengths of the people who are least like them and so learning from people who are different from us and how they see the world helps us be better especially as Business Leaders it helps us have a better appreciation of differences on our team I know you're you're big into the neuro spicy and so everyone in your audience has experienced that feeling of I'm different I'm different than other people and so when you work on a team where people are willing to adapt based on your differences and appreciate your differences and understand that you have something special that you're delivering and how do they get all the other stuff out of the way for you so that you can deliver your your Zone a genius that's what's really powerful um yeah it is very powerful it was like when I started talking about the neurospicey thing a little bit more and it just started opening conversations internally inside with my team and one of the things that they even did for me is it's like you know let's make an area in Click up which is our project management system one of the girls on my team was like I'm just gonna go make this area real quick I'm gonna show it to you so she went put it together and she was like this is the Christina support section this is where when you need help with things that you're trying to get done you can just put them here you can just get it out of your brain as quick as possible she's like I've already set us all up to be Watchers so we'll all see it and one of us can just hop on it and be like this is me I can help her with this one and tag in and assign it to themselves and it's just like my team came up with that because it's like we need to find a way to work with you and it's like having me hold regular office hours where they can hold me hostage is an important thing too so they can come over to my office and I'm going to be sitting there and it's a safe space to come ask questions or get me to do something or so as you talk about that it's really clear that you feel supported by your team and that is the most beautiful experience for when you're on a team is to feel supported by your team and so just imagine magnifying that where everyone on the team has their area where they can list here's what I'm struggling with and other team members can look at that and say oh I can easily do that because the things that we can do easy those are our strengths it doesn't take extra energy but for that other person it feels like oh my gosh this is a huge mountain I have to climb I'm I'm really struggling with this and so one of the one of the things that I do in a course I teach called leadership boot camp which is for the a players on our clients teams and we're really teaching them about leadership and talk to them about being a gift from their gifts and giving them a secret mission and every week their secret mission is to look for a team member who's struggling with something or a client or customer who's struggling with something and intentionally you take their strength their gift and take that off of that person's plight and it's a beautiful thing when they come back and they talk about how did it feel to do that because they say I felt so happy and joyful to make something easier for my team members so it's that good feeling that you get inside when you get to support your fellow team members we call that being a gift from your gifts to actually had somebody on my team today and they're like I'm so glad that you guys told you know the other guy on our team that he could reach out to me when he needed help with something because he's been doing that and it's been great to be able to help him like I just got the feedback from somebody on my team this morning yeah where she was able to step in and kind of support someone else who was struggling had a lot on their plate and so yeah it's it's great when you can create that when you can see it happening um it's part of why I love that we use gather town it's a metaverse space because I can see my team meeting together and working on things because I'll see them go into each other's offices and you can see the little chat bubbles over their heads that they're talking and then they'll go up and do something else so it gives you that you know as a leader being able to see that even in a virtual environment when you wouldn't normally it's like even their personalities and that was probably the thing that threw me the most when we first started using gather town is everybody has their own personal Office Space and they could decorate it and just seeing the personalities emerge like as you walk around our office and just giving a sense for who's there is just so interesting

because virtual work is so hard for people because you lose a lot of that connection a lot of the cues the visual cues and social cues that you normally get in a work environment so it sounds like you've really found a way to address that uh we've been having fun with it we were even hosting um an event every quarter right now that we call gurus gather live and we just did our first one last month and the feedback from everybody was like we didn't have zoom fatigue it was a nine hour event with 16 different speakers and it's like we didn't have zoom fatigue it was more like conference fatigue or you had gone to an in-person conference you know you're running around all day long and you're just absorbing information it gave that kind of fatigue but it was virtual and they were able to get away because you can walk away from other people and you're no longer on you know like if you're in an in-person thing you can step away you can like you know go to the bathroom or even just like between conversations when you're moving from one room to the other room or you have some space to just be like breathe for a second and then go back yeah so it's interesting what we can do with technology today and I think exploring some of that and to help your team work a little bit better has been it's been good for us um we've really liked it I know a couple other people that have started using gather with their teams even if it's just on like a quarterly basis and it's been fantastic so little fun stuff so speaking of small steps yeah what are some small steps that someone can take right now like you're talking about being able to build up their team and kind of do some more stuff with their team and that's obviously going to start pulling things off of the business owner so that they can actually go out and live their life have some free time be able to breathe do the things they like to do so like what are some small steps they can take that would get them moving into that more positive direction yeah this is such a great question because I think a lot of people in your audience are in that place where they are doing what they're doing because they love it they have a gift to share but in order to build a business and to build a following there's a lot of activity that needs to go on you got to write blog posts you have to be on social there's a lot of administrative stuff and those things are probably not the things that you enjoy doing they probably don't give you energy I know when I started out I was so excited on my first day leaving my job and getting to go home and I was officially an entrepreneur the very first thing I did was sit down and write a blog post and it was so fun I was like oh my gosh I can't believe I'm really gonna get paid for this somebody's gonna pay me for This Not That Money showed up right away it took a little while but I I just was so that was like my gift that's something I really enjoy doing I love teaching I love speaking what I don't love is bookkeeping I I hate email oh such a drain for me and and so I saw myself get consumed in all the minutia all the things and in my I saw my writing time and my coaching and speaking time just getting eaten up by all the things and that's what happens as we become more and more successful as business owners our businesses grow and they take over our lives and so it have the potential one of the things we love to do is we have a chart called the ten thousand dollar an hour activities and it shows you the difference between a 50 an hour task 100 an hour task thousand dollar five thousand and ten thousand dollars our goal is to get from doing all the fifty dollar an hour tasks in our businesses to where the majority of our time is spent in the ten thousand dollar an hour activity so for me being here on a podcast with you is a ten thousand dollar an hour activity because you're introducing me to people who might not have ever encountered me Christina and I think that's like the most amazing thing and but if I were too busy doing my email and said no I can't take an interview I've got email overload I would miss out on this opportunity and so we want to be taking these uh 50 100 even a thousand dollar an hour activities off our plate and it you can't do it all at once because you've got to grow the revenue in your business but people love to use this chart to just look at what's on my plate currently that's not my highest value contribution and who could I find who could take this off of me and a beautiful thing about virtual work now is you don't have to hire a full-time employee to come take some things off your plate you can look at specific duties and hire contractors to work in your business on a very limited basis to take these things off your plate and allow you to move up further where you can focus really on your your highest value contribution

the other thing that I want to share around small steps because I know when you're a brand new entrepreneur I remember the feeling 17 years ago when I left my job and wrote my first blog post I looked at other entrepreneurs who had books and who were speaking and had their own podcast or whatever and I thought I want to be like them I you know who do I how and it felt like such a huge amount in the climb but I wrote One blog post a week and I just committed to that I'm like I'm gonna if I can't get anything else done in the given week I'm gonna get that one blog post out and put I consistently put out a newsletter so pick your one thing that you're going to do that's consistent that helps you build like especially blog posts my books were written through my blog posts and I know Christina you talk a lot about building your audience as you're writing your book so putting those blog posts out creates people who are interested in what you have to share and then when your book comes out it's like look she's got a book I want to hear about that and so I just I want to encourage your audience to take those small steps forward because they really do lead to huge change in a very short period of time I wrote my first book within a few years of being out there as a coach and I would have done it faster but I had a baby so that kind of interfered with things but it's totally it is totally doable and it creates opportunities I'm here talking with you and getting to connect with your audience because I have a book and these these things that we're doing even though it feels like oh this is a huge mountain to climb you don't know where these things are going to take you and and so stick with it and keep taking those small steps forward well and I like some of the stuff that you said too where it's like is you're starting to grow your team it's not just about it's like there's all these lists of all these tasks that you can Outsource but what you said was look for the ones that you don't enjoy doing yeah it's like we have tons of clients that don't enjoy writing Vlogs they Outsource that to us we handle that for them but then there's people like you who love riding the box like that that's a happy thing keep your happy thing yeah it's okay to keep your happy thing yeah so what I what I did is I loved writing the blog post and then I would obsess about my newsletter that I would put out every week and the format and making it look right and all the details I got totally lost in that and so that was one of the first things I hired out and my virtual assistant Donna who's been with me all these years she was my very first team member that I brought on she I hired her to take that off my plate because I knew I was spending way too much time in the weeds and it wasn't a valuable activity no well I mean that's so important especially when so one of the cool things that that you did was you got the knowledge out of your brain first and then you let someone else help you maximize that knowledge yeah and I think that's like my cautionary tell to people that want to Outsource some of their content stuff is it's like you're the expert you've put the time and the training and that you know man hours into working with people and getting results and doing stuff like you don't need to just be like I just want to write a blog about this will you just go research and write it because there are tons of writers that will do that and it's a terrible idea yes because they can't figure it out of you in some way yeah just because someone else can write about a topic doesn't mean that they're going to have your voice and your unique Spin and expert contribution um and I used I used a Ghostwriter to help me write my books and I had all of the content in the blog posts and and I did ask for help with the research but the thought leadership came from me because no one else can do that thought leadership yeah and I see so many people try and Skip on that and just hire someone to write content for them and it's like oh don't do that please don't do that get it out of your head wherever you need to like some people it's not their happy place to write yeah make a video make a loop it doesn't have to be perfect nobody else but your writer has to see it it's okay if you're uncomfortable on video but you have to get it out of you in some way like we have had to create so many different ways to get that out of people everything from like worksheets to sitting down to working with them one-on-one to I have a video ask where it's like I pre-record questions so I'm talking to them but they can do it in their own time so if 2 30 in the morning is when their brain goes we yeah go sit down give me stuff at 2 30 in the morning it's okay you can have a little asynchronous conversation with me that way yeah we just had to make so many different ways because like everybody's brain works differently yes and you want to make it happy but they still have to get it out from them and for me because coaching is one of my happy places uh we pulled recordings not of our client sessions but of me talking when I was teaching in the coaching sessions and used some of that for the content of the book because for me when someone asked me a question this is why I love to do interviews and you ask me a question I could just I could just go but if I don't have that initial question I'm kind of like huh what is that here I don't know what's relevant so everyone has their unique style and I love how you are you're tuning in to okay we're going to figure out multiple ways to pull out the content well and that style can change you know some days people are like hey I've got it's a high energy day I can do some videos I can do some meetings I can run with it we can make some things happen other days it's like if I have to people with anybody but no I'm going back to bed and like a bit I'll take my laptop and I can type some things and so that'll be a written day instead of a video day and it's cool like I literally have and this is so bad I have literally rescheduled podcasting you have to give yourself permission to do this sometimes because it was a no people day yeah it was like I woke up that morning and it just it just couldn't happen and it was a no people day and I think you have to give yourself permission to do that you're speaking my language because one of the the big things that I educate about is entrepreneurial burnout and when we're constantly pushing ourselves to hit someone else's standard or some standard we've created in our head we're gonna burn out and so the best way to prevent that is to be tuned in to yourself just like what you describe and look for ways to do that self-care and it continually be checking in with yourself as to what do I need to be at my best because it will not deliver your gifts if you're not at your best yep this has been absolutely fantastic I know I've kept you for almost all of our time together so I want to give our audience a chance to get to know like you and where to find you and what you do and who you help and all that good jazz so can you tell me more about you and what you do certainly so our business is tap the potential and we help overworked entrepreneurs who have successful businesses take their lives back from their business so you can check us out at tapthepotential.com and you heard me talk about the ten thousand dollar an hour download you can get that at tapthepotential.com forward slash 10K and I have the profit by Design podcast so if you love listening to podcasts I'm over there every week sharing entrepreneurial knowledge and really looking at keeping keeping it real like this is real life business and what what do we need as entrepreneurs to keep moving forward and then I have the how to hire the best series which is available on Amazon so if anyone is struggling to hire and you're not succeeding with it which that by the way if you're struggling you're not alone ninety percent of small business owners struggle with hiring and that's what I love about the how to hire the best book is I've taken what has been taught in the corporate world and I've adapted it to the real life reality of a small business owner who's doing all the things and trying to hire at the same time so these are these are just simple things that work um and then the other book that I've written is the four week vacation and that is for entrepreneurs who are really wanting to work to that place where they just get to do the fun stuff in the business and the business can run without you being in there every day which is great for creatives because if you can get all the other roles on your roll chart filled and you get to do your fun stuff then you can be there or not be there and things continue to happen yeah well and that's so important and I think people are like I can't imagine my business running without me what would I do with myself and say trust me you will find something yes you will find something to do you will spend time doing the things you want it will happen but it's also really important I think because you just don't know what's going to happen to you right you know you could get sick you could get in a car wreck you could whatever and your income goes on hold if you don't grow your business to that point so I know that's kind of the like scary danger danger message but I feel like it wakes people up half a second when they think about that for a minute and I mean event you're not going to be in your business forever and you have to plan you have you have to plan and I've encountered so many experiences in my own life where I needed to be away our team members have had this happen other colleagues entrepreneurs I've seen you know have Devastation in their business because they hadn't set it up to start running without them and so it may feel like where you are now is a big journey to get to the point a four-week vacation and the business can run without you for an extended period but it really is it's those small steps forward so it starts with well what can I take off my plate what can I delegate and the chart of ten thousand dollar an hour activities is a great place to start with that yeah and working with Dr Sabrina is one way to do that too because they'll be able to start taking all the small steps with some guidance in the right direction so I think that's really smart I'll make sure we drop links to all of that wherever you are watching this we put this thing out all over the place so wherever you are watching this right now there will be links somewhere near the video around up or down so thank you again Dr spree for coming on this we have shared some amazing tips that people hopefully will listen to take to heart and take some action on absolutely it's an honor to be here with you Christina all right until next time guys go build a business that enables your lifestyle instead of taking over your life I love that [Music]