Summary
Part 2 of our conversation with HB Pasley. Unlock the secrets to maintaining both personal and business health with our latest episode on Pasley Commercial Interiors. Imagine the transformative power of treating your business to regular check-ups just like you would for your own health. HB shares his journey as a growth advocate, where he's turned his passion for helping others into a fulfilling mission to empower business owners. Listen as we explore the parallels between routine doctor visits and business assessments. We'll discuss the essential readiness for change and how true growth can only begin when you're willing to act on these insights.
Progress isn't just a goal; it's a journey that can be incredibly motivating. Join us as we delve into the world of surveys as a dynamic tool for business coaching. Discover how evaluating businesses on purpose, process, and people can unveil areas ripe for improvement while fostering a positive team culture. From scoring your business identity to enhancing client experiences, track your growth and set ambitious goals with our structured approach. Witness the excitement of a team doubling their score from 29 to 58 and feel inspired by the measurable feedback that aligns efforts and propels future success.
We welcome your questions! If you would like to learn more about us or connect for a conversation, please visit www.pasleycommercialinteriors.com.
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Robin: 0:13 Welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me and our podcast here at Pasley Commercial Interiors, where we're giving back to our listeners who are also business owners, and interviewing other people in different sectors of business who could bring something to them.
HB: 0:32 Oh, that makes me feel good that I could bring something and that be for the listeners. Knowledge I'm not an interior designer. No, you're not. I do not have your skills, I do not have my son's skills, but it's been fun to serve you as a business owner at your request.
Robin: 0:46 Yes.
HB: 0:47 Particularly in my role as a growth advocate.
Robin: 0:50 Yes, that's what you call yourself, isn't it?
HB: 0:51 Thanks for asking. Yes, yeah, yeah, you know, I coined this term back when I was working as a development officer for a financial services firm and they were doing a lot of great things. But I didn't really grow up in sales per se and development didn't seem like the right word and I realized the thing that I naturally want to do is get behind people and bring pressure and encouragement and the kind of upward pressure that will help them succeed. I find it super rewarding when other people's light bulbs go off or when the team success goes uphill, and I think, after as many decades as I had in my professional career as a creative artist, a performing artist, a writer, a publisher, a coach as well I sort of realized over a long period of time that it was at least as much or more joyful to help other people succeed than it was to focus on me all the time I'm 58.
HB: 1:50 I turned 58 this last summer and I'm aging. I think a little bit. I can feel it when I work out. I get tired quicker yeah. I've recently it when I work out, I get tired quicker. Yeah, I've recently decided that the doctor is somebody that I want to know better.
Robin: 2:02 Let's be closer friends so weird Can. I get your cell number.
HB: 2:06 Dr John, I just wanted to reach out today and see how you were doing.
Robin: 2:14 You know, it's true.
HB: 2:17 We've got this great relationship with direct primary care doctors. We love Pinnacle here in town, Dr.Digert love him, so I think it's because I don't think my car is breaking down, but I do need more routine maintenance. Okay, and now, all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, getting a blood test is super cool and I want the big one. I want the start to finish with all the stuff.
HB: 2:33 Yeah, yeah, don't tell me that it's red. I want to know the deets, right, because it helps me know all these things you're concerned about. How's my cholesterol, how's my discount, how's my that count? I don't even know what to say. See, I'm not yeah.
HB: 2:46 I know. So I go to the doc, I get the blood test. He can hand it to me. He's often, you know, hand it to him in a piece of paper. You look at it. I used to pretend like I knew something that was going on there, and now I just hold it up and go no comprende, make sense of doc, you know, kind of go caveman. He always has things to say that are insightful. I have to be willing, though, at that point, to either make life changes, make diet changes, make maybe some adjustment in order to address the problem. I also have to trust that he's telling me this in my best interest, right? I'm describing this to let you know what I think mature businesses should be doing more of.
Robin: 3:31 Right.
HB: 3:32 Did you see it coming? I did see it coming Because.
Robin: 3:35 I find it to be the same in working with you this last year was that I have to give a plug out, plug out, do that. It's a plug and a shout out. Together that's a good combo. I have to give a plug for your. You have this amazing assessment that you let us in but now is available for other businesses to use.
HB: 3:59 Yes.
Robin: 3:59 The survey? Yes, 75 points, and it's it helps. It helped me understand where my business was, because I am already looking towards how to exit in the future and that's helping me plan my growth right now. And so all of those things you created this amazing assessment that we did, and when you were talking about going to the doctor, I immediately was thinking about taking that assessment because I didn't know how to read the. This was in your early stages. You hadn't, it wasn't pretty. You've made it pretty now it has colors.
HB: 4:32 That's right, it's true.
Robin: 4:33 But you had to help me read it, and then I had to decide that I was going to take steps to do the things that would make my business healthier.
HB: 4:44 That is true and it is a requirement. You know, I had an almost client recently. I wish everybody I served you know could really get maximum energy out of me or what I'm trying to help them with. But I had a client take the same survey and after they and their executive team went through it and this person looked over it, he decided that he did not have the energy to focus on the requirements that the assessment showed. It's kind of like learning that your cholesterol was high. He decided working on cholesterol is not important right now, hb, we're super busy doing other stuff.
HB: 5:21 Now people do that for different reasons, but I did realize that it can be assumed that just because you take a really great business health assessment in the form of a survey over 75 points which will show you top to bottom health and wellness or weakness and challenge it will show that to you, it doesn't mean that it's actually going to benefit. Anyway, the desire to change has to be combined with the desire to assess. So my role as a growth advocate, I'm only going to be great for people that are ready to change and that will trust that what I'm going to help them with and what I'm showing them needs to be changed, and then they've got to want it to go after, and those are really fun people to work with. Now I did get my certification as a certified exit planning advisor. That study and that particular arc in my professional career did equip me to develop this unique survey. I love doing the survey because I didn't find that there were many business valuation tools designed for trust building businesses. Some businesses sell widgets and stuff and the amount of trust they need is almost nothing. Like if you go to a department store and buy a pair of pants, you don't need to trust the clerk that much. You just hand the pants across, leave with the pants. Wait pants money. You got it. You know how this works. But if you're going to hire an interior designer, well, you're going to have a season to develop trust. Do other people trust them? Are they somebody I can get along with? Do I like their attitude about certain things? Do I think they can guide me through this? If you're a listener, you might have a business just like this where you know that trust is essential for making the sale and for making the client happy For those businesses.
HB: 7:01 I uniquely created this growth mapping survey and I think the delivery of that survey, just like going to the doc first I want to see it, but then I want an expert to help me understand. How do I interpret some of this data? I've got some low scores here and some high scores there. Now how do I see that and what do we do first? All right, we'll wrap our discussion on this point. This idea of getting a growth assessment. You don't have to take mine. I think there's a lot of business valuation tools out there. Valuebuilderscom is an amazing, incredibly fat site my friends at Denver Business Coaches they do a great job of taking people through that program and there's several other thumbnail surveys that you could get into online at a variety of price points your local, your CPA, your M&A friend, your person who's in exit planning or investment banking. They may have some in-depth evaluation tools that they could share with you. The point is take a survey like you would take a blood test if you're interested in personal health, and it's not just for exiting.
Robin: 8:05 It's not just for exiting. No, it's about awareness, like self-awareness, being aware of where you are in your health situation, health situation as a business, and what do you need to improve on. That's what was so. Um, you know, we're married, we live together, so, having you work in my business, it could have been easy for us to just plot along through the year and you just keep telling me you got to get this better, you need to work on that. But because we had a tool, just keep telling me you got to get this better, you need to work on that. But because we had a tool, it was actually really great to be able to have a tool tell me what was.
Robin: 8:42 Yeah, it's better than me telling you anything right Than you not being the tool. I'm sorry, yes.
HB: 8:46 Let's just be honest. It reminds me of when we were first married, do you remember, and we were not making a ton of money and you'd be at the store. I don't know how you call me, because we there must have been some tool back then called a telephone that had wires.
Robin: 9:02 They had those.
HB: 9:03 And you call and go do we have money for me to buy these pants? Has pants come up twice in this podcast.
HB: 9:10 No I feel like it's something going on in my mind. I may need to go get some new pants after this show and you needed somebody to tell you was this a good or a bad decision. But I'm the new husband and I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to be on the hook for this. I'm just going to be the good guy every time and say, yes, we have money for the pants and we realized that we needed a third party in our marriage. Who was he?
Robin: 9:31 Mr. Quicken
HB: 9:32 Mr. Quicken
Robin: 9:37 Mr. Quicken, we started budgeting and I know that makes us sound like total nerds, but you like to when you don't have money, it's actually the best time to budget. Yeah, surprisingly.
HB: 9:43 I wanted not just to control the expenses, I wanted to get some things Like. I wanted a few things that we thought were important. You wanted things that were important, so we used the budget to tell us what we could spend, not what we couldn't spend, right, but you, being able to talk to Mr Quicken gave you emotional separation from the facts.
Robin: 10:00 Right.
HB: 10:05 I like it, as a business coach, by the way to give a survey, so that my clients don't look at me and think I'm judging them Right when I say we should improve that Right. I want them to look at the survey. It's the facts.
Robin: 10:11 That's what I love, too, was that we started the year with a survey and then we got to the end of the first quarter and took the same survey again.
HB: 10:19 And you tracked. We do a cumulative score. So the survey is 75 points. It's broken into three fat sections over purpose, process and people, which would kind of be the same as business identity, client experience and process management, tools management. And then three would be team. How's your team culture? Do you remember your cumulative score? When you first took the assessment? I want to say it was like 27. It was 29. I just looked at it was like 27. It was 29. I just looked at it the other day.
Robin: 10:45 Did you yeah, and then by the end Five months later. That's the end of quarter two.
HB: 10:51 Yeah, it was weird Because we took it again at the end of quarter one. No, we took it in January and then we waited all the way until May. Oh did we? Yeah, I just looked at it. I'm sorry.
Robin: 11:00 Did you?
HB: 11:01 I review these things occasionally to see how the tool is working. Do you remember your score the second time around?
Robin: 11:04 I don't. I know it was better, but I don't remember 58. Oh, that was much better.
HB: 11:08 It was double, or I can't do math, but you know it was. And then, recently, do you remember what your latest score was? I don't. I'm so glad that it was even higher, though I know it was higher. So, as a team, if you're looking for a way to set goals, know what to work on next and you're humble enough to let a survey or maybe somebody from outside the firm help you execute your goals. This is measurable and it's exciting.
Robin: 11:35 It's super exciting and what it's done is it's helped us. Then we can key in and go oh okay, these are where our weak spots are, this is what we need to work on next. In and go, oh okay, these are where our weak spots are, this is what we need to work on next. And it helped us, like, build our expectations and our plans for the next following quarters. It's been fantastic, thank you.
*Recorded in our studio in Colorado Springs, Colorado
