With Dulcee Loehn, founder of FocalPoint Business Performance Inc and a certified business coach for over 18 years, where she brings extensive experience in all aspects of business management, organizational effectiveness and leadership to her clients. Dulcee partners with her clients, and together they improve all areas of the business, maximizing revenue, profitability, and return on investment. Using the FocalPoint system, powered by Brian Tracy, Dulcee introduces business concepts and then works with her clients to unearth effective ideas to apply those concepts to the business. 

Dulcee’s passion for what she does comes through to everyone she touches because through coaching, she can live her purpose of improving the professional and personal lives of business owners and executives to new levels of success, prosperity and fulfillment.

Join our conversation with Dulcee as she shares insights on transitioning from directing to coaching, including how to have difficult conversations with your team. We’ll also discuss the critical importance of building a supportive team for business leaders and the initial steps toward effective coaching. Additionally, we’ll emphasize the significance of strong management skills and the benefits of having a coach or mentor for entrepreneurs and business leaders.

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Takeaways & quotes you don’t want to miss:

• “Skills can be taught…but you can’t teach attitude.”
• How do executives become a coach first?
• “We can’t coach uncoachable people.”
• The importance of building a professional team.
• How being a coach is different for everyone.

“A sign of a great manager is when you can walk away for a little while and everything works as if you were there.”

-Dulcee Loehn

Check out these highlights:

• 13:02 Why do most of the executives delay terminating people?
• 16:00 The first thing you need to do if you want to succeed….
• 29:24 What is the biggest barrier for people around adopting the process?
• 37:18 What lights Dulcee up about coaching?
• 44:41 Dulcee’s final thoughts to leave with the listeners.

How to get in touch with Dulcee on Social Media:

You can also contact Dulcee by visiting her website here or email her at dloehn@focalpointcoaching.com.

Special gift to the audience: Get a FREE coaching session with Dulcee.

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below:

GGGB Intro  00:00

Here’s what you get on today’s episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®…

Dulcee Loehn  00:04

The reality is a great manager can leave like to go on vacation or something. And nobody notices because everything stays the same. Things don’t fall apart when they leave. People don’t freak out. When they leave, they leave and the system just keeps on running the processes just keep on running. That’s the sign of a great manager, right is that you can walk away for a little while, and everything works as if you were there.

GGGB Intro  00:30

The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.

Heather Pearce Campbell  01:01

Alrighty, welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior® and attorney and legal coach based here in Seattle, Washington, serving online businesses around the US and the world. Welcome to another episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®. I’m super excited about today’s conversation. This is one that we have not yet had on the podcast. I think it’s a really, really important conversation, especially when it comes to business leadership. And so I would love to welcome today, Dulcee Loehn. Hi. I don’t see and did I say your last name the right way? I should have asked. Okay, fine. Yep. Perfect. So they’ll see and I connected to through LinkedIn, I can’t remember who connected us. I think we have several like mutual connections. Anyway, so we had a chat a while ago, and she’s got several topics that she could teach on. But today’s topic is all about really transitioning from directing to coaching. And so stick around, we’re gonna get into some really good stuff, including how to have difficult conversations or what might be perceived as difficult conversations with team or with people you’re leading. But for those of you that don’t know Dulcee, Dulcee is a certified FocalPoint Business Coach and the owner of FocalPoint Business Performance, Inc. Dulcee partners with her clients, and together they improve all areas of the business, maximizing revenue, profitability, and return on investment. Using the FocalPoint system, powered by Brian Tracy, Dulcee introduces business concepts and then works with her clients to unearth effective ideas to apply those concepts to the business. This step by step process produces continuous improvement to the business. Her clients begin to realize their goals and aspirations, many for the first time.  Dulcee’s passion for what she does comes through to everyone she touches because through coaching, she can live her purpose of improving the professional and personal lives of business owners and executives to new levels of success, prosperity and fulfillment.  Dulcee founded FocalPoint Business Performance of Tampa Bay in 2007, but has been a coach for over 18 years. She brings to her clients extensive experience in all aspects of business management, organizational effectiveness and leadership. This, coupled with the FocalPoint system, equips her with the foundation and robust tools to deliver huge value to her clients.  What excites Dulcee the most about being a FocalPoint Business Coach, is the measured, tangible results enjoyed by her clients. Through working with her, the clients put methods in place to measure and track the key data that drives the business. Her clients know the exact value, monetarily and otherwise, they are getting for every dollar they spend in the business. They know their return on investment for their efforts and money. The clients make smart, strategic decisions that transform the business toward their vision. That’s a big one don’t see there’s so much to cover in there. Even that last paragraph on its own. I love about measuring things. I think, particularly for small businesses, it can be hard to measure the right things and know what to measure. So there’s a lot that we can jump into.

Dulcee Loehn  04:29

It’s one of the first things we do when I engage with a client is identify what those goals are. And then let’s figure out how to measure them. And some are easy to measure some not so much. But we find a way to measure everything so that they can really see their progress, which is powerful. You know, it’s very energizing when you see you’re making progress towards where you want to be.

Heather Pearce Campbell  04:50

No, it is powerful. And you know, even speaking from my own personal money story, there were times that I just was not willing to measure and part of that came out of a period of my life where we had, I joke that we have $2 million babies. It’s not far off from the truth. And it was a really expensive path that we were on to get our kiddos here. And so what I knew is like, I was willing to go all out, and that included any expense that it took to walk that path. But in the meantime, I didn’t really want to look at the money side of things, you know what I mean? Because I was just like, no, we’re doing this. And, you know, this is just the path to motherhood for me and what it takes and wasn’t until I could kind of close the door on that really hard chapter personally, that I could shift gears and felt like I had the energy to like, really look at my money. 

Dulcee Loehn  05:48

Yeah, it can be scary, right? And I’ve experienced that to where I’ve procrastinated and said, No, I don’t want to look at the numbers, right, it can be scary. But we can only move forward, if we know where we are today. And we just have to be honest with ourselves about where we are today. There’s no shame in it, you know, judgment free zone, right? Oh, and I just, you got to know where you’re starting in order to get where you want to go,

Heather Pearce Campbell  06:14

We’ll end up starting with baby steps. I remember even getting the right people in place to support you on that. I mean, I just want to shout this from the rooftops. Right? It makes all the difference in the world, in your business, in your personal life to have the right supports. And I think in some ways, we all learn this a little bit the hard way, you know, through certain things and certain topics, because we need experts on a variety of topics. But for me, making a switch and getting the right CPA in place to help me with some of my systems and the way that I approached my money. It’s made a night and day difference. And even just the way they have the conversation around it, you know, you just said judgment free stress free zone it, or at least the judgment free part. I think I said stress before we started. But it’s really important, I think, to work with people who help you create that space.

Dulcee Loehn  07:10

Yeah, absolutely. I think so it has to be the right person. Right? That you have to really be able to develop that relationship where it is judgment free, you’re not embarrassed to put it out there for them. And let them give me honest feedback and write and help you devise a direction of where to go moving forward.

Heather Pearce Campbell  07:31

Well, exactly. And you know, even when I hit a point in my business of like, having consistent bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, you know, all of the key milestones, which, to me really felt like baby steps, like there was a huge part of me that’s like, oh, I should have reached this point. years ago. Right. But working with somebody who could celebrate that with me and be like, No, actually, that’s a really big deal in a small business to hit those points, you know, and help you see it from a different perspective, I think is just tremendously helpful.

Dulcee Loehn  08:05

Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s also true, when it comes to business owners and executives, right, they have to have the right team of employees around them, which is oftentimes what they struggle with. And one of the things that I work with clients on, when we talk about having the right team having the right culture within your organization, I can’t tell you how many people engage with me because of team issues that they’re having. Yeah, right. There’s some kind of motivation there, because they’re feeling some kind of pain underneath that umbrella of team. Either the team’s not performing, or they have a lot of people that are causing problems. And it’s this constant, putting out fires kind of thing. And so one of the things that we typically always work on in the beginning is identifying what kind of culture that they want. And then doing the things we need to do to get that culture anchored. And changing how we hire, changing how like you put, choosing those people. So I have a great example of an electrical contractor client, they’ve been a client for a while. And as you might imagine, when you’re interviewing for people, you’re looking for skills. Right? But what we know from research is that 85% of success is attitude. Skills can be taught. Yeah, exactly. You can teach the rest, but you can’t teach attitude. And so it’s a big paradigm shift. For these the CEOs, these business owners, these executives, to stop really putting so much importance on skills and knowledge, and to put the importance and ask most of the interview questions around attitude. Because the only way we can move from being those directorial managers, to more of a coach is to get coachable people to begin with yeah, coaching if you don’t have coachable people, I know can you people?

Heather Pearce Campbell  10:05

Right? And you say that again? Louder for the kids in the back?

Dulcee Loehn  10:11

Absolutely, yeah, we can’t coach uncoachable people. So a lot of times I have managers and executives come to me and say, Well, I’m trying to coach but it’s just impossible well usually means because they don’t have coachable people, they have a lot of uncoachable people. And so that is the hurdle that has to be tackled first. Then once you have coachable people around you, it’s amazing how much easier things get, and how much more productive you and everyone else can be.

Heather Pearce Campbell  10:41

Yeah, you know, I’ve got a small team that I’ve built up over the years, for my own practice, we consist of about five people, but doing very different things. And some of them not full time. But I love my team. And I will say that, in this last year, even there have been periods where I was not able to work due to illness or whatever, I could not have operated or kept things going or been in touch with clients without them. And before that, there was a year actually pre COVID, where a local law firm who I know well, I went to school with some of the folks there. And then I actually worked really early in my career with one of the partners there. They had a project that they lost their leadership on. And they came to me and said, we’d really like you to run this project. And here’s the scope of it. And here’s what we think we need, are you willing to do it, and I figured out that I can allocate about three days a week to running their project and still, you know, maintain my business to some extent, I mean, certainly my own clients had to drop off a bit that year. But I stepped into that project leading 15 people that I just inherited, there was a lot. And part of the reason that I took it is because I wanted those lessons of leadership and what it took to lead a bigger team. And I learned some really valuable lessons about what you are saying just now about the importance of attitude. Really, overall, it was a great team, but there was one person with a super stinky attitude. And, of course, you didn’t know it right off, people don’t come out and just be like, I have a stinky attitude. You learn it because it shows up in their performance. And some people really hide that, right, they can create a lot of chaos and confusion around them and try to keep people kind of mystified about what they’re actually up to. But ultimately, when you see it clearly, like you just realize, like, oh my gosh, this person is causing way more problems than they are helping other people perform and benefiting others on the team. 

Dulcee Loehn  12:56

Yeah. And what do we tend to do with those people, most of the executives procrastinate, because they don’t want to have that conversation, they don’t want it to, none of us want to terminate anybody. It’s not a fun thing to do. But what we don’t weigh is the damage, that a person with a very negative attitude has on the team. Because you have to really consider if that person is allowed to stay around. Oftentimes, your high performers will now quit and go away. Because they don’t want to tolerate it any more than you do. Right. But if you procrastinate on these things, yeah, very damaging to the business.

Heather Pearce Campbell  13:42

Oh, it’s so painful. That quote that I referenced before we got started that I read I think again, just yesterday, it’s I’m not gonna get it exactly right. But something about the fastest way to lose a great employee is to basically have them watch you tolerate a bad one. And I think it is really painful. I’ve watched people in my life, you know, go through who are in built into bigger companies and like one individual that I’m thinking of that, you know, managed another person underneath him and had a heck of a time trying to navigate this line of providing feedback around all these performance issues. But you’re right underlying it was an attitude issue of I don’t have to show up, I don’t have to give it my best. I don’t have to you know, and so constantly cutting corners everywhere and this person in my life who was responsible for managing him at a very hard time, actually even addressing that conversation. You know, there were multiple reasons why but they ended up you know, he ended up leaving the company and the underperforming employee, but I feel like there was a lot of pain, unnecessary pain that happened in the meantime. Right. And so you see that and it’s like, oh, gosh, people just have the hard conversation. But you’re here to share with us. I think probably one of the things that you could speak to is, how do we do that the right way? Right? How do we do it in a way that, in part, alleviate some of our stress around having those types of conversations, but also just helping us approach it the right way? What do you see in your work?

Dulcee Loehn  15:24

Well, yeah, so I’ll get to that in a minute. I just want to finish one more thought, because it really pertains to what we’re talking about today. And this is about, I will admit, 100%, that one of the hardest things that I asked my most of my clients to do based on the issues that they’re having within the organization, is to establish and identify what kind of culture do they want? How do they want their people to behave? And then…

Heather Pearce Campbell  15:50

Here, we’re talking about square one, yeah.

Dulcee Loehn  15:53

Yeah, because you can’t coach again, you can’t coach on coachable people. So the first thing is to, if you want to succeed, change your department, change your business. First is to identify the culture. You want identify the core values, you want people to make decisions by the live by. And then here’s the hard part, commit to it 100%, which means it comes back to this termination issue, which means that you cannot tolerate anything that doesn’t fit with that culture. Right, you have to commit to it 100%, you’ve got to go all in. And it usually things get a little worse before they get better. But once they get better, you’re very, very glad you did it. And it pays off, because now you’ve got a team, everybody’s showing up. They’re positive. And now we have a team of very coachable people. So let’s just talk first about one of the things I like to point out to managers, CEOs is that if you want to be a coach first, the first thing you have to understand is, what’s the job description of the coach? Like what are the key things that we need to do as coaches? Right? The first thing is, we need to when we have a conversation with people, we need to identify with them. Where do they want to be? And where are they today? We talked about that, right? Being honest about where we are today. But we’ve got to I’ve call it point A and point B, right? We have to define those two things with them, get the employee to define those two things, then we help them and facilitate them in plotting the course of how do we get from point A to point B? What are some of the ways that we might be able to get there. And then the fourth part is giving positive feedback, oftentimes forgotten and skipped over. We have an attitude of well, I pay them to do the job. So they’re just expected. But positive feedback is really really important. Yeah, kids, pets, people. Right, right. And then the final part of the job description is I think, what you refer to it, and that’s the course correction, right? So when people go off course, we want to get them back on course, right? So one of the key pieces of that course correction is think of yourself as like you’re reporting the weather, right? You’re recording the weather, so you’re gonna take the emotion out of it. So the first thing we need to do is to in order to give this corrective feedback, we want to check our intention, if something has gone wrong, drastically wrong. And I’m dealing with it right now. My intention at that moment, might be to strike back to yell at somebody to punish. Yeah, so I need to wait for a time because what coaches are trying to do, what a coach does is build people up and act like an ally helping them get where they want to go, right. That’s the whole point of coaching.

Heather Pearce Campbell  16:29

All right, let’s pause for a moment and hear from today’s sponsor. Are you an entrepreneur who is on track to make a million or more in revenue this year in your business? If so, your business is likely facing a host of legal issues that are right for support. And if you are like so many of my clients at this level, you are likely tired of taking unnecessary risks and a DIY approach to legal support in your business. You’re ready to tackle the mess of legal documents, six legal gaps that you have. You want to take care of your IP, your clients, your business, and avoid unnecessary conflict and risk in the process. If this is you, and beyond just being an entrepreneur, you are a catalyst and are committed to your mission and your impact in the world. I invite you to get in touch. You could be a fit for my catalyst club, a small business legal support program that I designed for my high level clients. Just like you, you can find out more at legalwebsitewarrior.com. Just click on the Work with Me tab to learn more about the catalyst club and other ways that I support my clients, a fabulous group of world changing entrepreneurs, I might add, you’ve done the initial legwork in your business. And now you want to soar. And you know that you can only go as high and as far as your legal foundation lets you go. So get in touch today, hop over to legalwebsitewarrior.com, click on the Work with Me tab. And if you have any questions, get in touch through the Contact link on my site, I look forward to connecting it would be a joy to support you on your path.

Heather Pearce Campbell  20:41

Right? Well, and I feel like is even I think getting to the point of thinking of yourself as a coach, can we talk about that? Because it feels like you know, there’s step one of the creating the right culture and atmosphere and values. But I think even just having as a leader of your business, even if you start as a business of one, right, knowing that you’re gonna build team, I talked to us about how you build the right mindset, because I think some people may not naturally be a coach, or they don’t think of their role as coach, like, talk to us about that transition.

Dulcee Loehn  21:20

Okay, well, a lot of us over a certain age, which I won’t get into, you know, who you are, right? Have been rewarded our entire careers for problem solving. So solving problems for others. And that’s typically how we also translate our value that we bring, right? Right, if I can take care of something, oh, problem solved, you know that that I’m more valuable, right? But being a coach is different. And it’s a big, big paradigm shift for most of us. And it’s really a paradigm shift for everybody. I would say it’s worse for people over certain age, because we’ve been rewarded differently. But even for younger people, depending on their behavioral style, some people are more prone to just somebody comes to you with a problem, you tell them a solution, they go away, right? It’s quick. It’s a paradigm shift to saying no, I’m going to empower this person to solve their own problem, which means we have to dial our ego down a little bit to write and accept the fact that maybe how we would have solved the problem is different friends, and how they might solve the problem. However, the result will be the same. So it’s a little bit, it’s a big paradigm shift. And it’s really, the coach comes from the perspective of I am here to facilitate and helping you get where you want to go. So it is an ego shift to because it’s never about me as the coach, it’s never about me, right? It’s always about them. And so it’s really just being an advocate for someone else. So moving away from that problem solving mindset, that mindset of it’s quick, it’s easy, they come to me, I tell them what to do, they go away, and moving to now we’re going to ask more questions, we’re going to listen better, we’re going to listen better. And we’re going to ask a lot of powerful questions, and get that what I’m going to call the coachee, to come up with their own solutions and their own plan, right, and anticipate their own obstacles that might get in the way and how they’re going to get past those. And so it’s really being that advocate for helping others to grow. And how does this help us as managers? Well, the feedback that I’ve gotten from people who have really perfected this is less stress, they can focus on their core responsibilities, because they’re not putting out fires anymore. They go home at five o’clock, rather than six or seven. You know, there’s a lot of really personal, somewhat selfish benefits that we’re gonna get out of this as managers and executives. And I’ll just add that we are hearing a lot today in workplaces about how the heck do I manage and supervise Gen Z’s and millennials being the coach is a big part more than half the battle to doing that, because what those generations really cherish is autonomy and independence. They want to solve their own problems, they want to feel like they’re growing, they want that autonomy, and being the coach rather than the director allows them to do that as well. And so you’re that a big part of answering that question is be the coach.

Heather Pearce Campbell  24:34

I love this so much. And what I want to ask is, don’t you think that’s actually true for most people? Not just that, yes, it really I think, I think for a long time people put up with certain systems and structures in the workplace because, you know, whatever, they’re old school was different. It was different and it was kind of like, okay, this is just the way that things are and you Now I’m gonna go with it. And I do agree with you that those paradigms are changing. And people are less tolerant of things that I think have not worked well for people for a really long time.

Dulcee Loehn  25:14

And let’s face it, we can embed it, the old command and control didn’t work well at all. We just tolerated it, because we felt like we had to.

Heather Pearce Campbell  25:23

Right, well, and, you know, on this point that the tremendous gift to me in stepping into that position for a year and leading that team, as I knew from the beginning, I’m not the expert, you guys have been the one on the project doing the work on the ground, like, and so I knew right away, like the only way I could lead was asking questions, how are things going for you? What do you need from me? What’s not working? Right? What’s working and, you know, 15 is a lot of people for one person to manage, I will say that I learned in a hurry. And I’ve read lots of business books, but that whole rule about you should be able to feed one team with a pizza or something. I think it’s like a Jeff Bezos rule like you really can’t manage more like I truly understand what’s going on in their day to day world more than about seven or eight people. It’s, that was a learning lesson for me. And I always felt spread a little thin. But my goal was that we had at least one solid team meeting per week. And then throughout the week that I had individual meetings with everybody on the team for those regular touches of like, how is this going? What do you need? How can we make this better? What what are the results that we’re getting, you know, with whatever piece of work they were working on, it was all part of a system. And it you know, when I listened and I was a little resistant at first to some of the feedback, because there was a gentleman on the team who was like, I really think you need to get in and understand the database. I didn’t want to get in and understand the database. I actually really just enjoyed the people part, right. But once I was willing to be like, okay, he keeps telling me this, I wonder how it would go if I tried to get in and understand that. And because it was a massive database, 1000s and 1000s of individuals and even more pieces of information within that. But I did and guess what happened, it improved the experience, it improved my ability to manage that team and improved our collective decision making. And so you know, that was a lesson to me like, Hmm, maybe I should have listened to him a little earlier. I felt some resistance around that. But like your people will tell you they have the idea.

Heather Pearce Campbell  27:43

can handle, yeah.

Dulcee Loehn  27:43

Of the information they know. Yes, they do. Yeah. And the beautiful thing about coaching and when you really perfect this, and it doesn’t happen overnight, right. But once you perfect it, the more people you can have on your team, right? Because now you have a team of high performers, who are solving a lot of their own problems, because what’s happening in most is, in most organizations today and for most managers, is they’re getting interrupted constantly throughout the day. What should I do with this? This happened? What do I do? That goes away? A lot of that goes away when you coach and coach and coach and over time those interruptions decrease. Because you’re developing a team of self starters, you’re developing a team and creating a team of high performing empowered self starters, problem solvers. And they’re solving problems. So the interruptions decrease. So when you’re an organization is viewed as all the time they they assigned too many reports to one person, the more that person can coach, the more they can manage that…

Dulcee Loehn  27:43

Yeah, the more they can handle. Yeah.

Heather Pearce Campbell  28:02

What do you think is the biggest barrier for people around adopting that process? Is it that managers think that they’re supposed to have the answers like, is it this feeling of thinking like, I should know, this? Or I somehow should be in control of this? Because they just feel like that’s something that’s put on or is it like a personal thing? And I’m sure it varies individual to individual, about just being challenged and giving up control over how it’s done?

Dulcee Loehn  29:22

Yes. All the above. Right. Yeah. It’s just our mindset. So like I said, we’ve been rewarded for problem solving. In addition to that, yeah, we feel like our job security is somehow tied in to having all the answers, right, and like, you know, all those other things you said to you know, we have this fear of that. And a lot of people think, Well, I have to be here to tell people what to do or to solve the problems for people, because that’s my job security. And that’s how I’m a great manager, but really, the reality is a great manager can leave, like to go on vacation or something. And nobody notices because everything stays the same, things don’t fall apart when they leave. People don’t freak out when they leave, right? They leave and the system just keeps on running the processes just keep on running. That’s the sign of a great manager, right is that you can walk away for a little while. And everything works as if you were there. So again, it’s just that’s the biggest hurdle. Is this mindset that we’ve been programmed? So one of my friends who teaches me, who mentors me on mindfulness and things of that nature, right, he talks about, we’re always thinking about and focusing on what we need to learn, when probably the bigger chunk is what we need to unlearn. So we have to unlearn this attitude that we have towards what a manager is. Yeah. Right. And what I like to say about myself as the coach is, I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room, I just need to be the most curious.

Heather Pearce Campbell  31:08

Well, isn’t that true? When you read books that are written by phenomenal business leaders, what do they all say? They all say, I hired people smarter than me. 

Dulcee Loehn  31:20

Yes. Right. Yes. And I got news for us all, we’re never going to know everything. No, you know, stop trying, because you’re never going to know everything. And I think there’s a piece to this two in the mindset where it’s just faster. So I look at managers as being in the trenches, right? Phones ring, and people come into them customers calling, you know, there’s a lot going on. And so it’s just faster and easier to tell somebody what to do and have them go away. Because now it’s done. Coaching does take longer, I’m not gonna lie, unless you have a super, super high performer. Most coaching conversations take longer than just telling somebody what to do. So I oftentimes get the efficiency excuse, right? Well, I was gonna say, it was fast. I just told him what to do. Because it was faster. Well, you got to fight against that, I get that you’re in the trenches, I get that. But you’ve got to fight against that have those coaching conversations? Because the more you do it, the faster they get.

Heather Pearce Campbell  32:20

So I’m glad you brought that point up. Because my next question was going to be can you speak to the investment of time, and not just even time in the conversation, but repeated time over time over time, right, because I do think some people give up too early. And what I’ve noticed probably mostly by accident, truthfully, I can’t take much credit for myself, because it’s not like I have a ton of experience in hiring and, you know, leading big teams, I’ve got minimal experience in my own little business and some experience and other people’s businesses. But like, with my own, I hired a gal who came with basically, I will say zero applicable skills for what she was being hired for. But I just had a very strong instinct that she had the right attitude, and where other people showed up, and were like, Yeah, I know how to do ABC and XYZ, but they didn’t seem overly enthusiastic about it. This girl was like, hire me, hire me, hire me, I can learn this, right? And so I ended up doing that. And, of course, it takes time to do the skill building. But over time, as things would come up, that I’d go, Hmm, I really don’t want that on my plate anymore. I would just say, I wonder if this is something that you could begin to take ownership of like, if you see this in the future, I invite you to respond in it and to the way that you would want to, let’s just see what happens. And over time, do you know that like we had a team meeting yesterday, and I had this list of things that I was like, I had no idea if they’d been handled right, because I’ve been sick, and my family’s been sick, and we haven’t connected in a few weeks. And I started going through and she was like, oh, Don, Oh, I already did that. Oh, that’s done. Oh, blah, blah. And like, basically, there was nothing left for me to ask for help on because she had just automatically already handled these things. And I like I got done with it. And I just was like feeling so happy yesterday because it just compared even to where we were a year ago. The growth and the ownership. I mean, it doesn’t even compare.

Dulcee Loehn  34:26

Well, that’s why I talk about culture and values and hiring for attitude. And you are so right. What happens is there is a time commitment in the beginning. But it goes kind of like this, it goes up but then it starts coming down. Right. Oh, yeah. And people have to hang in long enough to start having it go down and usually people quit too soon right or give up while this just takes too long and they put the book on the shelf and then they give up and so you got to stick with it long enough and from a time commitment, I will tell you it depends is on the performer? Yeah, totally, it’s a high performer, great attitude, those conversations tend to be a lot quicker and shorter, right. But if you have maybe a plateaued performer or somebody that’s like maybe declining in performance, then those conversations can take a little bit longer. But again, it always follows this trend, right? There’s more time you invest in the beginning, but then it goes down. And we quit too early, as we do with so many things losing weight, or dieting, or whatever. We quit too soon, because we haven’t started reaping the full benefit yet. And we don’t have all those good feelings you’ve talked about yet. Yeah. But so I just I encourage my clients just hang in there and just keep going, keep going, because, and they always do they get to the other side. And it’s like, yeah, I’m going home at five, I’m spending time with my family. I’m feeling better. Like you said, you had all these good feelings, you know, and it’s so new to them, because they’ve gotten used to a normal of just constantly putting out fires and not feeling so good at the end of the day. Totally, totally, you know, and to go home feeling like, wow, me and my team were productive today. What a great. I mean, that’s great.

Heather Pearce Campbell  36:13

So, a couple of final questions, I totally want to be respectful of your time, but one and I should have asked this at the very beginning. What is it about business that motivates you?

Dulcee Loehn  36:26

I look at it like a project, right? I like getting businesses to run like fine tune pianos. Right. So and what I love about businesses, it never gets boring, because there’s so many different facets to it. You know, you’ve got the people facet, you’ve got the financial, you know, you’ve got…

Heather Pearce Campbell  36:48

You’ve got the constant problems facet.

Dulcee Loehn  36:50

Right. Yeah. Customer P, I mean, there’s a lot of different things. And so, getting all those cogs to run, right, getting everything running smoothly, is just so rewarding to me, I just love that, you know.

Heather Pearce Campbell  37:06

Are you a systems person? Or do you love the people piece? Like, what’s the biggest part of it that really lights you up?

Dulcee Loehn  37:13

You know? That’s a really interesting question, I would have said, I’ve been doing this 15 going on 16 years. 10 years ago, I would have said, it’s the systems but what I’ve discovered over time, is it’s the people, the relationship that I develop with the client, and they tend to stay with me a long time you develop this relationship, that’s just I don’t think I would trade for anything, you know, it’s just this, really, it’s kind of coach clients slash friends slash colleague, slash and I’m kind of like an invisible CEO sometimes. So sort of this calm, and that relationship is just fantastic. I cherish it. And I really think that at the end of the day is what drives me the most.

Heather Pearce Campbell  38:06

So true. I feel the same way. When I get off calls with clients, like, how lucky am I to spend time with people that I just adore? You know, they’re doing cool things. They have the right mindset, they’re into solving problems. They’re into treating people the right way. So I totally get it. Who are your favorite clients? Who are the folks that you really, really like to help?

Dulcee Loehn  38:30

I really target those business owners. My niche is typically business owners, I do some executive coaching as well. But I really like those business owners that are in established businesses already successful. And they’re doing, you know, a million dollars in annual revenue, or over kind of between that million dollar and $15 million range, where I’m still working with the CEO. Yeah, right, or their right hand person. So that’s kind of my niche. That’s what I really, really like. And so we’re able to kind of tackle all of those different facets, facets of the business and and set those goals say, Okay, where are we starting from? Where are we going and then watching that needle, move with them and celebrating with them as we make have those successes. It’s just fantastic. It’s what gets me up in the morning.

Heather Pearce Campbell  39:26

So fun. I think I may know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask it anyways. Where give us like some of the first pieces that you tackle when working with clients, where do you start?

Dulcee Loehn  39:37

Couple of things. So the first session is typically a behavioral communication assessment. So I have them take an assessment, so we can talk about how to communicate together. Yeah, but also how they communicate with their team. Yeah, and with all of us we all have a different behavioral style combination. With any combination, there’s some great things that you bring to the table, and there’s some things that you need to work on. Right. And so we talk through all of that. So we get some clarity around that. And then we go right into, where are we today? Where do you want to be? 

Heather Pearce Campbell  40:13

Yeah, what’s not working? What do I need to? Yeah. 

Dulcee Loehn  40:16

So I put together what I call their playbook, right? We create this playbook together that has all of our goals in it, where we are today. And then as we begin coaching, we start identifying, okay, what are the action items we need to do to achieve that goal, right? And when do we want to do them? So for all intents and purposes, we really are putting together that strategic plan. Right, and then we’re acting on that plan. In addition to that, while we’re doing that, sort of concurrently, they’re doing session material, they’re reading material, they’re maybe learning some new things, they answer questions for me. And that’s kind of the springboard for the coaching conversation, which causes other things to bubble to the surface that we that are impacting the goals that we can work on. So yeah, it’s a combination of things. But we always start with the behavioral assessment. And then as well, just that, where are we starting from? And what are the goals? Where do we want to go? So we started setting that path. Those are the first few handful of sessions. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  41:15

Yeah. I love this so much. I mean, when I talk to people about building their professional team, right, there’s some core people that I want on every business owner or entrepreneurs professional team, and obviously, it’s going to include a good accountant or CPA, right? Hopefully, somebody who’s helping you with wealth building, like a financial strategist, separate from a CPA, you know, an attorney, like, obviously, I consider myself pretty core to many of the businesses that I serve, and a business coach, right. And the old school days, you’d also say, a banker, but a lot of people don’t any longer have an actual relationship with their bank. Right. So that has shifted over time.

Dulcee Loehn  41:57

Well, it’s fair to say I’m biased, but if you read a lot of business success books, you know, with successful people, you will find that pretty much all of them either had a coach or a mentor or somebody serving that that role. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  42:12

That’s right. Yeah, no, it’s so true. We all need it is so true, we all need it. And most of us need it in multiple areas. Right? So guaranteeing health, you name it.

Dulcee Loehn  42:27

So true. So true.

Heather Pearce Campbell  42:29

So Idon’t see I so appreciate you today, this has just been such an enjoyable conversation, you have a very generous gift that you’re offering. Would you like to talk about that for a minute?

Dulcee Loehn  42:40

Yeah, so I’m offering a free coaching session for anyone who has gotten a lot of value out of this conversation and would like to talk about their business, or their executive role within a company and might be interested in some coaching, I’ll do a free coaching session for you. That will last about 45 minutes. But we’ll do that. And it just kind of gives us clarity, helps people kind of get some clarity around where they want to go and where they are today. And also decide if coaching is right for them. And it’s something they may want to pursue. So it’s a really a very low pressure, very casual conversation.

Heather Pearce Campbell  43:14

Oh, totally. But such an amazing, generous offer. Right, folks? I don’t really think there’s anything more generous than the offer of time. So if you need this, and we all do, you should be running, not walking to connect. They’ll see where do you like for people to find you online? Where do you like to connect?

Dulcee Loehn  43:33

Well, I think the easiest thing to do is to just email me I think you’ll you’ll share my social media posts as well. So totally reach out to me I’m easy to find on LinkedIn. But my email is probably best and easiest which is just dloehn@focalpointcoaching.com.

Heather Pearce Campbell  43:53

Nice. I love it. We will definitely share your email, we’ll share the links to your socials. Thank you and I met on LinkedIn, which I love. I am personally a fan of that platform. And honestly, some of my very, very favorite people who I’ve never met face to face are some of my like, favorite people to refer to and connect with. I’ve met through LinkedIn. So me too. Yeah. I’m a super fan. We will share your LinkedIn link. Also. You guys, you can find those at the show notes page. As a reminder, that’s legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Find Dulcee’s episode there and you can follow up and connect with her. They’ll see, so I appreciate you. What final thoughts would you like to leave the listeners with today?

Dulcee Loehn  44:40

Oh, my goodness. Well, I think the thought is just start today, right? Just start today. Just take little steps. Don’t try to be the perfect coach right out of the gate. You don’t need to worry about that. Just start focusing on being that advocate and not solving the problem. Start asking questions and help that other person to solve their own problem and just do it in little increments to develop that habit. So you can change that paradigm for yourself. I think that’s what I would that would love that your listeners to do.

Heather Pearce Campbell  45:14

Yeah, well, the baby steps make it feel much more accessible, right? Like, I think that it’s a super important place to start. They’ll see thank you so much. I really am looking forward to sharing you conversation. Yes, look forward to connecting again soon.

Dulcee Loehn  45:30

Okay, thank you so much.

GGGB Outro  45:33

Thank you for joining us today on the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. For key takeaways, links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more, see the show notes which can be found at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us too. Keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.