Hey guys , ryan DeMint from Chasing Financial Freedom podcast . Hope you guys are having a great day . Today on the podcast , we have Brad Smith , and Brad is making awareness matters in business . So , brad , welcome to the show . Well , I'm here . So before we get into what you're doing , how about a little bit about yourself ?
Well , how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go ? Hey however far you want to go . Okay , I've been coaching CEOs and business owners and executives on business growth for 28 years .
Before that , I was an analytical and formulation chemist , which meant you take a concept , you build the tools into the beaker and you put it in the right conditions and you make it happen .
Interesting . So what would be ? Something that the general population or the listeners would know , something that you worked with in that space ?
Oh , we did my dad's company I think that just recently we sold it but Tech Labs , we made over-the-counter skin products . One of them was well , there's several CaliGel , which was a calamine-like lotion , only it was clearer . Corticool , which was also another gel product .
Tepnir , poison oak and ivy cleanser was the first one my dad stumbled into which was pretty brilliant and it was because of grandfather Dan . The FDA says yeah , go for it , and it takes the urushi oils that cause from poison oak , poison , ivy poison , sumac off your skin .
If you're slow enough to react before the rash sets in , she would go out into the backyard and pull poison oak out of the backyard with her bare hands . Coming to wash up would never get a poison oak rash .
So tell us a little bit about Stellar Insights and how you came about that .
Stellar Insights . Second now Ed's wife brought me an article about a woman who'd gone through Kirch University and she said you're already doing this , Brad , you might as well have education for what you're doing . I was doing a formula sheet consulting . Now , excuse me , that's about the time . So formula formula consulting Okay , that was for a death company .
You know me directly in the company . So they hired me as a consultant , just sort of .
that was a decade okay , so then since then you've been coaching specifically ceos business owners , ceos . Yeah , is there a particular space that you focus in on ?
Yeah , human .
So like business space , as in was there an industry .
No , not really . I have found that there's a few I don't work with because they don't move fast enough inside themselves . They tend to be so higher education . I tried that . That doesn't seem to work well . Other than that , if someone is ambitious or curious and keepy kind , they're a good client .
Curiosity means you're willing to listen to other ideas than your own .
So what brings these CEOs and business owners into your space ?
Almost always they want more money . That's the visionary process . If they want more money , ask them what's the upper limit you think you can reach Getting the business with the business model they built ? And they give me a number . And the fun part is we almost always if it depends on the situation , but almost always we can go way beyond what they think .
The first time I'd been in my business maybe a decade I got a client and I took him from $3.5 million up to 12.9 million in our three-year period and then the following year with all the things we'd done . We restructured literally the whole company Sales , marketing , production and he went from 12.9 to 13.2 million .
We multiplied his net profit by a factor of five . Wow . So we had all the pieces in place and he did a good job .
Can you talk a little bit about what you do when you're working with a CEO and business owners ?
The first thing I do anytime I talk with someone is I'm listening . My key skill is listening and insight right . I sell insight right . So what happens is I listen for what they're currently experiencing , what the business is , what the revenue is , what the people are and what is interfering with improving the rate of their growth .
In other words , if you take someone from , let's say , 20% growth to 40% growth , you change the trajectory , and that's where I work today , whereas what's working , what's not working , what are the gaps , what are the blocks , and then , in the process , I help them figure out what part of them is interfering with the growth of the company , who you are .
The short way to put it is you can't grow a company beyond the limitations of the leader period . The point of having a coach is to have someone outside that bubble talk to us , help us understand and help us expand our , if you will , our universe . I think that's one of the major things of a relationship , whether it's romantic or not .
Right Relationships reinvented the human race . More than having just one human on the planet planet , we have more than one , so we can learn from each other .
There's the adventure so how do you take that approach with ceos and business owners ?
Because I can tell you this , I've got some of the same problems , but I know that only way to grow my business is surround myself with people that are not like-minded , they think differently than me , but we have the end result of the businesses to grow it and to help our clients .
The challenge is and this is just me personally is , as I'm growing this side of my business like the lending side , I'm also on the affordable housing space side you have to watch your budget and you can't just go out and spend willy nilly to bring people on .
So I always have this joke is you need to work with people that you not just can't afford but also can't miss out with , because they bring a whole nother set of skills that you don't have .
And that's a struggle , for I know , for me as an entrepreneur and a business owner , because I'm like my gosh , I'm turning over so much to this individual , but in the end it's there's a weight off my , my chest or my back that this person can do all these other things that I struggled with .
We can't be all things , all people . We can't . We have a limitation . There's a reason for that we have a limitation . There's a reason for that we have to learn how to listen . One of the things that I tell people is what you know about yourself is the only way you can understand what you know about other people .
In other words , if you care about somebody , you can read other people's ability to care by reading yourself . If you can't see me , but put your hand on your chest , that radar right there is how you can read other people . You can't . If you don't get any attention here , you can't hear other people .
One of the ways I stumbled into that was if someone is very depressed , what do they do ? They drop their chin . What they're doing is they're focusing all their energy and their awareness internally . They're listening to their heart and they're trying to build a better connection there . Depression is not a fun state , right ?
But if you hold your chin level , then you are in an equal relationship with yourself and the outside world . There's a few people that lift their chin above level . That means they're disconnecting from themselves because they do not want to know what their radar is telling them .
How did this all come about and how you came across it ?
I've been coaching for about 12 years . I was part of a networking group to get more clients . If we had a gentleman show up and , other than being obnoxious , he had his chin above level almost the whole time . I watched that really carefully how he interacted with the group . It was just interesting to watch that .
One of my favorite things to do is to watch couples shock together . You can watch what is the rapport place in them and watch where they disconnect . If you watch deeper than that , you can read their whole character in a picture . If you're careful even more deeper , you can listen to them .
So I used to do phone coaching online when I started and people across the country . We didn't have Zoom then we didn't have video . At that time I could hear their whole character in their voice . Took a little more work in watching them . It's all there . We broadcast constantly who we are . At almost all of our level Character comes out of us .
If you think about that and being able to watch it , then you flip over and you what's the universe doing with that ? What are the mechanisms for that ? I have a short story that I'll drag you into . Okay , when I was 18 , fall term , freshman year at Oregon State studying chemical engineering .
I developed an ulcerated colon and the doctor said to me when I got to him a month later he said gee , brad , if you'd waited such weeks to come see me , you'd have bled to death . Wow , I didn't know it was that bad . I have no clue because I was 18 , right .
And he said you'll never eat strawberries , corn or lettuce or anything with roughage , ever again in your life . My 18 year old brain said that's not happening . Then he said this sentence changed my life . He said you have a psychosomatic disease . Your emotions affect the severity of your symptoms . I was in pain all the time .
I was conscious , I was in pain and I was bleeding , and so I figured , if it was psychosomatic and I knew what that meant I created the disease . If I created it , I could uncreate it . Would it quit ?
No , it took me about six months to stop or at least wear down the bleeding , probably a year to get it to where it was just episodic , and then the pain took another three years , but it was then still episodic . So that was 18 , 21 , and that range . When I was 47 , I finally figured out . There was a key memory that I had at about 11 , 12 months old .
I went back in with hypnosis and reworked that memory to an adult perspective instead of a toddler perspective , or my disease went away .
Can we kind of transition that into how did that play out of your life and the coaching you do today ? I'm guessing you're applying some of those things to the coaching you're doing today .
I had to work my body . I had to watch how it felt and I had to study my emotions and the interaction between my emotions and my body . I studied that . Then I started watching patterns and then I started watching .
Where did the initial decisions , where did the energy come in that led me to understanding character , and then the subconscious , and understanding all of those things we don't consciously will ourselves through the disease , but we also don't consciously will ourselves into poverty or wealth . Right , it takes conscious effort to do that .
If you work with patterns within your life , I know that when I need to go dig another layer down and clear out another layer of my subconscious , because there are little thoughts running around the edge that never voice themselves unless you go talk to them directly . So I'm a 28 , 28-year , 29-year meditator .
That means that all you do is you sit , no matter what method you use , you're sitting and you're watching your mind and , as a result of that , you learn how to be objective and subjective at the same time . When I'm working with clients , I watch their character , I watch the character of their business . I watch the character of their customers .
What is it that their customers are actually getting ? And then how does that flow ? You have a customer optimize it so they can get more customers , and that is the process , or they didn't get more customers .
And that is the process . Doesn't that also start with the CEO or the actual owner of the business and how ? That I love what you're talking about . I'm just that's a very interesting way to take basically an approach to coaching . It's totally different .
But when you have somebody that's struggling with this , how do you find out that you can work with them to be able to help them ? Anybody can change . It's just a matter of do they want to put the time and effort in ?
Well , we have three ways of learning . We can learn from brick walls , which are the really beautiful ones , right . We can learn from the words people say and the words we say beautiful ones , right . We can learn from the words people say and the words we say their thoughts , right . Or we can learn from the whispers .
I like to listen to the whispers , the things that are at the back of the mind . My job is to listen to all of them and bring out the stuff they can't quite get to . Before they can get to it , I just catalyze and shorten the distance and time it takes to get placed . That's my job . I like that .
Or if someone could stumble to it in five years and get all the answers they need to do that , I'd like to shorten it up to a year . That happened Then the next time we turned it around . The shortest client was six months . We changed his natural native speech pattern . The longest one was 13 years and he built a whole new . He was an attorney .
He built a whole new national practice out of it , so that was pretty fun too .
Oh , that's interesting . As a business owner and a CEO who would be your ideal client that you'd want to work with . Or if someone's listening right now to the podcast , how would they know that they would want ? They need your type of help . One but two where to really start and understand all this .
Are they frustrated with the growth of their business ?
Very simple .
I love it . Is there a possibility that they could grow their company faster and not be in frustration or pain ?
No , that resonates with pretty much every business owner Going a little bit deeper under the hood , and so forth the struggles . But where do you jump off and say this is the ideal client for me and it's not ? Is that in that initial contact that you have with him or her and understand where they're at to make that decision ?
And how do they determine if you're the right person to help them get to that next level ?
Depends on the resonance the rapport we build . If there's no rapport , there's not really going to be movement . Okay , if there's no record , there's not really going to be movement . Okay , if there's a recorder I mean you know what , pretty close to the first five minutes we're talking that's a recorder then there's alignment .
If there's alignment , then I can call things out of their mind and their subconscious and their situation . It will help them understand . Do you know ? Anybody who does has known Epiphany , my word of the year is . I draw Epiphany to them faster . I talk to someone for an hour .
I pretty much know they and their organization , what Epiphany is , the whole organization and the individuals , the CEO I'm working with . Organization and the individuals the CEO I'm working with . I don't know anywhere from an hour to a month to six months ahead of time because it takes time to filter ideas through the bubble every once in a while .
So , once you've done that , what's the game plan ? To be able to help them grow their business , where do you ? I know you want to peel the layer of the onion back , but just some nuggets and some high-level items that you could share with the audience I sat down .
I had to do this at one point with myself . I sat down and I was having trouble wanting to grow my business . So I thought , oh , at that point I need to do cold calling .
I went to the library , checked out the largest , the largest clients or the largest companies in the Northwest region and checked out the books on selling , found one or two that were really good , studied them really deeply and I started cold calling . I had one afternoon that was horrific .
Person after person , I was calling them up and saying , because we didn't have the internet , I said may I send you a brochure about the work I do ? And I got 40% of them to say yes , but 60% of them and the last five people , and certainly the last gentleman , just annihilated . I stopped myself and I said said just doesn't feel good .
And then I sat down and I said okay , what are you actually doing ? You're offering people an opportunity , but what's interfering ? I realized I didn't have enough character strength at the time and even though I knew the script and I knew how , what I found was I made everyone responsible doing a call , responsible for my self-worth .
That's a ridiculous idea In Colandone . What I realized was I didn't even give my parents that they're still alive . At the time I didn't even give my parents the responsibility for setting my daughter up here . Why would I give her a complete stranger , not responsibility . Then I understood we live our lives from the outside in instead of from the inside out .
I know , yep Right , live our lives from the outside in instead of from the inside out . Yep Right , and if I'm living my life from the inside out , it means that I'm offering people an opportunity , but I don't make them responsible for who I am or what I am .
That's pretty deep and we all struggle with that . I have a pod .
The other podcast is called Chasing Happiness and that's truly just a play on words , because we do chase happiness from the outside , because we're chasing all those materialistic things that are out there and we're chasing the Joneses , and the Joneses are broke , they're in debt and ready to fall off the edge . But I love that we have this instant gratification .
Love technology , love the Internet , love social media , love technology , love the internet , love social media . But majority of the stuff that we see on social media is fake , just to get likes and views and shares . So people can feel good about themselves when they're realistically are fighting the battle that no one else knows about .
I relate that to business too . It's not always rosy in business and you have to be transparent with yourself and know exactly where you're at and what you can and can't do , and I don't think we have those hard conversations at times .
So I'm 74 and I just realized , maybe four or five years ago , you know , I'd helped several people become millionaires . Brad , why don't you do that for yourself ? So I sat down and started working through all of my issues . What are the things that , in the back of my mind , kept me from believing that I could be a millionaire ?
Then , beyond that , focusing my energy on not money , that's just a measurement , one of my friends comes to me and says oh , I want to make more money . I say , okay , we'll use that as a measurement . But why do you want to grow your company ? And we did . I have a client . We take it in from about two and a half million to 35 million , which is fun .
My goal is to add at least one more zero to his life . That would be a lot of fun . But then the process moved him from being able to say your , my main goal is to get more money to find your billion dollars in your life . What are you going to do to make yourself complete ? Who are you and what is that I ? I can't do .
Someone comes to you with a bad opinion of you . What do you do with it ? Do you make it yours and inside your heart or do you just study it ? You can have it outside yourself , right , yeah ? What do you do with your self-worth ? How do you grow your self-worth ? There's people that say that I think this is true .
Self-worth is a measurement of how much money you're worth . Money is a reflection of that . If you self-worth is a choice and if you're working on self-worth , all of us have met narcissists , people that are arrogant , and what that means is underneath they're hiding their insecurities or they never understood .
We all go through the narcissistic stage when we're about owning us , right , but some people don't get the chance to outgrow that and become aware and empathetic of other people . What are you aware of ? What do you need to know ? And then , where are you reading yourself into other people , kurt ?
did I answer your question ? Oh yeah , I like that . That's great , we got to wrap this up . So a couple more questions and then we'll get going . One is are you currently working or looking to take on new clients ?
Yep , okay , the four requirements , what you asked about Smart , curious , ambitious and kind , because I don't work with unkind people ?
Okay , and if listeners want to reach out to you , where's the best place for them to connect with you ?
My website is stellarinsightcom .
Okay , I will also link that in the show notes so they can actually get to that . Thank you very much for coming on . Love the conversation , love what you're doing . You have a very unique approach , but also one that's very good because you're going inside out instead of outside , in which we're all struggling with .
Thank you for your time today and love what you're doing .
Thank you . I want everybody that's listening to know if you add a zero or two to your life possible .
And the last piece is when you do add that one or two zeros , what are you going to do with it ? So , thank you , sir .