The Unsure Entrepreneur

The Unsure Entrepreneur Podcast
Episode 23
SPEAKERS
Bruce Mayhew, Roger Pierce

Roger Pierce 00:00
You're listening to the unsure entrepreneur podcast with Roger Pierce, whether you're scribbling business ideas on a napkin or wrestling with the should I shouldn't I question. Get ready to explore the realities, the risks and the rewards of entrepreneurship as we share the stories, scars and successes of small business owners.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The unsure entrepreneur podcasts. I'm your host, Roger Pierce. I'm so excited to introduce my guest here today, and let me tell you a bit about him. Bruce Mayhew. Is the founder of Bruce Mayhew consulting a firm specializing in leadership development, communication, training and organizational growth for over 20 years, a sought after corporate trainer, keynote speaker and executive coach, known for his engaging and results driven approach, Bruce has worked with countless organizations to tackle challenges like helping leaders inspire greatness within their teams, having safe and respectful, difficult conversations, bridging generational differences and mastering time management. His training is tailored to each client's unique needs, creating practical, actionable strategies that have teams motivated and better equipped to succeed. Now, one client described Bruce's impact perfectly. They said, Bruce not only teaches valuable skills, but transforms the way our team approaches communication and collaboration with a focus on real world application, Bruce's training approach combines humor, insight and actionable techniques that empowers employees and managers to work smarter and thrive together.

Welcome to the podcast, Bruce. It's great to be here.

So much to explore with you here today, because not only are you an entrepreneur veteran, but you're in a sector of small business consulting and training and speaking that so many people want to get into. And this is a podcast for people who are, you know, exploring entrepreneurship and all those different avenues. And I know you're going to share some amazing insights and some of your experiences to help people maybe consider those paths. So let's start by talking about the business of consulting. Kind of big picture? It a bit. Consulting has become a popular business model among startup entrepreneurs. As you know, in the United States, for example, management consulting market has been valued at over $300 billion reflecting a significant demand for consulting services that quote from Statista. It's the number one type of service business for many self employed people. It's the type of business many people currently working in a job somewhere. Think about starting up. Hey, I'm good at what I do, and I know a lot about a particular topic. Maybe I should quit my job open a consulting business. So what do you think of that idea? Is it a good path to follow Bruce?

02:42
I wouldn't it's a scary part of a career path. I'm glad I started it when I did and not now. It's certainly a different market, a different place, and there's a lot of different nuances that you can get to when it comes to communicating your message and getting people's attention and in selling yourself. So I'm glad I have the history that I have behind me. And why do you think it's so popular for first time entrepreneurs? Is it because it's a fairly easy path? I mean, you don't need a big restaurant or a big retail store. Why is it such a popular choice? I think they think it's an easy path. There's a lot of people who are good at something. Most of us are good at something. The challenge is being able to monetize it and get enough attention that you can make a living off of it. But yeah, it's easy to put up a website. Like, you don't even need a business card anymore. Like, when I started a business card is what made you legitimate. And you don't even need a business card anymore. I can't remember the last time anybody asked me for one of my business cards. You just need a website, you know, and then you can go off from there. So it's easy entry, you know, you can set up your business in an hour if you want. But it's the staying power that, I think, is what surprises people. What do you mean? Staying power? Well, you have to make a living out of it, right? You have to be able to get people's attention and they have to have confidence that you can deliver what you say, but also what they want. Those are to do two very different things about what people want and what you can deliver. So it's finding the balance between the two and making people confident that you can deliver what you what you say, and what they need. That's not so easy. You're talking about expectations Absolutely, first getting their attention, and then it's meeting their expectations during the sales process and then through the consulting or the training process.

Bruce Mayhew 05:00
Says you have to meet their expectations and and, frankly, exceed their expectations, and then following the training, you have to make sure that they still like you, that they're going to pay you, hopefully refer you to additional business. So much to unpack there. It's one of those moments where an entrepreneur goes, oh my god, I got the sale. I got the consulting gig, maybe my first one. What have I done now? I have to actually go and deliver on what I promised. It's frightening, isn't it, if you're new to all this, yeah, absolutely. And you could be a great salesperson, but it's the delivery that might be the challenge part, or you could be a great delivery person, and the sales part is the challenge part for you. Like, the weird thing about being an entrepreneur, I find, is that we have to be everything right. You have to be the subject matter expert, and you have to be the sales person, and you have to have at least some basic understanding of it nowadays, you have to be the time manager, and you have to be able to do the invoicing, or at least have an accountant that can do the invoicing for you. And you also have to like everything is is all about you. Before I became an entrepreneur, I worked for one of the big banks. And even before I worked for the banks, I always found myself in sales positions. And I always hated sales, but everybody kept saying, Bruce, you're so good at this. And I'm like, Yeah, but I don't like it. So the whole idea of working for the bank was to get out of sales. And lo and behold, I found myself in sales again. And then when I finally, when I finally decided to leave the bank and start my own business, well, here I am being a salesperson again, because I'm the subject matter expert, because I'm the contract guy, because I'm the presenter and the delivery person, but I still have to sell right which? I have to make sure that there's stuff in the pipeline, and that people are confident.

Roger Pierce 07:03
I've got to jump around a bit here, because you touched upon so much stuff. I want to come back to your origin story. Just to give people some context here, I dug this up online, the website, excellent business plans.com. Ranks consulting, which is what you're in as the second most popular type of business to start up, I think, next to a retail store, which I think is a big mistake for a lot of new entrepreneurs. It's so expensive, popular types of advice to offer as a consultant can be, you know, management, like you do, marketing, it. There really is no end to the types of consulting services one can provide. If you're an expert in that the website says that it's it ranks consulting as a business with a moderate to high success rate, especially of offering expertise that's got to be key. And success in this field is influenced by a reputation network and client base. We'll talk about sales in a minute. Now, this I found interesting. It said revenue projections range from $150,000 a year to 2 million annually. I would imagine that's for the upper end of the consultants out there. I'd like to be with a profit margin between me too, with a profit margin between 10% and 30% so a pretty healthy outlook, right for the ones who do well, any comment on that?

Bruce Mayhew 08:18
Yeah, I think it's, it's relatively accurate, just as reference, I see myself more as a corporate trainer and speaker than I do consultant, right? Like I get where the lines are crossed, but I try not to be a consultant, but I do try to provide them solutions from a training perspective. So that's where I like to turn lights on with groups or teams of people and get them thinking about doing things differently, but from a training perspective, as opposed to the consulting side, the interesting thing, I wonder how many failures are in that, because I do think that there's a lot of gain in that. I think there's a I in my career, in my 20 plus years of doing this, I've seen a whole lot of people start this business, or start a business similar to mine, and in six months, they accept a full time job, they leave it behind and are glad to do it. They like the stability of a full time job. And I get that. I totally get that. It's tough not knowing where your next meal is going to come from.

Roger Pierce 09:26
Very tough. Which is, you know, one of the basic messages here on the unsure entrepreneur podcast is, know what you're getting into this is not what you see on sharks tank or dragon stand or this is not a overnight success story for a lot of people, 50% of all small businesses in North America fail in five years. That can change by sector what you go into, but it is not a life for anyone. There's there's lumpy cash flow or no cash flow. There's multitasking, as you touched upon, you know, do everything from, you know, be the salesperson to be the actual product person delivering the. Delivery device. You have to do the billing, accounting, you have to wash the windows and sweep the floors, get the coffee. There's a lot of stuff to do. I don't want to scare people off entrepreneurship, because you and I share this. We believe it's a great career path and a great career choice, but you really have to go into with your eyes open, don't you?

Bruce Mayhew 10:16
I love it. I can't imagine doing anything else. And the funny thing is, when I was when I was younger, when I was at university, everybody around me seemed to be thinking, hey, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to open up my own business. I'm going to start a plan to UN everybody around me seemed to want to do this entrepreneur thing. And I was standing there going, absolutely not never, ever do I want to be my job. It was at university. Was to go and get a career at a big bank and stay there and collect my pension and my gold watch and get out. And that's what I wanted to do for my career, was to stay at a bank. After nine and a half years of of wonderful, I ran into awful, that's what made me think, okay, I I need to get out of here. And after a lot of thinking, a lot of curiosity, a lot of complete career rewriting. Long story short, I started my own business.

Roger Pierce 11:26
That's fascinating. So was it the need to get out of the bank the job? Was that what got you motivated? Or was it the lure of, hey, I want to be a consultant, trainer, coach. What came first?

Bruce Mayhew 11:38
The thing that came first was the need to leave as a good Boomer. I'm right on the cusp of Boomer and AX as a good Boomer. Once I decided to leave, it took me two years to leave. So for anybody that's that's in the younger generation profile out there, to think that it to take two years to leave a job like that's a whole career for for somebody who's a Gen Xer, yeah, it took me two years to decide to leave and and honestly, I left, I left the bank, and I went and worked for a small company, so for full transparency, and then it was at that small company that I realized I had a lot more to offer than I gave myself credit for, and that this small business thing really wasn't as terrifying as I might have thought. It was going from a company of 50,000 people to to two people. It still made sense, and I realized that I had a lot more skill and that I had collected over the 1012, years of my career that I could apply to this and and I think that's what made me think, yeah, I can do this right. And frankly, I was watching somebody else, the guy that I was working for, who who had a lot of skill but really bad time management and values challenge be successful. And I thought, man, if he can do it, I gotta be able to do this.

Roger Pierce 13:10
Was the small business in the sector you're in now.

Bruce Mayhew 13:14
No, it was not, yeah, it was in a completely different sector.

Roger Pierce 13:17
How long were you at the small business?

Bruce Mayhew 13:21
I gave him two years. My agreement with him when, when I was leaving the bank was because he like for good reason. He was skeptical that I would leave 50,000 people and go work for him, and I committed to him that I would work with him for two years. And so on my two year anniversary, I I gave him my, I handed him my, my notice.

Roger Pierce 13:46
You just described what I think would be one of the perfect transition paths to entrepreneurship, very cautious, lots of time in there, right? Two years before you actually quit the big, big bank job and then you went to work for a small business, something I really recommend anybody exploring entrepreneurship go and do, right? Go and go and live it on someone else's dime. I totally agree. Yep, totally agree. Jump in with both feet. So you spent no not not only, not only, not just six months, but two years at that, at that step, you said, Okay, I can do this. I'm going to go and start my own shop, Yep,

Bruce Mayhew 14:21
Yeah. And it was at about the one year mark with him that I realized that my long term career wouldn't be with him and that I could do it. Then I spent sort of the next year, the last year with him, working at what would be my business plan? What would be how would I gain clients? How would I what would be my selling proposition? What is my network? How do I tap into that network? That whole process was really invaluable for me. And again, I'm a I'm a cautious. Guy, right? Like, I, I know, you know I, yeah, you can tell like I am so cautious, and I totally would recommend this to anybody at all, right, that in that year, and especially within the last six months, I made sure that on my first day, on my last day with him, my first day with me, that I had three clients. So they weren't enormous, they weren't massive. I was never going to get rich off of them, but they were there, and that gave me the confidence to say, Yeah, I can do this. Other people were telling me that I was valuable. It wasn't just me. Other people were telling me that, yeah, I'll, I'll give you some money, right? So they were actually going to pay me. That was, that was really comforting for me. It would give me a lot of confidence. But the other thing that that did was, when I went to my fourth prospect, right? So when, when I went to a prospect, they could say, yeah, why should I hire you? And I'm like, Well, I'm already hired over here, so they've hired me, so you should hire me, right? And it gave them the confidence that I wasn't just some fly by night person who got a business card printed and said, I'm successful. So it gave my my next sale that much more confidence. And then it just started. It started rolling. Not to say that there weren't bumpy roads, but it's it really got it rolling.

Roger Pierce 16:40
Did you save up some money before you took the took the step into self employment? No,

Bruce Mayhew 16:46
actually, it was the, probably the worst possible time, which, you know, I seem to hear that from so many entrepreneurs. I was in a relationship. So the idea was that I would start this business, but there would always be this other source of revenue coming into the family. And probably within a week of me starting my business, my partner left. So boom, relationship explode. And so here I am on my own now, from a job perspective, on my own, from a personal perspective, all the security that I thought that I had gone so complete turmoil, complete chaos, but I survived somehow. I survived it.

Roger Pierce 17:35
Well it helped that you had those three or four initial clients to get some cash flow going.

Bruce Mayhew 17:40
I'm sure it most certainly. There's nothing like energy that hunger will give you.

Roger Pierce 17:46
The Hunger Games, yeah, motivation you want to eat. I love it. Well, you know, you made a success of it 20 years now, you've been in business, but let's, let's talk about because what you do is fascinating. I want to talk about some of your key service areas. And I know on your website, you've got so many different services, it's hard to pick some that to focus on. But when the company I was email etiquette, you said, I think on a video I saw on the website, 90% of business communication is by email, and people receive 50 to 250 emails per day, I say you help companies and employees deal with all this. Some people have called you the email linguist. Maybe you can tell us how effective email communication can be achieved.

Bruce Mayhew 18:32
Sure it's, really interesting, and that we also have to recognize it nowadays, like we have text messages and instant message and like, there's, there's all kinds of other teams related things that are digging all over us, that are really grabbing our attention, right? But the email email etiquette is it was actually the first workshop that I that I developed on my own, and it still is as relevant today as it was when I first started out. But good email etiquette ends up translating into good time management. So there's a that, and which is another one of my workshops. So, and I really see email etiquette as being good time management, but email etiquette is really all about your brand. For me when I'm talking to clients, when I'm when I'm doing training of to rooms or audiences around email etiquette, I remind people that every time that they hit send on an email, they are impacting their reputation. So is the person on the other end of that email. Do they see it as relevant? Do they see them as professional? Do they see them as being an effective communicator? Do they see them as managing their responsibilities and their needs as well as the needs of the people that they're sending email to? Right? So it's got to be a win. Every email needs to be a win. Win. It's got to. Be good for me, it's going to be good for you. It's amazing nowadays, especially, I find it has actually got worse as people text, because they are used to shorter and shorter bytes. It's really hard to be effective and communicate well when you're trying to shove everything into one sentence or two sentences. So good email etiquette really helps the people that I train Think about who they're sending it to and what's going to grab their attention, what's going to get their attention. And it's interesting. I listened to your cast about with Patrick McCauley, the point man guy, the the PR guy, and it's sort of the same thing where his his job is to get other people's attention. His job is to stand out at the news desk for his client. And frankly, I think that's what what we should be thinking about every time we hit send. We need to be able to stand out in that 50 to 200 email pile that each of us are getting every day, and if I can stand out, then that means that my email is going to get read, understood and responded to in appropriate amount of time.

Roger Pierce 21:17
And it's such an important. I mean, a lot of people I know think, oh, email, that's old fashioned. What do you talk about email for? Like you said, there's Snapchat and Insta and all these things. But let me tell you, email is still the I'm a marketer. Email is the most powerful and cost effective communication device or vehicle out there. Every dollar an entrepreneur invests in email, they can, on average, expect a $38 return, 38 to one no other form of communication comes close. So what you're doing is so essential, but many entrepreneurs don't come to the table with some of these communication skills that you're talking about. And even just judging by the amount of emails that we get or inundated with, bad emails, listening emails, hi, would you like to buy my services? You know, jumping into the pitch too quick. I mean, there's so many mistakes, aren't there?

Bruce Mayhew 22:03
Absolutely yeah, and it doesn't matter if it's email marketing still bad, you know, if they're not put together properly, if they're not really written for the for the needs and the mindset of your reader, you're basically wasting your time. It's amazing how much breakdown there is in that and the reality. It's a funny it's a funny reality, Roger. But one of the biggest challenges with email is that as I'm sitting here alone in my office or at my desk, and I'm writing an email, and it's the same thing with actually, with a text message, text messages follow the same sort of structure pattern that that an email will so I've seen with clients what I teach in email etiquette training works well for text training or im training, whatever vehicle you use. But one of the the strange realities of email is that when most of us write our again, I'll just go to email. When most of us write our email, we write as if we're writing that email to ourselves with our knowledge, our experience, our needs, our pressures, all of us, and it's amazing how that disconnects the real reader that we're sending it to that they have no idea what to do with the information that we're sending them, because they're not us. It's a little bit of a fine tuning that has to happen. It's not major surgery, but a little bit of a fine tuning can take my message and spin it so that Roger, you understand exactly why I'm sending this to you and why you need to read it, or what you need to do. And it's a it's a nuanced little thing, but it's so impactful.

Roger Pierce 23:53
This is one of the things you help people learn how to do. Let's talk about a couple of your other training specializations, mastering, time management. I know email ties into that, but that's a big one for entrepreneurs, because I don't know about you, probably not you, but I waste too much time. I'm sure it could be a lot more efficient. What are some tips you would provide there?

Bruce Mayhew 24:13
It certainly is a challenge and and our attention is being summoned in so many different places nowadays, and it's it's everything from the people that we might work with to our email dinging or an I am going off, or whatever. One of the big things that I think people can do, from a time management perspective, is block their time off. I really don't like using a whole lot of software. I don't like using a lot of tools. I like being able to say, You know what, for now for the next half hour, or from now, for the next hour I'm gonna spend reading, or I'm gonna spend doing my invoicing, or I'm gonna spend doing my strategy plan. And this works really beautifully, whether you're an entrepreneur. All by yourself or with two people in your office, or whether you're part of a larger organization, that you really block off your time so that you do your important work, the stuff that, if you have a performance review being written on you, that the components of your performance review are the things that you should do in your morning, in the am and answering email and being part of meetings and helping other people out with their work. Do all of that. Be a great team player. Do all of that in the afternoon. But we as people, whether you think that you're a morning person or not, we as people are smartest, most creative, most strategic in the morning. And one of the things that I see over and over and over again is people going into the office, turning on their computer and sitting there for three hours or two hours answering email, which there's very few email that you and I receive that are 911, right, that are absolutely must answer this minute, right? So unless you're in customer service, very few of our email do we need to answer right now. So why are we wasting our best, smartest brain, answering routine email? Shove that into the afternoon. Be smart. Be strategic. Do your project planning, do your brainstorming. Do all of that really heavy lifting, of your most important priorities. Do that in the morning.

Roger Pierce 26:43
Don't confuse the urgent with the important. Your advice aligns with what Jeff Bezos does, the head of Amazon. He says he makes all of his big brain decision power meetings and decisions in the morning, before lunchtime, he doesn't care what happens after lunch. You know, the big stuff has to happen in the morning when he's sharp, absolutely.

Bruce Mayhew 27:02
And there's tons of science that supports that.

Roger Pierce 27:05
Want to ask you, very briefly, maybe you could touch upon this, this generational gaps. How to bridge generational gaps at work? You talk about boomers, you talk about Gen X, you talk about millennials. This is one of the training services you provide.

Bruce Mayhew 27:20
Yeah absolutely. You know, it's funny. And when I, when I started doing generational differences training 15 years ago, I really thought that it was going to be a sort of a five year run on this topic, as millennials were really getting into the workforce and making a presence. It's still is an important topic that is being requested on a fair amount. And the challenge is that that in today's culture, in today's business world, we're now sitting legitimately with four different generations all working in the same place. So we have boomers that are still hanging in there, right? Not all of us, but there's a whole bunch of us that are still in the market Gen Xers are full on. Millennials are an enormous population. So millennials are a larger population than the Gen Xers. So millennials are an enormous population, and those millennials are now becoming serious leaders, right? So they're in their late 30s and 40s, so they are becoming leaders. And then we have Gen Z that are entering into the market now as well. So Gen Z's are up to their late 20s kind of stuff. So their Gen Z's are in it. These are four very demanding, very educated, very well traveled, lots of opinion, right?

Roger Pierce 28:45
Generations like my daughter, who's just turning 18, yeah, yeah.

Bruce Mayhew 28:48
Like full of opinion, right? And they're going to take on the world, and they want to make a difference. And every single one of those generations wants to make a difference, right? They want to have impact. And it's really interesting working with with teams on how to really engage those teams so that they're working with each other as opposed to against each other, and finding a core theme, a core purpose and a core appreciation for working with each other and when they do it really is amazing. But instead, you know, we have to stop the blame game. We have to stop blaming boomers for being stuck, and we have to stop blaming millennials and Gen Z's for being outgoing and wanting to change the world, right? And we all four generations have tremendous things to offer. Tremendous it's getting them to work with each other and appreciate it, appreciate each other.

Roger Pierce 30:01
And this is some of the benefits that will come into your training, I know. But before we wrap things up, I want to make you think about your earlier days, before you went into this business. I mean, you're you're a trainer, you're a executive coach or a keynote speaker. We didn't get to touch on that maybe next time. These are all business models that a lot of entrepreneurs would love to have, right? So what's your advice for someone maybe looking to get into this field? Maybe something, maybe something you did that worked really well? You know? Yeah,

Bruce Mayhew 30:34
I would say be humble, but also be respectful of what you know, because you probably know something pretty amazing. I've not met anybody that wasn't amazing. I don't care how old you are, there's something about you that's pretty amazing. Sometimes we don't give each other the credit that that that we deserve. So talk to people around you, talk to people you trust, and ask them what makes you amazing. And then if there was one or two things I could work on. Work on those. I would say, do that. I would say, also, say, be really careful with what you're not good at. And if you're not good at something, throw it away. So if you're not good at web design, don't try to do it. Get somebody else that does don't waste your time for something that you're not good at to get okay at you are there to be fantastic about something. So get good at what you're fantastic at, and let other people do your accounting or do your web design or do your PR or do whatever. Right? Don't waste your time doing things that you're not good at. And it might be that, as a brand new entrepreneur, that you don't have a budget, so barter, help other people, be a buddy, and get a little group together where you're going to help each other. And it doesn't have to be formal. I found that the informal groups have done the best for me, the people that I know, that I can trust, that will help me and that I can help those are the ones that work for me, and then go off and do it. Go off and be great, fantastic.

Roger Pierce 32:17
And I like the way you talked about outsource your weaknesses and focus on what you're doing best. Focus on your talents. Ask other people what your talents are, in case you're not sure. And, of course, get rid of things you don't do well, like website design or accounting. Shout out to our mutual friend Rachel odd at Vlogger girl design for that website work. But you know, it's so important to know your strengths and delegate your weaknesses. I hate accounting. I'm bad with numbers. I'm bad with math. I shove it all off to the account. God bless them. I don't have to deal with it, right? And that allows me to focus on what I think I do best.

Bruce Mayhew 32:50
So what you've offered is really good advice, I guess one last thing is, whatever you're good at, keep researching, like don't stop reading, don't stop exercising it. Don't stop studying it. You should see my library. My Library is massive, but I'm always reading stuff. I'm not the smartest man in the ballroom. I'm never the smartest man in the room, but there's a lot that I know, and maybe you should edit that part out. But I'm always learning, like I'm 20 years into this being on my own, and I'm still learning from other people, and I love that.

Roger Pierce 33:27
You're a subject matter expert. No shame on that. That's That's key. And I think you've touched upon one of the great joys of entrepreneurship, that's lifelong learning. If you want to learn for the rest of your life, be an entrepreneur, because there's no end to what you can acquire, business skills, business knowledge, subject matter, expertise, all that stuff, perfect. What's What a great, great answer. Thank you, Bruce, such a pleasure to have you here and to get your story. Thank you very much.

Bruce Mayhew 33:51
My pleasure. It's been amazing. It's been fun. Before you go, can you

Roger Pierce 33:55
give us a email address or a website or a LinkedIn page? How can someone reach you? Sure

Bruce Mayhew 33:59
the best way is at my website: https://www.brucemayhewconsulting.com/ I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Insta. I don't answer anything that comes in through Facebook. Facebook is my personal place. It's all Bruce. It's not business. Don't even try it, but

Roger Pierce 34:24
I love it. Go to the website BruceMayhewconsulting.com for sure, and to everyone listening. Thank you for taking time to join me here today on the unsure entrepreneur podcast. I hope you come back again often. That's it for now.

Intro 34:39
That's it for this episode of The Unsure Entrepreneur podcast. Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss other candid conversations with small business owners, and be sure to check us out at unsure entrepreneur.com you.