Is Status Quo an Option with Gordon Sheppard

Is Status Quo an Option with Gordon Sheppard

Gordon Sheppard: [00:00:00] And she'll say, you know, Gord, people aren't ready to change until they're ready to change.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And I'll say, well, as a executive coach when I'm in the room. I've got two brothers and they're burning the place to the ground, and they're about to go outta business and take all those people with them.

I have to be the one in there to be able to make a difference and make it very quickly.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development Podcast

based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business,

brought to you [00:01:00] by Capital Business Development capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it.

Welcome. To the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 312 of the Business Development Podcast Today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Gordon Sheppard. Gordon is a powerhouse in executive coaching, business advisory and leadership development.

With over 25 years of experience helping leaders sharpen their strategies, optimize operations, and drive real results as the CEO of executive wins, he has built a reputation for turning high level vision into measurable success through his proven five step anatomy of a WIN framework. Whether it's through one-to-one coaching, corporate training, or meeting facilitation, Gord [00:02:00] empowers executives with the insights, tools, and strategies they need to consistently achieve and celebrate their biggest wins.

His expertise spans strategic planning, operational performance, leadership development, and corporate communication, making him a trusted advisor to business leaders across North America. A dynamic speaker, trainer, and the host of the Executive Wins podcast. Gord challenges leaders to think bigger, execute smarter, and create long-term success with intention.

He doesn't just talk about winning. He shows businesses how to build a system for it. If you're ready to elevate your leadership and grow your business with a proven strategic approach. Gord is the expert who can help you stack your wins and scale on your success. Gord, it's a pleasure and an honor to have you on the show today.

Gordon Sheppard: And I'm just gonna bring you everywhere I go, I'll just take that introduction [00:03:00] all day long. Holy mackerel. Thank you so much. I appreciate the enthusiasm and it's nice to, uh, it's funny that that's all earned, that's all real, everything you said there, so that's a nice thing to actually hear it all said at one time, and I really appreciate the chance to be here.

Kelly Kennedy: The pleasure is mine. You know, we've met before, we've connected, I've been on the Executive Wins podcast literally, probably like a year ago by the time people were listening to this episode. So if you enjoy this conversation and you want more of Gordon & Kelly, uh, check out his podcast Executive Wins with Gordon Sheppard and uh, you can find another conversation that we're gonna have where he grills me, not the other way around.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, and I got luck. It wasn't just grilling. I got to go to school on essentially a masterclass in business development, which was just an outstanding thing. And funny I've. You know, the, the story that came up there, which was, you know, the 32 tries to make sure somebody gets through to get the meeting they need with the, you know, the persistence that that took and the way you illuminated that over that [00:04:00] conversation.

Again, anybody that listens to it would just get a great feel for what you do and how you're bringing value to the world too. So it's great to have you on.

Kelly Kennedy: It's, uh, it was a great time. I really enjoyed myself. So if there are listeners of this show who are looking to hop on podcasts and wanna have, you know, an anatomy of a win, reach out to Gord and if you got a great story, he might just let you on.

You know, Gord, I really enjoyed meeting you and we actually connected through a mutual friend, and I'm really happy that that happened just because I'm not sure that like our paths would've really crossed without that. I'm really happy it did, and I just, I really like who you are as a person. I like the way that you show up to things.

Obviously we haven't met in person yet, but every interaction I've had with you has been really, really enjoyable. And so I'm looking forward to getting to know you better today. Getting to better understand, you know, who is Gordon Sheppard? How did you end up this massive executive coach, uh, helping businesses around the world?

Looking forward to it. Take me back, were you always an entrepreneur at heart? Did you think [00:05:00] this was gonna be your path? You know, take me back to, you know, the beginning. Who is Gordon Sheppard?

Gordon Sheppard: Do you know what was fun? I was getting, I was getting ready for this and you know, those little, uh, you go to the guidance counselor and you do those little surveys about like, what do you wanna do in life?

So I'm like 17 or whatever, filling that thing in. And the results came back and it said, um. Don't be a nurse.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, you continue that.

Gordon Sheppard: So I would be a horrible nurse. Uh, 'cause I would just be like it's broken leg. Get the cast off. Get out the door. Yeah. The, um, but it said, do be a coach. And so I have sort of an urge from that, those early days to coach help, uh, in whatever way possible. Really good for, uh, professional use, not recommended for parenting and early childhood use.

I've got 23 and 21 year olds who are gonna be recovering from that with their therapists for a long time. The, um, that urge to help has always been there. And the joy that I get is when I help people get the ahas and do the behavioral change in short amounts of [00:06:00] time. That's the differentiator for me.

I've got, uh, one of my favorite stories to talk about, sort of who I am. And, and you know what I'm about is my mother-in-law who's outstanding, she's 81 years old, she's in Mexico right now, like an author. Seminar thing, doing cool things, keeping herself in great shape. She's wonderful to talk to. Retired therapist and she'll say, you know, Gord people aren't ready to change until they're ready to change.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And I'll say, well, as a executive coach when I'm in the room and I've got two brothers and they're burning the place to the ground and they're about to go outta business and take all those people with them I have to be the one in there to be able to make a difference and make it very quickly.

And so that's where I get uh, uh, sort of my attitude from in the sense of being very focused on making organizations successful. So when I say the aha moments, I really enjoy them. But I also have developed, uh, a skill set over years for difficult conversations, and that's a specialty of mine. In, in given situations.

Facilitation's really fun. I do big stakeholder meetings and small ones or whatever, but those ideas around innovation, whether it's [00:07:00] innovation or strategy or whatever, there's always some moments where we're gonna get. Potentially our backs up or whatever. And consistently over time I get feedback that I create psychologically safe rooms to be in.

I do that in one-on-ones. I do that with groups of people. But that's taken time. I, I, I say that easily now, but I've fallen down in trying to get there or whatever. And so, but I really love bringing that to that moment now. So all the way back to that high school guidance counselor kind of moment of like be a coach.

Uh, it's in me to coach and I know that's a lane that I play in quite well. I'm often describe myself too as the options guy for the leaders. I'm not there to necessarily answer. 'cause you know, I've had a guy say, you know, 33 years in drilling, say, don't tell me about drilling. I said, I don't know anything about drilling, but I do know about organizations.

Yeah. And I do know about structure and those things and how to put them together and happy to explain sort of how I arrived there from that moment. But there's that high school guidance counselor thing. I'm taking you on the journey then I'll take you all the way. And so that gets me outta high school and I headed off to Queens University in Ontario and um, did a drama degree.

Wow. And so when I [00:08:00] did that, I thought, well, I'd come out to, you know, be a director in theater or television, that kind of thing. When I did that, this is like late, like that's graduated in 89, so I'll put that right there. I'm 1967, proud to say it. Born and bred on that hundredth anniversary for Canada.

The, um, drama degree comes out. I did a year of acting school in New York City and that was really cool because it's all human behavior, it's all sort of soaked in there. Now, I certainly didn't have the focus that I have now, and I'll tell you how I kind of got here. I ended up working in the television business for probably from those early two thou, early nineties.

Into the, uh, 2012 was my last chance in tv. So Wow. Worked for tv. Ontario in Ontario did a variety of sort of, you know, up the ladder skills there. My wife works in theater. We got married in 97, so we've been married, whatever that is, 28 years this year. I guess the, um, then we get into I followed her theater career and we ended up in Thunder Bay.

Yeah. Which is a crazy thing to go to small market, but she worked at a theater there. I ended up working at CBC radio, so it's nice to, I've been doing work visually in the television business in the nineties. And then got to do stuff for the ear, which was [00:09:00] really cool. Being reporter and a switcher and doing that kind of stuff.

And we got out here to Alberta 'cause she worked at the French festival and since then has worked at all kinds of different theaters around town. Currently works at Catalyst Theater. She, um, the opportunity then to work in TV at Access Television came up. I did what I call my corporate stretch in there when I worked full-time for them as a producer.

Produced all kinds of videos, corporate videos putting things together. And then my last sort of role there when things got bought out and eventually we were owned by Rogers. Yeah. Was as the manager of creative services and marketing for city TV here in Edmonton.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Gordon Sheppard: When I look at the through line of what's in there, oh, and then, sorry, why did I get to this moment in time?

TV business is going like this, Blockbuster's going like this. Mm-hmm. Netflix is going like this. TV revenue's dried up. And so I got packed out in 2012 and uh, the TV business was fun up till about 2005 ish. And then I kind of hung in there for those other years. But it's been a very dwindling business just based on revenues.

2009 I dunno if I recommended or not. Went back, did an MBA and, uh, did that part-time at the University of Alberta and got [00:10:00] sparked. The natural progression for me would've been to continue in communications marketing, uh, at sort of executive type level. There was a guy who taught a class and he drew the org structure up on the board and I was a lightning rod moment for me to go, wait a second.

Oh and oh, when you go in and you help leaders learn how to make their organizations better. And that's Ty me all the way back to that moment in the guidance counselor's office because instead of it being theater or even television.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: This now takes it into a real world impact. And so 2012, the shingle got hung out.

I went through those early suffering entrepreneur years of really not knowing a lot. I should have wish I'd known you, uh, around those days for business development. 'cause I was bad at it for sure. And sort of fumbled through getting going. And then those probably I'd say around if you get that 16, 17 time, catching a bit of energy in there for, you know, the independent work.

COVID was not fun. As an independent, I can tell you for sure. Mm-hmm. But these last four or five years now just outta COVID and whatever, very consistent. And then that ability to help as many people, like you said, around the world as possible, has been a [00:11:00] real joy. So all of that has come to the fruition now for me saying I take it all and package it together.

And my goal is to help leaders get the information and inspiration that they need to strengthen themselves so they can strengthen their teams, their organization, and ultimately serve their clients and community at the highest possible level. And that's the biggest impact that I can have. So having consolidated now in the executive wins brand, everything to be with leadership teams, that's where I can make the impact.

It's where I can make the big difference. And it's really fun to go to work.

Kelly Kennedy: My gosh. Like what a what a career transition. Hey, that is, that is an incredible journey, Gordon. Every once in a while we get some pretty incredible journeys on here, and that is definitely one of them. You know, to go from essentially media through your MBA to now being an executive coach and doing that for the last 13 years.

13 years, that's frigging incredible. Like. Most businesses don't get that far. So congratulations on your success, and now you're kind of stepping into the podcasting space too, and [00:12:00] sharing that message far and wide, which is a lot of fun. So it's, man, like, it, it's really what's next. The sky is the limit for you.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, the, the biggest thing for me is I think if I could go, if I was, you know, if someone dropped a billion dollars on my head, I would just simply go to work every day in the nonprofit space. And I would bulletproof nonprofit organizations, I've, I've been lucky, I've probably worked with north of 15 nonprofits and had really good luck with helping them fill in gaps that they needed filled and supporting leaders in those areas that which has flowed through to the end users and strengthened those organizations.

So that's a real joy. But funny enough, I say nonprofit, I just mean organizations in general. 'cause whether it's a large organization, I got really lucky, uh, got to work for a resort company one time and we did.

Kelly Kennedy: That's awesome.

Gordon Sheppard: Two day innovation for their commercial team down in Mexico at a

Kelly Kennedy: wow.

Gordon Sheppard: Resort. It was really like one of those moments where you're just like, you can't believe the call is real, but suddenly you're on a plane and you're there and you snuck your wife on for the seven day trip. 'cause they were like, well, why don't you take a room for a week? And we're like, okay, [00:13:00] we'll do that.

And you know, so I'm in a room like that and I've got the commercial team for a, a company that makes a, an enterprise level of revenue. And, you know, I'm leading those people, but then I'm down in, in nonprofit setting and I'm helping, you know, a little nonprofit with their board or I'm helping, you know, whatever people in the home building services area to make their companies better.

It's been nice to get a wide variety of exposure. And in the one-on-one coaching, there are just commonalities that come up over and over again. So I feel fortunate to have been in so many different settings with men and women.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: Where they're like, why do you already know what's wrong? And I'm like, it's because I've heard.

The conversations before, and again, I'm there to expedite. I'm not there to bill, I'm there to expedite the situation so they can get themselves into a stronger position as quickly as possible, again, to strengthen their organization. So that's the real through line. That's super clear now. And it's so, it's nice to, when I have that organizational foundation approach, because all the heavy lifting that needs to be done, and I'm talking about exits, hiring [00:14:00] difficult conversations, talking about revenue shifts, talking about whatever, anticipating market trends and political changes, whatever those things are that come up in these facilitated moments, a lot of it's quite heavy lifting.

And again, we have to move as quickly as possible. The leaders are equipped the way that they're equipped. They're very good often at their main thing and, uh, earning revenue. Mm-hmm. There something in there that's a combo, but it's very difficult for them to have. Filled in all the other areas. 'cause not everyone's got time to go to the NBA.

Not everyone's got time to do all of that extra work around the way. So it's a joy for me to fill that in. And when I say I back that up, foundationally underneath the anatomy of a win, which is a five part system where we talk about the strategy work, plan people, operations, and results. In any conversation underneath there is what I call the executive planning system, and that's a 650 page.

Document at this point of prompts that allows me, if I spend about, if I spend a year sort of off and on in the office with an organization, which I've done before we can make sure that every area of your business is rounded out and checked off at least so that you've got a plan forward in every aspect of your business.

I'm not gonna claim [00:15:00] to be an HR person or an IT person, but I can claim to help you have the right questions for when you go to speak with them. So a lot of leaders aren't equipped just even in that basic way. And then because I'm guarding the whole organization, it's always feeding back to drive the strategy and the vision, which hopefully is as clear as can be.

So if I'm there, so often say I'll, I'm like Yoda on the shoulder of the leader trying to that little voice in their ear.

Kelly Kennedy: Everybody needs a Yoda and I really love that you touched on the fact that. You run into the same challenges over and over again? Uh, I do too. Right? Like in business development, the funny thing is, is that especially when I'm sitting down and I'm talking with companies, they'll always feel like, Kelly, I'm in this very unique situation.

Right? But the funny thing is, and you know, for better or for worse, I think for a lot of people, there's hope in this. And the hope is, is that your challenge is probably not that unique. It's a, there's a really good chance that if you're in business and you're struggling with something, somebody else has struggled with the same thing, if not thousands of people.

And I say that in business development because almost every time I'm in a room talking [00:16:00] about business development, the challenges they have are the same challenges that I have run into over and over and over again. And it's simply, you just dunno what you dunno. Lemme talk about that. Literally today I had a, I don't know what I don't know, moment.

And I had somebody reach out to me over LinkedIn and just say, Hey, you know, like your LinkedIn, it's set up really well. But you're missing some stuff. Like did you know that you could be adding a services section to like over and above your featured section? I'm like, what? There's a services section, so, so it's like, dude, I've been using LinkedIn heavy for five years and I didn't realize that I could add services to my to my page, which I did immediately.

And I was like, oh, well that's obvious. Like, why didn't I think of that? Well, I didn't think of it because I don't dunno what I don't know. And I run into those things all the time. And Gordon, a question I'm constantly asking myself is, what do I not know right now that could make all the difference in my business?

And unfortunately, the answer to that. It almost [00:17:00] takes somebody like you to reach out and say, Kelly, this is the thing. Right? It takes somebody like that LinkedIn message to reach out and say, did you know this? You know, another one like that would be that your LinkedIn has a recommendation section. Most people have no idea your LinkedIn has a recommendation section, but you can go in and ask for recommendations.

And I found that out about, I don't know, six, eight months ago. And we have like 70 recommendations on our LinkedIns now. Right. But once again, you don't know what you don't know until somebody points it out. And so you having such broad experience, right? When you're working with so many different industries, you've likely come across the challenge once before and that little bit of information is worth every penny.

Gordon Sheppard: I, I agree. And it, and it can be that very thing, like if I spend an hour with a senior leader, sometimes we're kind of getting through a bunch of stuff that's like, ah, I got it. And, but there'll be that one or two moments where they then, that's the moment of integration. That's the moment where they kind of carry things forward.

And the thing that I'm proud of underneath. The work that I do is I have a [00:18:00] structured checklist. Like it's not a, it's not a random conversation and it's not like, I hope you know this. It's that piece of knowing that I'm checking the boxes as we go and I'm thinking about their entire organization.

I'm guarding the whole place, is what I'm trying to do. Certainly in, in the theme of, of what I'm trying to do. The other piece that I'm, I love about your story, about getting, you know, being open to receiving information. There's a lot of people that aren't, and so there's gotta be a sliver of humility in the situation before I get into any sort of coaching situation where they're, they have to be coachable.

'Cause I can't, I've tried that sort of hit your head against the wall with folks and I, I don't. I don't mean to come across. I'm often very straightforward in style and I'm trying to learn. That's one of my things I'm trying to learn, but it's straightforward to the point of if the person, if I can't work with the person, it's kind of pre-vetting them to say, are we ready?

Are you ready to be coachable? Are you ready to move? And then the speed that they need to move at, depending on the pain points they have in their world, if it's a revenue issue, if it's a personal issue, whatever those things are, that's if, if you're hiring Gord, it's to move at the pace that you wanna move at to [00:19:00] help you reach your goals ultimately.

So, yeah, it's really a valuable thing. And I always say too, it's not just me as a coach. In a given situation, I think that leaders need a combination of paid and unpaid. I say that very, very clearly. One of the biases that you can get into if you rely too heavily on one advisor is they may be taking you in the wrong direction.

And there's a Harvard Business article, I don't have it in front of me right now, but this idea of someone relied too much on their advisor and the company starts to go sideways. So I think you need someone to check and say, well, did Gort said this. Like, and it can't be your spouse, but it has to be someone in a circle of, reliable people.

And I think you need, again, paid and unpaid. What I hear back from leaders though is like, well, I'm too busy to get those unpaid relationships done. And I say, no, you're not. You have to be able to go and get at least two or three, and you can pick what areas you wanna kind of get them to work on. But this idea of reaching out and having somebody an hour a month in that area that you wanna work on again, paid or unpaid the paid person because they're focused, someone like me gives you a chance.

Quarter. Like I help you quarterback the whole thing. I can and I can put it [00:20:00] all together. And that's the value I think in a strong executive coach. The, um, the other people that will need to be there for those different reasons. It could be for a personal relationship. I know one senior leader who's like finally like, go, I finally got the trainer.

I went to the gym. I was never gonna go on my own so I could take care of myself. 'cause again, we're often into these 360 conversations with people as well. But I love that you had the humility to know that you could be open to a suggestion. And once that's there I think help is unlimited. And it's funny having met people with super high wealth.

I mean in the hundreds of millions of dollars, they sound like you. Mm-hmm. They're open to suggestion. So it's not a revenue thing. It really is a sort of ego and can you be open? And when you are open, you just have way more opportunity.

Kelly Kennedy: I like to use the terminology no matter how much of an expert you are.

You were only an expert until yesterday, and today and tomorrow are brand new days. And I live my life like that because you know what? Even in business development, yeah, I know a lot about business development, but the field changes every single [00:21:00] day. And if I don't keep up with it, I'm gonna be behind. So it doesn't matter how much of an expert you are, you have to continue to work on yourself, and you have to continue to be open to the fact that you don't have every single answer.

There's probably another answer out there, you dunno.

Gordon Sheppard: And absolutely. And that ability to then say you know, I don't know, or, I'm not sure, or, can you check that? And that it's the same thing as your doctor's not responsible for your health. The coach is gonna be there to coach, but that's what they're there for.

They're not there to solve your problem. If I was there to solve the problem, I'd apply for a job in your company and, and I could work there. Uh, that's not sort of the role. I think, uh, what that the coach plays.

Kelly Kennedy: Run me through that. I wanna spend a little bit of time with that on the executive side, because you know, when you're talking about high level organizational coaching, which is essentially what you're doing, what is the difference between that per se and like, essentially consulting to make a recommendation?

Like how, how do you help them versus tell them what to do?

Gordon Sheppard: Yeah, it, it always, so for me it ends up being a combination of both. So [00:22:00] one of the things I've heard is this difference between, um, there's mentorship versus um, coaching. And, uh, there, there, there could be a couple camps around that. And I'm not in either camp 'cause it's not that I never advise, but, 'cause there's certain moments, for example, I'll hear this frequently.

Um, why won't that person who's underneath me do what I want them to do? That comes up all the time for leaders. They're frustrated and, often they get answers they don't want to hear. I'm like, well you haven't spent enough time with that person. Or, you know what I mean? They just bug you 'cause they look like your mother or something.

There's things that come up. Around that type of, you know, internal voice.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And if they can't get, you know, if they can't sort of be open to that level of advice and that's straight up, like that's straight up. And then, 'cause then in this, in that case it might be a coach moment where they're avoiding a difficult conversation as an example.

So that'd be a, that would be a very direct one. The other one's around. Where do you take your company in the future? I would provide analysis for, and help, depending on what needed to be coordinated. I'm often actually in situations where I'll be, again, helping the leader to quarterback the [00:23:00] situation.

And they might be interacting with hr, they might be hiring somebody. Uh, I've had moments where I'm in between them and the web, uh, website provider, this kind of thing. And it's because the leaders don't have, again, a full rounded skillset to necessarily deal with all the different vendors that they deal with.

So in those cases, it becomes recommendations. So it's a bit of both around what that is. And I wouldn't claim to be. An expert in technical often. I, my area is leadership development.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: Process improvement. That's sort of where I sort of spend my time and strategy. Like that's sort of my, my place to play.

And then when it gets into those heavy technical ones, around those specific recommendations, it's trying to get them all the alternatives that they need. So it's nice to know, say multiple HR strong referrals to say, well, here's a few you can vet. But you vet them out and then you find out the best one for you.

But ultimately they've gotta run their business, I think, from their perspective. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: I know for me, when people reach out to me for business development coaching, it's not because they're doing great, it's because they're really [00:24:00] struggling or they're finding that their teams are not having effective process or they're not getting the results they want, or they're not hitting their revenue goals.

Usually it's like a, oh shit, we need help moment. Are you finding Gordon, that when executives are reaching out to you that they're in that moment or are they getting ahead of the problem?

Gordon Sheppard: If you're lucky they're getting ahead of the problem. And those are the my favorites 'cause they're the Olympic athletes and they're tweaking and that's a great place to be.

'cause you know, all they wanna do is make things better. Frequently they're in a crisis, uh, scenario, just exactly like you said. And they're often reaching out too late, uh, especially on that lost revenue side or where they've gotten so far down the rabbit hole. And then you're coming in with very heavy recommendations.

I had one case where CRA was about to shut the place down because of some missed dealings. I worked with the external accountant to sort of get that under, you know, in control. But they couldn't emotionally control themselves because one of the things we said to them was, don't call CRA, we're using the accountant's reputation to keep you alive.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard: Don't call CRA and [00:25:00] then someone called CRA. Suddenly that thing was off the rails and a business went under because they weren't in a moment where they were gonna listen to the given situation. And I used to think that I could save everybody. I don't know if you think you can save everybody, but this thing, I used to think I could save every person walked through the door.

And that's just not true. And I'll go back to your piece about your an expert. Up until yesterday, I used to think I could save everybody till yesterday. Now it has to be that sort of combo of feeling out and being honest about people and then seeing what actions they take after we meet. Yeah. If they're not taking action, then it's not happening.

And then you just say, well, I, you know, I, I'm not the right person for you at this time. But when they do take action and it then you get to the next hour and the next hour and working with them. And in one case, I had spent 500 hours with one company. Wow. And we took them from swearing at each other in the hallways and not having any processes and the leadership being very poor to developing and delivering a strategy to getting one of my favorite compliments, which was, thanks for bringing the laughter back into the hallways.

That can be the level of impact. That I've made in the past, and I really enjoy those ones. [00:26:00] But it's, uh, it's not like, it's not like a hundred percent of the time, it's all based on this real human part of do they have the humility and ability to take the advice and take action?

Kelly Kennedy: Well, that is the downside, right?

Is that no matter what, no matter what we say or what we do if our, if our students don't take action, we can't help them because we can lead them to water, but we can't make the calls for them. We can't do, you know, or update our LinkedIns or do the things we need to do to achieve growth. So you're absolutely right.

Actually, I have ran into that, a couple of times, not a lot. I think most people, by the time they're paying for coaching, that dollar and cents amount is like, okay, maybe I should actually do some of the stuff they're suggesting. But I have, I have actually had it happen once where we got through the program, but honestly, I think I felt bad as a coach in that moment because.

They didn't do what they needed to do and didn't get the results. But I kind of struggled with [00:27:00] that in the fact of, I asked myself after, could I have done that better? Could I have said something different to have gotten better results from that person? The answer obviously is no, there's nothing I really could have done.

But you do find that way and you know, I, I wanna make sure that wherever we're at, we're making a massive impact, not even a, like a small impact or a medium impact. I wanna make a massive impact everywhere I go. And when I'm not successful in that, I do sometimes struggle with it. And I'm a fairly new coach, you know, you've been in this game a long time.

I've only been coaching for a year and a half, so I'm new to the game. So when it, when I do have something like that happen, and like I said, it's happened only once, but I did struggle with that. And I, I do ask you for advice for me how do you handle that situation better without, without taking it so hard?

Gordon Sheppard: I wish I didn't have the test case. And just like I, you said, you said, yeah, that experience, I had one test case where I was in it hour by hour going through quite a significant engagement [00:28:00] and didn't step back to realize that, who was I dealing with.

So I didn't, I didn't do that in the moment.

Like you said, you, you had a program, you were delivering your program. In my case, I was trying to deliver strategic advice under, in a structured way, you know, and, and were they absorbing it? And could they take it in? And in retrospect, uh, about a third of the way through, I should have just hit the brakes and went, Hey, this isn't working.

You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. And their behavior, uh, was pretty erratic. And so they weren't actually gonna do those things. And that's, that's more about me than I realized afterwards wanting to be the savior in a sense. And that's my own thing. I had to work out. And that's nice for future people.

'cause now I don't need to waste time or, or sort of deliver those things. So I don't, I, I think that urge to help, I would share with you in, in terms of what that wants to be. But your urge to help is not. Point Yes for them, right. You know, it's the result, it's the results, right? They need the results, whatever those results are gonna be.

And that's what it is. And that's a tough one to swallow for a helper. And you know, if you look back at whatever your own [00:29:00] personality or whatever mentorship you've had in the past, you know, type, the type of person that you are.

Uh, and that's why you're in it, right? To help people and make things go forward in that structured way and make it, like you said, that massive impact.

But it's not gonna happen every time. And I, I wish it was, I really wish it was. Yeah. Because I think so many folks need it. But again, that combo of, and I say a sliver of humility, it's not that they can't be, but I just, somewhere in there where there's a crack something to get in there and earn trust quickly to then be able to say, okay, yeah, I can take this in.

And the other tough part on the clients is I always say careful who you pick to coach you. Mm-hmm. Uh, because you're gonna tell 'em your whole story. And it's exhausting for them to have to retell the story if they have to get a new one. So it's gotta that's sort of early vetting upfront of like getting right fit is, uh, really important.

Kelly Kennedy: I really love that we're chatting about this right now. 'cause you know, I talk to a lot of coaches, but we don't typically talk about the times. It doesn't work out right. I would argue this is the very first time that I've talked with a coach and we're talking about the time it didn't work out. So I think it's really candid.

I think [00:30:00] it's really important. Uh, this is an important conversation 'cause I know we have lots of people who are coaching, listening to us right now, growing their own coaching businesses. And one of the things I wanna chat with you is I've never had somebody tell me that it is okay to end a program.

You're the very first person I've ever talked to who has said it's okay. Like, you're essentially giving us permission to pull the plug if it's not working. And I, I wanna spend a little bit of time with that because pulling the plug is, it feels like admitting defeat. It feels like failure on our part.

How can we overcome that feeling or like. For instance, I had that one client that we got through it. I knew by the end that they probably weren't gonna do the work. They, they'd already paid for the program. It was kind of one of those things where it's like, well, should I have just pulled the plug and, and just been like, sorry, like this isn't working.

We did, like I said, get through the program, but I wanted more from it for them.

Gordon Sheppard: I think, I think a [00:31:00] lot of it is, is looking at, well there's the tough part if you're talking about the fo the consultants that are listening is, uh, they're revenue hungry, so you have to check that. Like if you, you know what I mean?

Like that thing of being overly hungry for the dollars. And I remember meeting a consultant years ago when I was learning and they talked about, oh I should, they said I should fire this client 'cause I'm not really providing any value, but they've got me on a retainer and I wanted to like, instinctively, I was like, what are you talking about?

Like, what do you mean? Why wouldn't it just end at the point it's supposed to end, but my full, my, now that's me philosophically. So I'm just there to transfer knowledge as quickly as I can and get out the door. That's what I hope to do. Whether it's an hour, 500 hours, whatever that is. The hope is, again, if I wanted work there and that sort of maybe lets me kind of sleep at night for the perspective that I take into things.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: The, um, that piece around can you say no for their benefit and yours? For me, it comes back to a values-based kind of decision of like, well, if I'm not [00:32:00] providing value at this moment it's, it is time to say no because I'm not the right fit. And I, funny enough, I was in a, someone was kicking the tires with me the other day and I said, oh, well that's interesting.

Uh, and they were weren't sure and they were talking about things and whatever. I said, well, let's, you know, you should kick the tires with a few people because once you pick somebody where you're gonna get into this intimate, it's such an intimate relationship.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: There's that, you, you, you shouldn't take that lightly when you sort of go into it.

So I would hope that. You should have the ability to say no. Admitting failure. That's a, that's a funny thing that it's, it's real trendy right now to go, uh, Brene Brown and be vulnerable the whole thing around. Yeah. You know what, I mess up too, but it's inevitable I think, in terms of what's happening because the other part about coaching that's difficult is, um, you just have limited information.

You Yeah. You have to just like, unless you can spend a hundred hours with them and really get to fully understand every aspect of what they're doing, that's very rare. Right. Yeah. A lot of times for me, I'll come in on a small engagement on there for half a day, a day. We're doing sort of training that leads to other little bits and fits here and here and there, but it's tough 'cause you're not getting the full [00:33:00] context either.

And I don't know that you could ever pretend to have the full context. You have your toolkit, you can have your instincts and kind of what you know. So I would say I would hope. People can say no and then, but I walk on the poor road that's been, laid out by other people where they've hung on too long and there's just been poor results.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard: I, I've frequently like, oh what's the difference about you? Like, aren't you like these negative things? And I'm like, no, I'm not. But they don't know that 'cause they've had a bad experience with somebody. So. Yeah. And the ones I can't stand depending on, there's different areas of consulting and I remember someone going to a startup with a marketing plan and on a, just unabashedly saying, oh yeah, it's $30,000 and we'll get you your logo.

And I'm like, whatcha talking about they, they have, they have no money. Like they have $0 and you just asked a bootstrapped operation. So that's an inappropriate thing that has everything to do with a consultant wanting to get paid on 1990s dollars when money was very different to now where I think it has to be a value provided scenario because there's just so many alternatives out there as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and, and that's just it. [00:34:00] And when I'm doing consulting. If I can't make the money or save the money, I don't make sense. Like that's it. Like that's how I measure whether or not it makes sense or not. It's like if I can't either make you money or help you achieve the revenue goal you're after or save you money somewhere, I don't make sense.

Because you're right, like any consulting service, it's quite expensive. So if it's not providing value, if it's not putting money back in your pocket or saving you money one way or another, it probably doesn't make sense to do in your business.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, and again, and then there's also them getting to know you as well in this process, which is like, for me, I transform leaders' lives.

Like I, if I spend an hour with y'all, I'll make a dent. I've, I've just done it so consistently that and I'm super excited about that. It can be pretty impactful. Like it can be daunting for people to take, to have somebody get that honest, that quickly to move the needle. Mm-hmm. But it's just the nature of the way that I do things.

'cause if I'm gonna get paid, it wants to provide those values and the impacts that I'm having, again, are changing whole cultures. Massively improving processes, putting them on a strategic path that they never knew they were gonna be on, [00:35:00] having conversations they weren't gonna have with each other.

Because I can be the objective outsider, not in the family, able to get them to have those conversations. So again, massive impacts around either profit driving or again, process or personal satisfaction, uh, which makes hopefully the coaching kind of worthwhile for them. But it, there's a bit of discovery on their part too, 'cause they actually don't know often what coaching is.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard: And so there's sort of that feeling each other out as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Well, I think that's a good segue to just chat about it. You know, like, let's say that I'm a medium sized company. We're doing, let's call it $10 million a year in revenue, but we're struggling to grow. We're, we're just not.

We're maintaining, but we're just not doing it. Maybe we have organizational challenges inside. Maybe our processes are not right. Maybe our organization structure's messed up. You know, nothing aside from the conversation. For instance, we might have had quickly, when we were talking about bringing you on, run us through it.

Like let, let's do a hypothetical company. What does it look like when you come in and you start [00:36:00] evaluating a company?

Gordon Sheppard: A lot of it, where I start with is the leaders themselves. So depends on what they're ready to absorb. 'cause the, um, if I walk in, right, if I walk in with a 600 page document and say, we're gonna fill it out today, their poor eyes just roll in the back of their head and they just, they just die a slow death.

Right? Yeah. So it initially there's sort of gauging leveling out where we at. If it's just something simple, like I had one woman say, I want my website to be better. I'm not, I'm not a web guy. But I mean, I was in there to coach her.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And I was like, well, why isn't your web provider? Why isn't that happening?

Well, then you find out that they are not good at having a tough conversation, and then you find out they aren't good at asking for things that they deserve. But in the meantime, she's got clients on the client side or seeing her website and she, so immediately we're into, so often there's a little, there's a little thread in there that I can start to pull on if I can get started with whatever that thread is.

And when I say that thing about why won't my, the people that report to me do what I want them to do, that's a very frequent one. That's a [00:37:00] gift for me because I'll be like, oh, great, why not? And then pretty quickly I'm getting a mirror out and putting it right up to them. 'cause no one ever has in a given situation.

So starting with the leaders, if I was gonna, a typical starting place for me, and I, I, I don't have my dashboard in front of us right now to share the screen. But again, if I'm thinking about your whole business in these five pillars. What is the strategy? The work plan people, operations and results? What I do is I dig into the people side very quickly, usually in the upfront conversation.

And I'll just do two things. One, I'll say, what is your current organization structure in your $10 million company? And we just draw it out on the whiteboard. Yeah. And then we leave some whiteboard space, say, what do you want it to be in, in three years or two years, or one year? So what is the future state of what that looks like?

And then currently in your organization what are the roles and responsibilities under each person? And I can tell you, having dealt with $10 million and billion dollar organizations, uh, the senior leaders have lost touch with what's happening in their organization. They just don't have the time to know that everybody isn't again, [00:38:00] doing kind of what they're supposed to be doing.

Now it really bugs them when you start to reveal this. I had a person leading a VP of, in an institution leading 180 people. And I was like, oh, I was talking to some people at the lower levels and they're doing this. He's like, why are they doing that? And I'm like, well, the real reason is 'cause you weren't.

Paying enough attention to them, what do you wanna do about it? And then that gives them that option to sort of start to dig back in and get that going and realign it or not, depending on what needs to be done. So this 10 million organization we start in at, where are they at on their leadership side, if they're doing well or not, depending on what's happening.

Then we get into the structure and roles and responsibilities. Well, that just opens up a big can of worms because that who does what. Yeah, because it's not in the job descriptions. The job descriptions are essentially useless. I don't mean to rag on the HR people, it's just saying they're not representative of the current state of what's happening.

Yeah. So now you get into saying, well wait, wait a second. So what do you do in your daily? And I can't tell you how many times I've had a blank sheet of paper in front of me and people don't know how to time manage. And I'm like, oh, okay. You don't know how to, so then we write down all the things you need to do and we rank them and suddenly it's the first time when [00:39:00] they've started to prioritize their day.

Yeah. We wanna get them outta that. The typical is working in your business, working on your business. We wanna get them to work, the senior guys to be working on their business. So that structure and roles and responsibilities goes together pretty quickly. Depending on if they are into strategic planning or not.

Some are, and some aren't. Some are just revenue driven and they make the money and that's fine. If they want to get to the vision, mission, values, and those are real, a lot of times, uh, lip service gets paid to those things and I'll gauge what's happening. Like if they're not gonna get that vision statement rolling off of everybody's tongue across the organization, then I, I don't spend a lot of time there.

What I'm really interested in for me, is moving to their goals and what are the objectives that drive those goals they want. If they wanna go from 10 million to 20 million, what does that pathway look like? Yeah. And what do we need to talk through and what can be absorbed mentally for them to actually stage that out?

And I'm in the high complexity game at this moment in time, and I don't mean to make this podcast last for 10 hours 'cause I would just simply pull the ripcord and start talking straight because we dig in then at that point to say, okay, if we're doing that, then what are the, you know, [00:40:00] all the areas that we need to talk to, uh, how do we pull all that together?

And then we start working through those goals and objectives and making that happen. And then underneath there, in that operational c. I just wanna know that they know what's happening. So quality assurance is an example of an area that I don't know a ton about, but for organizations say that do bids a $10 million company that's looking to do a bid with a massive company they need to know a lot about quality assurance.

And I know enough to know that they need to know.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And I just want 'em to check the boxes that I know they need to know. But sometimes the senior leaders don't, like we said, we don't know what we don't know. And then I'm looking for every major area of their business. What don't they know about accounting that they need to know?

What don't they know about it? What don't they know? And it is in every conversation whether they like it or not. And I'm like, get them to the table because they've gotta be there. Like those types of things. So then again, you can hear the complexity and now that spreads into many, many hours for saying, okay, we had the $10 million company.

You said in the first meeting you're gonna 20. What does that look like? Mm-hmm. What does that look like for you? How do we kind of work that out? And then I'm just, I'm getting it at a [00:41:00] high level. And then we can pull the threads on all the different things that we're doing there all the way along. I'm always trying to knowledge transfer.

I want a knowledge transfer. So that they take over the information. 'cause again, if they wanted me to do those things, I would work in their company. Yeah. But ideally what we're doing is knowledge transfer, knowledge transfer. And they get that. They take that on, it strengthens them as leaders. And then in their leadership team, they round out who does what in an honest way with an open, you know, communication with each other.

Now we're off to the races 'cause we know that they're gonna work towards building out, essentially, again, if I call it the executive planning system, yeah. They will have a document that's like an organization plan, which is bigger to me than a strategic plan because it's everything. And then if they've got that, they can visit that on an annual basis, prioritize it and look at the key things they need to do.

And then also ignore the things they can't do. And so, you know, they're often very hopeful, say in the area of marketing, but they're not ready to do it. So they, they often don't have a budget for it anyway, so.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: Then we don't need to say that that's important. If they can't actually get to it.

So I don't mean to get into the, the full complexity, but if I had that $10 million company with those leaders, I'm starting in [00:42:00] at them, I'm looking at roles and responsibilities and structure. Yeah. And that gets the ball rolling into saying, how far do we need to go for where you're at? And then can I knowledge transfer hopefully within six months to a year over sort of meetings, you know, with frequency around two, four times a month, depending on what's going on.

And then they can have all that knowledge to take forward themselves.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That is, that was a lot more than I thought you were gonna say. Uh, just in general. It's very complex. Right. I, the thing I like about it though is that you're ultimately creating a roadmap, right? Roadmap. You're not just saying you need to change.

You're saying, Hey, let's look at everything. Let's create a genuine, actionable plan. I think there's a lot of people that come in and give advice. But what they fail to do is give the action plan, right? And if you can give a full action plan on how you're going to accomplish those goals, the things that need to happen, people are really good at making things happen when they can see it.

Gordon Sheppard: I agree. And, and it's amazing [00:43:00] what those little moments are. So like, a favorite coaching question I'll say is, um, and I'll just ask you, who do you listen to?

Kelly Kennedy: Like in the company or like on podcasts?

Gordon Sheppard: You're the c you're, you're the CEO of your own deal.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right.

Gordon Sheppard: Who do you listen to?

Kelly Kennedy: You know what I bounce a lot of ideas off of, off of mentors and a mentor group that I have of, of other business owners, um, who, who've accomplished far more than I, and they

Gordon Sheppard: tend to I'm so glad.

Yeah. The typical answer is nobody. Okay. Especially, especially the owner operators as an example, and Alberta is an example, is full of these folks. You've just never, they're. Millionaires standing in line at Tim Horton's or whatever the, um, they are, they've built these businesses up over three and four decades or whatever it is, and they are genius at their thing, but they don't have any advice.

And I'm, I'm a big fan of the full life cycle of everything. Like, so I'm, I'm like organization all the way from here to either selling it or passing it [00:44:00] on to that next generation. I've got that sort of through line in mind. So that, who do you listen to is one of my favorite ones. The other one is I love as a coaching question, is is status quo an option?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And that's a great one because it'll get people to react. 'cause often they'll say, well no.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm

Gordon Sheppard: I want my $10 million company to be 20 million. I'm like, great, but what if you just keep doing what you're doing and I can just leave? And that challenges them to either get in the game and kind of dig in.

Or not, depending on where they're at. So those are typical ones that kind of get the ball rolling quite well. Yeah. And they'll then start to find themselves sharpening very quickly into where they need to go.

Kelly Kennedy: That's a really great question. I, that's a man I, that has never come up, not in 300 plus episodes, asking yourself if status quo is an option.

I want everybody listening right now to ask themselves if status quo is an option, because that's a great question.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, and, and then look at what you do after you ask yourself. Yeah. Because [00:45:00] typically we've got patterns, right? With so Well, if you're gonna go do your pattern.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: Then you know that it is an option.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: The people pay a lot of lip service to it not being an option. They'll read a book, they'll do a thing, but are they gonna actually kind of get at it? And that's a very good baseline question to find out. Okay then well, what do you need to, what do you actually need to do next?

Kelly Kennedy: And it doesn't have to be a big leap, I think that's what like people are always looking for. What is the big thing I can do? And I would argue, don't look for the big thing you can do. Look for the little things you can do every single day, week, month, and year. Because little things turn into an elephant over a year.

Gordon Sheppard: Absolutely. Absolutely.

And uh, and, and if they can sort of deal Yeah. What is the action that they can take. Yeah. And, uh, and again, who can they be accountable? Hope, hope, accountable to, to get it done. Yeah. Hopefully themselves. But again, if they need that outside accountability. Yeah. The other one I love asking is, um, how do things get done around here?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And that's a great one because you just start to go oh, [00:46:00] you actually, you know, you do this and you do that, and this is the way it is. Then I don't need to be prescriptive or coming from a book. To say we're gonna put this model in place. It's very organic.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: To then say, oh, okay, so this is where you're at in leadership.

You got a plus column, you got a minus column. Let's sort of see that, okay, that's where we're at. That's great. We understand the status quo good, and now where are we going from there? So it's really nice to have that sort of experience to know when to hit those simplified moments to allow that to occur.

The other one that was a real gift a couple years ago, a woman named Susan Scott wrote a book called Fierce Conversations and she says, one of, one of the key learnings in there is to let the silence do the heavy lifting. Mm-hmm.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I know, I, I always say when I got good at business development, Gordon was when I learned how to shut up.

When I literally stopped talking and stopped trying to sell, and I just started to listen and ask good questions, and it changed everything. And, uh, I almost hate to admit it, man, for like probably like two years, I was really bad at business [00:47:00] development because what I kept telling myself was, I have to sell, I have to talk, I have to fill the space.

And it was completely wrong. It was when I kind of realized, okay, no, you need to understand the situation. You need to better understand the challenge to see if you're even a fit. I was trying to sell most of the time before I even knew that my product was a fit for these people. It's like, understand the challenge before you start to provide the solution.

Gordon Sheppard: Congratulations. I mean, that's a great gift to yourself, right? And all your relationships, you'll be able to use that, but that ability to zip it, my mom used to do, uh, this one with me. She'd go, which meant zip it and throw away the key. Scottish sort of humor, but the, um, I love that one. And when you say that, what's that quick win that you can get?

When I talk about that one there's a workshop I teach about effective meetings to a lot of senior teams. And it's, um, that silence is people need to practice. So you actually have to go and just see what it feels like. 'cause depending on your personality that's very easy for you or for, I know for me as a talker, it's very difficult to mm-hmm.

To do that. So [00:48:00] that physiological ability to go and stop and just take people in can be very powerful. And again, something you put in your leadership kind of toolkit.

Kelly Kennedy: And actually even strategic pauses when you're communicating are also incredibly powerful. There's a lot of power in silence and people don't realize that.

But if you can learn how to leverage it, it'll change the way you communicate.

Gordon Sheppard: Absolutely. And so what's nice is just sharing tricks of the trade in terms of coaching little phrases or tweaks that you pick up along the way. And hopefully it demonstrates the hours, you know, the 10,000 hours. Uh, Malcolm Gladwell made me put in to get good at this, where you can arrive at those eloquent solutions.

Like that thing of like, oh, I talked to Kelly and he just said, if I patiently and persistently and respectfully stay in touch with people, it will work out. And I didn't believe him. And then he showed me the proof and then we did it. Like it. Like that's an eloquent solution to I'm sure what took you a long time to define into something that it would've taken [00:49:00] time to get to that eloquence.

Kelly Kennedy: It's just, it's experience and consistency over time. Right? If you get, and it's just like you, you can walk into an organization and you have a, like a 99% chance of being able to make a big impact. A hundred percent chance, as you mentioned, if you get me an hour, I'll change something in you.

Right. You can only do that because you've had so much experience and you've shown over and over again that it just works. And business development for me was the same thing with that much time dedicated to doing the same thing over and over and over again. You just got to a point where you're like, yeah, if I do this, I'm gonna get this result.

At least, over this period of time. So,

Gordon Sheppard: well, and it was fun to talk to you about your thing. 'cause like, like I just don't, I don't believe it and I want it right now. That's that other piece right now. I want it, I want this to be solved right now and that we run into that. I'm sure anybody in, in the coaching space, 'cause somebody wants that immediate pain point taken away.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: Um, and some of them can be pretty straightforward, but the ones where I'm facilitating the very difficult conversations, there's like an internal thing you gotta [00:50:00] sort of work on. There's the external reality to that. There's the context, there's all these things that you need to sort of, kind of work through.

So, it's certainly worth the investment in coaching. And training, you know, to get those things right and they can make huge, huge differences. But again, you need the humility and that commitment for folks to, to be able to take advantage of it.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Gordon, we're getting to the end of our conversation, but I do wanna lead us into podcasting.

You know, you started the Executive Wins podcast, you know, in 2024, you started it?

Gordon Sheppard: 2025 was the launch. January 20th was the launch for that one. Wow. It's been such a joy 'cause it's there for, um, what I do is, uh, and we did, this is what we did in our interview, but what I'm the intention is to get experienced leaders to share their biggest wins.

They pick one, and then we go through a structured conversation to unpack that win takes about 30, 35 minutes for the interview. And by the time we get through that, we meet people like Alvin Pike, who, you know, the biggest loan he ever got was a $300,000 mortgage. [00:51:00] And somewhere fell in love with buying a screw piling business, and he raised $25 million.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Gordon Sheppard: And bought a screw piling business and got that from 10 million revenue to 50 million revenue in three years. Wow. Where you meet, uh, Kelly Mote, who's, uh, chief Operating Officer at Mach. 32. Four people on our little medical device development team. They, I'll say this badly, but they've got an EpiPen they can jab into an open wound and stop the bleeding Wow.

That, uh, US military might be interested in. She's gotten through what they call the BARDA step getting to FDA approval in the United States. Karen Un at Taproot publishing a local Edmonton phenom. Karen does a wellness check-in at the beginning of every meeting so that she's able to create the vulnerability and trust to attract and retain the best remote talent.

The joy that I have in doing the podcast is, I sound pretty cool when I say that very quickly, but I get to spend a pre-interview with these people. I get to spend the interview time with these people. I can form wonderful connections with them. To spread their story. These are fantastic [00:52:00] stories. And the whole goal back to what is my mandate, is to get those leaders on sharing their stories so that someone else can listen and then they can take that away and immediately apply what they've learned, whether it's in attitude, improving people, making better profits, whatever they are.

And so it's just been so nice to be able to have such a wide variety of really strong people on with that focus on the one win. And I appreciate the longer sort of podcast, but this one's been nice to have a specific format and uh, we'll see how the people like it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. I really enjoyed my time on it and I'm really excited to hear it.

So you gotta keep me posted when it's coming live. If you're hearing this now though, it is a hundred percent live and you can definitely go and find it after this show. But Gordon, I wanna chat with you about the launch of the podcast because I'll tell you what, man I get questions all the time.

Kelly, how do I launch a podcast? I love your show. I wanna do something like it. I have an expertise in something, but I'm afraid to do it. I'm afraid to get started. I don't know what I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know [00:53:00] about you. I start you actually had an experience in radio.

I, I had zip nothing. I just knew that I loved podcasts and so I launched this show in February of 2023. My equipment, Gord sat in the corner of my room for a full month before my fiance really just put me on the spot. Moley Kelly either sell that or do something with it. We either need the money or we need the show.

Figure it out. And I went downstairs, recorded the trailer episode and, and the rest is history. But dude, I had to learn everything so I completely understand what these people are saying and the fear they have. I didn't understand audio editing. I didn't understand how to record a good show or show planning or anything.

I just knew I had an expertise in business development and I could share that with the world if I just went for it. That was enough for me. Episode three was almost the end. I almost quit. I was like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Who even cares? And I just, I love to talk to other podcasters and I actually don't [00:54:00] talk to a lot of other podcasters, so it's nice having you on.

And I would love to understand your journey and your experience because I think there's a lot of people who could make huge impacts if they're just willing to take the leap.

Gordon Sheppard: I, I agree. And congratulations on what you've, on what you did. 'cause there's that moment exactly like, I don't know. When things go wrong, like, what are you doing that people can't see?

There's that element of, of what that is. And you've got, if you're into your hundreds of episodes, that's an incredible dedication to making it work. And obviously it's, it's had an impact on your work because the value has proven itself out. I did another podcast called the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

I produced 156 episodes back, probably six or eight years ago. And that was a, a good experience, but I was trying to go, I then, the dilemma I got into there was not being focused. And it struck me that I, I didn't really feel that I had a theme for what I was doing in that one. Met lots of great people. It was a really good experience.

And again, like you said, I have the production background to sort of step into what's happening starting in 2025. I wish it was [00:55:00] like this. We're on Riverside right now. Just go get Riverside.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: Then go listen to the Riverside tutorials and you'll have a pod between, I, I use Buzzsprout and Riverside.

So the thing with, I used to have to send the podcast for editing audio editing. Yeah. To clean things up. The AI can take care of that now. The transcripts, the show notes, all those things that I used to have an assistant to do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: That stuff is all sort of there for the taking. But I would say more than anything, there has to be kind of a purpose and a focus to why you wanna do it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Gordon Sheppard: Uh, because if you, if it, if it's too random you simply won't get an audience for what you're listening for. So having that kind of worked out, and what I did, I know before I started was I just tested. I've spent, I've spent a lot of time coming to the executive Wins brand, and that was because I used to have that, you know, the complicated parts of our conversation today.

I used to start there and it was a horrible place to start. Whereas now when I meet people, I'm just like, Hey, can you tell me about your biggest win?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And we have wonderful con, we have a wonderful, it doesn't matter if I'm talking to somebody for five minutes or five [00:56:00] hours, or. It's just a fantastic place to start, but it took me forever to come down to, again, that eloquent kind of first moment.

So what I would say is I would be encouraging to anybody that, you know, is thinking about starting a podcast to think to do it. And there sh there's no barrier to equipment at all. Like you don't, you know, whatever. You can get like a, it's a couple hundred bucks for a mic and an editing program and you're off to the races in terms of what that looks like.

So have that little budget to go, but pick a focus so that you're gonna be able to get some traction with what it looks like. Yeah. For example, you've made a massive impact on the local business area. Is that fair?

Kelly Kennedy: That's fair. Yep.

Gordon Sheppard: Yep. So you've got a geographical footprint that allows that to be there.

For me, it's senior leaders. Senior leaders and wins. That becomes a way that's quickly memorable. Yeah. And you know, that sort of allows me to have a place to play. Uh, and of course if you go to Apple Podcasts, you'll see what that is. But I would try it out. I would try out the podcast format. Or whatever you're thinking about doing in simply some networking conversations.

Yeah. Go to an event and just try it on, see what it looks like and start to [00:57:00] get feedback on what that looks like. And this time round I actually asked people, um, what length of podcast would you like to listen to? Do you listen? Do you want it on YouTube? That led me to do both. Yeah. Uh, as opposed to, um, just doing audio.

Yeah, I, I'd done just audio before, so I did both. And then you get into sort of, you can go into other levels of complexity that I didn't know I was gonna get into. I have a teleprompter now, a little new studio in here. Like, it's kind of silly. And then, you know, you don't, people don't see you failing for an entire Saturday 'cause you can't get the teleprompter speed Right.

And all that kind of stuff, making it look natural. So I would be encouraging to anybody, but start with that thing of like, why am I doing it? Who's gonna listen and why do I wanna be connected with them? And I think it really can be a platform to meet the people you wanna meet.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: So I've met some really.

Outstanding people that I just simply wouldn't have met without this ability to say, oh, you know, I've got this podcast, but I'd love to meet you for the quality and interesting things that you're doing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And that's just been very easy Then, then I don't need to, I'm not trying to sell anything. It's just like, nope.

If you wanna share your information, you want [00:58:00] people to learn from it, then we're in good shape. So that, I would say that pre-work of like knowing what I wanted from it and why has been easy. The technical parts, I wouldn't, I hope nobody is intimidated by it. 'cause it's just a day and age where that's not the hard part to kind of get it up and running.

And again, all those tools are there for the taking.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. And I would say that even if you're not using AI tools, the production tools that are available to you now Yeah. Are fairly easy to use.

Gordon Sheppard: That's right.

Kelly Kennedy: I, I struggled a little bit learning Adobe audition only because I didn't start with Adobe auditions.

My recommendation to anybody starting a podcast, if you are going to self edit your show, just start on Adobe audition. It'll save you leaps and bounds of, of headache down the line. I, I switched at like episode, I wanna say like episode 95, I switched. So I'd already produced a whole bunch of shows on Hindenberg and had to learn a whole new program for the production.

Gordon Sheppard: Oh, good. Good for you. For your persistence. And I think, again, what's funny is I'm doing the whole thing through Riverside and it's because I gave up perfectionism a couple years ago.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Gordon Sheppard: And it's [00:59:00] not that I, it's not that I don't want to, and I've used Adobe audition a few additions ago, and it's not that I don't want to get in there.

It really is an expedited time versus quality thing. And so people are like, oh, you've got a sink issue or you've got this, I'm. Listen, I'm getting this thing out the door.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard: And the people that are listening are, you know, and the feedback that I'm getting is really strong. And so I'm just going with that.

And I might be on episode nine, five, and then I'll make that sort of per perfect change. Yeah. But perfect to me is, would've been a barrier to getting it out the door. And I'm just stunned. Again, it's something like Riverside. The thing I would say for people is, um, don't they, they need a little budget.

They need some amount of money. I'm gonna call it a thousand dollars.

Uh, but they've gotta be ready with that. And, and that thing where you're on Fiverr and you're like you know, I can get that editor for $5 or that editor for seven 50. It's like, no, stop. Like, you just gotta be able to move quickly through whatever these things are Yeah.

To get going. Whether you're getting like a logo produced or whatever, but that thousand dollars, uh, just be ready to, you gotta buy a mic. You gotta maybe buy a light. Yeah. You know, and you gotta, you gotta kind of get those basic investments done. And then, like [01:00:00] you said, you're off to the races and you can get going.

Or if you don't even wanna do that, just get that. I've seen some speakers who are doing very well and they just get the iPhone out and turn it around and hold it to arm's length and just start

Kelly Kennedy: massive.

Gordon Sheppard: Like that could be one of those ones too, where you just, and then you overcome whatever your interview fears or those things.

Kelly Kennedy: And a lot of phones these days have like a noise cancellation and like an audio upscaling feature that's pretty incredible. I had a person reach out the other day and I was like, yeah, I'm just doing this on my phone. I was like, dude, that sounds like you're in a studio. Like, that's really well done.

Gordon Sheppard: It's, and it's, it's funny having gone through and I could take you all the way back to my eight millimeter film project in university. Yeah. And I'm sad I should have been born 20 years earlier or 20 years later. But the gear these days is just shocking in terms of how good it can be. I still think there's value.

It's funny about the AI and how far to take it. 'cause apparently you can get, aI just to do your podcast now, which I would never recommend because I didn't, I don't get to meet Kelly Then in terms of how that goes, the other thing that's super crazy is I took transcripts from a podcast recently and because I've got this five part format, I gave a prompt to chat gt, I took the transcripts, I put it [01:01:00] in there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yep.

Gordon Sheppard: And it spat out these sort of page and a half Perfect like hockey cards of information.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And I'm like, whatcha talking about something that would've taken me forever to summarize and get into good shape? I'm like, pull out the inspirational quotes. Well now I don't need to go to brainy quotes anymore.

'cause all I need to go as a podcast guest, but I don't need to even search through the transcript. It got pulled out and I've got these quotes that are outstanding so that when I'm going to do social media pro promotion, I'm like, I'm, it's already there. So these tool, it's the tools are there to become really high quality very, very quickly.

So then it's still back to that idea of like, do I have an idea and with the people that I'm gonna get on, do they want to hear it and what's the point? So I really would spend, again, that upfront time there.

Kelly Kennedy: I appreciate that, Gordon, because I think there's a lot of people listening right now who just, they feel overwhelmed when they look at it and they're like, oh, I'd have to create the social media.

I have to do all of our show notes. I have to record and produce a show. Right? Like, yes, it's a lot, but there's a lot of great tools as well available to help you. And they're getting better all the time. So you [01:02:00] absolutely nailed it.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, and, and on and on the advisor side, the, there's that thing in there of like, it is basically, for me it's, well, 'cause I have help in the background, so that maybe is un unfair, but it's gonna be a half a day to a day a week of your time.

Yeah. And if that sort of gets you where you want to go that's the commitment. That is the commitment level. You're not gonna get it done in just a couple hours just to things happen. So.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Like I find my production has gotten longer only because my pickiness in the show quality that I wanna put out has gone through the roof.

Like, uh, you know, you, you, I find that like my show planning is, is longer now, my recordings are longer, my editing time is longer, but the show production is better than ever. So there is a trade off. There is gonna come a point where it's like, okay, I think I'm gonna put in the time to get this, like, to get the, get the sound and the quality meaning.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, and you know what? You, you produce regularly. So like I, when I had a cold and I'm like, oh, this thing's this episode's gonna last for ever.

Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And I'm like, well, I've got a cold. Like, I gotta get this thing out the door. So I was like, yeah, that one, I [01:03:00] sound like I have a cold.

Kelly Kennedy: So there, it is what it is.

It's, I do it all. Like I, Buckley's is my best friend. I haven't missed an episode in, at this point, 300 episodes. We're still trucking along, so. Yeah, man, like it, it really comes down to you. It's okay. Like it's, people will forgive you, but the algorithm won't. So you need to make sure that you're consistently doing your posting.

Gordon Sheppard: Wow. Well, and, and you've, I mean, you've, what are the, what are the highlights of the rewards that you've gotten? I mean, you, I mean, you've, you're doing it. So how has it paid you back?

Kelly Kennedy: You know, what you named a few of them today. You named the community, you build, right? Me and you know each other now if I need help with, you know, with corporate stuff.

I now know you, you mentioned earlier, do you, who do you talk to? Honestly, I talked to Colin Harms. I talked to Vaj and sw. I talked to Brian Hayes. I talked to all the people that I've. Done this show with, and a lot of them have become really, really great friends. Uh, Carmen LaBelle's, another one. Um, you know, there's just so many incredible [01:04:00] individuals that I've gotten to meet on this journey who I can now call like a friend.

I, I could call them for help. And it's amazing that it's hundreds of people now. You know, like it's pretty incredible, the community. There has obviously been contracts and work that has come through. Coaching has come through as an option. I never saw I never planned to be a coach, but it definitely presented itself after about a hundred episodes of this show.

And I didn't see it coming. But when it did come and I said yes to it, it was like, wow, I could have been doing this the whole time. This is amazing. Like,

Gordon Sheppard: and it's, it's funny 'cause people are like daunted by the time, but in fact, oh, a hundred episodes, a hundred day like you, when you start to add that up.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: But the cost benefit, 'cause you've done it like your business development work consistently over time. Going deeper in relationships. You, you've demonstrated, so when you, those people are hesitating to kind of do that, are you gonna do a live get all the podcasts together, guest together in one place at one time?

Kelly Kennedy: That would be really cool. I don't know. We'll see. We're [01:05:00] doing a lot.

Gordon Sheppard: I I, I'm, I'm, I just say it 'cause it's in my, I'm, I'm doing it now with micro groups from the podcast. Yeah. So I pull together two or threes. I would go I'll buy the ticket right now. Like you just pick the venue.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: And you charge me 25, a hundred bucks or whatever.

I'll be there. I would just sort of say, you've got that opportunity I think with this group. And it's funny for me, I just was batting this around of like, do you get just the group together or you divide other people? I think there's something about the guests where they have a con continuity of being on the show.

Kelly Kennedy: They all have something in common.

Gordon Sheppard: Yeah. Yeah. And then like, right. So then that thing, that's, I think, anyway, I just, um, that's a good idea. There's something about moving it into the real world that I think would be great. And you'd be there. Oh, that was the other thing I was gonna say. Please do a like host a panel.

Take two or three of the guests, put them up front for a little 15 minute thing, and then hyper encourage them to go and share the stories they shared with you. Yeah, because they've already known what to talk about and then they would, I, I know. I just can't be encouraging enough about that. 'cause I think you've earned that, right?

To have those few hundred people at one place at one time.

Kelly Kennedy: That would be super fun. I hope we get to do that a hundred percent. I wanna do that now. [01:06:00] No, we, we are trial running a live show at the moment, every Wednesday on LinkedIn. I don't know how long it's gonna go. I'm not sure, like with four people anything could happen.

But we're ultimately trying it. And so right now, like, uh, you know, at this point it's February 21st, uh, 2025. At this point we've been doing a live show. We've done three episodes to date. Our fourth episode is next week, and it's just. We're hopping on for an hour. We're doing a live conversation. Each one of us brings a topic and we don't know what it is.

So it's like a surprise to each one of us. And we just talked for like 40 minutes on it. It's been a lot of fun. And I would say maybe to you, I would encourage you to try something like that as well. Doing the live on LinkedIns. The last one, episode three, we had over a hundred, a hundred people watching, which was pretty incredible for a third show.

So might be worth trying on your front.

Gordon Sheppard: I, and again, you've built the base, right? You've built, you've earned the relationships through what you're doing. You're genuine right? You can hear that you want the best for the people that you come in contact with. That's [01:07:00] been very, very clear. So, congratulations.

That sounds really well earned.

Kelly Kennedy: Thank you, Gordon. I appreciate it. You know, for all of the listeners listening today who might have found what you were talking about with regards to executive wins really valuable. And maybe they're struggling, maybe they're having organizational challenges, maybe they're not hitting their growth goal.

Maybe they haven't set their mission and vision and they, they're just making money and they don't know where to go next. And they need that support. Give us a quick rundown on executive wins and let them know the best way to get ahold of you.

Gordon Sheppard: Executive wins.com, that's the simplest way to sort of think about it.

And from there, the site's got everything that you kind of need to learn about the coaching facilitation and business advisory resources that are there. If we're talking about coaching, it typically starts with a free one hour intake. Are we a fit? Can you know? Is there something there? Uh, facilitation, I've been in every room setting.

So there's not sort of an innovative strategic or conflict management scenario that I've been in. So if you need somebody, again, very experienced having been in. I don't know, with the Canadian military in a high [01:08:00] sensitive room, I can't talk about that kind. Like, it's just been crazy that way in terms of the levels that it's been.

So there's that. Uh, and then on the business advisory side, there's that joy of having that underneath engine foundational engine around having the executive planning system. So it's not that I'm going willy-nilly in one thing at a time. It really is saying, I've got this checklist underneath there.

If you want to go that far to Bulletproof your entire organization that's there as well. So the, the website executive wins.com, uh, get going there, check out the podcast, uh, the executive wins podcast. I think there's something there for anybody that wants to opt their leadership level. And if they're gonna hear again, like we're hearing today, we're hearing great tone, great suggestions, and again, lived experience.

Some of those experiences that are just absolutely unique and, uh, and really stories worth sharing. So that's another good place too.

Kelly Kennedy: And you are active on LinkedIn, so go check out Gordon Sheppard on LinkedIn, give him a follow. He's got great information coming out weekly. Gordon, it's been a pleasure.

Thanks for joining me today. Thank you for your time. Until next time you've been [01:09:00] listening to the Business Development Podcast, and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website@www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.