Chasing Dreams Through Entrepreneurial Drive, with Stacey Hanke

Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast. Stacey Hanke is the star of our episode here. I could tell she was a farm girl right from the beginning. I mean, she introduced herself as a farm girl. I'm a farm boy, so we can spot each other. You know, I take a very farming approach to Strategic Coach, that the tools are like plants, like we put the tools in and we plant them in your brain and they develop at different rates. Some of the tools just immediately bloom and you understand it. But I've had clients who've been in the Program for 10 years and they said, you know, you said something and you introduced something in year 1 and I finally realized what the purpose of that tool is. But the one thing I'd like to really focus on about what Stacey shared with us is the consistency of doing positive things and letting the positive things compound. And I believe that all growth is compounded growth. It's what you do consistently every day and what you're committed to, and then the habits that grow around your commitments.
 
The one thing that really struck me in her interview was her comment about she started the company for her, but now the company is really for her team. Babs Smith and I feel exactly the same way about Strategic Coach. You know, we started very, very small a long time ago. 35 years ago we started. I think we had two or three individuals to start with, and now we have 120, and we're in three countries, and we're in four cities. But the growth has been consistent all along over those 35 years. Stacey talks about the fact that her two sisters work in the company and that she was worried that the other team members who are not related to her might have a problem with that. Well, try it with a husband and wife team. But Babs and I have a division of labor that we do, and we treat it like a theater, that Strategic Coach is like a theater, and Babs is the boss of the theater. She runs everything with the theater operation, all the team members, she's responsible for that. And I'm responsible for what's on stage, I'm responsible for the thinking tools that are created in Strategic Coach and how the workshops are going to go.
 
But I loved her understanding, her deep understanding of just exactly how teams grow, you know, and that you have to have very strict rules that apply to everybody. In our company, everybody has a unique role. But they're all part of a team. Every role is related to other team members. I have a particular role in the company. Babs has a different specific role in the company. But I loved her whole presentation and how she thinks about it. You can take the girl off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the girl. And I know she's growing her business just as if it was a successful farm, like the one that her father and mother have created over decades and decades. Just a joy to listen to her talk about how you grow things that last a long time and keep getting better.
 
Stacey Hanke: Stacey Hanke started the business. We will be 22 years old in August, which is crazy. So we work primarily with sales professionals and executive C-suite, helping them enhance their level of influence. We do that through their body language, through their messaging. I have an entire team that presents this in workshops, deep dives for some of the top Fortune 500 companies. We do a lot of executive mentoring. And then where I really started the business 20 some years ago, I deliver a lot of keynotes on this topic at big events. One thing that I talk a lot about my keynotes is my background is really where it started. I grew up on a dairy farm in central Wisconsin. My parents are 84 years old. And as of this morning, I just called my dad this morning and he's out planting and working the field, 84 and he's on a tractor doing this. Obviously, that's where it started. It's in my DNA watching dad and my mom do what they did to be successful every year, to make sure that my sisters and I had what we needed, to watch the level of drive and passion that he instilled in my sisters, which both my sisters also work in my company.
 
That tells you a little bit about how this all created. The entrepreneurial piece was always there. I mean, out of college, though, I went to several different large corporations because I knew I need to get the business world underneath my feet and really learn the ins and outs of running a company and being a leader. The entrepreneurial piece, though, that is, I guess it's an advantage and a disadvantage growing up underneath that, because that drive is what really got me to decide, the sky's the limit. I can just pick and choose what I want to do to just have that passion in my life. And that's one thing my dad, now my mom, not so much. She doesn't want to farm anymore. But my dad, he is so alive come this time of year and he gets to do what he loves. That is his purpose. That's his passion. So I guess I have to blame him on where this all happened. He is, and you know, as you get older, the whole piece, I know Dan Sullivan talks about this a lot. It's about having the purpose. And I see that in my father. So my sisters and I no longer fight with him to say, you really need to slow down. Like, no, keep doing what makes you happy.
 
I use a story in my keynote. I talk about how to communicate with influence. I talk about how it's a journey. There's no destination to it. It's a process of constant development, similar to what Dan preaches. And I always share the story with my mom and Dan, and I say, you know, our company slogan is communicating with influence Monday to Monday, that it has to be consistent. And I share with my audiences, that's really where Monday to Monday came from. I did not come up with that on my own. It was watching my mom and dad. Everything that they would plant in the spring, their level of consistency Monday to Monday, the patience piece of it, always determined our finances in the fall when they would do the harvesting. I relate that to corporate world, to really anyone, that how we show up, how we interact with others, truly determines the people in our circle, it determines the businesses we run, and it determines the money in our pocket Monday to Monday.
 
That kind of ties also to your question of where did this whole entrepreneurial piece started. I found that if you stay consistent, and if you're true to who you are, consistency does mean you've got to be true to the work and be consistent with it. You will grow. You will, no pun intended here, but that to me is really the success when we talk about having influence Monday to Monday. It's no secret formula. It truly is consistency. And there's obviously discipline and drive that goes with it. We believe it as well. I think now more than ever in the last, what, four years or so, just everything that has changed. The big thing that to me that hasn't changed, but people think it's changed. Finally, people are understanding for the most part, the power of communication, because there's so many different mediums now that we're trying to influence people through. It's more competitive, it's more complicated, and yet communication still is the core to everything that we do, no matter who you are, no matter what industry you are in. And I do think the last four years have opened up that possibility, that awareness for people.
 
But communication has always been the core of everything that we do. Now, though, with the multitude of mediums that we have, people seeing themselves on Zoom or Teams, whatever platform it is, it's almost as if it's opened up a box that's always been there that says communication is the core to everything you do. It's core to whether or not you have success, connection, engagement with people. It's just been magnified over the last couple of years. I started in radio. I did commercials. And I remember the first commercial I did, it was an intern in college. I remember showing up with a totally big ego. I walk into my place of internship, it was a radio station, and they said, we're going to give you a shot today. Today, we're going to give you a shot. You've been asking, you're going to shoot your first commercial. Well, it's radio, so it's all voice. And I thought, oh, I'll be done in an hour. It took all day to record one 30-second commercial. And I remember thinking, oh, so the power of how you sound has nothing to do with how you feel. I wanted to be the next Katie Couric. I wanted to be on the Today Show. It never happened.
 
And then I started to stop at large corporate jobs, some big Fortune 500 company I worked with. And I always worked in training and development. I was always doing training around customer service, time management. I mean, things that I should never have been training on, because I had no idea what I was talking about. But the one thing that I always noticed, no matter what the training topic was, if a leader that I was training on time management, if he or she could not communicate effectively, it didn't matter what they knew about time management. So through a series of stops along the way, I found one stop where I was a meeting planner. And I hired our speakers. I was the emcee at some of our events. I started to hang on to their shirt tails. I had them coach me. Fast forward how many years later, people started asking me to come speak at their events. And I thought, sure, why not?
 
I remember one of the first events I did, my boss said to me, right before I was going to go on stage and introduce our keynote speaker, he said, I'm going to record you. And I thought, why would you record me? Everyone says I'm so good and I'm so great at what I do. Again, big ego. I was young. I watched the playback with him afterwards. We're two seconds, five seconds into the playback and he looks at me and he says, would you want to sit through that? And I remember that harsh feedback to the biggest turning point in my career, starting to turn the corner in my career, that I realized just because you feel influential and confident has nothing to do with what really happens. And that was the big turning point where I realized, wow, no matter how smart we are, no matter the level in the organization or the years of experience does not determine how influential we are. Now, communication was my degree in college and I always had a love for it. It just made me really open up my eyes to see there's opportunity to increase people's awareness of how much influence they really have rather than what they believe to be true.
 
And that was, it'll be 22 years in a couple of months that I decided to give it a shot. I was young. I remember calling my parents and saying, I'm leaving my corporate job. Now, even though they're an entrepreneur, they looked at my corporate job as, wow, you get a really great sale. I was overpaid. I should not have been paid when I was being, big benefit package, all that. I remember calling my mom and dad and saying, I quit today. They didn't talk to me for weeks. Now they could not be happier, right? But I remember thinking, well, if it doesn't work, I live in Chicago. There's tons of Starbucks. I can always get a job at Starbucks.
 
And it has grown. Like any other entrepreneurs you've talked with through Strategic Coach, I started here. And it's just listening to our clients and the need that was there around communication. Our clients, I'm so grateful for the friendships I've made there. They've really been a big part of me growing this company, and they'll continue to help me grow and expand. Before we can change anything in our life, we have to be self-aware. And it's the power of seeing yourself through the eyes and ears of your listeners. It's this. The more that you can audio, video record yourself, watch the playback. When you watch the playback, you're asking yourself, how did I feel during that interaction versus what I hear or see? Because this is the eyes and ears of your listeners. That is hands down. You would be shocked the amount of executives that we coach that will say, I've never watched myself on playback. And all my executives, my teams are telling me how great I am.
 
Well, you get to a point in your career, people are going to tell you what they think you want to hear. It gets lonely at the top. The feedback starts to get less and less of really feedback that you can use. That's number one. Number two, in no order, is really sitting down today and taking five minutes and asking yourself, what is my personal brand? What do I want people saying behind my back? Because there's one thing that we all have control over, and that is our development for ourselves. And to some degree, we really have control over the perception others have of us. If you don't have that conversation, if you don't write it down, because what we write, we invite in our life. So if you don't write it down, you never have clarity of, oh, I want to be like that. I want to be like that. Some people call it executive presence. Number three, what you could easily start today is ask for feedback from people you trust are going to tell you the truth. I am sure our listeners have people in their personal life that can't wait to tell them the truth. It's usually the people that we live with.
 
When I say feedback, it's not, how did I do? Great, good, was good. And a lot of my executives will say that, well, that's false feedback. In some cases, people are lying to us because they don't have the confidence to tell us you take a long time to get to the point. Or you always seem distracted. To really ask for feedback in your personal life and your professional life, that’s what I mean by consistency. You have those three. Watch yourself. Ask for feedback, and create that clarity of how you want to come across. Now you take it to the next level and it's consistency. One of the biggest mistakes I see our clients make is the way they show up in a virtual platform, the way they show up on a Monday versus a Friday, the way they show up in person. When we start messing with our consistency, for example, how you see me here, there's a good chance this is how you're going to see me when we're in person too. When there's not that consistency, people start guessing who's going to show up. They start guessing, they start guessing your level of trust. Influence is based truly on the length of time people trust you. Those would be the top three that people can easily, I mean, we can all do that easily today.
 
There's someone right now that I'm working on, working with, mentoring. He is a CEO of a family-owned business. Stakes are high. He has so much pressure on his shoulders. He already is very much of a high caliber CEO. The morale in his company is high. Production is high. Productivity is high. He came to me to say, I know there's always more. I know I can always get better. However, the board is not going to give me honest feedback. It's always good, nice job. I don't know what I don't know. And I've spent three months with him and to watch them change over a three-month time frame. Now, when I say change, I've not changed his personality. It's even through my coaching to take him to a whole ‘nother level. His strengths go up a notch and then it's balancing out any weaknesses.
 
Then you've got someone who I recently am coaching right now. He is a brand-new CFO. He is the face of the company, of his clients, of his board. He got promoted to CFO because he's got the years of experience. He has the knowledge. And then comes the however. The client always says to me, they've got this, however, and I know exactly where we're going. The way he's communicated before he was a CFO no longer works. And that's a big piece around communication too, is knowing that how you communicated 10 years ago, how you communicated two years ago, may not be what is going to work for where you are at now. And my job is really not to change these folks. My job is to make first, self-aware of how did they really come across? Then it's to watch their strengths, their weaknesses, give them practical, immediate tools that they're going to be able to use whether they're hanging out with their family or they are in a high-stakes investor meeting. And that is the power of communication.
 
I always use the example I teach as if I'm teaching an athlete. I was watching something this morning about one of the athletes. They talk about the hours that they spend practicing. How are we the same in corporate world? Whether you're an entrepreneur or you're not, how you show up every day is going to help you prepare for that big game day, which in our world might be the big presentation, might be the big sales pitch. And the biggest mistake people make is, I have a podcast that I got to go on this morning, so I'm going to practice. Well, it's too late. If I'm going to turn on these skills that I've never used before with you, I lose authenticity, I lose credibility, and most importantly, I lose trust. My slogan is always, what is common sense is not common practice. I know what I'm sharing with you is not brand new. I know our listeners have heard it before. My challenge for people is, have you done anything about it?
 
COVID's the big one, where before that, our calendars would be booked a good year out. There was momentum going on. And I remember coming off stage, I just delivered a keynote. I opened my email, and it was blown up. Cancel, cancel, cancel. And my sister’s in front of the company, they're texting me, you've got to call us right away. The calendar's going bare. And I'm thinking, who messed up? What happened? And I remember it was a Wednesday, Tuesday, something like that. And I drove back to Chicago and I sat on my sofa that night with my husband, Jeff. And I said, I'm quitting. I have this whole team of people that I'm responsible for. I'm responsible for my sisters. They all have kids. I sat there and he said, you can either feel sorry for yourself or—this is where my mom used to say to my sisters and I—suck it up, buttercup, and put those big crop pants on. So I spent 24 hours moping. And that next night, Thursday, I sat on the sofa, I pulled out my laptop, and I sent a message to all of our clients. And I said, this is happening. And we are here to help you, we can still train you, we have an entire virtual platform.
 
Now, we did not have a virtual platform. But I remember my coach always saying, sometimes you have to sell it before you create it. And literally that weekend, me and two of my team members spent the whole weekend putting together an entire virtual platform. On Monday, I sold it. And within two months, the calendar started to build out. The big turning point there was I was so comfortable. We were doing well. We had record years leading up to that. I could feel I was floating. I could feel I was getting lazy. I could tell my team was getting lazy. So comfortable. I mean, it's just, we were living on cloud nine. I always knew it, but I had such a long running streak. I always knew to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I got too comfortable. And I always had said that in my speech, get comfortable with being uncomfortable because the minute you understand the discomfort, growth will happen. I realized how strong I was. I didn't think I ever could do something like that. And that time truly catapulted our business to an international market. It opened up windows.
 
I know this is a similar story to a lot of entrepreneurs and I know it's not a similar story to a lot of entrepreneurs. It also humbled me. It has changed my thinking big time. I don't take anything for granted. I have put my foot on the gas pedal even more since then, maybe almost to a fault. And it has made me stronger, that moment in time has made me stronger to last year, where we lost some of our employees due to retirement, and I have completely restructured this company. I think these last eight months have been the toughest eight months I have ever had running this company, even outside of COVID. But I can look in my rear-view mirror. It's not done yet. I still have some more transitions to make. But I knew that COVID helped me prepare for these last eight months. Because if we kept even doing it the same as we were, I can't get to 2025 the way I want to.
 
And Strategic Coach and the guidance there has been a big part of this, too. Because that's when I joined Strategic Coach was 2021, but it opened up a lot of windows, doors. There were things that happened earlier in my career, but not like this, not like COVID, not like these last eight months because I was too chicken to ever make the big transitions that I've recently did. And I've realized the more you fall, as long as you get up fast and you don't fall the same way every time, every fall, right, is the next level. And I think I'm here versus when I first started, I was here. And I've always been told that as long as you're self-aware of you're gonna fall again, you'll never fall as far as you did when I started 21 years ago.
 
Best thing I've done, and I truly can say this because I've had a lot of coaches, love my coaches. This, I think, is the community that adds to the power of every tool I have received. It has been a game changer. To walk into that room every quarter, I always joke with my husband, I get excited for Strategic Coach when we meet in person, and then I walk out of there like I've just been slapped like 20 times. But I crave that because in my group, they're smarter than I am. They just push me to this place that I don't know if I do it on my own. And then it's, okay, 90 days. I know I'm going back in 90 days. I've got stuff to do because I am not walking in that room in 90 days and saying, I told you I was going to do that and I didn't do it. This level of accountability.
 
The other piece that I love about Strategic Coach is probably where it's really the game changer. Being an entrepreneur can be lonely. It can be so lonely and no matter, even though my sisters are involved in this and my husband hears about it and my friends, no one will ever get it unless you live and breathe this 24-7. So to go in that room and to be okay to say there's no egos, we have all failed. Sometimes, you know, we kick off Strategic Coach talking about your personal Positive Pocus and professional focus. So sometimes you're listening to everyone and there's all this rah rah. And I'm sitting there thinking, mine was not that great this quarter. And someone else will say, I just have to tell you, I've had a rough quarter. It's that community that is, yeah, it's a big game changer.
 
I dragged my feet for a couple of years. Strategic Coach was introduced to me a good five years ago. And if I could look back, I should have, could have, would have, I should have joined a long time ago. I'd be even farther now. I'd be smarter than I am right now in this moment, I really believe. And I'm one that will examine over to a fault before I invest. I am so protective over where we spend our money. And I can only talk from personal experience. That price tag, that is going to come back to you over and over again as a huge win. And if you talk to my sisters, they'd agree. They'd be like, Stacey is the tightest person that you know. So the fact that I have spent that kind of money on Strategic Coach and I continue to come back and do it, these are lifelong friendships. So on a personal side, and it's lifelong learning. I don't know how I ran my company without Strategic Coach. I believe in it that much.
 
I think about anytime I need help, to just know you have somewhere now to go, If I look at, and of course, I'm going to share this because it's what I believe in is this power of communication. With the amount of executives that I've worked with, I think even if an executive works for a company, they to some degree are an entrepreneur. And I've had so many people say to me, once I started focusing on my communication, my delivery, my messaging, it has elevated my company. Now that can mean many different things for everyone, whether it's bigger profit, bigger business growth, better relationships with the team. I think especially for an entrepreneur, it's not just our products that stand out. I know this to be true because a lot of our very long-term clients, I'll ask them, I'm a small boutique training company, why do you keep coming back to us? And they'll say, we know, we know we can get communication skills training from somewhere else, but it's how you all show up. It's the experience that we have with you. It's how you communicate with us. It's how we feel when we interact with you.
 
No, we don't have the secret formula. But what we do know that when it comes right down to choosing one or the other, people are going to choose how you make them feel. People are going to choose how you make them feel when you're with them, and then long term afterwards. Therefore, if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't taken a look in a while, I challenge you just for the next week, start recording yourself, start asking for feedback and identifying how you really want to come across to just make sure it's in line with not only your brand of your company, but really your personal brand. I think a lot of who you are will come out even more to your clients, that authenticity, that trust. And we all know that trust is what grows any company.
 
The fact that your first day with Strategic Coach was all about Free Days. And I remember sitting here thinking, what have I been doing? It's the quality of life. Strategic Coach was a big part of me doing these big transitions as of eight months ago. I don't think I would have done it without the guidance and just that constant messaging. The big takeaway when I was thinking about transitions and stuff, I remember going up to my coach during Strategic Coach, one of our in-person, and I said to him, I'm sitting here today listening to all this information and I'm realizing I'm starting to build my company for my team and not for me anymore. And that was last year. And that's when he's like, why did you start the company again? I go, for me? But it's not that anymore. And that was part of all these transitions that I've recently made. Like, wait a second. It's that, it's these messages that suddenly you're like, that's brilliant, yet common sense. I'm not thinking about why are we really doing this? Why are we putting in all this work? I don't want to lose the love for what I do because suddenly I'm doing what I don't love to do anymore.
 
And we're still course correcting. But the fact that I had that moment is important because I'm going to have to course correct again. I don't know how soon that will happen, but at least now I've had that moment that I can always go back to these resources. And it's the reminder of, no, it's okay. You can take a Free Day. It's actually okay. You can take a Free Day in the middle of the week. Like in my world, that was unheard of. Oh my goodness, it's so, so true. It's been fun too, because I've taken my leadership team. All of them now have gone through Strategic Coach, a version of it. That fact that we're talking it, we're using it as a team. They will joke with me sometimes. They're like, you have so drank the Kool-Aid. Okay, I believe it. And if I'm talking it, I want you to be a part of that experience.
 
We have six instructors. They're the ones that do these deep dive workshops. And then we have a leadership team of a very small three due to some reorg. And then, of course, like everyone, we contract out—our vendors, like our marketing, our social media, those type of areas who are, I mean, they've just been a part of us for so long that they're like family at this point. I work with two of my sisters and we've learned over the years, it's all about clarity and open communication to know what each one expects. And we're not great at it. I mean, when it's time that I have to talk salary and bonuses, I hate it. You know, so then we both decided, how about we set up a structure that this is what it is for five years. And then we re-evaluate and it makes it easier. Yeah, it's hard. And I'm sure I'll have more difficult conversations with them. It's definitely difficult. The family always comes first. I'd rather have them not work with me than to jeopardize our relationship as sisters. You get it.
 
I mean, we're so blessed, right? We're so blessed to have sisters. I don't know what life would be without them. My youngest, Sienna, should be on sitcoms. It's so funny. And not too long ago, she comes home from school one day and she says, Mama, I decided what I want to do. I'm going to be the CEO of Stacey's company. And she goes, well, why do you want to do that? She goes, because you get to tell people what to do, and I bet you don't have to go to college. Well, give me a little bit more credit. I actually do have an education. When this happened, my sisters both have two daughters and one of the daughters said to my sister, what happens if auntie Stacey fires you? She's saying that to my sister. And I said to her, it will make Thanksgiving very awkward.
 
It was a huge risk. It is not easy. The key is business is business. Family is family. And we have a very, very clear line that when we are connecting on Zoom or in person, we will say, this is all business. But we need the okay to transition from one to the other. When we get together in person, there's no work talk. I need a break. They need a break. There's no work talk. If it is something that we need face time, we happen to be together at a family gathering, we'll say, are you okay with business talk? And we take it away from the family. We go somewhere else.
 
It is not easy, yet I treat it and they treat me with the utmost respect, where they look at me as you're not our sister, you are the CEO when you need to be the CEO, and when we're sisters, we're sisters, which that is the priority. I think having a very clear conversation upfront before you decide on this arrangement of what does it look like, create the clarity. And of course, you're going to have that conversation many times. Number two, the biggest fear for me has always been I don't want my other team to leave because they don't like the dynamic of that family. And we've had some people that when they joined the team, they said we were concerned at first of what this would be like. Are you going to treat your sisters different? And I know I'm under the microscope of that. So it's putting everyone on the same playing field.