Darren Jamieson:
On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I am speaking to Rod Kuchta, who is a business coach that helps UK-based small businesses take back control of their businesses, their lives, and their time.
So I’m going to be having the age-old discussion with Rod about what happens when businesses don’t do this. What happens when businesses insist on maintaining control and not empowering their staff? What happens when businesses are too afraid to hire, to expand, and where does that leave them when they reach that inevitable retirement?
So, you help businesses with streamlining themselves, getting themselves better, and basically growing and expanding. Is that a fair assessment of what it is?
Rod Kuchta:
It’s a fair assessment, but there’s a greater mix than that. It can be, and commonly is, business owners who have started their business with a vision in mind. This is what I want this business to return to me.
Inevitably, what happens is the business owner then gets into the day-to-day of running their business. And when you’re stuck in the middle of running that business, it gives you very little time and capacity to work out how you’re going to grow it.
So inevitably, owners come to me when they’re in a situation of what I can best describe as completely stuck.
I started this with a vision in mind. I have no idea how far I am from that vision because all I do every day is come into work and work has become a job. It absorbs all of my time. It doesn’t pay me enough. A lot of the time it’s not structured well enough for me to do anything with, and I just don’t know what to do to change it.
And that’s not uncommon because that’s what I call being trapped in the storm.
Darren Jamieson:
Do you find most businesses, or business owners I should say, actually start their business with a vision rather than just fall into it by accident?
Rod Kuchta:
In my experience, business owners start with one of, or all three, of the following in mind.
They certainly want to increase their income. They want more freedom. And they want more time.
And inevitably, it’s those three things that they set out with the vision to achieve that they fail to get because they get drawn into the business.
The first thing I do with them is always the same. Let’s find your gap. How far are you now from what you wanted to achieve?
What are you going to do next to get there? And what’s stopping you from taking that action?
Darren Jamieson:
This is very similar actually to a post I’ve just put out on LinkedIn today.
I know it’s about me not doing any work, because people take the piss out of me in the office for doing that. But it’s true. I don’t really do anything.
And when I’m at networking meetings people ask, what is it that you do? Most people will say I’m a web designer or I’m an accountant or I’m a financial adviser.
I say I don’t really do anything. I try to do as little as possible, if that’s in any way possible.
But I’ve explained how I don’t mean that flippantly. I genuinely do try to do as little as possible. It’s about scaling a business so that people do it for you.
I worked out today I’ve not designed a website in almost five years. And in that time Engage Web has built over 130 websites. I’ve had no hand in any of them, even though I used to be the only person here that built websites.
I speak to loads of business owners, you probably do as well, that say I want to get off the tools. I need to get off the tools. But what stops them from doing that? And is it industry specific?
Is it trades that suffer from that more than others?
Rod Kuchta:
Trades suffer from it quite frequently.
What you’ve managed to achieve is something that I have just shared a post about in this last week, which is about empowering your team. Because once your team is empowered, you are then free to focus on growing your business.
You mentioned trades there. I spoke to a new client for the first time earlier this week and he said to me, “My phone just won’t stop ringing and I’ve got too much work. I’m either turning it away or I’m giving it to other companies who do what I do, but they’re not giving me anything for it. They’re just taking what I’m giving them.”
So what do you think I should do?
I said, “Put your prices up.”
“Well if I put my prices up, I won’t get as many jobs.”
You won’t be giving away as much work. That much is true. But what you will be doing is getting more money from your time. And by doing that, you’ll have more time to focus on how you’re going to grow your business.
That’s not uncommon either. People are too busy because they’re not charging enough money.
Darren Jamieson:
We’ve had that exact conversation many times with clients.
“We don’t need to increase our marketing. We don’t need to do anything to get more business in because we can’t handle the business we’ve got. We’re too busy and we can’t afford it anyway.”
What do you mean you can’t afford it? But you’re too busy.
Put your prices up.
“Oh no, we can’t do that because then customers will stop using us.”
Then you’ll be working less for the same amount of money.
And it doesn’t quite click with some people that you need to.
We put our prices up for a lot of our services either every one or every two years and our clients know that’s happening.
You’ve got to do it. If you keep worrying about the cost and your competitors being cheaper than you, you’ll lose people to your competitors. You’ll end up working eighteen or twenty hours a day for very little money and you’ll just burn yourself out.
Rod Kuchta:
If you look at the percentages on it, if a business were to increase its prices by twenty percent and lose twenty percent of its customers, its net income would still be higher than it was previously.
And they would still now have more time to focus on growing the business and attracting the customers they actually want to work with who will pay the prices that they require.
Transcript continues in the same format for the remainder of the episode.
Rod Kuchta:
They can get me on LinkedIn. They just need to search for me. It’s Rod and the surname Kuchta, which is spelled uniquely.
LinkedIn is a good place to find me, or they can go to kuchta-consulting.co.uk and they can get in touch with me through that website and we can chat.
Darren Jamieson:
Fantastic. I will put the links for those underneath the podcast. So if you’re watching on YouTube it’s in the description. If you’re listening on iTunes, Spotify, Audible or something else it’s down in the show notes below.
So just scroll down and you’ll find the links to Rod so you can connect with him directly from there.
Rod, thank you very much for being a guest on The Engaging Marketeer. I have learned so much in the last hour or so.
Rod Kuchta:
It’s been my absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on.
Darren Jamieson:
Thank you.
More about Rod
Rod Kuchta is a business coach who works with UK-based small business owners to help them regain control of their companies, their time, and their long-term goals. Drawing on a background in sales leadership and business development, he specialises in helping owners step out of the day-to-day operations of their businesses so they can focus on growth, strategy, and building teams that can operate independently.
Through coaching, Rod helps business owners identify the gap between where their business is today and the vision they originally set out to achieve. His approach focuses on empowering teams, improving processes, strengthening leadership, and creating businesses that are sustainable, scalable, and ultimately valuable enough to sell or step away from.
Rod works with entrepreneurs who want more freedom, more time, and a business that delivers the lifestyle and financial results they originally started out to create.
You can connect with Rod here:
Website: https://entrepreneurscircle.org/coaches-directory/info/rod-kuchta/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rod-kuchta/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Kuchta-Consulting-Ltd-100080935483410/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therodkuch/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
