ActionCoach SBL

February 2025: Sully starts T&T Heating and Cooling. Just him. Goal: $250K by year end.

May 2025: we start coaching.

We didn't start with ads. We started with a vision, a strategic plan, and guiding principles for his money and his time – plus an accountability schedule he still runs today.

Then a team. A referral program. Real outreach.

December 2025: $600K.

Today: past $750K, aiming at $1.1M.

Sully didn't work harder than you. He climbed the steps in order.

I'm walking 12 owners through those same six steps on Tuesday, October 20 in Valley View. Comment SCORECARD and I'll send your ticket.

Be the Buffalo. Charge the Storm.

Thirty days ago I decided to change things up on here. Here's what came out of it, and one direct ask.

I've written about the same handful of things all month, because they're the things I actually see:

That most owners can't name four of the six numbers running their business.

That ten percent, in five places, is sixty-one percent on the bottom line.

That the storm you're avoiding gets bigger, not smaller.

That your team is usually fine and your clarity usually isn't.

That the hours you're giving this thing beyond what you agreed to, times fifty-two, is the number that actually keeps people up at night.

If any of that landed, here's the ask, and it's a small one.

Fifteen minutes on the phone. Not a pitch, not a presentation. I ask you what a normal week looks like and whether the business is giving you what you started it for. If there's something there, we book ninety minutes and do the real work. If there isn't, you're out fifteen minutes and I'll tell you straight.

Comment CALL, or send me a message, and I'll get you the link.

To everybody who commented, argued with me, sent a message, or showed up to a room in Valley View this month - appreciate you. Genuinely.

Be the Buffalo. Charge the Storm.

I want to say something that's going to sound soft coming from a business coach.

I sell growth. Revenue, profit, systems, all of it. That's the job, and I'm good at it.

But that's not actually why I do this.

I do this because I've sat across from too many owners who built something successful and lost everything that made it worth building. Missed the games. Missed the dinners. Marriage went quiet. And they were told the whole way that this was just the price of being serious about your business.

It's not the price. It's a design flaw.

A business that requires all of you isn't a successful business. It's a job with worse hours and more risk, and you own it.

Everyone deserves to live a successful, balanced life. Everyone. Including you.

If you haven't had a real week off this year, that's not a badge. That's a symptom.

Be the Buffalo - Charge the storm.

People ask what actually happens in a free coaching session, and I think the vagueness is why most of them never book one. So here's the whole thing, start to finish.

Ninety minutes. You talk for about seventy of them.

First I ask you three questions: why you started this, what a normal week actually looks like right now, and how you'd feel if nothing changed for three years. Then I mostly stop talking.

Then we do numbers, out loud, and I write them where you can see them. Revenue, margin, leads, conversion, average sale, how often a customer comes back, and your hours. If you can't produce four of them, that isn't an embarrassment. It's the diagnosis, and I'll tell you so.

Then we do arithmetic on a blank piece of paper. Two numbers come out of it: what the gap is worth to you over three years, and how many hours of your life a year this business is taking that you never agreed to give it.

Then - and this is the part nobody expects - I actually coach you. We take the single biggest constraint we found and we fix a piece of it, in the room. One process, one price, one conversation scripted. Not "here's how we'd approach that." We do it.

Then I show you the road, and I ask two questions: what's your honest read on what we just did, and do you want help doing it.

If the answer is no, you keep the two numbers and the thing we fixed. That's yours either way.

Here's my own test for whether I ran it well: if you leave knowing more about ActionCOACH than about your own business, I ran the wrong meeting.

Fifteen minutes on the phone first, to see if it's even a fit. Comment CALL or send me a message and I'll send you the link.

If you stopped working tomorrow, would your business keep paying you?

Free working session for Cleveland owners: 6 Steps to Build Your Business & Build Your Wealth.
Tuesday, October 20 · 8a – 10a · Valley View
12 seats. Your ticket is a five-minute scorecard.

Claim yours: https://go.bethebuffalo-chargethestorm.com/6-steps-october-page

Be the Buffalo. Charge the Storm.

The conversation you've been avoiding with that person on your team is costing you more than the conversation would.

Every owner has one. Usually the same person, for months.

Here's why you haven't had it: you've already rehearsed it going badly. They get defensive, or they quit, or it gets emotional and somehow you're the bad guy in your own building.

So instead you do the expensive thing. You work around them. You quietly hand their work to somebody else. You get short with them in front of people. They know. Everybody knows.

The avoidance isn't kinder. It's just slower.

Here's the structure that keeps it from blowing up. Four moves, in this order:

1. The specific thing. Not a pattern, not "lately." One event, with a date. "On Tuesday the Henderson quote went out two days late."

2. The impact, factually. "They called me about it, and we're now second in line on that job."

3. The question - then silence. "What happened there?" Then you stop talking. This is the part everybody skips and it is the entire conversation.

4. The agreement. What's different next time, by when, said back to you in their words.

Notice what's not in there. No "I'm disappointed." No "you always." No compliment sandwich, where you bury it between two nice things and they only hear the nice things.

Specific event. Real impact. A question. An agreement.

Who's the person you've been putting this off with?

Here's the promise I make every client: if you cannot find our fee within 17 weeks, we will work with you for free until we do.

People assume that's a sales tactic. It's closer to the opposite. It's a filter, and it points both ways.

For you, it means the arithmetic has to be real. Not "you'll feel more confident." The coaching has to produce more than it costs, and it has to do it inside four months - or I keep going at no charge until it does.

For me, it means I can't take a client I don't believe I can move. I sit across from owners fairly often and tell them this isn't the right time, or I'm not the right person. That conversation costs me money and it's the best decision I make in this business.

And it puts the risk where it belongs. You're already carrying the risk of your payroll, your lease, your customers and your family. You shouldn't also be carrying the risk of whether your coach is any good. That one's mine.

There's a catch, and it isn't a small one: you have to do the work. The guarantee is on the system, not on wishing. Skip the sessions, skip the actions we agree on, and no promise on earth is going to save you. I wouldn't insult you by pretending otherwise.

Fair trade?

Nine times out of ten an owner tells me they need more leads. Nine times out of ten, that isn't their problem.

Here's why.

Leads are the first of five levers, and they're the most expensive one to move. You buy leads. Ads, staff, time, somebody's retainer.

The other four are free.

Conversion rate. You already paid for those leads. Go from closing 20% to closing 25% and that's a quarter more customers for nothing but a better follow-up process.

Average sale. Almost nobody has ever properly tested a price increase. Ten percent, on the work you already do, for the customers you already have.

Transactions per year. You have a list of people who already trust you and already bought from you once. Most owners never contact them again.

Margin. Where's the leak? Most owners genuinely don't know which job or which product loses them money.

So before you spend a dollar on more leads, get the four free levers in shape - because every new lead you buy runs through the same broken funnel you've got right now.

More leads into a business that converts at 12% isn't growth. It's a more expensive version of the same problem.

Which of the four have you actually tested in the last twelve months?