Dan DeMuth - Secrets of the Golf Whisperer (G1017)

Welcome to the Exit Coach radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm very pleased to have you with us. Uh, we have an exciting show lined up today, a lot of great guests joining us. Let's move right into our first guest, and he is Dan De Booth from, uh, he is gonna talk to us about Secrets of the golf whisperer. Um, Dan is gonna talk about the power of focus. How does. And how does interactive learning affect change in people? Uh, Dan was a PGA professional and he's applying what he learned from being a PGA professional to the world of business. Dan, how are you today? Welcome to the show. Just great, thanks, Bill. Thanks for joining us today. I'm excited to hear about your experiences and And how you got in how you transitioned from uh being a PGA professional to a business um I guess consultant leader uh tell us about yourself and your background and your career. Yeah, so, um, I've been in business for the last 18 years and um I started off as a PGA golf professional back in 1984 and um. And then at night by night I traveled around the country working at a number of different top golf courses around the country and came back to Minnesota where I'm from and I kept studying how the brain was working and affecting change in um in sport and And so I came up with these different concepts about how to help people focus on targets and let go of interference, and I realized with golf is that most people were focused on what I call on grip, stance, and slang instead of focusing on a target. And from there that led me to realize that there was a lot more coaching that could be done using golf as a medium, um, and you don't have to be a golfer to do it, but I'll talk about it further as we get into this, but just a little activities that we do to help people focus on targets and let go of the interference. So what you're saying is that a lot of people are focused on, on where they are and what they're doing instead of where they're going. Yeah, what I found with business owners is that they tend to get caught up in the business instead of running the business from time to time as well as, um, certainly sales people when I was working with different as I'm working with different sales teams, they, um, people tend to get uh locked in on what isn't working rather than what can be working. OK, that's great. That's a great analogy, and you know golf is one of those games, uh, especially when you play like I play that uh the ball doesn't always go the way you want it to go, but it's still you, you can still get and we see this even with the PGA professionals on TV. Uh, they don't always hit a perfect drive, but they keep their eye on the target and they, they end up getting to the target, uh, um, some way or another, so you have to really be able to adjust and adapt as you go. I love golf as an analogy for business owners and, and life in general. Well, it's, it's interesting because even just last week, I do still work with some golfers from time to time and um last week I was working with a couple of division one golfers that play in the university school and um One of the kids had the had his game, um, at, at 6 under par after 8 holes in a tournament and um bogeyed the 9th hole and then found a way to, to, to shoot much higher on the back nine and I just simply asked him what he thought happened. And even at that level, he first was thinking that he lost his swing and I was, I, I then asked him a number of other questions and he soon realized that it wasn't his swing. It was really where his mind went, and that correlation is I just time and time again see it in daily life where people lose their target and in some cases people haven't done the work to be comfortable in being successful. And this was the same case. They haven't done the work to be successful so they they are expecting more than they they should they should or they find a way to uh not belong there um so in in the business world what I've seen with sales teams is that if the sales person isn't comfortable being successful in. In their life of being comfortable, being who they are when they're succeeding, they'll find a way to screw it up. And um I've seen that correlation with golf over and over and I've seen it with business people. They first thought with golf when I would see someone who would have a really high score on the front nine and then A low score on the back nine or they'd have a high score, I mean the opposite where they'd have a low score on the front nine and then a high score on the back nine, and that that really is about not being comfortable scoring low and I saw that in the same correlation with a lot of people in business as well, um, being comfortable, being successful. That's an interesting analogy. You know, I look at it as obviously you're going to have a certain number of very difficult holes in, in a group of 9 holes, and sometimes it's the, it's the risks that you take if you feel comfortable or the risks that you don't take if you feel uncomfortable. Um, how do you, how do you help business owners to align their thoughts and refine their focus if they're if they've lost their focus on the target. Well, we, I use a series of little activities, um, which I call the power of focus. It's a workshop around, um. What I call the whole Discover series, but the first part of it is called the Power of Focus. And when people do this putting exercise, I have people do this 5 different ways, and I've been measuring the results over the last number of years, and over 15,967 people have done this exercise, um, and only 98 have done better the regular way. They're perceived right way to do it. And um the rest of us have done better a different way than what we thought we'd ever do better at. So like in my case, I, I did 8 out of 9 with my eyes closed and I did 5 out of 9 the regular way, and I see this very. Happens quite often to people where they'll do better different ways in the regular way and it's simply because we're thinking of something else than the target and and I'm saying this even knowing it um but but it will be a reminder from time to time even for myself and. Other people that I coached throughout the years and and even within the same year or same month I can do the same activity and they'll do better a different way than the regular way even when they know it. Isn't that interesting that yeah and you know we've all I think on the golf course we've all been in a situation probably where we couldn't see the pin or we couldn't see the target. And we said, well, I'm just going to swing for what I think it is, and, and a lot of times it's, it's a good result and it's, it's uh it's amazing. So what you're saying is, you know, and in golf it's like this a lot too, of course, where you do your practice on the range and you play your game on the course. And so what I think I heard you saying before is that people that aren't ready for success or they they sabotage themselves, but they haven't done enough preparation before they got to the game. So they're, so now they're now they're practicing and thinking and And making it up as they go on the course instead of having thought through all that they would need to have done before they got to the game to the course, to the game, whether it's business or golf, is that, is that kind of sum it up, right? So the analogy of play the whole backwards or play the round backwards or play the week or play the year. Um, all of those add up to both written goals and then visual, um, visual goals as well, we call them the, the vision boards that tie into the goal that allows the person to Reflect and think about what they want to achieve. Um, and it's, it can be the person, it can be a team depending on what the needs are, but, but when those are clear and people are comfortable with them, they'll normally achieve them and not get nervous about it. Now when, when, uh, when you're talking with golfers, I mean, number one, you're, they're focused on the next tournament, the next round, the next challenge that's coming up and, and all their focus goes into that, right? But they're also thinking of. About um the long term, maybe do they have goals and visions for for what they anticipate at the end of the the the season and that would be their long term goals and then their short term goals and then their uh benchmark uh kind of uh uh milestones along the way. How do you help um business owners and golfers to set goals that they can focus on? So I have a scorecard as part of our workbook and um it has down there business, personal, golf, sport or hobby. So if you're not a golfer, we want to find something else that you want to challenge yourself on that you can see in an activity. Um, see and field, so you could and, and something that you could measure, uh, golf tends to be pretty easy because there's either a measurement if you choose to keep score or you choose to keep how many good shots you have around or some some measurement there, um, but find something else if you're not gonna golf some other activity. And then what we do is we look at the high level goals and we'll measure those and relate them to the sport, to the business or the personal goals depending on what, what the person is really wants to focus in on. Um, like, I'll give me, give me an example like if, if I have a sales person that isn't doing well within the team, it's normally because they've lost their own focus. So the personal goals go back to what do they want to accomplish? Are they looking to, are they looking for a new house, a new car, you know, what, what is it that drives them. Um, and that they can be, they, they can be easily measurable and something that is rightfully theirs to go achieve within that time frame of of the goal. Give, give their mind something to grab onto and then, and I think the key is that what, what I think we're talking about is. You sometimes people lose focus on what that is and they need that visual or graphic reminder somehow to oh yeah that's what that because you're gonna have bad holes you're gonna have bad shots but you've got to keep your eye on the prize and a lot of people just focus on that. Yeah, they do, and oftentimes the mind will go into the negative instead of the positive and so we actually use these goals with the mental images and we normally do them every quarter, um, and then the mental image part of it we normally do every year unless the person has achieved them and then we have them do, do another one, but the, the quarterly goals tied. In the mental images allows for some passion to happen and excitement for the individual instead of just the written goals, and it's also fun to share with other people that care about you or want you to succeed. So when we're doing this, we'll we'll normally have the person present their goals with their mental images to a roundtable group of people. Um, that they work with that, um, even if they're competitive with each other, they're still trying to help each other grow. That, that's a great um combination of people to be able to help coach one another on. So by doing that, you unlock it from just being a private thing to being something that you've now said to other people, I intend to do this and You know, and create some maybe accountability if if nothing else, and I think that's for a lot of business owners that's, that's a little bit lacking, isn't it? They don't really have anybody to be accountable to, unless they're a publicly traded company or they have a board of directors. So this is a substitute for something like that. Exactly and it and it helps in the business owner case it helps them. Um, be accountable to themselves, to their families, because they'll often have them share it with, with someone close to them outside of the business as well, um. Now you see there's certain things that that the business owner may want to do that he doesn't want to have, he or she doesn't want to have the um employees know, but, but in many cases when the employees learn what the vision is of the business owner and it's, it's high level on the personal side, but they get excited for wanting to help them achieve that as well. So it's a fun way to to measure the goals and see uh uh uh a longer term process without just talking about it. Now when, when you're coaching, whether it's a golfer or a business owner, um, is there an ideal number of characteristics or traits that they should focus on when they're giving themselves a self talk? Let's say uh I I've read, for instance, I've read sometimes that. You know, when you, when you're addressing your ball on the putting green, you should be telling yourself, for instance, 3 things about that putt to, to when you're sizing it up, uh, you know, the, it's gonna pull to the right a little bit, it's downhill, greens. Running a little bit of self talk, but is there an optimal way to talk to yourself, uh, either before you address the ball or before you address a goal or uh just those reminders because I've always heard that, you know, brevity is best. Well, that might be all true, but I go with the basis of, um, when, when the awareness of what you're thinking and doing has an excitement and call it fun, but You know, fun is defined differently for everyone, but when there's a passion about wanting to do something, your mind already goes into the place where you want to be oftentimes. Um, give me an example like if you watched a kid roll a ball across the driveway and the driveway had a little slope to it. And you stood on the other side of the driveway, they would often, they may not figure it out right away, but if you roll the ball back to them and they roll it back to you, you start to play this little game back and forth, they'll figure out how to get the ball to you. So, The way they do it is by seeing in, in, in the, in the whole visual process and so forth and then doing. But how they do it, everyone has their own little style to that, but there's something that goes on in the brain real fast about um the person sees the target already. And so um we don't have to overthink that whole process when it's already there. Once it's hardwired in, it's the brain's gonna take care of the rest, the brain and the body will take care of the rest, yep, because what happens otherwise is that we, we, if we go into what I call again the grip stands and swing or the mechanics or something, it could take a long, long time to figure that out um if you're over there trying to. Uh, do every little mechanical thing to help that person get the ball to you on the other side unless it's letting them experience it, become aware of what they're doing, change it if it's not working. Um, so we talk a lot about when things in in a given day or a week when we're measuring our goals or looking at them at the end of the day I have a lot of our, our clients in business ask themselves what they learned today versus how well they they did, and I'll do that with the golfers as well. They get done with a round of golf. What did they learn today versus how well did they do? because that that will help create the awareness for the person to want to make the changes and realize what happened to them, whether it was, it eliminates the good or bad out of the situation. It allows for peak learning to happen through the awareness. It's great stuff, Dan. Tell us about your book The Secrets the Secrets of the Golf Whisperer, and how our listeners can get a copy of that and and also how they can get in touch with you to hire you for workshops and things like that. Yeah, thank you. Um, Secrets of the Golf Whisper, uh, it's, it's a book that can be found on Barnes and Noble or Amazon. And my direct number is 612-275-8950 and I do have a website, Secrets of the golf whisper.com. It's a fascinating topic and of course a lot of our listeners are golfers. They certainly can relate to some of the things we talked about. So go to Secrets of the Golfwhisper.com and check it out and find out more about Dan and what he does for business owners. And if you're a visage chair or a A coordinator for another type of a business owner group. Dan puts on golf oriented thinking workshops for your business owners to think about how they can relate and focus on their goals. So Dan, again, thanks very much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks, Phil. It was a pleasure myself. All right, we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted adviser to create a BEI plan for you or visit us at exitlannning.com. That's exitlannning.com. You're listening to Exitoachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio.