In this whole-hearted episode, Sonya Corkery, Owner of Clear Plan Consulting Pty Ltd, shares how she has used her over 15 years of experience in commercial banking and financial planning to help entrepreneurs live healthier, happier lives by building healthier, more profitable businesses.

You will discover:

– How to understand and overcome the dark, scary messiness inside your business

– How the health of your business has a direct impact on your health

– Why it is so hard for founders to separate themselves from their business

Episode Transcript

Scott Ritzheimer

Hello, hello and welcome, welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach. Podcast with us today is yet another high demand coach all the way from the other side of the world, and another day altogether, is the one and only, Sonya Corkery, who is a business owner, a wife and mother, who helps empower fellow business owners to take control of their enterprises and design their desired lives. With over 15 years of experience as a business owner and a commercial lending, banking and financial planning background, Sonya now offers a professional speaking services as well as coaching to empower business leaders and entrepreneurs. Her journey from founding a successful business to building the clear plan. Consulting Company has equipped her with unique insights into using business as a vehicle or personal success. She’s here with us today. Sonya, just out of the gate. One of the things I noticed as researching this episode is a lot of coaches will start with kind of the health and effectiveness of the founder or CEO, or whoever it is that they’re helping a lot of what I saw from you started with the health of the business itself. Why is that?

Sonya Corkery

Based on, firstly, thank you so much for having me and that wonderful introduction, but based on what our research tells us is our health and well being is directly correlated with the health and well being of the business. Every time something happens in our business, we’re directly impacted, especially in mental health. That you know, when we have our ups, we we’re feeling great and things are amazing, and when things are not going so well, or we’re hitting a challenge, we’re really deeply affected on that level, and it really impacts each and every one of us on how we’re responding and how we choose to respond, you know, to what’s happening in our business. So we really can see that people are intertwining themselves really with their entity and consuming that, and feel as though they’re becoming that. And we’re really looking to make sure we separate that so that people understand that they are separate from their entity, and we want them to concentrate on using that entity as the vehicle, more than identifying as part of that entity, right?

Scott Ritzheimer

That sounds so obvious, as you say it, right? Why is it such a big challenge for so many people?

Sonya Corkery

Because they’ve usually grown that business from nothing. They it becomes their baby. They they adapt to it, and they put everything into the into that entity, their heart and soul. So in essence, they become that. And they tie themselves so intricately into that it’s hard to identify that that’s happened and pull away from there, but it’s really important for the long term health and well being of the business owner, as well as the entity health itself, to kind of separate those two. And I know it sounds obvious, but most people don’t understand until they’re really deep in the trenches that that’s actually happened, or sometimes identifying from a third party that that’s actually going on. It’s just because they love it so much, it’s become a part of them, and essentially, that’s where it’s at.

Scott Ritzheimer

What does that look like if you’re talking to someone? What are some signs, maybe, that they still have those two entities intertwined in their mind?

Sonya Corkery

When it becomes almost an obsession and there’s no real downtime, there’s no separation. There’s no separate hobbies or interests outside of the business, and it becomes the encompassing all part of their life. And we identify that because when we’re speaking to the owners, and we’re designing that perfect life that they’re looking to achieve with the use of their business wealth creation, they can’t articulate what they see beyond. They can’t articulate what they see outside of that. And when we speak about hobbies and interest, there really aren’t many that aren’t business related to that entity. And that, as that becomes obvious, then they become it’s quite confronting, and then they really need to understand about themselves and separate themselves from that entity to build the life that they want.

Scott Ritzheimer

Right. Is there a certain size organization that this has to happen? So for example, let’s say you have a solopreneur like you are, myself, that’s a coaching business, and we’re obviously very integral to the coaching that we do personally. Does that look different than maybe the plastic extrusion manufacturer who’s got a plant and a leadership team? Are those different processes?

Sonya Corkery

No, we’ve found that on the basis of how we conduct our framework, that the process is exactly the same. It really depends on the how that business came to be. And there was it out of necessity, or was it out of a passion that it was created? And essentially what happens, even if you know you’re a seven figure business, and that my husband was a great example of this, there was nothing outside this seven figure business turning over. Of millions of dollars a year, and we have three children, and I was asking him what he really wanted out of life and what he hoped to achieve. And he was said, saying, I’m doing it. I said, But, but what is beyond that? Look beyond that, and ask yourself those questions. And I mean, this is my husband, someone I see all the time, so it’s really no different between a solopreneur and someone who’s got a, you know, a larger business.

Scott Ritzheimer

Yeah, I found the same thing to be true. In fact, there’s a couple of kind of core questions that I found folks ask, and the two kind of the stages that you’re talking about, I have found almost always strike people as odd, who aren’t there, and always strike people as true. Who are there? So the first one is, who am I? Right? That’s that, that detangling. And then in the wake of defining myself as something other than the thing that keeps this business alive, we instantly go to, well, now what do I do? You know what? What’s next? Now, what do I do? So, yeah, couldn’t agree more on that. It’s, it’s so true, it’s so deep and and I think it’s something that is, in many ways, it’s not completely unique. Technically, there aren’t degrees of uniqueness. But it’s not only founders who experience that, but I haven’t seen a founder who doesn’t have to deal with that at some stage in the journey. What one of the things that prevents us from really doing this kind of the personal and ego side of things, but the other part that I tend to see is there are no perfect companies, right? There are no perfect organizations. There’s messiness in every single company, but it kind of feels like we’re the only ones who’ve got it this wrong. So why, when things are messy, why is it that we’re so reluctant to to shine a light on that?

Sonya Corkery

In a lot of instances, what we find is people because they’re so deeply ingrained it, they think it’s a part of self reflection. It’s a judgment on themselves about how things are happening in their business, and it’s taken very personally, understandably, because they feel as though, you know, we’re going through these feast and famine times in the business, and every time something happens, they’re looking back and saying a reflection of either themselves or their team, depending and a lot of times, there’s factors that are third party, that aren’t even that are impactful to the business, but through no fault of their own. And it’s really having that understanding and being able to really step back and identify and separate to to objectively say, well, what could have happened differently here, looking back, let’s let’s Red Team this and see what the outcome could have been differently had we done something different and and implement what we need to to create a different outcome potentially. But it’s a lot of people look for chaos in their business. When things are going well, they get scared of things going well, and all of a sudden, you know, some catastrophic event happens, and then they’re like, there it is. That was that thing that I just knew was going to happen, and it’s almost like it’s being manifested, right? Because it’s things are so great, I must look for a problem.

Scott Ritzheimer

Is there, is there some kind of upside to that? Why is that so prevalent? What that kind of threat forecasting waiting for the other shoe to drop? Is there some kind of advantage that we get from that? Or why does it continue to exist?

Sonya Corkery

I think it continues to exist greatly because we’re looking always to miss risk mitigate in the business, and we’re always looking for the possible outcomes to when you’re more aware and more thoughtful ahead of time you’re able to put mitigation in place, as opposed to being reactive and waiting for things to happen. So I think it’s kind of an ingrained in our, you know, in our, essentially, in our croc brain, part of our being to be aware of what’s happening around us and always kind of being alert of what potentially could be any dangerous situation or something that could be untoward to us. But I think as you become more experienced and more aware of self and doing the work individually, you become okay with the fact that things are going to happen, and the the less, the more you’re okay with it, the less it impacts you. And therefore you seem to see those things, not as a deep, you know, feast and famine Pitfall, high, down low, it just becomes little bumps in the road, you know, compared to catastrophic events, as it were.

Scott Ritzheimer

Right. It brings me to my next question here, and that kind of centers around data. What’s the role of data and helping you to understand and maybe even accurately identify the severity of those dips and maybe even the overall health of a business?

Sonya Corkery

So we can look at historical data, which is helpful in some degree, but depending on the industry, you know that may not be as relevant. And we can utilize that to see really what’s happened in the past and how we’ve mitigated things on that end, but moving forward and looking at industry specifics, and I mean, COVID really identified this. It could be across all industries, and something could impact us all heavily, or it could be more significant on one than others. For example, hospitality took a huge hit in Australia overnight with COVID, and that was through no fault of anybody’s for the running of their business. But what it allowed us to do was identify and change things moving forward, saying, if an event like that happened, how would I continue running my business? Lots of people went to catering and were sending out food, as opposed to having a storefront or having a restaurant. So what we do with the data is we take that and forward plan, and we also audit those individual businesses to look at potential areas that might need improvement or might have some risk, where we can help that owner go get ahead of it essentially.

Scott Ritzheimer

I love that. As you’ve been working with clients, especially in this kind of post COVID, through this whole season, what have you found are some of the patterns around where organizations are particularly unhealthy? Are there common areas that you’re seeing, or is it just different for everyone?

Sonya Corkery

There are a lot of common areas, particularly with team members. At the moment, team are quite hard to acquire inside the trade space, so for us in construction, we’re seeing that it’s quite difficult, and there’s not a large pool of people and a huge amount of construction happening. And what’s happening is business owners are holding on to people that are not necessarily a cultural fit for their business. There’s this scarcity happening at the moment where they’re doing things more out of fear, as opposed to doing things that are correct for the business and the other team, because if that cultural, culture fit isn’t right, it then affects other team members who see those behaviors being accepted or seeing that well, if that person’s kind of held the owner over a barrel for something, well, I’m going to do that too, and it puts immense stress and pressure on that business owner. So we’re seeing that is quite prevalent at the moment in in Australia, specifically.

Scott Ritzheimer

Wow, remarkable, I would say very, very similar here in the US, at least in my experience, it’s interesting how it plays across the globe in such a consistent way. Sonya, there’s a question that I have for you. I ask all my guests, very interested to see what you have to say to this. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?

Sonya Corkery

I know it sounds obvious, but for business owners, having the entity that you have is the ultimate blessing. Your income is purely uncapped. It’s completely proportional to what you put into it, and it will allow you to have the lifestyle that you really want if you plan for that to happen. So it’s, it’s really down to you, and everything that is an outcome is is going to be planned, and it’s for your future, if you’ll choose it.

Scott Ritzheimer

Yeah. Sonya, if someone listening wants to, they want to lift up the rock, as as Jim Colin says, and you know, look at all the squiggly things underneath. They want to build a healthier business. They want to do the hard work of separating themselves and de intertwining, if that’s even a word. How can they reach out to you? How can they find out more about what you do?

Sonya Corkery

I’m across most of the social platforms, so you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. You can reach out to me on our email or our website, at www.clearplanconsulting.com.au, and you can just have a chat, have a zoom. I’d love to talk to you and help where I can.

Scott Ritzheimer

Absolutely I love it. Excellent website, lots of great stuff on there. Highly recommend it. Sonya, thanks for being here. Really appreciate you being on and loved what you had to share today. I think it’s gonna be really impactful for some of our listeners. So appreciate you being here for everyone watching and listening today. You know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.

Contact Sonya Corkery

Sonya Corkery is a business owner, wife, and mother who helps empower fellow business owners to take control of their enterprises and design their desired lives. With over 15 years of experience as a business owner and a commercial lending, banking, and financial planning background, Sonya now offers a professional speaking service to empower business leaders and entrepreneurs. Her journey from founding a successful business to building Clearplan Consulting has equipped her with unique insights into using business as a vehicle for personal success.

Want to learn more about Sonya Corkery’s work at Clear Plan Consulting Pty Ltd? Check out her website at https://clearplanconsulting.com.au/

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