Maximize Your Impact As An Entrepreneur Without The Burnout, with Nikki Fraser

Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast. On today's Multiplier Mindset episode, we have a great commentary from Nikki Fraser. Nikki and her husband have a business in Weddington, North Carolina, very close to Charlotte. She just makes so many points that are fascinating. But I'd like to start with two, and I'll preface this a little bit by saying that as I'm recording this video, it's my 50th year of coaching. So in August of 2024, I've been coaching for 50 years. And I want to say something here. I didn't set off to create a program for entrepreneurs. I set off to create a thinking program, you know, that there's different ways of thinking about your daily experience so that they become your main lessons in life. It's just that when I went into the marketplace, the only people who showed up interested were entrepreneurs. So the byproduct of my wanting to create a thinking program was I ended up with an entrepreneurial. But it's an entrepreneurial thinking program.
 
So the big thing Nikki mentions, which is a process that we call The 4 C's, that all progress starts when you make a total commitment. You have to make a total commitment. If anything's going to be successful, you've got to be totally committed. You have to be committed before you have the capability. And that requires courage. So commitment is the first C, and courage is the second. People will say, well, what's the difference between confidence and courage? And I said, confidence feels good. Courage doesn't feel good. There's a period where you've committed yourself, but you don't yet have the capability. And I think it's the combination of commitment times courage that actually creates the capability.
 
So then you become capable, and you can actually achieve the much bigger goal you were after. And as a reward, you get confidence, and then you take some free time, and then you come back and you repeat the process with a bigger goal. So that leads us to another aspect of the Coach Program that Nikki talks about, which is the Four Freedoms. It's really a combination of The 4 C's—commitment, courage, capability, and confidence—and the Four Freedoms. And the first freedom is to get freer with your time—Freedom of Time at work and Freedom of Time outside of work. And that's what Nikki really talks about is, making sure they created a new business and they're providing great financial counseling, coaching, and service for small to medium-sized businesses. And I think Nikki's a really good coach. I can see she's a really good coach. So if you put the 4 C's together with the Four Freedoms, you get constant, solid growth. You get constant, increasing in growth, and sometimes it's really multiplier growth. You can grow very, very quickly because you're taking care of all the right things.
 
The other thing she makes a mention about is that corporate America, as most people experience it, is not for entrepreneurs. You know, the whole way that corporate America expects you to be spending any amount of time at any time of day on the work for goals and visions that you don't even relate to and you don't really have the Unique Abilities to do that is the clear separator between being an employee in a corporation and being your own owner, being an entrepreneurial owner. These are vastly different worlds. There is not very, very much connection between these two worlds. And it's very, very important for entrepreneurs because I noticed a lot of entrepreneurs, when they start their business, they start thinking that they're a corporate CEO. Entrepreneurs hire CEOs. Entrepreneurism means that you're using your own Unique Ability to create a Unique Teamwork that produces really unusual value that's usually far better than anything that corporate America or corporate anywhere can actually produce.
 
The thing about entrepreneurism is that you're taking resources of other people and taking them to a higher level of productivity and profitability. I think it's a real treat when a husband and wife are involved in the same business, and they can come and be with other entrepreneurs in a community, and they get to check back in every 90 days to get refreshed on their progress, to learn new tools, thinking tools. And it's such a pleasure to get this feedback. This is my 50th year. Babs and I, my partner in life and my partner in business, we've been creating this company, and this is our 35th year of Strategic Coach. My reward for all of this is getting feedback like I just got from Nikki. I am deeply touched by this. I mean, the money's been good. We've grown, you know, we have a great company. But I have to tell you that when I get comments and feedback from someone like Nikki Fraser, it's the reward for me.
 
Nikki Fraser: Hi, my name is Nikki Fraser and alongside with my husband, Dan Fraser, we co-founded NextKey Services in 2018. We service small, medium-sized businesses providing all of their outsourced finance needs from staff counting all the way up to fractional CFO services. And prior to that, my career was all corporate, growing up in big corporations, large banks. So it's been a big transition in the last six, seven years into my world of entrepreneurship. And for the last two, I've been part of Strategic Coach, which has been fundamental in our growth in our business.
 
So the transition from corporate America into my world as an entrepreneur was not straightforward. It was complicated and messy. And I had a coach in my corporate America [unintelligible] and tell me, "Nik, it's okay, nothing's perfect, embrace the mess." And my frustrations, my trying to make a bigger difference in my different roles in corporate America, I kept getting stuck as to how much of an impact I could truly make. And it was very disheartening. And eventually, I just had to admit that this wasn't where my life dreams were and making that decision to move on. And then that's also powered by the fact that I grew up, my father was an entrepreneur, my husband's father, mother, entrepreneur. So it's in our blood, and it just wasn't part of my path initially. But over time, it just became a bigger power. In the beginning, it was, what could I do? I knew I had some excellent skill set, and how could I add value to the marketplace? So really just focusing in, taking some time to really assess that and find our passion.
 
I think that it's important to just be okay with not having all the answers. And that's something we learn in Strategic Coach. Having that big vision, don't know how to do it. That's okay. Find your "Whos." Get comfortable with that, and just embrace that evolution. And also it's okay once you try something out, if it doesn't quite work, keep trying, keep trying different things, keep evolving and growing and learning along the way. That's how you will get that magic sauce and end up in a place where you're really focused on what it is that you do best and building a team and bringing service to clients or bringing a great product to the marketplace that you're really passionate about.
 
So I chose to be a CPA very early on in my life. And I'll never forget having a conversation with my dad before I went off to college saying, "This is what I want to do. I love accounting." And he was just like, "Accountants are really boring, Nik. Why would you want to do that?" And I said, "I'm not boring. I'm not going to become boring. I'm just going to change the way." And I really loved accounting. Like it really clicked with me. And then over time, it was just continuing to build that skill set. But then, how can you have that impact in large organizations? And that's hard to see when you are a visionary and you're trying to be more strategic. And the larger organizations I went into, the smaller, more defined the roles became regardless of where I stood in the ladder. So for me, that entrepreneurial spirit just kept pushing and pushing me out of corporate America effectively.
 
We founded NextKey Services in 2018, and at first, the vision was not clear. We knew we had a great skill set. I decided to work full-time in our business, picking up more consulting work out of here and there, not sure exactly where we were going. As we moved forward and really just picked up client referrals through our networks, it was fairly easy. And we could initially grow the business quite quickly that way. Then we really, as we started to support more small and medium-sized businesses, the profound impact that you can have when an entrepreneur or business owner starts to realize that finance is not a compliance; it's actually something that they can use as a strategic asset in their business to grow and transform. That's when it became really telling: how can we have a bigger impact? How can the two of us and our team, we're small and mighty, but how can we have an even bigger impact? And that's really where we are. We're in big time growth mode and really looking towards coaching and growing in that space.
 
And it's been hard. It's messy. It's hard. It's figuring out new skills. I constantly go back to our infamous 4 C's that we learned in Strategic Coach because that's what I go around and around that circle of making sure you make that commitment. Okay, we're all in on this. Yes, we're all in on this. And when- My husband and I are co-founders, we work together. So, as we go through these things together, we always kind of come back to it. We're fully in, we've got our commitment, we're working through the courage to do this. We've increased our capabilities and you build a confidence. And that's become a fundamental shift in our mindset as we work through different transformations, whether it's growing our team significantly, which we've done in the last couple of years, expanding our influence, growing our services, adding in new clients, all of that.
 
But it even goes further than that, to be honest, because one of the big passions that we've taken from our mindset and how it's evolved over the last few years in Strategic Coach is in our interactions with our children. All of that is mindset. So you can pass generational wealth to your kids, but it's the mindset that's the most important because then they can retain the wealth or build their own. So that's really become quite a focal point for us in our journey.
 
So we've grown to nine people on our team right now and looking to expand even further. It seems like as we grow our team, we expand our client base and our offerings and then we're- We're constantly going in that full circle. Do we have adequate resources? It's one of our core fundamentals and our culture for NextKey Services is ensuring that we are not working till the wee hours. Like that's just not conducive. We are constantly working on our own Freedom of Time and working through that aspect in our business, but also helping our team do that. And I think in the nature of where we've worked, especially in large, Big Four, and financial institutions, you work, work, work. And that's the corporate America, and you just keep going. And it's something that never produces the best product. It'll never produce the best service. So how can we really, truly change the culture in the service industry and providing our clients still strong, excellent service without overworking the team? So we've grown our team. Our full-time Strategic Assistant is very much involved. She's using our strategic coaching tools. She's going to be participating in the executive training here in the next few months. So it's part of our culture now and just trying to find that balance across the team.
 
You know, work-life balance is something that you hear everywhere. They even say it in corporate America. But I'm a big fan of work-life harmony because I think they all have to work together. And there are times where we're in full-on growth mode or you've got a major client delivery, and you do have to work maybe extra hard or, you know, first quarter for us finance folks is usually a heavier quarter with a lot of year-end compliance combined with next-year planning and things along those lines. So, when we're in that mode, we've accepted that we'll have a little less free time, but we have to make up for that in the subsequent quarters. And that's what's really important is then that's kind of more harmony, concepts, and thoughts. And that's what we do is just making sure, hey, you know, we're planning time off. You're planning time off—I don't want you to check in. I want you to take the time. And that goes for us practicing it too. And I'm nowhere near perfect. I am a work in progress. Right, like we all are. So it's helping each other. I think when we all try to help each other do better, we can bring our better selves to our clients and our service that we deliver.
 
Dan and I working together leading the business has been just such a privilege. It is a privilege. We spent two decades on different continents working at our jobs. So to be able to work together, have a shared vision, empower and lead our team is truly something we don't take for granted. Do you have to work at it? Yup. It's not easy, but it's not hard, right? As you're going through transformations in your business, and as we have, we're still very much in growth phase and figuring out roles and responsibilities as we involve and change each and every day. But I think one thing that's been fundamental to us is pausing, looking at some of the tools that we do, the exercises that we do as part of Strategic Coach, like understanding your Kolbe, understanding your PRINT. Those have been great for us. And it's not an excuse, so I'm really good at follow-through and Dan's not. It's not an excuse, but it's also a reminder, hey, I might need to nudge on this one a little bit more, or that's where our amazing Strategic Assistant steps in, and she's awesome. Like, she understands how we work and can really start taking those steps ahead to maybe provide that little extra help and spaces that I needed or spaces that my husband needs it.
 
Like, I'm atrocious at doing lots of back-to-back meetings and not giving myself a break. She constantly comes in and starts nudging around my calendar and helping me. So that helps me with decisions and allows time for Dan and I to make decisions as needed during the day as opposed to, I may be off working with different clients all day long. So it's definitely a balance, understanding our roles and responsibilities and having that time to connect. But it's also important to have that time to turn off. And that's something I have to work on because I get very excited as the week goes on. And, you know, as I try to wind down on the weekend and, you know, not taking that into our personal life too much is a work in progress. I'm a work in progress.
 
I joined Strategic Coach after reading Who Not How when it came out. And I told my husband, I was like, we need to participate in this. And he said, oh, you know, what has she got going on now? And we went to our first session together. And it's interesting, there's a lot of individuals that participate, not as many couples, but in our first session in our first year of Strategic Coach, we were actually in a workshop with another couple. So it was kind of neat. We're there together. So we can strategize after the fact, but work separately during the day while participating in the workshop. We absolutely treasure our quarterly check-ins, as Dan refers to them. They have been extremely helpful in pulling us out of the business, making sure we're spending that time looking forward, long-term, and then reflecting and coming back and taking action and making changes as needed. And having that consistent impact has been huge.
 
I think the biggest surprise- So I knew all the technical aspects of what Strategic Coach could do for us, and it's done that and then some. I think a huge surprise for me has been the community. I wasn't expecting it. I'm like, oh wait, there's all these people and they're amazing other entrepreneurs, and that's been just a huge added bonus. Getting to know and connect with other entrepreneurs has been extremely helpful in our journey and really just understanding more about where and how we want to take things forward. So I think the combination of the two, that led us to really kind of double down on our investment in Strategic Coach and participate in 10x. And now we go once a quarter for two days every quarter, and it's non-negotiable. This is it.
 
In the two years that we've [unintelligible] Strategic Coach, we have doubled our team. We have tripled our client base. Our mindset quadrupled. And you can't even put a number on that because that just, again, I come back to The 4 C's and how that continues to evolve. And it's almost like you get faster and faster, like coming down a hill, right? So as you keep doing it, it just gets easier and easier. So there are so many valuable takeaways.
 
The 4 C's are really where you start out with, I have to make a commitment to a change, a transformation, an evolution, or I'm going to make that commitment. And then I have the courage to actually follow through on my commitment. And that's where people can often get stuck. We're all rah rah, but do you have the courage to really move? It doesn't mean you know how. You will figure out how or the right "Whos" to increase your capabilities and think of yourself coming around the circle. And then once you get there, you've got the confidence. And then you can go bigger again the next time around the circle. And that's kind of how I view it and think about it. And that's been extremely powerful in our evolution.
 
What I'm fascinated with the community when we come to our workshop every quarter is just there's a complete trust. There's a complete trust, there's a respect, there's a privacy. You go into smaller breakouts and have conversations and share all your vulnerabilities, and there's zero judgment and just an outpouring of support and help. And that's huge because being in a safe space with like-minded individuals that really want to encourage and support and level up everyone, really gives you even more confidence. And we know how we need to continuously fill up our confidence in the moment. And that's really impactful when you're around like-minded entrepreneurs in the room. So I truly, truly appreciate that and hope I give others that same benefit.
 
I think one of the things that we've had the courage to do in the last year has been really work towards our vision of coaching entrepreneurs when it comes to finance. I remember Dan and I sharing with each other very early on in our finance career when we were working in corporate America that we would love to educate or be professors later in our career. Teaching, building a team, that's something we were always very passionate about and have had the opportunity to do our entire career. So now we're building our own team and educating our clients as we go. But to be able to do that and expand and have a bigger impact and have that bigger vision and see it come to life, that's what we're in the process of building and really expanding on the idea of coaching a group of entrepreneurs over the course of the year as to how to use finance as a strategic asset in your business. Not let it get in the way. And that's too often what happens with some folks.
 
One of the most powerful mindsets- Maybe I should take that back. They're all extremely powerful. But one thing that I've truly helped me, helped Dan in our business and in life—this is a big one with the kids—is The Gap And The Gain. The Gap And The Gain mindset. My son participated in a soccer tournament recently, and it didn't go quite as he'd like. He's a goalie, so he takes every goal that gets passed, and it's personal, but he tries to work through it. But he very much is like, "I know, Mom, I'm in The Gap, but I'm getting to The Gain." And you're like, wow, that's amazing. That's powerful. So that mindset and being able to expand that into your personal life, it's huge.