Unlocking Entrepreneurial Success with Jackie B. Grice

Brent Peterson (00:01.388)
Welcome to this episode of Uncharted Entrepreneurship. Today I have Jackie B. Grice. She is a speaker, bestselling author, CEO, transformational coach, and business strategist. Jackie, go ahead, do a much better introduction than I just did. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life.

Jackie B Grice (00:14.051)
to the business strategy.

Jackie B Grice (00:24.609)
Thank you, Brent Thank you first for having me on. And you did a great job, first of all. Yes, so I am CEO, co-owner with my husband of a transportation company. I say that I'm a people mover. Instead of freight, we move people, groups. And my day-to-day operation as CEO of our company

and founder of my coaching and business strategy company, you know, is really to oversee the, you know, the day-to-day operations to make sure that everyone, as we would say in my world, is on the right seat of the bus doing what they're supposed to do, whether you're the driver or the passenger. So I like to make sure all of those things are running smoothly and, you know, just like...

My whole thing as a visionary is just looking at ways to continuously grow our company.

Brent Peterson (01:27.178)
Yeah, so you've already, you did mention early in the green room that you have the book Traction. So right seat, right person, right seat, visionary role, integrator role. I'm a big fan of entrepreneurs operating system and that's kind of comes out of Traction and those things. Tell us about your journey through how you got where you're, have you always been an entrepreneur? Tell us about that journey.

Jackie B Grice (01:34.531)
Yep.

Jackie B Grice (01:55.63)
Yeah, I've always been an entrepreneur. I am the product of my father and my mother. They own their own upholstery business. And my father worked a full-time job and had an upholstery shop in the back of our house. He had converted our garage to an upholstery business. And I just grew up with that. Every day watching him and my mother do that and just...

love the fact of being able to do something you're passionate about, you love doing, and it just, I think it's probably in my DNA.

Brent Peterson (02:39.957)
Yeah, perfect.

Jackie B Grice (02:40.17)
That's my story with that, yeah.

Brent Peterson (02:43.266)
Alright, before we keep going into and talking about your business and some of the things you're doing, I almost forgot the free joke project and you're probably like, hope he forgets it. So what I'm gonna do, I'll tell you a joke and all you have to do is give me a rating one through five. And I've got a really good one today. So here we go. I can't take my dog to the park anymore. The ducks keep biting him. I should have known what would happen. He's purebred.

Jackie B Grice (03:00.068)
up.

Jackie B Grice (03:12.065)
Okay.

Jackie B Grice (03:18.668)
You get, I'm gonna be nice, a two. Right, I'm still trying to get the punch line. Maybe I'm a little slow. Pure bread, yes, yes. I get it, I just needed a little context, thank you.

Brent Peterson (03:25.896)
Alright, should I've... was it the delivery? Should I've said pure bread?

Brent Peterson (03:34.274)
He's all bread. The dog is pure bread and the ducks eat bread.

Brent Peterson (03:44.712)
Yeah, a lot of people get my jokes like the next day.

Jackie B Grice (03:48.825)
Right, I love it though, I love it.

Brent Peterson (03:53.824)
All right, so let's talk a little bit about coaching and mindset. So I know that you do some transformational coaching and you help business owners shift sort of how they're thinking. Talk a little bit about that.

Jackie B Grice (04:11.906)
Yes, so one of the things when I started with this is I started helping people and I call this technique what's in your hands, right? What are the things, those gifts, those talents, your passions, those things that you love to do and to, or there are some people that are currently doing them. You know, my whole thing is,

moving them from your hands to actually the action of starting the business, scaling the business, sustaining the business. And the biggest thing that I found out was that it wasn't skill. wasn't, a lot of times it wasn't competence. wasn't, even though those things are definitely important, a lot of times it was mindset.

And I realized that I was doing as a coach more mindset work than strategy work. You know, just starting or for people that wanted to scale their business, understanding that they may have had limiting beliefs around how big they could grow their company. So that's where that really came from.

Brent Peterson (05:29.744)
Talk about the difference between the strategy and the mindset. Do you have to have one to get into the other?

Jackie B Grice (05:38.284)
You know, I would say you have to have the right mindset because we can sit down and talk about strategy all day long, what we can do to start the business to cause starting a business. We all know can be pretty easy. You know, you can go down to your local city and get a business license and you're in business, but

really to start to get to talk about strategy, the mindset, like you talk about EOS, just that mindset of that sort of, I'm doing a side hustle to really having a business and growing it into a company. A lot of times.

you know, people can't see that or like I say, they have a lot of limiting beliefs around it and it's very difficult to move past it without dealing with that initial mindset, those issues.

Brent Peterson (06:37.004)
Do you think the people that are doing the side hustle and the people that let's, I don't want to say wannabe entrepreneurs, but somebody that's getting a paycheck still, right? But then has a high, has a side hustle. The hardest part there is like getting rid of the paycheck, right? When, when am I ready to quit my job and make my side hustle, my all day hustle, right? Is that how you help people?

Jackie B Grice (07:02.897)
Yeah, I really do because a lot of times people feel like when they get that unction, I want to start this business. They think, okay, it's time to just walk away and quit. And I usually say that's usually that first, those first unctions that, okay, maybe this is something I need to look into. I always tell people to have at least a year's worth of, you know,

their finances together. Because in our mind, as we sit back and dream about how great it is to be this entrepreneur and have our own business, we never really look at what I call developing or looking at the the backside of the whole.

know, blessing or starting your business. We don't have a pain plan. What if all these people that you think are going to support you don't support you? What do you do when the money doesn't come in quite as fast as we think it's going to come in? So always tell people it's so important to, you know,

You got to plan, you got to do some market research. know, once you've done all that, you've planned, you have your money put away in case things don't happen the way you want them to happen. I like to, you know, so this was the way I did it. I'm not saying everyone has to do this, but when we started our business, my husband started the business, I was still working a nine to five.

when I started making more for the company than I was making at my job, my nine to five, that's when I started making that transition. So it was really when I started seeing, wow, I'm making more and I'm doing it part-time. Imagine if I left the job, I could probably do even greater, but yeah, so.

Brent Peterson (09:01.106)
Do you think there's a little piece of magic inside of somebody that wants to be an entrepreneur that has to maybe see past the money side of it and do it? You know, I think in my own experience that I value the freedom more than I value the money. And if you're successful, the money will follow, right? But you kind of have to have that passion to get into it. How do you help somebody understand that part of it?

Jackie B Grice (09:29.636)
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean you have to have the passion you have to have the gifting for it because if you don't the money will never First of all, I agree a hundred percent the money comes You know if you're doing something you're passionate about it. You work hard you're determined The money will follow that but if you start off doing it for the money and you don't have the passion for it

you'll end up getting wore out, maybe despising it, and you'll end up probably in the same place you were when you were working the nine to five. It just doesn't, you know, and it just doesn't.

work that way, you know, but a lot of people feel like, I want to start this, you know, people are making money and, you know, real estate, and you hate dealing with people or you hate, you know, you can't do it for the money because it just, it's hard to explain, but it doesn't work out in the end, it you will despise that and no amount of money will make it worth doing the things that you have to do to keep

growing your company.

Brent Peterson (10:48.544)
Yeah, setting aside the subjective part about, you know, having this sort of internal energy or passion to do something, what are the other common pitfalls you see that new business owners or even seasoned business owners make that hold them back from really growing?

Jackie B Grice (11:06.164)
yeah, a lot of times they're great at, you know, they're visionaries, right? You know, most entrepreneurs, you're visionaries. But as far as actually running a business, understanding the analytics behind it, understanding the back end, the business part, a lot of times you have people that, again, they're great.

for example, bakers, but they have no clue about business. And that is one of the biggest pitfalls that I see. You really don't know about the marketing. don't understand the...

understanding pricing, those types of things that you have to understand in order to be successful, delegating tasks, you know, as an entrepreneur, when you're starting out, and there's a lot of people that do this five, six years into business, they're great at loving what they do and doing what they do, but the business end of it, they're not so great at that.

Brent Peterson (12:20.384)
Yeah, I've always thought that the hardest part is the people part. And a lot of entrepreneurs fail at the people part. They may have a lot of success in the sales part, even in production. then tell us a little bit how you help that management side in getting those people in. And what are the pieces that they have to do to achieve that?

Jackie B Grice (12:21.149)
I've always thought of my thoughts and...

Jackie B Grice (12:47.794)
Yeah, I you know and as a as a transformational coach I do executive coaching, you know, it's it's really I think developing self leadership Self leadership really helps you deal with people and you are absolutely right Most a lot of entrepreneurs aren't great people people and I mean

when my husband and I started out, you know, we thought we were, but you know, after going through people, you know, we came to the conclusion and it was after doing an assessment that both of us score really low at the people part. So I think that it's important to, again, you have to develop those skills, you have to develop that part of your leadership, but also,

As you grow, look at other people and put other people in place and delegate some of those things that you're not great at and delegate those to other people that are. Delegation is a big key to growing your business because you just, there are skills that other people have that they're stronger at than that visionary and that entrepreneur may have.

Brent Peterson (14:13.196)
Yeah, when you meet somebody that's clearly a visionary, do you help them understand how they have to be that sort of get it done person as well? Because I think that a lot of visionaries are coming up with 100 ideas a day. And in the book, they talk about the shiny object, where you have to focus on one thing before you can be successful. How do you help them in that?

Jackie B Grice (14:30.82)
you

Jackie B Grice (14:37.651)
Yeah, I have them usually write down like a list of 20 things that they feel like they're really great at and then out of those 20 things kind of narrow that down to maybe three things and then that one thing out of those that they feel that they're really good at and focus on that. I think the thing to get people to understand is that the more you master the one thing

it opens the door for you to work on other things. So you let them know, I'm not saying you have to throw that stuff away and you can't do all these great ideas, but if you don't master one thing really well, it's very difficult to then add a second and a third thing onto an already teetering, you know.

house. I love the house analogy. It's like, okay, let's build a really solid house before we start putting additional levels onto the house.

Brent Peterson (15:41.874)
Do you have some success stories that you can share? Some things that have been successful with some of your clients?

Jackie B Grice (15:50.528)
Yeah, so one in particular, a lady that I have been coaching and she's great. She's a speaker. She's an educator. I call her a closer. She goes to different organizations and like nonprofits when they're raising money. For example, she's the person organizations bring

to get the money. you know, so she has all these things she was really, great at and, and also a leader. So I had her sort of focus in on the leadership part and, she, she did a course, she called it her C5 course and on leadership and she put it out one day, made about $15,000 in that day, just

putting that out there and she wanted to kind of do a couple different things but I encouraged her let's work on that because you work on that leadership part you can always work on those other things the speaking and the the the teaching but all of that goes into this this leadership course and it turned out to be pretty successful.

Brent Peterson (17:12.194)
Are there some specific steps that you help them through? Are there some critical steps that work that they need to do?

Jackie B Grice (17:19.424)
Yeah, a lot of times it's, you know, people have an idea. We call it pain island, you know, pleasure island, you know, where you are now and where you want to get a lot of people, especially in that people that have done nonprofit work or work with churches or different organizations like that. It is really difficult for them to ask for money.

you know, they want to give it all away, which I get it, you know, and that's a great thing to have that servant heart, but you can't invest back into yourself. You can't invest in them. You can't invest in your community if you give everything away. So a lot of times it is those barriers I find with a lot of people, they, they are understanding of their value.

is one of the biggest things that I find myself having to deal with people about in business.

Brent Peterson (18:24.802)
Do you find a lot of business owners undervalue the product they're selling and they'll sell it cheaper just to get the deal?

Jackie B Grice (18:34.052)
You know what, and I learned this from negotiations, they undervalue the product because they undervalue themselves. know, their worth is often tied into the product that they sell or they promote. And a lot of times, if you don't feel you're quite worthy of asking for a certain amount, it doesn't matter. You can have the best

chocolate chip cookie in town, but if you kind of feel like, why would people buy from me? I'm not the biggest whatever. Then you sell that cookie for 50 cents, you know, and you don't look at it like the cookie is people will actually pay $5 for the cookie.

Brent Peterson (19:24.14)
What do you find as your success? How do you find success in your partnership and specifically how can you be successful with your spouse?

Jackie B Grice (19:25.539)
you

Jackie B Grice (19:36.364)
That is a good thing. think we could do a whole like another session on that. You know, working with your spouse is is how can I say it? It's it's been it's a challenge. But the biggest thing, the best thing that we learned was

to stay in your lane, to really, really say, is what I, and that's what the partner, regardless, is, these are your task and these are my task. And you work on those things and I'll work on these things. And sometimes in a situation where there is two married people working together,

They tend to blur those lines. The other thing is a lot of times there are no boundaries. So you blur the lines of husband, wife, partner with, you know, or the time we leave the office or the time we say that's the end of it. Sometimes you tend to blur the lines and boundaries. So I would say the biggest thing to be successful in those situations are to, you know,

Be real clear on who does what and make sure you have really healthy boundaries set.

Brent Peterson (21:00.736)
Yeah, that's great. What do you have, you could give anybody some advice that's starting a business, what would that one thing be to get rolling? Not a whole plan, but what's the first thing somebody should do?

Jackie B Grice (21:17.22)
I love this book, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. The first thing I think a person should do is spend some time with themselves, really, really writing out their vision, where they want to go, what type of impact.

to get to start to write a mission statement, a vision, even if it's just you and it's, you know, a solopreneur, but to really do those things. I think if I had to do it all over again, number one, read that book, get a coach.

You know, I really didn't back when we started business about 20 some years ago, you didn't really hear a whole lot about coaches, at least in my world. I didn't really hear that. I knew people had mentors, but we sort of pull from the people that were around that are in the same situation we're in, you know, but a hundred percent, if you get a coach, a mentor, and I would say, read that book that, that right there.

You know, those two books, you can start. It will cause you to make quantum leaps right off the bat. So.

Brent Peterson (22:45.891)
E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, is that right? All right, yeah, good, I have another book to read.

Jackie B Grice (22:48.983)
Yes, yes.

Jackie B Grice (22:53.1)
Yes. that book really changed my life as an entrepreneur. Yeah.

Brent Peterson (23:00.91)
Jackie we have a few minutes left as I close out the podcast I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like what would you like to plug today?

Jackie B Grice (23:10.146)
Well, I would love for people to follow me. I am growing, you know, so my other business, the metrics were different. Now that I'm doing coaching and business consulting and strategy, the metrics, it's social media, know, and word of mouth, but I would love for people to follow me at Jackie B. Grice and launching deeper on Instagram. Those are two of my pages.

Our transportation company is Agape Travel and Tours, but I would absolutely love people to follow me and see what's happening. I try to give tips to entrepreneurs and just help them get out of their head and grow the business that they love and that they feel that they're worthy of.

Brent Peterson (24:04.448)
That's perfect and I'll, tell us how do they get a hold of you?

Jackie B Grice (24:08.804)
Yes, so you can again go on those pages on social media. I have a website called launching deeper.com. You can reach out to me at and I'll give you a number too. I'm OK with that. It is 7575602440 but the easiest and best way is just to reach out.

with you know to me at launching deeper.com it's pretty easy and there's a form you can fill out and that way we can communicate and get together. I work with organizations, I do executive coaching, I have my emotional intelligence certification so I have all the things to help you get out of here.

and grow the business that you love. So, yes.

Brent Peterson (25:08.876)
That's awesome, yeah, and I went through the emotional intelligence. We did a whole retreat on that. I love that 2.0. That was a great book.

Jackie B Grice (25:18.956)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love the whole idea of a retreat with that. That just, yeah.

Brent Peterson (25:20.619)
Yeah, good.

Brent Peterson (25:26.646)
Good, Jackie, I'll make sure I get all those on the show notes. It's been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

Jackie B Grice (25:32.676)
Thank you, I appreciate it.