Showing you the love

​‘Dr Phil’ Holland prescribes: ‘be present’ and ‘love your business’ to stop the hurt in businesses and help people succeed in life. It’s a prescription he’s put into practice.

by Kevin Kevany

Locked out of a business he’d spent five years developing, Phil Holland was forced to launch a legal claim to get what he was owed. He found himself struggling to get out of bed; depressed; and very angry at his predicament. Mostly, he felt completely lost and consumed with vengeance. 

“I experienced what I call a ‘Business MACK truck out of nowhere’,” recalls Holland. “Long-story-short, my fellow shareholders made what I considered a wrong decision and I found myself locked out of the business and having to launch a legal case to get them to honour our agreements.

“I quickly learnt a lot about how humans act; how fragile trust can be, and that the legal system really only works for those with deep pockets. It was during this time I hit rock bottom.”

Life had been pretty easy until then. Ten years after finishing at Tauranga Boys College, Holland felt he needed a new challenge. 

He’d started with a financial firm in 2008. “A poorly-managed and struggling insurance brokerage firm.” 

Over the next five years he “helped transform it into one of Tauranga’s largest, leading insurance brokerages”. A JV with another firm created a nationwide insurance brokerage company: it is now a growing life insurance brokerage, with advisers all over New Zealand.

Importantly, in that first decade, he’d acquired a number of significant business qualifications. Ironically, the ‘Dr Phil-to-be’ had thought he wanted to be a town planner. Instead, he started a business degree, ending up with a BMS in Finance. Financial planning was his forte. 

In no time he was the youngest Kiwi to have attained both the CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and CLU (Chartered Life Underwriter) designations. More qualifications followed quickly in the financial planning discipline, and he recalls having more ‘letters’ after his name than in it.

In 2004, he won the Young Financial Planner of the Year award. 

“I’d learned the business owner was generally the biggest issue in all the businesses I rescued.”

However, all those achievements were long-forgotten as he lay crushed under his ‘MACK truck’. Thankfully his Damascene ‘redemption’ was at hand: a transformation which would see him become an internationally recognised business consultant and transformation coach.

“During my lowest point I was introduced to Sally Anderson from Evolved Leadership,” says Holland. “After an hour on Skype with her, I realised I did not wish to carry on living the way I was. After all, the only person I was punishing with my anger and revengeful thoughts was myself (and my family). 

“I made the decision to complete Sally’s Immersion Coaching Course and became an Evolved Leadership Certified Coach. While participating in this training things really began to shift for me. I became really present in where I was operating, and I realised there were an awful lot of business owners who are hurting, frustrated, overwhelmed and depressed – who didn’t have anyone to turn to,” says the self-proclaimed ‘Dr Phil’ for troubled businesses and businesspeople.

Finding the love
‘Being present’ became Holland’s driving mantra. He calls himself “The Uncompromising Friend for Business Owners – partnering with them to find and achieve their goals, dreams and potential”. 

“I began to understand the level of frustration; the feeling of being overwhelmed; the anxiety, stress, dissatisfaction and performance pressures many business owners were experiencing was directly linked to the love they had for their businesses. 

“No matter how much consulting, or strategy plans I put in place for them, they would sabotage these, if they were not present in loving their business.”

Holland believes his unique and unconventional brand ‘Love Your Business’ (http://loveurbiz.today/), which has seen many reclaim that love, has saved businesses from failure; saved marriages; and saved lives. 

Or, as he puts it, he is “helping business owners and leaders with their headspace”. 

This approach has led to other business consultants, coaches and mentors, unusually, allowing him to work with their clients; to help ‘unblock’ them.

“Most business owners and leaders are focused in working in their business and not on it and thus become frustrated with the feeling of not actually achieving what they really want to.

“I’d learned the owner was generally the biggest issue in all the businesses I rescued too. So I teach them to not only get out of their own way, but to silence their inner critic (the voice in their heads, which takes no prisoners). 

“Most business owners and leaders I meet have horrific inner critics at play. I understand this because I’d previously had my own one bagging me 24/7.” 

Maintaining empowerment
Holland believes the key to his coaching is “the sustainability of maintaining an empowered state – regardless of what is happening around you”. He guides his clients on how to not only have 10-out-of-10 days, but also how to repeat them, every day.

‘Dr Phil’ again: “A recent client had been depressed for years, to the point that in January this year, his wife was ringing around institutions to have him admitted. He was riddled with anxiety; depressed; and was beginning to have thoughts on suicide. I started with him not long after. I loved watching his transformation over the next six months. He now messages me most days to say he is a ‘10’, jumps out of bed and has his passion back. 

“For many business-owners their lives and their businesses are one. The cases of divorce, suicide and depression among business-owners are way too high. However, all these elements do merge together. Most of my clients want to have an extraordinary relationship with their partner and children, as well as a rocking business.” 

Meanwhile, this active member of the Papamoa Potbellies veterans’ rugby club, is proud also to have been recently introduced at a speaking engagement as “the annoying, happy guy”.

Phil Holland’s three core motivators are love, freedom and legacy. He claims to have that tattooed, to reinforce it 24/7. 

His vision for Love Your Business is to “Pioneer a new paradigm. A world where business owners love their business.” 

A book to that effect is in the pipeline.