Today we’d like to introduce you to Sandy Stewart.
Hi Sandy, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My first career was in financial management, receiving my Series 7 license right out of college. Years later, when I realized it really wasn’t holding my interest, I was offered the chance to partner with someone to start our own boutique independent RIA firm. It was my first taste of entrepreneurship, business ownership and it changed everything for me. When I did make the leap, I was recruited to help launch an Australian business coaching company in the US market. With one of the Australian partners, we formed the founding team that eventually planted the national headquarters in San Fransisco. Those years were more than formative. It was exciting learning best practices in coaching business owners and their teams how to grow and scale and basically run better businesses. It was rigorous, exciting and shaped by my cohort in the UK learning and implementing alongside me. Eventually, I felt frustrated by the limitations of a business model that wasn’t mine and a team culture in our US team that was more “bro” than fair, more show off than show up and it just wasn’t for me.
I founded my own company, Swiss Avenue Partners, a training company that took all the knowledge and experience from my two prior experiences and boosted them into something different, more me. I focused on genuine transformation, value growth, strategic planning, operational efficiency and growth strategies that scale. With a team, we rewired everything and while we served a market of mid-sized privately held companies, the gap I saw was the small business that could be incredibly successful without needing to scale. They just needed to get better at running their small business and build a true future for themselves, their employees, their customers and their families. Think Big was born as a cohort program to serve the smaller business. It was also secretly a ‘screw you’ to the men who told me that I thought too small. It’s not my fault they couldn’t see my vision.
At our peak operation, we had expanded into 5 states in the US, 9 cities total including one in Sydney, Australia. But that kind of growth comes at a cost. I was feeling burnt out from having less and less time for clients, a painful end of a marriage and then a diagnosis of a new lifeline health condition to manage.
It took me a minute, but I stepped back, took a breath and saw that what had sustained me through all of it, and what I kept seeing over and over were the relationships. The partnerships. Fellow business owners who were working together to build something bigger than ourselves. Not transactional, but relational. That became the foundation for this new chapter now. Think Big is now about teaching all that I learned through hard knocks, through listening to those that know more than me and through practicing over and over, falling down, scrubbing my knees and going again. Think Big isn’t just a program within a company for me now. It is the company and my inspiration. And through this journey, I became a 3x best selling author sharing my story and my vision in three different best sellers through Sulit Press. Becoming an author wasn’t on my bucket list, but it helped me to grow into the business owner I am today with authenticity, honesty and new real friendships with my co-authors and my publisher.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I was on a built treadmill of a business and was doing my best to cope. My husband had joined me in business and while I’d like to say working in business together was our demise, it was years of narcissistic manipulation and his secret life that resulted in divorce, a new health condition and a realization that everything in my life needed to change. I had been using alcohol to cope and when things got bad, and without any real self-care skills, I began to drink my feelings. Two DWIs later and a realization that it was only going to get worse, I got sober, started learning how to really take care of myself and started changing things in my business too. That lasted for a few years, but for the business, it was a false sense of change. Really, I had just been rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. When the pandemic hit, one of my best friends died suddenly, I decided to slow my business down and figure out my next move. Then lockdown caused all but one of my clients to slow almost to a halt and I lost 85% of my revenue in two weeks. It began a period of reinvention and gave me breathing room to help my mother navigate her ever progressing Alzheimer’s while in lockdown in a care facility. I spent 3-4 hours a day helping her just do daily tasks like brushing her teeth and getting dressed. I stayed as safe as possible in hopes that I could see her again in person while she still knew who I was. Unfortunately, she contracted COVID in December 2020 and passed away two weeks later.
After steering myself through grief, through trauma therapy and through the 12-step program, I began to emerge a new person. One that brings years and years of experience and knowledge but a strong will to do things differently. Gone are the days of trying to impress. Gone are the days of trying to be something I’m not. Hello to the new. Hello to saying no when something doesn’t fit. Hello to deeper, richer connections and relationships in my personal life and in business.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
My book publisher said in my podcast interview with her that I’m like a business relationship sherpa. That won’t go on my business card, but it does feel right. At Think Big, I teach referral based professionals how to grow and scale through 3rd party relationships. What I still keep seeing are business owners treating alliances like a transaction. I refer you and you refer me.
The reality is that most successful alliances don’t work that way. Many of the most powerful and profitable alliances think bigger and seek out opportunities beyond the transaction. It’s that nuance that I teach, not just how to think bigger, but how to follow the model and take the actions to get there. The end result we aim for? An alliance who knows us so well, they are willing to refer their top clients, their bread and butter, to us pre-qualified, pre-sold and to do that over and over for years to come. Sounds massive? It is. It’s a game changer, and while it’s a simple methodology, it’s not easily carried out. That’s where the coaching and training come into play.
I teach invitation only cohorts this method giving them practice time with actual real-life potential referral sources. The bonus is an ongoing community of like-minded professionals doing business this way. Those that opt in to The Allyance get real-time hand holding to source, build and manage these alliances for long-term results. This is real wealth building.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
My industry as I’m doing it, is almost nonexistent. If you ask AI about referral relationships, it dribbles on about client referrals, nothing at all to do with 3rd party relationships. Most who talk about relationship marketing are still marketing experts and simply tacking this onto a marketing pitch.
With the continued smattering of AI slop on social feeds, people are wanting more analog, more human. What’s more human that this? Real conversations, real people. Real interactions.
If you ask me, it’s only going to become more and more necessary and the desire for more visceral human interactions is going to hit a tipping point of need sooner than later.
Pricing:
- $3500-$5500 Annual Strategic Planning facilitation
- $2750-$5500 Team training/coaching Strategic Alliance methodology
- $650 VIP/$350 Standard Strategic Alliance Accelerator 4-hour in person invite only events
- $79/mo membership The Allyance
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thinkbigimpact.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkbigprogram/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-stewart-9534a/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ReferralGrowthAcademy
