Latest / The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast / Should You Really Become a Visionary Founder with Scott Ritzheimer (stages 6,7) - Ep. 417

Transcript

Should You Really Become a Visionary Founder with Scott Ritzheimer (stages 6,7) - Ep. 417 · The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast

• 0:00
  Scott Ritzheimer: Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again
• 0:03
  to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast, the only podcast that
• 0:07
  grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a
• 0:11
  founder. I'm your host Scott Ritzheimer, and today we close
• 0:16
  the series, the the seven part series. Can you believe it? With
• 0:22
  the level that most founders dream of, and that is a business
• 0:31
  that runs without you, right? The one where the checks just
• 0:36
  come in the mail. They don't really come in the mail anymore,
• 0:38
  but the deposits hit your bank account, and your time is yours.
• 0:44
  This is level six. Level six is where you actually, literally,
• 0:52
  deeply, meaningfully have true time and financial freedom. If
• 0:59
  you look back over any other level, you probably had one or
• 1:03
  the other or none. Like level six is really the first time
• 1:07
  that you genuinely have both pure financial and time freedom,
• 1:15
  and that's strikingly difficult. Our kids go to a very nice
• 1:25
  school, and folks there have lots of money, and it's good for
• 1:28
  them. But the the the the challenge that I see playing out
• 1:35
  there, and you see this in families all the time, from rags
• 1:37
  to riches to rags in three generations, is. How do you say
• 1:45
  no? How do you resist your most basic impulses? How do you
• 1:51
  become the best version of yourself when nothing forces you
• 1:54
  to? How do you get up early in the morning and start working on
• 2:01
  a project when nobody else is expecting you to do it. How do
• 2:06
  you carry the the desire to to keep winning when you've already
• 2:13
  won? Level six is beautiful, especially when it's right for
• 2:20
  you, but it can also be kind of empty. Instead of feeling like
• 2:28
  the massive success that we are, many times we feel like, "Well,
• 2:33
  now what do I do? Like I, I did all that, but who cares? And
• 2:40
  it's at this stage that we've got one more revelation on hand,
• 2:45
  and that is that owning and not running your business is not the
• 2:48
  pinnacle. Starting a church and then handing it off to the next
• 2:54
  generation isn't the end. Building a nonprofit from
• 2:58
  scratch and then entrusting it in the hands of a brilliant
• 3:02
  executive director to take it further, while you sit as
• 3:04
  chairman of the board, isn't the last act? There's one more
• 3:10
  that's available now. It's not right for everybody. In fact,
• 3:13
  I'd go so far as to say it's not right for most. There's probably
• 3:16
  something like 10 times as many level six leaders as there are
• 3:20
  level one seven founders, and what's the difference? Well, in
• 3:30
  level six, and if you don't know what level six is or level seven
• 3:32
  is, I forgot to mention this at the open. But this is part of a
• 3:35
  seven-part series. If you go back just to part one of this
• 3:38
  series, we lay out the context for what these different levels
• 3:40
  are, why they matter, and we'll help you find out which level
• 3:43
  you're in. and And this episode really is for folks that are in
• 3:46
  level six already. Now, anyone can listen to it, anyone can
• 3:49
  watch it, anyone can learn from it. But this is going to be
• 3:52
  deeply relevant for those of you who aren't leading your business
• 3:55
  anymore, and may not even be limited to one business anymore.
• 4:01
  So, what happens? Let's let's go just from CEO stage onward,
• 4:04
  which is level five. Level five, you're leading an organization,
• 4:08
  super successful, and you exit. And there are lots of ways that
• 4:12
  that can happen. You can cash out. You can partially cash out.
• 4:17
  You can just hold it and own it. None of that really matters so
• 4:20
  much. But what happens is you end up with money and time, and
• 4:25
  and no responsibility to lead an organization every single day,
• 4:28
  and that's what brings us into level six. And then we realize
• 4:31
  in level six that hey, now that we have all this time, now that
• 4:34
  we have some cash, now that we've got these relationships
• 4:37
  and these connections and all of these different types of assets.
• 4:41
  Well, why don't we put them to work for us? Well, why don't you
• 4:45
  start to leverage those things instead of your time?
• 4:49
  And it's crazy, but like you can make way more money in terms of
• 4:54
  annual income in level six, working half as much, a third of
• 4:58
  as much, if at all. Than you did earlier. Why? Because you're
• 5:03
  you're continuing to reap the fruit and letting those other
• 5:05
  assets work for you. Again, might be financial, but it might
• 5:09
  be relational. It might be reputational. How many
• 5:14
  commercials does Shaq do? Right, and and so level six is really
• 5:21
  about playing that game. How do you win as much as possible in
• 5:28
  as little time as possible? How do you leverage the assets that
• 5:32
  you have to get as big an ROI as you can in as little time as
• 5:38
  possible? And that's a fun game. That's where you move from being
• 5:42
  a true owner, someone who's defined by this one organization
• 5:45
  that they built, to becoming a portfolio owner, someone who has
• 5:48
  multiple interests in multiple enterprises and is is getting a
• 5:52
  high ROI out of those. Now, being a great CEO does does by
• 5:57
  no means guarantee you to be a great owner. In fact, there's
• 6:01
  something called the halo effect that will trick a lot of great
• 6:05
  CEOs into thinking that they'll be great owners. And I've seen
• 6:11
  more than one go from level five to level six and lose it all. So
• 6:16
  just because you're great in level five doesn't mean you're
• 6:17
  going to be great in level six. There are skills to be learned
• 6:20
  here, and one of those skills is you know how to make great bets
• 6:29
  on other people's endeavors where you don't get to control
• 6:32
  it yourself. Another is building out your new team because you're
• 6:38
  going to leave your executive team behind with the company,
• 6:40
  and now you've got what I call the wealth team, what many
• 6:43
  people call the wealth team, and that's a that that's a different
• 6:47
  way of leading. That's a different type of of people that
• 6:50
  you have to inspire and coordinate. So there's different
• 6:54
  skills here, but level six isn't the end. There is another level
• 7:00
  after it, and and and so when we understand that level six is all
• 7:04
  about generating ROI and leveraging your wealth team to
• 7:08
  do that, when it's about maximizing, one of my friends
• 7:12
  who works a lot in this level, he says it's not about what you
• 7:15
  make, it's about what you keep. Right, maximizing the free cash
• 7:19
  flow from that or the total net worth increase from that is is
• 7:22
  the game. It's actually a pretty fun game, complicated but fun.
• 7:27
  And at some point in time, if it hasn't hit you before, but
• 7:34
  certainly in level six, which you know for many happens later
• 7:38
  in life, you have some folks in their 20s and 30s, who you kind
• 7:42
  of had their one hit wonder and it set them up for life. But for
• 7:45
  most folks, this is something that you get into in your 50s,
• 7:47
  usually your 60s or 70s, and our own mortality starts to come
• 7:53
  into view, and you realize, yeah, I could make that
• 7:58
  investment, I could get that ROI. I could add another million
• 8:03
  dollars to this bank account that I've never seen. But why?
• 8:10
  Like, other than just winning, is there some material benefit
• 8:16
  to that? Well, you can pass it on to your your kids and to
• 8:19
  other generations, but. but wouldn't it be a lot more fun to
• 8:25
  pass it on now while you're still alive? What if, what if
• 8:31
  this whole journey wasn't actually about you at all? What
• 8:37
  if this whole founder saga was really an opportunity for you to
• 8:43
  caretake all this value, curate it, and make it available to
• 8:52
  solve problems that other people can't solve because they don't
• 8:57
  have the time or the resources to do it. What if the best
• 9:01
  investments aren't measured by their financial ROI, but the
• 9:06
  legacy that you leave behind? That's level seven. And what
• 9:13
  makes level seven a little weird and a little scary is that for
• 9:16
  most folks who move from level six to level seven, they
• 9:19
  actually perform worse. They're ROI goes down. The things that
• 9:26
  they use to measure their success in level six get
• 9:31
  objectively worse. Their time commitment goes up, but this is
• 9:37
  what makes it worth it. They're leaving the world behind a
• 9:41
  better place. They're leaving a road for their successors, not
• 9:47
  in a literal sense, but those who come behind them.
• 9:50
  That's easier to walk than theirs ever was. They're moving
• 9:54
  their little corner of the world, or maybe even a huge
• 9:58
  chunk of the world. Much better off than it was when they found
• 10:03
  it. They're moving society forward. There's this brilliant
• 10:06
  Greek proverb, and and if you've ever heard me talk about level
• 10:09
  seven, you've heard me say this proverb because it it
• 10:12
  encapsulates it perfect, perfectly. And the the proverb
• 10:17
  is this: A society grows great when old men or women plant
• 10:22
  trees under whose shade they'll never sit. Right. It's not about
• 10:29
  planting trees to make your house look nicer. It's not about
• 10:33
  creating opportunities for you to enjoy, but it's the
• 10:38
  absolutely stunning gift and ability to be able to afford, in
• 10:44
  any measure that we would choose, to to plant trees under
• 10:48
  whose shade you'll never sit, and think about how much better
• 10:51
  we become as mankind when we have founders who do. When you
• 10:57
  think back to some of the most remarkable people in history,
• 11:01
  many of them, whether they were founders or not, this is just
• 11:04
  the founders' version of this. Were the people who focused not
• 11:08
  on the ROI in their lifetime, but the ROI in lifetimes to
• 11:13
  come. They had a vision that extend extended beyond their
• 11:16
  lifetime, and they moved us all toward it. That's what level
• 11:20
  seven is about, and that's pretty exciting, but it's not
• 11:24
  right for everybody. And so let's take a look at those of
• 11:29
  you who are in level six. You've got a legitimate shot at getting
• 11:32
  to level seven now. So let's take a look at how you decide
• 11:36
  which one is which, and we're going to do this somewhat
• 11:39
  quickly because I've gone too long already. If you can't tell,
• 11:42
  we've recorded all of these today, and so if I turn totally
• 11:45
  soup silly, you know why. Here we go. Reasons why level six
• 11:51
  might actually be right for you. That you're loving the game
• 11:57
  still. You feel like you still have gas in the tank. You. love
• 12:04
  the thrill of the win. You're you're doing pretty well
• 12:11
  financially, but you're not quite at the place where you
• 12:15
  don't need to invest anymore for your own income. You. you
• 12:26
  figured out how to make your money work for you in a literal
• 12:30
  sense, but you've not quite developed the skill or the
• 12:34
  desire to figure out how to make money work for others in
• 12:42
  multiple ways, you you like the concreteness of being able to
• 12:50
  measure objectively whether what you're doing is working or not.
• 12:54
  You like to be able to identify and evaluate investment
• 12:58
  opportunities that you. you can prove whether or not they
• 13:05
  worked. You still have an unfulfilled part of your vision
• 13:12
  for your lifetime. Those are all great reasons why level six
• 13:17
  might be the best tool for you. Those those might be necessary
• 13:22
  parts. You you may have enough asset value, creating enough
• 13:28
  income to kind of live a quiet life, but you may want to do
• 13:33
  more without having to go back into the game full time
• 13:37
  yourself. And so you might need to sit in level six a little
• 13:40
  while longer, win a little bit bigger to create that real
• 13:44
  opportunity to give back beyond the measure that you could right
• 13:48
  now. Those are all great reasons to stay in level six, and for
• 13:51
  many, they'll they'll stay there for the rest of their life. And
• 13:56
  if you can get to level six, you have more than earned the
• 14:00
  privilege of getting to stay there, if that's what you
• 14:01
  choose. For some, it's not enough. For some, it's time to
• 14:07
  move to level seven. So, if level six is that owner level,
• 14:12
  level seven is what I call the visionary founder, and this is
• 14:15
  where we move to. It's kind of like being in the Hall of Fame,
• 14:21
  where your your primary function is to actually inspire the next
• 14:27
  round of visionaries and to make their lives more effective. And
• 14:32
  so, if you don't need to work or even actively invest to pay your
• 14:37
  bills, right, aka Bill Gates, kind of a thing. Not not quite
• 14:40
  that for everybody, but if you don't need to worry about your
• 14:43
  own income at all, which is a lot of people in level six, and
• 14:48
  you're ready to to tackle an even bigger challenge, level
• 14:53
  seven may be perfect for you. You're okay changing the measure
• 14:58
  of success.
• 14:58
  You've probably. Pursued vision-fueled financial success
• 15:04
  for like your whole life, and you're despite whatever age you
• 15:11
  are at this point, you're ready to say, "Hey, I want to play a
• 15:14
  new game, and I'm willing to redefine success to do it. If
• 15:20
  you have a vision that extends well beyond your lifetime, if
• 15:25
  you are ready to to actually give yourself to something
• 15:31
  bigger than yourself, if you are willing to not not determine,
• 15:37
  hey, what is it that's going to give me the most freedom, but
• 15:42
  what is it that's going to help plant the greatest legacy? Then
• 15:47
  level seven is absolutely going to be right for you. Now, how do
• 15:53
  we get there? So it's the same with all the stages and and I'm
• 15:55
  sorry, levels, and that is that to reach level seven, you must
• 16:00
  have thrived in level six. So if you're sitting there in level
• 16:04
  six and you haven't quite figured out the game yet because
• 16:06
  you're still stuck with some level five skills, that's the
• 16:10
  first thing to do. You want to learn how to really be good at
• 16:14
  being an owner because being really good at being an owner is
• 16:17
  going to equip you to be really good at inspiring other owners,
• 16:21
  and it's going to teach you how to lead through inspiration.
• 16:24
  It's going to teach you how to judge efficacy from afar. It's
• 16:28
  going to teach you how to run from the board room and and not
• 16:32
  the the leadership room. And those are all mandatory skills
• 16:36
  for a level seven leader. So if you are are in that owner stage,
• 16:42
  and you're working to thrive as a portfolio owner with diverse
• 16:45
  interests, generating high ROI. That's all going to help in your
• 16:49
  journey toward becoming a level seven visionary founder. If
• 16:53
  you're ready to make the leap, then it's time to start changing
• 16:56
  the goalposts, and that is to move away from the ROI in your
• 17:00
  lifetime, to the legacy that you leave behind, to the vision that
• 17:05
  can be achieved well beyond your lifetime, and that's that's
• 17:11
  pretty cool. The fun thing about both levels, level six and level
• 17:15
  seven, level six you're not limited to the effectiveness of
• 17:19
  one organization anymore, and so you can you can use your assets,
• 17:26
  your relationships, your connections, your finances, you
• 17:31
  can your knowledge, you can use those to to do work in all kinds
• 17:37
  of different places, and in level seven, it's like if you
• 17:41
  want to talk about freedom, right? Freedom is not I can go
• 17:45
  play golf today. Freedom is I'm working on something that I
• 17:50
  don't even have to have finished in my lifetime. That's freedom,
• 17:57
  because that's the ultimate time. Freedom. It doesn't matter
• 17:59
  if it's done now, when you look back at what a lot of great
• 18:04
  folks have accomplished, when you look back, one of my
• 18:07
  favorite quotes in this line-it's a little different
• 18:09
  space, but it articulates the same pattern. And a historian,
• 18:14
  really profound historian, was asked 200 years after the French
• 18:18
  Revolution, what was the true global effect of the French
• 18:22
  Revolution? And their response was, "It's too early to tell.
• 18:27
  Think about that. Think about the freedom of someone looking
• 18:33
  at your life 200 years from now and asking, "What was the effect
• 18:39
  of that life? And someone else responding, it's too early to
• 18:44
  tell. If that fires you up, and you're already in level six,
• 18:51
  then level seven may be exactly where you need to go. Whether
• 18:55
  you choose level six or level seven, know that I'm rooting for
• 18:58
  you. If you've made it to level six and have the option to get
• 19:02
  to level seven. I think the world of you-very, very, very,
• 19:06
  very, very few people ever make it that far. But you have well
• 19:10
  done, very well done. And with that, that concludes our series
• 19:16
  of should you really. And I hope what we've been able to take
• 19:21
  from this is that, as amazing as each of these levels is, there's
• 19:28
  no mandate that you have to get to the next one. And so,
• 19:33
  regardless of which of the six transition points you're at,
• 19:37
  from one to two, two to three, and so on, regardless of which
• 19:42
  one of those you're at, you have two great options for how to
• 19:47
  move forward, and you get to pick which one you want. So take
• 19:54
  the agency, the control, the authority, and choose which.
• 20:00
  Conviction, the level that's right for you, and give it
• 20:04
  everything you've got, and you'll do great. With that,
• 20:08
  thank you so much. You know that your time and attention mean the
• 20:12
  world to us. We spent a lot of time in this series together,
• 20:15
  and especially those of you who watched all of these. And I just
• 20:19
  want to express my deepest appreciation for that. Even more
• 20:23
  so, I want to express my appreciation for being a
• 20:26
  founder, for jumping into the game, for doing what very few
• 20:31
  can actually do, and bearing the consequences and the benefits of
• 20:36
  that. Thank you. You make the world a better place, and
• 20:41
  hopefully, this conversation left you just a little more
• 20:43
  clear than you were last time. I cannot wait to see you in the
• 20:47
  next episode. Take care. Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer here.
• 20:54
  Thank you so much for listening to the Start Scale and Succeed
• 20:58
  podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what you need
• 21:01
  for the level you're in right now. If you want to discover
• 21:05
  what level you're in, take our 10-question Founders Evolution
• 21:08
  Quiz for free at foundersquiz.com. That's
• 21:12
  foundersquiz.com. It'll pinpoint exactly where you are and give
• 21:16
  you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next
• 21:20
  level in your journey as a founder. If you got something
• 21:23
  out of today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, or
• 21:26
  review. It helps us reach more founders like you, and let's be
• 21:30
  honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible
• 21:34
  guests. So keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and
• 21:37
  I'll see you in the next episode.