Latest / King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights / Scaling Smart: 7 Stages to Master Growth, Mindset & Financial Success w/ Scott Ritzheimer

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Scaling Smart: 7 Stages to Master Growth, Mindset & Financial Success w/ Scott Ritzheimer · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

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  But one thing that comes into very sharp focus is that there
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  is a story. And, and that really surprised
• 0:07
  me at first because like just about every entrepreneur out
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  there, I felt like our situation was completely unique, right?
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  And I mean, we've helped 20,000 people and just about everyone
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  of them came to us and said, I have a completely unique idea in
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  every single way. And then they just described
• 0:21
  what the person before them said, you know what I mean?
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  It was like, yes, there are individual differences and
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  nuances to every founder and every business and every
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  nonprofit, but there the reality of it is when you zoom out just
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  a little bit and you watch the journey unfold, it turns into
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  just one big story that we're all taking part of, right?
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  It turns into one path that we all follow.
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  And if you stay on the path, you achieve success.
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  If you deviate from the path, it gets really challenging really
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  quick. Welcome to the King Dems
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  Podcast, where we share the stories of extraordinary people
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  and dissect hot, relevant topics that shape our world.
• 1:03
  From visionary leaders to trailblazing creatives, we
• 1:05
  uncover the mindset, strategy, and grit behind greatness.
• 1:09
  Whether it's business, culture, or personal growth, we ask the
• 1:12
  real questions. This isn't just conversation,
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  it's transformation. The Kingdom's podcast, Your next
• 1:18
  breakthrough starts here. Music licencing reimagined.
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  We are live. Ladies and gentlemen, you will
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  once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast.
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  And I have with me today a European brother on another side
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  of the pond, a German machine called Scott Ritzheimer.
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  How are you Scott or Ritz? I am doing fantastic.
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  Yeah, doing fantastic. So excited about this episode,
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  the conversation we're going to get to have.
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  Wow, wow. You know, it's really great.
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  You know, the way we, we connect and interestingly we've, you're
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  meant to produce this I think about a week ago.
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  But Many thanks to my wonderful network broadband network
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  providers talk talk. But you know, interestingly they
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  have been relegated, you know, to second place.
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  So now we have 3 network doing doing a great job.
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  Very nice SO. I, I'm telling you, I'm telling
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  you, I I wasn't happy that they did not make it happen, but it
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  does happen. But interestingly, right when I
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  saw your profile and I swore something relating to
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  architecture, but it is not the architecture that we all know.
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  Skill Architect, you know, let's start with what you do.
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  Who is a scale architect? Yeah, well, you've got
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  architects who design buildings, right?
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  You've got systems architects who design software.
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  What scale architects do is design scalable organisations.
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  So we work with founders, leaders, CEO's, interestingly
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  both in the for profit and nonprofit space who have big
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  dreams and and they've had some success in the past.
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  Like, these are not unsuccessful folks, but they've been bumping
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  into this wall that's prevented them from scaling.
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  There's some kind of ceiling there that they keep smacking
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  into, some much more painfully than others.
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  And the longer you're there, the more painful it gets.
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  And basically what we do as Scale Architects is help them
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  not only through coaching and understanding their role as
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  founders, which will unpack throughout this episode, but
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  ultimately as a founder at this stage, you can't do it alone,
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  You can't do it by yourself. You can't just hustle and grit
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  and determination your way to scalability.
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  You have to do it through others.
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  And to do that take some intentionality.
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  It takes some design, it takes great organisational
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  architecture. And that's really how we unlock
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  scale for our clients. And like the the thing that
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  people are looking for is like, what do you know?
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  What about revenue? What about profits?
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  That yes to all those things. It's fascinating.
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  Like when you actually build the right organisation, right, when
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  you design the right machine, I mean, it works really, really
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  well. And so depending on the the
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  specific challenge that a client's facing, it's not
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  uncommon for them to either double their revenue or triple
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  their profitability through the course of an engagement over a
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  year or two. So just on the like to note,
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  even architect steps or a weight skill, does that make him a
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  skill architect? I think so.
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  I think so. Maybe if an architect designs a
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  scale it would be so as well. But yes.
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  Just just other like to the, you know, but for you, you know,
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  growing up, you are a millionaire, right?
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  As millennials growing up, we, we're more into, or would I say
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  our parents wanted us to, to, to take on professions like being a
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  doctor, being an engineer, being a lawyer, those mainstream, you
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  know, professions. But how did you get into
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  becoming a skill architect? What was that?
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  A hard moment that made you realise that your pathway to
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  achieving purpose and impact is becoming a skill architect and
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  eventually mapping out the founders evolution.
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  Yeah, I don't know that there was a moment, but there were
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  lots of moments. So I actually accidentally
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  dropped out of high school, which was another maybe a story
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  we'll get into, but accidentally dropped out of high school.
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  And because of that was like really drifting for a bit and
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  actually landed at a ministry school of all places and was
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  training to be a pastor here in the US and move down to Atlanta,
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  GA, where I live now, just after I got married to my amazing
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  wife, Hilda Marie, to actually take part in a ministry down
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  here. That was the grand plan.
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  There's no real other thought behind it other than to just
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  kind of come along and help out for a little bit.
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  And and in doing so, you, you realise pretty quickly that
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  that's not going to pay the bills, not the way we were doing
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  it. So we decided we really did want
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  to do ministry, but we didn't want to ask people for money to
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  do it. So we decided to finance it
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  ourselves through jobs. And as luck would have it, I
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  bumped into a gentleman. I ended up becoming my cofounder
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  and I went to work for him at a an earlier version of the
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  company that we ended up launching together.
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  And in a very short, very painful period where I watched
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  him sell the company, watched the company collapse and watched
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  everyone be beat up by it in some kind of like pseudo
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  masochistic way, I fell in love with what business, not with
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  that. Like that was one of the most
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  painful experiences of my life. But in seeing what it could be
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  right, I I fell in love with what the organisation could be.
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  I fell in love with what we could create if we potential.
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  Over credential. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  And, and so I accidentally ended up as that whole thing fell
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  apart, I accidentally kind of ended up in a spot where I
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  helped him Co launch it again. So we we had to build it, build
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  it back up from nothing. And we ran that together for
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  almost 15 years. And so I really didn't set out
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  to be an entrepreneur. In fact, I don't know that I've
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  really ever ever considered myself an entrepreneur, which is
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  crazy because it's exactly what I do.
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  I do, and I've helped start more organisations than just about
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  anyone in the world. But I got into it by mistake.
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  And so there's really big chunks to the story here, but I want to
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  get to the most poignant. 1 was a season where I was the CEO of
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  our company. It was going great from like a
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  numbers perspective, at least from the outside.
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  We were growing at over $1,000,000 a year in revenue
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  growth. We were hiring people like
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  crazy. We were helping start some of
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  the fastest growing businesses and nonprofits in the country.
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  Like it was amazing. I'm in my, you know, mid late
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  20s at the time, kind of everything you would hope to ask
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  for, right? Multi $1,000,000 business, the
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  whole 9 yards. And you know, I felt like I was
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  dying inside, quite honestly. Like it felt like like all that
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  stuff was going on. And so if you talk to anyone,
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  like there's no room to complain because they're like, why are
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  you complaining? You have everything going for
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  you, right? So there was no real like
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  connection that I could make with others around some of the,
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  the real challenges I was facing.
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  I couldn't do it with my team because they were a big part of
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  the problem, right? I couldn't do it outside because
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  folks just didn't really get it. And, and I felt massively
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  isolated, just massively isolated.
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  I had reached out to a couple of different coaches.
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  We'd hired some, paid them lots of money, made really big
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  decisions based on their advice, and then lost like $1,000,000 in
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  making those decisions. It was and, and so when all
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  these different like external sources of help start failing me
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  just systematically, you know, across the board, I found myself
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  just kind of sitting there thinking, is this it?
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  Like we fought for all those years, all that blood, sweat and
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  tears, literally to building this business to have this
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  right, to have a multi $1,000,000 business that's just
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  sucking the life. Like I would have quit if I
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  wasn't known the place, you know what I mean?
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  Like it was just that and we started to have on top of that
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  some problems with profitability, very, very common
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  for businesses at this stage where we figured out how to grow
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  revenue. But every year, despite growing
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  by over $1,000,000 a year in revenue, we were keeping less
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  and less of that revenue every year.
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  And so our profit margins went from the high 20% to the low 20%
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  to the teens. And that it's worse.
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  It was all the way down to 7% in a year with no real good reason
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  for why that was other than my leadership.
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  And when you try and turn something like that around,
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  right? It wasn't like it dropped from,
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  you know, 28 to 21 and we're like, oh, that's fine.
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  It would drop from 28 to 21. We're like, that's a problem.
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  We have to fix it. We had a plan to fix it.
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  We tried to execute that plan to fix it.
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  And the next year instead of going back up, it went down
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  again like that. Whether you want it to or not,
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  that says something about your leadership, right?
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  And so like all of this is swirling together and, and where
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  I used to think like, hey, we could take hell with a water
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  pistol, like we could do anything that we wanted.
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  Now I was wondering if we would be here in three years.
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  And when you have all those different challenges happening
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  at all the same time, let me tell you, there's nothing you
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  can Google to get out, right? Like, like there's nothing like,
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  what do you do with that? You know, I had tried the
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  coaches, I had tried counsellors, I had tried all of
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  these things and they weren't working.
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  And it was about that time that I, I came across someone
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  actually from your neck of the woods, from where you, you just
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  told me I need to go travel, but from Northern Ireland.
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  His name's Les McEwen, and he's now a dear friend of mine.
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  Oh, you see, you have to go there.
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  You have to go there. This is the Jack Coastway.
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  The Jack Coastway is Belfast I. Have to go there.
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  It's a great place. So anyway, Les has this book.
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  It's called Predictable success. It's phenomenal.
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  Anyone listening should just stop this and check it out
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  because it's really is phenomenal.
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  I call Les the Morpheus of the business world because it's like
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  once you once you read his work, it's like you see the code of
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  the Matrix on on how businesses succeed and fail.
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  What's the tackle of the book? It's called predictable success
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  and basically what it does is it it highlights the fact that
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  success in business is not some static set of strategies.
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  It's not like one-size-fits-all. Every organisation at any given
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  point in time all need to do this one thing and they will
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  succeed, right? There's this kind of silver
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  bullet that we're all looking for like that.
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  And as founders, every time we find something that works, we
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  hang on to it as if it will work forever.
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  And the point of his book is it won't, right?
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  Marshall Goldsmith wrote the book.
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  What got you here won't get you there.
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  And what Les put together is a very, very specific set of here
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  are the things that will bring you success in each stage of the
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  journey as a business, as a nonprofit, as an organisation.
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  And in in that book, I actually heard it on a podcast.
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  That's why I love doing podcasts like this because one actually
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  totally changed my life. I'm sitting in my truck driving
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  to work listening to this guy with a funny Irish accent.
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  And I think it was the accent that kept me long enough because
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  the idea of business life cycles, stages would have bored
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  me to tears at the time. But I hung in there and he goes
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  through a couple stages and was like, yeah, I remember that.
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  Like I remember when you know, one's early struggle and we, you
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  know, we were working in the basement and someone took out
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  our entire phone network with their toes once, you know, like
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  I remember the craziness of those early days.
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  And then he starts talking about this second stage called fun.
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  And yes, like we had a tonne of fun.
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  You know, we just, we grew the thing like crazy.
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  We figured out the recipe. It was just an amazing run.
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  And at this point I start wondering like, when's he going
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  to get to the stage I'm in? What stage am I in, you know,
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  and he hits me square between the eyes with the next one in
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  this stage called Whitewater. And he starts describing the
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  pain that you feel in Whitewater, the chaos, the
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  complexity, the people problems, the inability to at some point,
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  even dream anymore, right? Because there's just no room for
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  it. The constant firefighting, the
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  lack of profitability, the existential threat to your
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  reputation because you're screwing up at just about
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  everything, it seems. And I could have sworn he had a
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  camera in my office or he'd been reading my emails.
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  You know, it's like he just got it.
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  And I mean, it's the first ever that I felt like my business was
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  actually on a map. It was the first time I felt
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  like we weren't actually just for like heading off into the
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  unknown, that there was a map. We were on the map.
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  And because of that, the next step wasn't into unknown
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  territory. It was to just follow the next
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  step on the map. And he does a masterful job at
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  simplifying that process and lays out the steps on what to
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  do. And we went through that process
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  and like many of our clients today, we trip.
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  We tripled our bottom line in 13 months and it was at that point,
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  and this is the exceptionally long answer to your very short
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  question. This was really the most
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  defining moment in terms of my pursuit of becoming a scale
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  architect was when I realised the power of what it could be.
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  I realised what the actual nature of that problem was, how
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  to overcome the complexity at this stage.
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  And I, I thought to myself, if I could help other founders to
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  avoid this pain or, or get out of this stage, I would die a
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  happy man. And that's really what started
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  the journey of, of not only becoming a skill architect, but
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  launching the company and training other scale architects
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  and deploying them around the country internationally now as
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  well. Was I don't want people to get
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  stuck where I was stuck. I don't want them to feel the
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  loneliness that I felt. I don't want them to feel the
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  discouragement and the disillusionment that I felt.
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  And while there's a necessary stage there that must be passed
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  through, there's no necessity in getting stuck there.
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  And so that's ultimately what drove me to do it.
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  And I've I've had a blast doing it.
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  We've helped some really, really remarkable people do really
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  remarkable things. You know, it actually feels
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  surreal when you are able to get a resource to consult,
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  especially in business. And that resource feels like a
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  scan of pure actual challenges in the business that you've
• 15:30
  brought. It's always a good thing.
• 15:32
  And like you said earlier about consulting like different,
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  different coaches, different consultants.
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  I did have my own fair share of our experience with the BIG4
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  accounting firms auditing different organisations.
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  And for me, I always try to apply myself to understand the
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  business environments, the business ecosystems of these
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  various clients that we served. And I did observe, you know,
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  some colleagues, we're just more about getting the job done,
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  right. So I can understand when you
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  consult these consultants and they probably give you textbook
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  approaches that do not meet or solve your pain points, right?
• 16:22
  But you have these other guys on the other end of the spectrum
• 16:28
  who have that high business acumen, who are business savvy.
• 16:32
  You could go to have a Business School, but they don't teach you
• 16:38
  how to the street wise. In order to succeed in business,
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  you need two things. You need to be book smart and
• 16:44
  the street wise. Fortunately you get LED being St
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  wise on would I say in the school of Hard Knocks.
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  I think so. There's there's no replacement
• 16:58
  for, there's no replacement for experience.
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  And the really cool kind of redeeming thing about all of
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  this is that later in your career you realise the reason
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  for those experiences. It's real, real hard to see in
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  the moment. Yeah, real hard.
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  It doesn't ever make sense in the moment.
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  No, but the return on those lessons will serve you
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  indefinitely as long as you learn the right ones, right?
• 17:26
  So here's here's the big problem.
• 17:28
  Because you can be street smart, you can be book smart, you can
• 17:31
  hire a great consultant, but if you don't understand which
• 17:35
  challenge you need to be focusing on right now, you can
• 17:39
  get the right answers to the wrong questions.
• 17:42
  And that's actually the biggest problem that I see when, when
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  folks hire coaches and consultants, it's certainly the
• 17:48
  one that I did, is we don't know how to actually find the right
• 17:54
  question to ask for help with in the 1st place, right?
• 17:58
  So here's a, an example for folks to just kind of illustrate
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  this. Let's say we've got a problem
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  with profitability and we go out and say, Hey, we need help with
• 18:06
  our profitability. And they come back and say, OK,
• 18:10
  you know, the best companies in the world have processes for how
• 18:14
  they bring in clients, how they serve the clients and how they
• 18:16
  do you need, you need processes. And so they come up with this
• 18:21
  brilliant world class playbook of processes that you need to
• 18:24
  use. The problem is you haven't sold
• 18:27
  anything yet, right? So like if you haven't sold
• 18:30
  anything, then there's no processes to run them through.
• 18:33
  Like that might be great to have, but it doesn't solve your
• 18:36
  profit problem because your profit problem is you've not
• 18:40
  sold enough yet. And so you can have the exact
• 18:44
  same problem, a problem with profitability that a much larger
• 18:48
  organisation would have, right, like we did in in Whitewater.
• 18:52
  But the solution to that problem is fundamentally different in
• 18:57
  the early stage, right? If you're having a problem with
• 19:00
  it, it's generally because you don't have enough revenue to
• 19:02
  support yourself, right? You're not, you don't have the
• 19:04
  same ruthless, you don't have a ruthless focus on cash flow and
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  you're not managing it properly. That's it.
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  That's all. It's not processes, it's not
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  leadership, it's not optimizations.
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  It's that you got to go sell more and then you got to be
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  careful with your cash. That's, that's all it is.
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  And so if you are a consultant and you feel like you need to
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  make it fancier than that so that you can charge your premium
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  fees, you're doing a disservice to the person who's asking the
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  question. Now on the flip side of this, so
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  that we don't just think that everything's a revenue problem,
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  whenever we were having our profitability problem at my
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  company, we had tonnes of revenue.
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  We could get more revenue, we just couldn't keep it.
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  And so the problem there was that we didn't have the right
• 19:48
  systems and processes. So if we had gone like we did to
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  someone to say, hey, we're having a trouble with our
• 19:55
  revenue, we need to bring in new people, new profitable customers
• 19:59
  and they teach us how to increase our sales, it's not
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  going to solve it solves the problem that we're not having,
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  right. And so the biggest thing that
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  that just about everyone misses unless they just happen to get
• 20:14
  it by chance, broken clock is right twice a day, right?
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  The biggest problem that we have is as coaches and consultants,
• 20:20
  we don't help our clients to figure out which question they
• 20:24
  should be asking us in the first place.
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  That's quite, you know, support on and I think pretty much our
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  in the big four, they used to tell us ensure to ask
• 20:38
  appropriate questions, ensure to ask open-ended questions,
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  because asking your clients probing questions typically
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  would make them talk about pinpoints that they never
• 20:55
  realised are challenges. And the owner seasoned you as a
• 20:59
  consultant, right as a seasoned consultant to to, to read in
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  between the lines and also observe, you know, the body
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  language, observe the the pulse within the business ecosystem.
• 21:16
  Source. Some, you know, consultants get
• 21:18
  it wrong in that regard. And something I would like for
• 21:23
  us to touch on is financial ratios.
• 21:26
  You know, a lot of businesses do not monitor their relevant
• 21:32
  financial ratios. Interestingly, I'm starting up
• 21:36
  my company here in the UK. It's a company that will be
• 21:42
  offering fractional CFO services.
• 21:45
  You know, we want to start helping startups and SMEs to get
• 21:49
  their businesses right, you know, using that strategic focus
• 21:52
  that they're unable to afford, You know, a lot of small
• 21:55
  businesses cannot afford, you know, high level experts that
• 22:00
  have that high level business acumen.
• 22:01
  That is also a gap right, For working with a fractional CFO is
• 22:07
  a very, very efficient way of getting the same level of
• 22:11
  expertise that, you know, the big organisations have access
• 22:15
  to. So I think that is, you know,
• 22:17
  something I would like to keep in, but let's talk about ratios.
• 22:21
  A lot of organisations make the mistake or messing up with their
• 22:25
  liquidity ratios and that comes by way of the wrong credit
• 22:30
  control measures, the wrong credit control policies, right?
• 22:34
  Your liquidity is different from your solvency.
• 22:38
  Your liquidity is your ability to meet up with financial
• 22:42
  obligations in the short run and your solvency is the ability to
• 22:45
  meet up with the obligations in the long run.
• 22:48
  But some organisations focus more on the solvency than on the
• 22:54
  liquidity. And if your liquidity is
• 22:56
  failing, you'll be having problems in the short run,
• 23:01
  right? And of course, your working
• 23:02
  capital will be will be distorted.
• 23:05
  We look at this from a stage perspective.
• 23:08
  There are certain stages where that distinction is much more
• 23:11
  meaningful, right? Particularly in the very first
• 23:14
  stage, which we call early struggle and in the third stage,
• 23:17
  which we call whitewater. So early on, you, you see a lot
• 23:23
  of folks particularly early in their journey as an
• 23:26
  entrepreneur, as a founder, they're very, very optimistic
• 23:29
  about what their business is, right?
• 23:31
  You ask them what their business is right now and they tell you
• 23:34
  what it will be later, right? That they are not just
• 23:39
  financially, but strategically and philosophically thinking
• 23:43
  about their business in terms of solvency.
• 23:45
  And because of that, they actually missed that.
• 23:49
  The primary problem in that first stage is liquidity
• 23:54
  perspective, right? You're just on borrowed time.
• 23:57
  You have to manage cash ruthlessly early on inside of an
• 24:02
  organisation. You, you just don't have any
• 24:04
  other choice. But it's painful.
• 24:07
  It's really painful. It's actually not necessarily
• 24:10
  painful in the dollars and numbers.
• 24:12
  It's painful in the emotions that those dollars and numbers
• 24:15
  make you feel. And so one of the the biggest
• 24:19
  reasons why so many startups fail is because they aren't
• 24:25
  willing to pay the emotional toll to wrestle the the cash
• 24:29
  dragon to the ground, right. And so it looks like in it shows
• 24:33
  up in really strange ways. So very book smart, we'll put it
• 24:37
  that way, founder. We'll have cash flow projections
• 24:40
  and you look at those and they're like men.
• 24:42
  You look like you're in great shape, but they're not real.
• 24:45
  They're like, this is what I want to make in each of these
• 24:48
  months. A cash flow projection is not
• 24:50
  what you want to make in future months.
• 24:52
  It's what you are contracted to make.
• 24:55
  Yeah. And so we look at it and we
• 24:57
  start making decisions like it's gonna be OK.
• 25:01
  And the reality of it is you can't bank on that, right?
• 25:04
  You have have to look at your cash flow in terms of what cash
• 25:08
  am I actually can at least contractually obligated to get.
• 25:12
  And then from there, depending on the industry that you're in,
• 25:15
  you may not even be able to rely on that.
• 25:17
  So you have to have a ruthless focus on cash and again comes
• 25:21
  back to this liquidity problem. So the challenge with this
• 25:24
  though, is that even if you understand all of that, it's not
• 25:30
  enough to get you out of the stage.
• 25:32
  It's just enough to keep you alive, right, or your business
• 25:35
  alive. We don't want to be too morbid
• 25:37
  here. So you have to manage liquidity.
• 25:40
  But the solvency piece does come in, in the sense that the only
• 25:44
  way to fundamentally change any of it, right?
• 25:47
  No matter how well you understand it, the only way to
• 25:49
  change it is through revenue. And so you have this dual focus,
• 25:55
  right, with very limited resources, which is very hard to
• 25:58
  do of we have to stay solvent long enough to find a profitable
• 26:03
  sustainable market, right? We have to stay liquid to to
• 26:07
  users. Sorry, I'm I'm misspeaking there
• 26:09
  with the within the context of this conversation, you have to
• 26:11
  stay liquid long enough to find a profitable sustainable market.
• 26:17
  And so one of the things that that tends to happen in a lot of
• 26:21
  the work we do, it's it's surprisingly, even though we've
• 26:23
  talked about profit a lot, it's surprisingly unrelated to the
• 26:27
  PNL or the the finances of the organisation.
• 26:30
  Because at the end of the day, the PNL and all of the finances
• 26:33
  of the organisation are fundamentally nothing more than
• 26:36
  a reflection of the decisions made by the leadership team.
• 26:40
  And so generally what I've found is that the vast majority of how
• 26:45
  you solve for financial problems happens not in the finances, but
• 26:50
  how you make decisions, right. And So what we tend to do with
• 26:54
  our clients alongside CFO services, which are, and I love
• 26:58
  the fractional model by the way, alongside them, what what we
• 27:02
  look at particularly as scale architects is what are the
• 27:05
  decisions that we're making that will ultimately end up as
• 27:09
  positive or negatives on our PNL.
• 27:13
  So for you, you have done these rings and repeats and there's
• 27:19
  something I always say that repetition is key to mastery.
• 27:22
  So you've helped to launch nearly 20,000 businesses and
• 27:27
  nonprofits, highly incredible. Or is that anyone story that
• 27:32
  deeply moved you or changed your view on growth and leadership?
• 27:37
  Yeah, there's, there's lots of individual stories.
• 27:41
  I think the thing that that stood out to me the most is when
• 27:45
  you do something that many times it does get harder and harder to
• 27:48
  remember the individual stories. But one thing that comes into
• 27:51
  very sharp focus is that there is a story.
• 27:55
  And and that really surprised me at first because like just about
• 27:59
  every entrepreneur out there, I felt like our situation was
• 28:02
  completely unique, right? And I mean, we've helped 20,000
• 28:05
  people and just about every one of them came to us and said, I
• 28:08
  have a completely the unique idea in every single way.
• 28:10
  And then they just described what the person before them
• 28:12
  said. You know what I mean?
• 28:13
  It was like, yes, there are individual differences and
• 28:16
  nuances to every founder and every business and every
• 28:19
  nonprofit. But the reality of it is when
• 28:21
  you zoom out just a little bit and you, you watch the journey
• 28:25
  unfold, it turns into just one big story that we're all taking
• 28:30
  part of, right? It turns into one path that we
• 28:32
  all follow. And if you stay on the path, you
• 28:35
  achieve success. If you deviate from the path, it
• 28:38
  gets really challenging really quick.
• 28:40
  And so the biggest story that I would share is that we all share
• 28:46
  one story and and that's what ultimately led to the book.
• 28:49
  The Founders Evolution was I had to get that story on the paper
• 28:54
  right. I had to get it out of just the
• 28:55
  pattern recognition that I had and into a frame that folks can
• 29:00
  really connect with and use in their own life.
• 29:02
  And like my experience with Les's book, which does something
• 29:05
  similar for organisations, My goal with the book was that
• 29:09
  folks could read through it and, and recognise this is where I am
• 29:12
  right now. These are the specific
• 29:14
  challenges that I'm I'm facing that are solvable and need to be
• 29:18
  solved for the stage that I'm in.
• 29:20
  And in doing so, it help, it'll help them to say, hey, here's
• 29:24
  where I am, here's where I want to go.
• 29:27
  And here are the very very specific things I need to work
• 29:30
  on between here and there. So they say curiosity killed the
• 29:34
  cut, but I hope curiosity doesn't kill me because I'm
• 29:37
  quite curious about, you know, what exactly the founders
• 29:41
  evolution is about and why is it the the the map, so to speak,
• 29:49
  that every entrepreneur should have before they are able to
• 29:55
  scale? Yeah, so I use a in the book I
• 30:00
  open, since I'm an American, it's just kind of the obligatory
• 30:03
  football reference, which is American football here on the on
• 30:07
  on this side of the pond. And, and the reason that I, I
• 30:10
  use this story and I'll we'll, we'll share a, a soccer version
• 30:14
  of it. I won't go so far as to call it
• 30:16
  football. We're going to call it soccer
• 30:17
  here. So we're just.
• 30:19
  Going to we'll offend everyone equally.
• 30:21
  That's that's what we're going for.
• 30:22
  But the reason why I use and extend this sport metaphor
• 30:27
  throughout the whole book is because for founders, one of the
• 30:31
  challenges that we face relative to other occupations, other
• 30:36
  domains, is that the journey that a founder goes through
• 30:39
  these different stages are not visible.
• 30:42
  That there's actually no external validation that you
• 30:45
  have changed from one stage to the other unless you know what
• 30:49
  those are already right? It's not like you pass a road
• 30:52
  sign and says here it is. Now the book does that.
• 30:54
  That's why the road map analogy is so appropriate because it's
• 30:58
  like passing through and says you are now in the city of, you
• 31:00
  know, you are now in the stage of, well, if that sign wasn't
• 31:03
  there Here in the US, if you cross over state lines, there's
• 31:07
  nothing really to tell you that it's changed.
• 31:10
  Many of the state lines are just completely, you know, like
• 31:13
  made-up lines. The line between Florida and
• 31:15
  Georgia, for example, is a straight line.
• 31:17
  Well, there's no straight lines that exist in nature.
• 31:20
  It doesn't map to a river or an ocean or anything like that.
• 31:23
  And so if you were to just go from one state to the other
• 31:26
  without any road signs, you'd have no idea that you crossed
• 31:30
  from Georgia to Florida. And, and the same thing happens
• 31:32
  for founders. Each one of those state lines,
• 31:35
  if you will, those staged lines is invisible.
• 31:39
  And a quick explanation, then we'll get to the story here in a
• 31:41
  second. But to, to just illustrate what
• 31:44
  this looks like in another environment, so you can
• 31:46
  understand what these types of changes might mean.
• 31:49
  If you take the journey that an an employee faces, it's actually
• 31:54
  the same story, same stages. But the advantage that an
• 31:57
  employee has working inside of another enterprise is that when
• 32:01
  they, they navigate from one stage to the other, there's,
• 32:05
  there's usually a promotion and a title that come with it,
• 32:09
  right? So, for example, one of the most
• 32:11
  common ones is the move from being a star player on the
• 32:14
  field, you know, being a solo contributor, right, An
• 32:17
  individual contributor, being a solopreneur in the founders
• 32:20
  world and moving from being an individual contributor to being
• 32:23
  like a team lead or a shift supervisor or whatever the, the
• 32:27
  nomenclature is inside your business.
• 32:30
  That's actually a really hard shift to make.
• 32:32
  If you go from just being responsible for you and you
• 32:36
  realise you can control you and you take control of you, you can
• 32:40
  crush it as an individual contributor.
• 32:43
  But being in control of you is a necessary prerequisite for being
• 32:49
  a great team leader. But it's not enough to be a
• 32:52
  great team leader. Because if you just take control
• 32:54
  of yourself, but you don't know how to inspire that same control
• 32:58
  in others, you're going to fall flat.
• 33:00
  You're not going to succeed as a team leader.
• 33:02
  Doesn't matter how skilled an individual contributor you are,
• 33:06
  it's not enough. And so there are coaches, there
• 33:10
  are books, there are podcasts, there's this whole industry
• 33:13
  that's dedicated to helping employees to become better
• 33:16
  managers and better leaders, right?
• 33:18
  Tonnes and tonnes of resource. And it's all validated by the
• 33:21
  fact that they have changed positions, right?
• 33:24
  And so it makes sense that they would have to embrace a new
• 33:26
  skill set, that they need to bring in some new help, that
• 33:29
  they'd have to learn something new.
• 33:32
  But my question for you and everyone listening is, what is
• 33:34
  that line for a founder? At what point does a founder
• 33:38
  have to move from being a star player to being a manager?
• 33:42
  And let me ask you this, which founder?
• 33:45
  Tell me one founder I've worked with 20,000 of them, but maybe
• 33:48
  you know one. Which founder do you know that
• 33:51
  started their business or nonprofits so that they could be
• 33:54
  a manager? No way.
• 33:57
  None, none, right? Not a single one.
• 34:00
  Because let's be frank, there are way easier ways of becoming
• 34:03
  a manager, right than going and starting your own enterprise.
• 34:07
  And so there's this, there's the like point at which we we have
• 34:12
  to pivot from primarily being a solopreneur, solo contributor to
• 34:16
  being a manager. And we're not really wired to be
• 34:20
  managers. And so we just a fault to going
• 34:22
  back to I'll just do it myself mode.
• 34:25
  And we get stuck as founders bumping into the this wall
• 34:29
  because we didn't know that the stage changed and we certainly
• 34:31
  don't know how to succeed in the next stage.
• 34:34
  So it's an invisible path. It's an invisible journey.
• 34:37
  And so in the book we use different different analogies to
• 34:40
  make that clear. Say there are 7 stages, right?
• 34:44
  There are. On the growth or pathway for
• 34:48
  entrepreneurs. So are you able to do a quick
• 34:50
  breakdown of the seven stages and what they Intel?
• 34:54
  We've got 3 hours, right? No, just kidding.
• 34:56
  No, that's a brief summary because we need people to get to
• 35:01
  get the book. And how can people get the book,
• 35:03
  by the way? Yeah, they can go to, if you
• 35:05
  just go to scalearchitects.com/founders,
• 35:08
  you'll get a copy of it there for free, actually.
• 35:11
  So we've made a digital version of it available free for
• 35:13
  everyone it goes through. Also like a paperback or.
• 35:16
  It's a PDF that you can download immediately.
• 35:19
  You don't have to wait for shipping and you can read
• 35:21
  through it. It's all right there.
• 35:22
  So scalearchitects.com/founders get a free copy of it there.
• 35:26
  You also have an opportunity to take the assessment if you're
• 35:28
  like, hey, I don't know what stage I'm in.
• 35:30
  You don't have to guess. You can find out in 10
• 35:32
  questions. It's awesome.
• 35:34
  Interesting. So a scale
• 35:35
  architects.com/founders. Now what are these stages?
• 35:37
  OK, so they run from pre launch to post exit.
• 35:41
  So it's the entire journey that a founder faces.
• 35:44
  OK. And and it's important that we
• 35:46
  start pre launch because stage 1 is called the dissatisfied
• 35:50
  employee. It's that stage where you're
• 35:52
  you're at university, you're working for somebody else and
• 35:56
  you're thinking isn't there a better way?
• 35:58
  Like there should be a better way than whatever this is.
• 36:01
  And that's a fundamentally different question for founders
• 36:06
  than for just people who are dissatisfied, right?
• 36:09
  People who are dissatisfied but aren't really founders are just
• 36:12
  thinking, how can I get, how can I have a better experience?
• 36:15
  It's a much more internal, much more kind of problem centric
• 36:19
  focus. Whereas founders, they're
• 36:21
  frustrated even when things are good, right?
• 36:24
  They're dissatisfied even when they get a new boss or they get
• 36:27
  someone out of their hair or don't have to deal with a slow
• 36:30
  teammate. There's this brewing
• 36:31
  frustration. And what happens is all too
• 36:34
  often we try and skip this stage.
• 36:37
  We try and skip straight to, hey, I just want to be my own
• 36:40
  boss. And in doing so, we jump into a
• 36:43
  game that we know nothing about. Just nothing about it, right?
• 36:47
  If you're a consultant working for a Big 10 company and you
• 36:51
  think you're going to go start your own consulting agency, you
• 36:54
  know nothing about starting a consulting agency.
• 36:58
  All you. Know is how.
• 36:59
  To consult and so we make this mistake all the time that we
• 37:03
  think we know more about the business than we do we jump in
• 37:06
  too soon and then you have to figure it out on your own dime,
• 37:10
  right? That's the scary part.
• 37:12
  You're going to make a bunch of mistakes.
• 37:14
  If you can recognise, hey, I'm going to use this stage pre
• 37:18
  launch to make those mistakes, to learn the ropes of what it
• 37:22
  is. Not to just do what I do, but to
• 37:24
  start a business doing what I do.
• 37:28
  Then you'll find you can learn those mistakes on someone else's
• 37:31
  dime. You don't have to worry about
• 37:33
  cash flow because you've got your payroll covered through
• 37:35
  your employer. So that's Stage 1's dissatisfied
• 37:38
  employee. We believe there's a better way,
• 37:40
  and you want to use that opportunity for as long as you
• 37:43
  can to figure out the ropes of the game before jumping into
• 37:46
  Stage 2. So what's the 2?
• 37:50
  Stage 2 is when we actually jump in the game.
• 37:53
  It's glorious and wonderful and terrible and awful and amazing
• 37:58
  and everything in between. There are higher highs than you
• 38:01
  could have imagined, and there are lower lows than you ever
• 38:04
  thought possible. And they happened in the same
• 38:07
  day, you know, And it's just a roller coaster of emotion and
• 38:10
  success and failure. And stage 2 is what we call the
• 38:14
  startup entrepreneur big mystery.
• 38:15
  They're not not a profound idea, except that being a startup
• 38:19
  entrepreneur is a very specific stage with very specific
• 38:22
  strategies. And in this stage, we basically
• 38:26
  have to set out and we talked about this a little bit before,
• 38:28
  but you have to survive the stage long enough to find a
• 38:31
  profitable, sustainable market. And for founders, folks who have
• 38:35
  not started their own company don't understand how intensely
• 38:38
  personal the journey is, because in this stage, you'll face as
• 38:43
  much rejection that someone else would in two lifetimes.
• 38:47
  And you'll do it in about two years, right?
• 38:49
  If you're doing it right and if you if you're if you're lucky.
• 38:52
  And so it's just you have to get up and do it again.
• 38:55
  You have to get up and do it again.
• 38:56
  You'll hear a lot of no's. You'll have a lot of people
• 38:59
  ghost you. You'll have a lot of setbacks
• 39:02
  and frustrations and failures and things that don't work and
• 39:04
  ideas that don't pan out and models that are broken.
• 39:08
  That's normal. It's just completely normal.
• 39:11
  It's OK you, but you have to figure it out and you have to
• 39:13
  keep your feet moving. And so unfortunately the
• 39:16
  defining question of the stage is like, what have I gotten
• 39:18
  myself into? But if you keep yourself
• 39:21
  centred, you keep a focus, ruthless focus on what we talked
• 39:24
  about earlier, preserving cash, cash and finding your
• 39:27
  profitable, sustainable market AKA sales, right?
• 39:30
  Marketing and sales. You have to market, you have to
• 39:33
  sell, you have to get your name out there, you have to bring
• 39:35
  clients in, you have to attract the right clients.
• 39:38
  And for the folks who figure that out, who, who, who crack
• 39:41
  the code, even in a small way, one of the things that happens
• 39:44
  is you find yourself out selling what you can actually do
• 39:47
  yourself. And so you realise it too late
• 39:50
  and you don't have a whole lot of time.
• 39:51
  So you just go out and hire whatever warm body you can find,
• 39:54
  right? We hire by pulse and proximity.
• 39:56
  So we're looking for the closest person who's still breathing and
• 40:00
  like, hey, come to work for me. That's about the extent of our
• 40:03
  hiring and it's fun. They're usually folks that we
• 40:06
  know and are related to us and some.
• 40:08
  Way, shape or form, friends or otherwise.
• 40:09
  And we bring them in, we hand off a couple of things to them,
• 40:14
  right? And then we go out and we sell
• 40:16
  again. We wake up after this has gone
• 40:19
  on for a little while. It's usually on a Monday morning
• 40:21
  where you've worked all weekend to clean up a mistake that one
• 40:24
  of them made, right? And, and so you start the week
• 40:27
  behind because you were supposed to work the weekend anyway, but
• 40:30
  you're supposed to do it on some new proposals.
• 40:32
  You wanted to get out the door to some of your big prospects.
• 40:34
  So instead of doing proposals, you're solving someone else's
• 40:37
  problem. You wake up just exhausted on
• 40:41
  Monday morning and you're thinking to yourself, what's
• 40:44
  wrong with these people? What is wrong with these people?
• 40:47
  They don't think like me. They don't solve problems like I
• 40:49
  do. They don't take ownership like I
• 40:51
  do. They don't work the hours that I
• 40:52
  do. They don't show up with the same
• 40:54
  intentions that I do. That's just what's wrong with
• 40:57
  these people. And unfortunately, there's 2
• 40:59
  answers to that question and they're both your fault, right?
• 41:03
  So the first one is you've probably hired some of the wrong
• 41:06
  people. So it's not what's wrong with
• 41:08
  them, it's that they are the wrong people for your role.
• 41:10
  And that means something specific.
• 41:11
  We talk about it in the book. People can read that.
• 41:14
  So the first thing is you have to solve for hiring the right
• 41:16
  type of people. And again, that means something
• 41:19
  very specific. They're called operators as a
• 41:21
  hint. The other part of it is they
• 41:24
  aren't going to be like you, because if they were, at this
• 41:29
  point, they might as well just be your competitor, right?
• 41:31
  If they're going to take all the risks that you take, then they
• 41:33
  might as well get all the rewards that you're going to
• 41:35
  get. So the folks who are going to
• 41:37
  come work with us are just definitionally not exactly like
• 41:41
  us. They have different needs, they
• 41:43
  have different skills, and that's exactly why you need
• 41:46
  them. And so the second part of the
• 41:48
  problem here, once we've solved for hiring the right type of
• 41:51
  people, is that you have to learn to manage them the right
• 41:54
  way. Unfortunately, the name of this
• 41:57
  stage is the reluctant manager because we're used to having the
• 42:01
  wrong people and then trying to figure out how to manage them.
• 42:04
  And even if we manage them the right way, because they're the
• 42:06
  wrong people, it doesn't work and we get frustrated and we
• 42:09
  start spinning our wheels. So reluctant manager stage is
• 42:13
  principally about how do you find the right type of people to
• 42:18
  get them on your team and how, what are the few skills that you
• 42:21
  need to manage them? Well, that's it.
• 42:24
  That's all that it takes at this stage.
• 42:26
  There are so many other questions I get asked at this
• 42:29
  stage and none of them matter anywhere near as much as do you
• 42:34
  have the right people on your team and are you giving them the
• 42:37
  right minimal structures that they need to succeed.
• 42:39
  And, and so that's a real problem in stage 3.
• 42:42
  And nobody's asking that. Nobody even knows to ask that.
• 42:46
  And, and a lot of folks get stuck in that stage because of
• 42:48
  it and they fail to ever reach stage 4.
• 42:52
  So what is stage 4? All right, Stage 4, if you have
• 42:56
  a stage like the reluctant manager, you know, stage 4, it
• 42:59
  seems like you've got a pretty good shot at it being a lot
• 43:02
  better than this, whatever this is, right?
• 43:04
  And so a lot of folks will come, they'll be in stage 3.
• 43:07
  They don't exactly know what's wrong.
• 43:09
  They don't know what's coming next.
• 43:11
  And and they just know I need to get to the next level, right?
• 43:14
  I don't know if you've ever heard that, but I hear it all
• 43:16
  the time. I got to get to the next level
• 43:19
  and they're basically saying they're, they're saying two
• 43:21
  things. They don't realise it either.
• 43:22
  They want to get to doing more of what they do already and they
• 43:25
  just want to do it better, right.
• 43:27
  That's actually most of the time.
• 43:29
  Some people genuinely want to get to the next level, but they
• 43:31
  don't know what the next level is because they probably
• 43:34
  wouldn't want it if they did. Unfortunately, level 4, stage 4
• 43:38
  is the disillusioned leader. So we have to unpack this for a
• 43:42
  second and I'll tell a story that's particularly meaningful,
• 43:45
  made-up story, but for why this disillusionment happens.
• 43:49
  So here's my soccer analogy that you've you've so far skillfully
• 43:53
  avoided. So imagine that it's Champions
• 43:57
  League, right? It's that the final round we're
• 44:00
  tied 33 going through stoppage time, stoppage time ends is
• 44:04
  going to. Liverpool versus AC Miller
• 44:06
  there. You go, we're going down to to
• 44:09
  penalty kicks. So you send out your, your best
• 44:12
  All Star striker, nails it in the back of the net.
• 44:15
  Amazing. They send out their All Star
• 44:17
  striker. Same thing happens.
• 44:18
  You send out your next guy and he wobbles a little bit and the
• 44:21
  goalie stops it. And so you're like, OK, we need
• 44:24
  a save. And your goalie comes up big,
• 44:26
  makes the save and, and this goes back and forth and we're
• 44:29
  down to the the last guy. And basically, if, if you make
• 44:33
  it, you know, we'll live to fight another day.
• 44:35
  If you don't make it, you lose. That's that's the point that
• 44:38
  we've come down to. And and you've been through your
• 44:40
  couple of your best players. So now you're kind of like, is
• 44:43
  it like, is it Jerry over there or Ned standing next to, you
• 44:46
  know, it's just kind of that kind of a decision and you're
• 44:49
  not super confident in either of them.
• 44:50
  But you send Jerry out, he runs out on the pitch and lines up to
• 44:54
  take the shot, goalies on the line awaiting the kick.
• 44:57
  And without really thinking this through, right before the
• 45:02
  referee blows the whistle to take the kick, you take off,
• 45:06
  right, just faster than you have ever run.
• 45:08
  And we've played soccer all your life until he started coaching.
• 45:11
  But you never ran this fast, right?
• 45:13
  And and they're going to study the physics on this for years
• 45:15
  because nobody else knows how you ran that fast either.
• 45:18
  But somehow you go from your place on the sideline across the
• 45:21
  touchline all the way onto the pitch, run in, and just before
• 45:25
  your guy can make contact with a ball, you slide in and make this
• 45:29
  like slide diving, you know, tackle on your own player to
• 45:33
  kick the ball. And the goalie doesn't even move
• 45:35
  because it's like what is happening right now.
• 45:38
  Ball goes rocketing into the back of the net and, and you
• 45:41
  think as you watch it fly past the goalie who's stunned, you
• 45:45
  think, victory, I've done it right, the crowning
• 45:48
  accomplishment of my career. We've won the Champions League.
• 45:52
  But you stop for a moment and you notice you don't hear a
• 45:56
  sound. It's quick.
• 45:59
  It's we could hear a pin drop 100,000 people in the stands and
• 46:04
  that not a single noise. The only thing that's happening
• 46:07
  is the rest of the referees are all now running toward you as
• 46:11
  well as the head referee. And what would have been the
• 46:15
  crowning accomplishment of your career is now an utter
• 46:19
  catastrophe. It's you are now the
• 46:22
  laughingstock not only of your team, not only of your city, not
• 46:27
  only of your country, but like the sport around the world,
• 46:32
  right? Well now like the headline of
• 46:34
  everything will be this ridiculous behaviour of a coach
• 46:38
  that's entirely inappropriate and loses you the game.
• 46:42
  You've broken every rule. And so the reality of all this
• 46:46
  starts to set in. You're laying there on the
• 46:48
  ground paying the price for that Sprint across the field, right?
• 46:51
  You've probably pulled about 3 muscles.
• 46:53
  So you're aching. They're laying on the ground.
• 46:56
  Didn't mention before it's raining, but the heavens have
• 46:58
  opened and it's pouring down rain.
• 47:00
  You're soaking wet. You're feeling awful physically.
• 47:04
  You ruined it for your team, you lost it for your country.
• 47:07
  And you're wondering, is this it?
• 47:09
  Like, why do I work so hard now? That's crazy, right?
• 47:14
  Like, that would never, ever in the history of Champions League
• 47:18
  or any other league, right professionally around the world
• 47:21
  has that happened. And it begs the question, why?
• 47:24
  Well, because there's a white line on the side of the field
• 47:27
  that separates where the coaches are and how where they do their
• 47:31
  job and where the players are and how they do their job.
• 47:35
  But let me ask you this. What's that white line inside of
• 47:38
  your business that you started? Who's the referee that's going
• 47:42
  to tell you you've broken 5 rules when you tried to come in
• 47:45
  and save the day? Which one of your team members
• 47:48
  is going to tell you no, let me take the shot.
• 47:51
  It's not going to happen. And so while this would never
• 47:54
  happen in professional sports, I can tell you it happens every
• 47:57
  single day for founders and the organisations they lead.
• 48:01
  They cross the line, they jump in, they try and save the day.
• 48:05
  They're exhausting themselves in the process.
• 48:07
  They're frustrating the especially the best players on
• 48:10
  their team and they're setting themselves up for failure.
• 48:13
  And they, they have this moment where they're, you know,
• 48:17
  metaphorically lying there beat up and bruised from doing it all
• 48:20
  themselves, wondering why no one else can get anything done.
• 48:24
  And they wonder, is this it? Is this really as good as it
• 48:27
  gets? Is this really why I've built
• 48:29
  this whole Business Today? And what happens is we get into
• 48:33
  this stage, Stage 4 of the Founders Evolution called the
• 48:36
  Disillusioned Leader. Our company needs a leader.
• 48:39
  It doesn't need another doer. Our organisation needs someone
• 48:43
  who can show us the way. And we're so busy trying to be
• 48:47
  the way that we don't show them the way.
• 48:49
  We don't, we don't. We haven't learned how to lead
• 48:52
  and create success through others.
• 48:53
  And so we keep trying to save the day ourselves, and we keep
• 48:56
  stifling our growth in the process.
• 48:59
  And it's at this stage that a lot of founders really start to
• 49:03
  question whether or not this is what they're cut out for, right?
• 49:07
  This is where we start to get the conversation.
• 49:08
  Can a founder scale their business right or do they need
• 49:11
  to hire a professional CEO? This is where a lot of folks
• 49:14
  will sell to bigger, more established companies.
• 49:17
  This is where a lot of folks will say, hey, forget this.
• 49:19
  I remember when, you know, I could go and just, you know, all
• 49:23
  I was doing was making coffee, selling coffee and talking to
• 49:25
  fun people all day. I'm going to go back to doing
• 49:28
  that. I don't need a chain of coffee
• 49:29
  shops. I'm just going to run my coffee
• 49:31
  shop and they go back. They actually go all the way
• 49:33
  back to stage two of the process, maybe stage 3.
• 49:36
  I'm curious what what what does it take you to elevate this to
• 49:41
  level 5? That's exactly right.
• 49:43
  And So what do we have to do? It's because they don't
• 49:45
  understand what it takes. And what it takes is very, very
• 49:47
  simple. You have to go from being the
• 49:50
  guy who makes the decisions, from being the magical decision
• 49:54
  maker to building a decision making team.
• 49:57
  You have to go to move from founder to CEO, chief executive
• 50:03
  officer. Now, to do that, if you're going
• 50:05
  to be the chief executive, what does that require?
• 50:07
  Other executives, Right. And so you have to level up your
• 50:11
  team. Sometimes you'll have folks on
• 50:13
  the team who can become executives.
• 50:15
  Many times there are several who can't.
• 50:17
  And so through a combination of coaching, training and elevating
• 50:20
  your existing team members and going out and bringing in some
• 50:23
  executives from the outside world, you can step out of that
• 50:26
  founder role to becoming CEO. And that's what stage 5 is, the
• 50:30
  chief executive. And it's terrifying for a lot of
• 50:33
  folks before they've been there, but I can tell you just about
• 50:37
  every visionary who's made it to stage 5 will tell you it's one
• 50:40
  of the most remarkable transformations they've ever
• 50:42
  made. It's so rewarding, it's so fun.
• 50:45
  It's so you know any moniker you can give it, like it's just that
• 50:50
  good. And just to quickly go through
• 50:52
  those, these last couple here and then move on.
• 50:54
  When you get to stage 5, you can then start to set your sights
• 50:58
  for how you're going to exit. What does succession planning
• 51:00
  look like? What does exit look like?
• 51:02
  And, and you can take your time at this stage because stage 5 is
• 51:06
  a great, great place to be and, and set your sights on stage 6,
• 51:10
  which is the business owner where you can actually own and
• 51:13
  not run your business, Magical, magical transformation into
• 51:17
  stage 6. And then last but not least, you
• 51:20
  realise that this whole story wasn't actually about you,
• 51:23
  right? And it wasn't about what you can
• 51:25
  accomplish in your lifetime. It's what you can accomplish for
• 51:27
  lifetimes to come. And the very, very few people
• 51:30
  make it this far, But you can go from Stage 6, where it's about
• 51:33
  you and your investments and what you've done, to Stage 7,
• 51:37
  which is about what you're, what you can do and build in others.
• 51:40
  There's this Greek proverb that says society grows great when
• 51:44
  old men plant trees under whose shade they'll never sit.
• 51:48
  And that's what Stage 7 is about, where we can give and
• 51:51
  create and pour into and build up people, system structures,
• 51:56
  knowledge, books, resources, training, relationships that we
• 52:00
  won't benefit from personally, but we know that those who come
• 52:03
  in our footsteps will. I think he he very much aligns
• 52:06
  with with something that I always say there there is no
• 52:09
  success without a successor. And you know, we are almost
• 52:15
  getting to the end of the podcast.
• 52:17
  It's always hard to say goodbye anytime.
• 52:21
  You know, it's a really deep, thought provoking and
• 52:24
  resourceful conversation. But I'll end this with a quick
• 52:28
  fire round just five questions. Just give quick answers.
• 52:32
  So morning routine or productivity hawk that has
• 52:36
  changed your life? What would that be?
• 52:38
  Yeah, so my morning routine, it all fits together, but prayer,
• 52:42
  meditation for 30 minutes to an hour and then exercise for 30
• 52:46
  minutes to an hour every morning has made a massive difference in
• 52:50
  my world. I love that body, mind and
• 52:53
  spirit connection. So one book every founder should
• 52:57
  read besides the founders Evolution.
• 53:00
  So we've mentioned it before, but Predictable Success by Les
• 53:02
  McEwen is fantastic. OK, so what's 1 foreign or
• 53:07
  surprising thing people wouldn't guess from your LinkedIn
• 53:10
  profile? What's 1 surprising thing?
• 53:13
  I mentioned this earlier, but it's still pretty funny, is that
• 53:16
  in all of the things that I did, I dropped out of high school.
• 53:19
  So I never graduated high school here in the US.
• 53:22
  Oh, wow. Why is that?
• 53:23
  A lot of great founders, dropouts, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs
• 53:27
  yourself. You know, I need to find
• 53:29
  something to drop out of, so that could be great too.
• 53:33
  OK, so a business leader or mentor you deeply admire and
• 53:38
  why? So we've talked a lot about less
• 53:41
  on the show. He would certainly be the answer
• 53:43
  to that question. I would have to give a shout out
• 53:46
  to a dear friend and and mentor of mine here in Atlanta.
• 53:49
  His name is Robert Mallon. Massive, massive influence in my
• 53:53
  life in a really, really difficult season.
• 53:56
  Oh, wow. What is it with the robots and
• 53:58
  business success? Robert Kiyosaki, So many, you
• 54:02
  know, there's so many great robots.
• 54:03
  So I think the last question would be success is what to you?
• 54:09
  Success, to me, there's a couple of ways to answering that
• 54:15
  question. Successes for me is to restore
• 54:18
  the nobility of work. I think that work is not
• 54:21
  something to be avoided. I think it's something that
• 54:23
  creates value. I think it is how we solve any
• 54:27
  problem that we face together as humanity is through work and so
• 54:32
  the nobility of work is not to find yourself in some dead end
• 54:36
  job, but to recognise no matter how medial or menial the job is,
• 54:40
  it's a critical part of our shared enterprises as a as
• 54:45
  humanity. I very much appreciate that
• 54:50
  perspective. So before you leave, do you have
• 54:53
  any final word of advice to a lot of people out there,
• 54:57
  potential founders, current founders, people looking to
• 55:00
  scale up and scale up? What is your advice as a Big
• 55:04
  Brother? Here's the biggest tragedy that
• 55:07
  I've seen come about in large part because of my work
• 55:10
  actually. And that is when folks know what
• 55:12
  the road map looks like. We get destination.
• 55:15
  Itis right where I was like, I understand why it's so hard.
• 55:18
  Well, I'll be OK when I get to stage 5 and can actually be CEO
• 55:23
  or I'll be OK when and we put our our happiness and our joy on
• 55:29
  hold, right? As if it's going to somehow
• 55:31
  appear to us in some later stage for some reason, when the
• 55:34
  reality of it is in every stage of this journey, the best way to
• 55:40
  succeed in that stage, the only way to enjoy the journey is to
• 55:44
  enjoy every stage of the journey.
• 55:47
  And so for folks that are listening, joy doesn't come from
• 55:50
  the destination. It comes in the journey itself.
• 55:54
  And to make that a little bit more meaningful and, and
• 55:57
  certainly a lot more practical, one of the things that I do in
• 56:00
  the book is to outline the very specific joy that is available
• 56:04
  at every stage. One of the things that happens
• 56:07
  is you get to stage 5 and you'll, you'll find yourself
• 56:09
  thinking, man, I wish I was back in.
• 56:12
  And so I've had lots of conversations with lots of
• 56:14
  founders on all those ones that they say, man, I wish I could
• 56:17
  have that again. We've we've listed those out in
• 56:20
  the book so that you can actually enjoy them when you're
• 56:22
  in them. Well, you are a man of faith and
• 56:26
  you have just reminded me of fun Bible passage.
• 56:29
  That's a verse from Psalm 30, verse 5.
• 56:32
  Weeping may endure for a night, for joy cometh in the morning.
• 56:38
  So joy's coming. Thank you very, very much for
• 56:41
  your time. I always say that an attitude of
• 56:43
  gratitude is good attitude. And when somebody shares their
• 56:46
  time with you, they share their life with you.
• 56:48
  The SI you need for measuring life is a time.
• 56:51
  So from me to you, it's love and respect and of course, to our
• 56:55
  audience and love and respect to you.
• 56:57
  Please support us, like share comments, you know, distribute
• 57:02
  this to our everybody within your network.
• 57:04
  And of course, I'll keep working tirelessly to bring in
• 57:07
  tremendously fantastic individuals like Scott Reeds
• 57:11
  coming in with a lot of teas. So from me to you, it's look
• 57:16
  after yourselves and of course, see you next time on the port.
• 57:20
  God bless you guys.