Latest / The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast / Dueling Q&A with Les McKeown (stages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7) - Ep. 400

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Dueling Q&A with Les McKeown (stages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7) - Ep. 400 · 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
0:06
grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a
0:10
founder. I'm your host, Scott Retheimer, and today is episode
0:14
400 It is unreal. I was, I was shocked if I was going to make
0:19
it to episode 40, if I'm honest, and that's only because I had
0:22
pre-recorded most of the episodes before then, before we
0:25
even launched, but here we are, 400 episodes later, and I've
0:30
learned so much. I hope you've learned so much. The podcast has
0:34
changed names during that window, it's changed focuses
0:38
during that window, and I feel like each 100 episodes, we get
0:41
tighter and tighter on how to serve you well, and each episode
0:45
- 100 200 304 100 - has been a little bit of a celebration here
0:49
for me, and it's become a bit of a ritual. But here with us today
0:54
is the one and only Les McKeown, and for today's conversation,
0:58
Les and I are going to, we're gonna, we're gonna pick a little
1:02
bit of a fight here, where we've both got some questions lined up
1:06
for each other about each other's models, which, as most
1:10
of you know, are very tightly knit together. So, Les has the
1:13
predictable success model. I don't know that I've shared this
1:16
story on this podcast in a really long time, but I heard
1:20
about less from a podcast, which was actually part.. I don't know
1:23
if you know this, Les, but it's part of why I do podcasting is
1:26
because the podcast where I heard you.. I don't even know
1:28
what podcast it was on, but it was just an episode with you,
1:30
and it changed my life. It really genuinely did. We
1:33
implemented predictable success at my company that was leading
1:36
at the time, tripled our bottom line, and I think you got
1:39
probably about $2.30 out of the deal from the book sale, I
1:44
bought the audiobook as well, and you know we bought copies
1:47
for everybody, so it's probably like $2.45 but but just totally
1:52
transformed my life, and so as I was transitioning out of that
1:56
company, sold it and was trying to figure out what I wanted to
1:59
do next, the answer was pretty obvious. I wanted to help people
2:02
out of Whitewater, and the best way to do that was predictable
2:05
success. So, for those of you who don't know, I don't know who
2:08
that would be, but the one listener out there who doesn't
2:10
know, this one's for you. Predictable success is a, it's a
2:14
life cycle, it's a model about organizational growth and scale.
2:20
Let's set that up a little bit better here in a second, and
2:24
radically transformative. My experience of tripling our
2:26
bottom line, I've found in the world of predictable success, is
2:29
pretty normal for folks that are coming out of white water and
2:31
predictable success. And it's, it's, I have the ability to poke
2:36
holes in lots of things, I'll just say it that way, it's the
2:39
nicest version of that, and there's nothing about Les' model
2:43
that I don't deeply resonate with, and so just tremendous
2:48
having you here, Les. Love that you've shared your model with
2:51
us, and excited to ask you some questions about it. And then the
2:55
other model is my founders' evolution model, you'll have
2:58
heard about that, you know about that, we talk about it almost
3:00
every week, and Les is going to return the favor and throw some
3:04
questions to my way. So, Les, welcome to the show. I saw of an
3:12
early version of the Predictable Success book just recently, and
3:17
and you and I have been going back and forth about about books
3:21
in the process, as you know, I'm deep in the process of getting
3:26
my book out into the wild, but tell us, how did, before we get
3:31
into the questions I have here, but how did Predictable Success,
3:35
the book, come to be?
3:38
Les McKeown: Well, it's interesting because you find
3:40
that buried in a massive email thread that I think I've
3:45
forwarded to you for a completely different reason, and
3:49
I hadn't realized that the attachments were still all in
3:51
there, and you're right, what you saw was probably a 2008
3:57
version, 2008 version of the 2010 book, and it was hilarious
4:04
to look back at, as you pointed out, without any chagrin, the
4:10
weird chapter titles, and the funny little logo that I had,
4:14
and all that sort of stuff that was in there as placeholders,
4:18
but that was all part of the fun was evolving towards what it
4:22
finally became. The book I put down to one very brief
4:26
conversation with my then wonderful wife, so wonderful
4:31
person, Julie, around about 2007 where she said to me, "You're
4:38
going to have to either write this book or. and I'll extract
4:42
the expletives. Stop talking about it, because I had been
4:48
talking about writing this book for so long, and I took her to
4:52
heart. I wanted to write a book. I knew it was a book that was
4:56
what it was meant to be, and I. Had to plan it out to stay
5:03
financially solvent for long enough to let me do it right.
5:07
You're in the middle of all this, so you'll be aware of it,
5:09
that you know, actually coming up with the artifact, you know,
5:15
the thing feels like it's the hardest part of it when you're
5:20
doing it, but it's actually not the hardest part of making it
5:24
worthwhile, is all the other stuff, the marketing. It's a
5:30
little bit like, as you will discover, you think you've run a
5:34
marathon, but some actually, the publication days, that's when
5:37
they fire the starting gun. So I did a fire sale of my time in, I
5:45
think, was late 2007 I'm terrible with dates, I could be
5:48
as much as a year off, and that bought me nine months of time
5:55
when I just didn't have to work at all, and I just got up every
5:58
morning and sat until I'd done 1200 words, and the book
6:04
eventually evolved. So that's the story of how the book came
6:07
to be.
6:09
Scott Ritzheimer: Wow, 1200 words is a lot. That's a lot of
6:12
words, and yeah, I didn't know that part of the story. That's
6:16
very cool. So, for those of you who either of these models are
6:20
new. I'm going to put some links in the show notes, where you can
6:24
kind of get the least you need to know about these. It'd
6:27
probably be helpful for this conversation. So, we're just
6:30
going to assume for the rest of the conversation you have at
6:32
least a basic understanding of what these different stages are,
6:36
so that we don't have to explain everything to explain
6:39
everything. We'll be able to get to some of these questions
6:41
quicker, but Les, I'm going to open up a first question here,
6:45
and then you can fire some back my way. But one of the questions
6:49
that I hear a lot, especially from folks that are new to
6:52
predictable success, is they feel like things are good, but
6:58
they're not really sure if they're unpredictable success or
7:02
fun, now one quick thing on this, they don't come across
7:05
that way, they all think they're in predictable success, but I
7:09
know from some of my experience with them that maybe they're
7:11
not, so for someone who either thinks they're in predictable
7:14
success or maybe thinks they're in fun or thinks they're in one
7:18
of them but doesn't know that how to tell which one it is. How
7:21
do you know the difference between predictable success and
7:23
fun?
7:25
Les McKeown: Quick bittens test is, if you have to ask, you're
7:27
almost certainly in fun, and I say that because for an
7:32
individual to be asking that question, they're
7:36
individualizing the sense of where they are, and when you're
7:40
doing that, you're leading as the founder, usually type leader
7:46
who is in fun. When you're in predictable success, the
7:50
question gets abstracted, and the question would be, Are we in
7:56
predictable success? And there's almost always assuming you've
8:02
got past the first year or so, there almost always comes with
8:07
it a sense of certainty at some core part of the business. We
8:10
are, or I wouldn't be asking the question. My concern is, are we
8:15
throughout the organization in predictable success? If you just
8:19
don't know, just assume that you're in fun, and then you
8:23
know, maybe you'll prove yourself wrong, but the key
8:28
distinction, if I get pressed, I break out into two parts. One is
8:35
what happens when you're not there. If things degrade, you're
8:40
on the left side of the growth curve, probably in fun, you
8:43
might be in some part of Whitewater. If things get
8:46
better, you're definitely in predictable success. If nobody
8:51
notices or cares, you're probably in treadmill or in the
8:54
big rut, but that sense of how individually dependent is all of
9:01
this on me is one touchstone and the other part of the two prong
9:07
thing is sort of the other side of the coin is how strong is the
9:10
immediate team around you if if you feel that you're actually
9:16
taking things from them your inventory of important things to
9:21
do comes from their priorities and needs. Then you're likely in
9:26
predictable success. If they're working like crazy to try and
9:30
take stuff off you, you're probably still in fun.
9:34
Scott Ritzheimer: I see this a lot with very charismatic
9:38
leaders in businesses, industries, or nonprofits like
9:42
churches that are individual specific, and so they'll,
9:48
they'll be in a period of ease, they're growing, it's bigger
9:53
than it ever was, which means it was bigger than the thing that
9:56
barely covered their paycheck three years earlier, and so a
9:59
lot of that feels like. Predictable success, but that
10:01
litmus test of how does it do when you're not there, I think
10:04
is excellent. That's really, really helpful. It's really
10:08
helpful. I like that.
10:09
Les McKeown: You know, if somebody's immediate reaction
10:12
is, I haven't been not there for five years, can't remember the
10:16
last time I took a holiday. You've answered the question, so
10:21
let me, let me turn that around a little bit, and look at it
10:26
from the point of view of the individual leader who's asking
10:29
the question, as you track the founder's evolution, as we've
10:37
called it. Do you think it's possible for a leader to
10:45
overshoot in their evolution, so to speak? You know, in my model
10:49
world, to find yourself in predictable success and realize
10:53
this isn't where, actually, where I want to be. I want to be
10:55
back in fun. Can you get to stage five and think I should,
11:03
I'm actually going to go backwards. Is that, is that
11:05
possible? And is it healthy?
11:07
Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, there's, there's a few different ways
11:11
that that happens. One is, I think, like predictable success,
11:14
there's this idea that whatever is the highest one is the best
11:17
one, especially in the US, and I think the West in general,
11:22
there's this idea that bigger is better, and bigger does
11:26
different things, and can be better, but it's not inherently
11:30
better, and I think one of the reasons why the founders'
11:34
evolution is so helpful is because we don't define level
11:41
seven as the destination for everybody, that you know we're
11:45
just all on our journey to level seven. It's the, it's actually
11:49
the least likely by several orders of magnitude, because for
11:52
most of us, we don't actually ever have to get that far, and
11:55
so what ends up happening, I think, a lot of times is, is
12:00
similar to predictable success. What puts you in level three
12:04
instead of level two is success in level two. We don't really
12:08
choose to get to the next level as much as we do the things that
12:12
thrust us into that level, and so a lot of folks will, you
12:18
know, they'll, they'll start in level two, they'll start
12:21
bringing some folks around them in level three. They'll kind of
12:24
crack the code in level four, and they'll wake up one day,
12:28
usually in level four. It's not level five, is a pretty
12:31
conscious effort to get to, but I see it happen sometimes, and
12:34
they're like, why am I doing this? Is this it? Like, is this
12:38
in? So, for some folks, the answer is no. This isn't it.
12:42
Level five is amazing. Let's go there. For some folks, it's
12:45
yeah, this is way past it. And if you just had your own private
12:50
practice where you were doing the thing that you love to do,
12:52
if you love coffee, don't get to level five and be a coffee CEO,
12:57
right? that's just that's not like if you love being behind an
13:02
espresso machine, then level two, maybe level three, is all
13:06
you need to do, and so in a similar way to predictable
13:09
success, if you have any choice other than to go to the next
13:13
level, it's oftentimes the right answers to stay, or maybe even
13:17
go backwards,
13:18
Les McKeown: And I'm guessing too that you can get to the
13:21
point where you've, as you say, been promoted, isn't the right
13:25
word, that's got a very specific connotation, but in essence,
13:28
you've developed into a leadership level where it
13:33
actually would feel like a failure, or certainly there'd be
13:35
a lot of peer pride involved in just saying, no, I don't really
13:42
want to do that, that you know, I just want to go back to my two
13:46
coffee shops rather than trying to be another Starbucks, you
13:49
know, but yeah, it can make you the happiest person in the
13:52
world.
13:53
Scott Ritzheimer: It takes way more bravery to go backwards. I
13:57
don't even like to use the phrase backwards, but to go
13:59
backwards, to return to a previous level, I call it going
14:04
home instead of going backwards, but it takes way more bravery
14:08
and courage to do that than to just accept the organizational
14:11
inertia and try borrowing someone else's vision for your
14:14
life. Now I will offer, and this is a part of what makes us so
14:18
hard, and part of how it happens is that I believe organizations
14:22
of a certain size demand a founder or leader at a certain
14:27
level. You can't lead a 500 person firm from level two
14:33
startup entrepreneur doing your own thing however you want,
14:36
whenever you want. So, so some of what makes that is the kind
14:41
of golden handcuffs is like you get to level five and folks who
14:45
are in level five that shouldn't be in level five are some of the
14:48
most miserable people I know because they've got everything
14:53
that everyone thinks that they should want and they're they're
14:55
dead inside they hate all of it and. And it's like, how do you
15:00
say no to that? It's like you've got the most privileged position
15:04
in the world. How do you choose to give that up and then go
15:07
start something new from scratch? Is it's a really,
15:10
really difficult place to be. It's a difficult place to be.
15:13
Les McKeown: I want to just throw in a follow-up here. I,
15:19
when I was thinking about things I wanted to ask you about the
15:23
model, I thought this was a distinct question, but I realize
15:27
now, having just spoken to you about this, it's actually part
15:30
of what we just said. Talk to me about skipping stages in the
15:34
founders' evolution. Is that possible? Is that desirable?
15:40
Where does that fit in? You know, you know, my view on the
15:43
lifecycle side of things. How does skipping stages, where does
15:46
that fit in the founder's evolution.
15:49
Scott Ritzheimer: Structurally? No, you can't skip stages.
15:51
However, the founder's evolution, like predictable
15:54
success, is a fractal of, I think, a much more universal
15:57
principle. You can find the same seven levels in the story of
16:02
Gandhi, the story of Steve Jobs, and the story of Jesus. So, in
16:07
that, in that, it's just the founders' version of this same
16:12
pattern that exists for every person in their story. You can,
16:19
you can, you do whatever stage you want at whatever time, but
16:22
in terms of the founder's evolution, here's the most
16:25
common example: folks want to skip to level six, which is the
16:28
owner stage, and it's obvious why. It's like, if you could own
16:32
something and not run it, and it just gave you a bunch of money,
16:34
and you had infinite time freedom, who doesn't want that?
16:37
It's like, okay, that's fine. I actually don't want that,
16:40
because I'd be bored out of my mind, and I'm a terrible person
16:42
when I'm bored, but I understand the allure, and so you'll get a
16:46
bunch of folks that are, you know, level two very successful
16:51
solopreneurs, and they want to, you know, hand off their
16:56
business for someone else to run it for them while they, you
16:59
know, collect a paycheck once a month. Why would anyone do that?
17:04
Why would anyone run your solo practice for you and not just
17:08
run their own solo practice? And so, can you do that technically?
17:14
Yes, but that's not level six, that's just stepping out and
17:18
collecting a check, and and so you can borrow some of the
17:26
strategies and privileges of other levels, for example, a
17:31
startup entrepreneur can retire, they can just close shop, and if
17:36
they've set aside enough money, then they can do investor type
17:39
things similar to what a level six owner would do, but they're
17:42
doing it not as a level six own founder, they're doing it as
17:46
someone who had a great career and has spare money to do stuff
17:49
with. It's, it's, it's different. It's not level six,
17:52
so no, you can't skip them. They are linear, even if you move
17:57
through them too fast, you don't build the requisite skill for
18:00
success in a level, the next level will collapse in on
18:04
itself, and so even if you could skip a level,
18:08
Les McKeown: As you're sharing that with me, as you know, one
18:12
of the things that I enjoy doing more than anything is working
18:15
with family businesses, because I think the family dynamic
18:18
brings such a juicy degree of complexity into everything that
18:22
you know, I can't help myself. I just love working with that
18:25
stuff, and I think that is one of the reasons why so many
18:29
success family successors fall on their face, because there's a
18:34
presumption that they've somehow got it, whatever they would have
18:38
got from working through the stages, by osmosis, you know,
18:42
just being at the dinner table every Sunday night, and you
18:45
know, sharing the war stories and all that sort of stuff. It
18:48
sort of has seeped in to them. Now, there's some sense, I
18:53
think, in which, sure, you know, sure, you're getting a
18:57
mentorship that's free, almost nothing in families is free, but
19:02
you know what I mean, that if you use it, you know wisely can
19:06
help accelerate moving through, but there's almost at times a
19:11
sort of a bit of an arrogance bordering on entitlement sort of
19:16
thing that goes on, like I don't need to do that, you know,
19:20
that's that's what the parentals did, they did all that stuff.
19:24
Now I can just step in and make this work, and you know the
19:27
statistics are very clear. The majority of family success and
19:33
plans don't go the way everybody thinks they're going to go, and
19:37
not in a positive manner. So I think that plays into that a
19:40
lot, don't you think?
19:41
Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, I do, and, and, and it's one of the
19:44
reasons why I was very specific in that this is the founder's
19:47
evolution. There are an enormous number of benefits from someone
19:52
who's not a founder to come in and learn from it, but with a
19:56
founder, if I'm talking to a founder in level five. I know
20:01
that they have been through levels 123, and four. If I talk
20:05
to a business owner in level five, I can't make that
20:08
assumption.
20:09
Les McKeown: Sure, sure,
20:11
Scott Ritzheimer: right? Because they may have bought in at level
20:13
five, they might have bought in at level three, and, and you can
20:16
buy organizational competence in, in later stages, but you
20:22
can't buy the individual experience, and so, unless
20:26
you've had that in other environments, then it's gonna
20:30
be, it's gonna be a real challenge. Speaking of
20:32
challenges, I want to turn this around for you. We opened up
20:35
with fun and predictable success, which are not the most
20:37
challenging of stages, but one of the things that I've found in
20:41
helping companies, businesses, and nonprofits, organizations to
20:47
use the predictable success model to navigate their strategy
20:51
and how to achieve predictable success. Many, many times I've
20:56
been in the room, and, and you could split the room down the
21:00
middle, you usually have to reorganize the seats a little
21:02
bit, but half of them think they're in whitewater, half of
21:05
them think they're in treadmill. Can you be in whitewater and
21:08
treadmill at the same time?
21:09
Les McKeown: Yes, you can. That's not always the reason why
21:14
the dynamic that you're talking about happens, and I'll talk
21:17
about that in a second or two, but the reality may be that
21:21
that's the case, that we've got two departments, divisions,
21:24
projects, groups, teams, whatever, that are just in
21:27
different stages of the life cycle, and I had a sort of
21:34
clearest exemplar of that, that I had over the years was a PR a
21:43
a real old time PR company, Chicago-based, and this was back
21:48
in the very early days of the interwebs, when you know AOL
21:53
were sending out CDs, so they set up an account, that type of
21:58
thing, Who were absolutely they owned, you know, old media, so
22:04
you know that gets you newspaper column inches, that gets you on
22:08
radio and on TV, and all that sort of stuff, but they were
22:12
plunging into treadmill headlong, if not at times in the
22:16
big rut, and their newly set up Los Angeles-based internet
22:23
division was zooming up, and you know, plunging into wild water
22:31
faster than the half life of, you know, a neutron, if that's a
22:36
thing. I'm going to disown that sentence. I don't think it makes
22:40
any sense, and so you know, I literally did physically sit in
22:45
a room with people who were half of them were in treadmill and
22:49
half of them were in my work. What's as likely happened to us
22:57
frequently is you've got people who are just seeing things
23:01
differently, and you know, if you've got a hard charging
23:05
operator, and if you've got a business that's succeeded, and
23:09
it's been in fun for quite some time, you will have developed a
23:15
cadre of hard charging operators, typically people who
23:19
have become big dogs in the organization, because they've
23:23
got a lot of delegated authority, whether they would
23:25
call it that or not, lot of sweat equity, they've got their
23:29
own, might be small, but teams around them who look to them,
23:35
and any hard charging operator worth their salt, you know, if
23:39
you, if you just, if you just put a spreadsheet up on your
23:46
screen, and they're over there, they'll smell it. What are you,
23:50
what is that? You know, don't you actually have a job? Why are
23:54
you being extreme, but not much. And so, what often is the case
24:00
is here. We've got, you know, a single source of truth here in
24:06
the middle, which is we're just going to have, we're in white
24:09
water, we're going to have to codify stuff, gonna have to
24:12
start writing things down, gonna have to be able to replicate
24:15
what we do and not make it up. It's too complicated to do that
24:18
anymore, and for certainly for the processors, synergists
24:24
usually on a good day, the visionaries, they accept that
24:28
and see that, and the operators, and on a bad day, the
24:32
visionaries are looking at it and saying, horrible, you know,
24:36
why do I have to fill in this thing at the end of every day,
24:40
or whatever, and so, yes, you can be in both, and that's
24:45
actually easier to deal with, because giving shared
24:50
vocabulary, it's like that old cheesy story of the, is it five
24:57
blind men, you know, blindfold. The men who are backed up to an
25:01
elephant, and they each pull a different part, you know, one's
25:04
got the tail, one's got the ears, so forth. They all
25:07
describe a completely different thing. If that's what's going
25:10
on, and you can take the blindfolds off, and everybody
25:13
can go, "Oh, right. So you are in treadmill, that's fair
25:17
enough. How can we help? You are in white water. So there are
25:20
mechanical things that you can do with the other situation, you
25:27
know, you're dealing with hard coded DNA, just how I think
25:31
about things, and sometimes just intellectual purity isn't going
25:38
to fix it, just showing somebody it's like I don't mean that the
25:42
people involved here are bad people, but if you've ever tried
25:46
to reason with an internet troll, eventually you work out
25:51
that reason isn't on the table here, it's just not gonna make
25:56
any difference whatsoever, a waste of time. Like, I want to
26:00
say that sentence again. I'm not saying hard charging operators
26:03
and big dogs are all like internet trolls. It's just that
26:06
the thing that's being triggered isn't something that's fixed by
26:10
logic. It's, it's such a deeply felt thing that, that, that,
26:16
that's the work that's really, really hard in Whitewater. So,
26:19
you're genuinely in whitewater, you've just got people for whom
26:22
it really feels like treadmill, that's tough, tough work.
26:26
Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, yeah, I think that it's important to
26:31
address both of those issues. If I could put a bow on it, of
26:35
saying, hey, we need to know what stage we are in, enterprise
26:39
wide, and that the reason we're there is in large part because
26:45
this group is there, this group is there, it really is both, and
26:51
you almost can't address one without the other, but you do
26:54
have to wrestle through the dual reality there, and I think a lot
26:59
of teams come up short in that respect,
27:01
Les McKeown: And in doing that, one of the self-deprecating,
27:09
say, one of the few things, but it's not true, one of the many
27:11
things that age has helped me with is that it's really
27:17
difficult to be of help to anyone dealing with that
27:22
different set of perceptions, if you, as an individual, have an
27:27
emotive buy-in to one of those specific perceptions yourself,
27:33
and when I was younger, you know, it was a lot harder for me
27:37
to be a real sounding board, being able to be objective and
27:42
stepping back from the emotional concerns of all of that, you
27:47
know, one of the things that I've always believed is that the
27:51
ability to be not necessarily clinical, because that sounds,
27:56
you know, less than human clinicians are not less than
28:01
humans, so again, got to be careful, but the ability to be
28:04
objective is such an important part of being a good skill
28:10
architect, critical success practitioner, and you know,
28:14
although I have my own preferences when it comes to the
28:17
work I do, I can completely abstract from that, so let me
28:21
ask you this. When you look at the founder's evolution, where's
28:28
your natural, where's your heart? Which stage is the one
28:33
that you most enjoy being in, and does that affect the way in
28:41
which you interact and help other people,
28:45
Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, yeah, 100% So this is an interesting
28:48
one, because if I were to just say which stage, because I've
28:51
been through most of them, not all of them, but most of them,
28:54
which one did I enjoy the most? It was five hands down, not even
28:59
close. I love the CEO stage when I finally figured out what that
29:03
meant, and I'm pretty good at it. It works well for my makeup,
29:10
and as soon as I got there and it got good, I sold the company.
29:14
I don't know why I did that, but I left that, and one of the
29:18
things that I realized I didn't have the model at the time that
29:21
I did this, but when you are a level five CEO, crushing it in
29:26
one domain, and you go start another business, you don't
29:28
start it in level five. It's like same with predictable
29:33
success. If you're in predictable success and you go
29:34
launch another business unit, it doesn't launch in predictable
29:37
success, it launches an early struggle, and in the same way I
29:40
went all the way back to level one, had to figure out, like,
29:42
what is this, what does it mean to actually be a coach. However,
29:46
when I'm helping folks go through this process, I don't
29:50
think that which stage you want to be in is the highest and best
29:55
way of figuring out where you're trying to go, for me and how I
29:59
coach. Folks, and now they choose whatever stage they want.
30:02
I actually, I think all seven are equal. I didn't think that
30:06
when I started the project, and several of my clients proved me
30:08
wrong. All seven stages have a valid expression that can be
30:12
wonderful and life-giving and fulfilling, and every bit of
30:15
what you need it to be. Some of those is a little harder to
30:19
believe than others, but it is true, and, and the book has
30:24
seven of those examples, so you can actually see it from the
30:26
real world, but I found that to accomplish what I wanted to
30:31
accomplish, helping other founders ultimately build an
30:36
organization that they love to lead, that's really what it
30:39
boils down to, I can be most effective at that, achieving
30:44
that vision for this organization in level two, and
30:47
so I have even once my, my book of business was completely full,
30:51
and the next obvious step is to bring in other coaches and
30:54
start, you know, having them work for you and all that in a
30:58
bag of chips, I realized that for the vision that I have for
31:03
this organization, and what I want to do with it, level five
31:06
is undoubted. I'm sorry, level two is undoubtedly the most
31:10
effective tool to use for that vision, and so I have to make a
31:15
really concerted effort to not accidentally get to level three,
31:19
and kind of watch hiring people, and
31:24
Les McKeown: For your listeners, very quickly, just explain the
31:27
difference between,
31:28
Scott Ritzheimer: yeah, level twos on its, on its best day,
31:32
level two is a successful solopreneur, it's you with, you
31:36
know, a couple of people that help out, you have less than a
31:39
handful, because somewhere around hiring a handful, the
31:41
game changes, and it's not about you doing what you love to do,
31:44
it's about you managing a group of people who does something
31:47
that hopefully moves us in the right direction, but so level
31:50
two successful solopreneur, level three on its worst day is
31:54
being a reluctant manager, but on its best days being a
31:57
skillful manager, where you have arguably the most control to do
32:01
during your day job, the thing that you enjoy the most. So, if
32:05
you're like the, if you really like to sell, then you can hire
32:10
other people to do the actual doing, and you can go have
32:12
wonderful sales conversations until you're blue in the face.
32:14
So, level three, being a skillful manager isn't about
32:17
being a manager, it's about what being a manager allows you to do
32:20
personally, but it happens when there's enough people that you
32:25
actually have to manage them, and so that's the break point,
32:28
and I have to be really conscientious of that breakpoint
32:31
and make sure that I'm not committing to more work than I
32:36
can do from level two,
32:38
Les McKeown: And here's an interesting thing you and I
32:41
share that you know me well enough to know that I'm firmly a
32:46
level two guy, and this is going to sound like, oh, well, of
32:52
course, you know it was going to come up at some point. I'm
32:55
surprised that too. I mean, this is a podcast, so AI has got to
33:01
be talked about at some point, or we're clearly just two old
33:05
fuddy duddies, not anyway. My personal discovery, and it's the
33:11
one real revelation to me over the last year, is the degree to
33:17
which AI genuinely helps me build a moat between this level
33:23
two and level three transition, because the amount of stuff that
33:28
I previously would have had to conduct a group of people to do
33:33
that I can just invest like a morning setting up some really
33:38
good way for AI to do it, and then put it on rinse and repeat,
33:42
has been, you know, I.. I'm not going to use game changer, it's
33:47
just an awful phrase, but it really has at least helped me
33:52
use some game tactics that I would never have otherwise got.
33:56
I think it's a wonderful tool if you want to stay in level two
34:00
and you're going to try to minimize the gravitational pull
34:05
into three
34:06
Scott Ritzheimer: Mechanically, what's happening is when you're
34:08
maxed out in level two, you have three options, which, because
34:12
you can't do it yourself anymore, so you either have to
34:15
eliminate it. Hey, I'm just not going to do that anymore. You,
34:19
that's really hard, and that was kind of the only choice. Level
34:24
two, the only way to stay in level two is to over eliminate,
34:26
just keep cutting, keep cutting, keep cutting, keep cutting, so
34:29
you could stay in size. Then you can automate it, right? Which,
34:37
again, this is where AI and natural language processing, and
34:40
all of that, have have radically shifted what's available. The
34:44
automate functionality 20 years ago was nothing compared to what
34:50
it is today, which is nothing compared to what it will be two
34:52
years from now, and and so the only the third tool, the only
34:56
thing that we could really rely on if we were maxed out and
34:59
didn't. To eliminate was to delegate, which is why you had
35:02
to keep hiring and hire and hiring, and so, yeah, I couldn't
35:05
agree more. I think what it allows folks to do is to thrive
35:10
in level two at a much larger scale than was previously
35:13
possible, and for us level two junkies, that's a pretty cool
35:17
thing. It's a pretty cool thing. Well, Les, I'll give you the
35:20
last word, and then we'll wrap up here.
35:23
Les McKeown: All right, my last word is a remaining question for
35:28
you, which is, to what extent do you think you will be a changed
35:35
person as a result, in say two or three years from now, as a
35:40
result of what you've learned writing your own book, because I
35:44
know that's something that years ago somebody said to me, you
35:50
only ever really see true change in the rearview mirror, and
35:54
that's true, and as I was being pulled through a hedge backwards
35:58
in stage you're at now with my books, I didn't see anything
36:03
like the impact. I couldn't see what the impact it was happening
36:06
on me. What do you, how do you think you'll be changed by
36:11
producing this great is it up to 400 pages now?
36:18
Scott Ritzheimer: I don't know what the final print version
36:20
will be, but I think it's actually gonna be longer. I'm
36:22
the guy in the Briar Bush being pulled backwards, so I just.. I
36:26
can tell you, I'll have a few more scars along the way. But
36:30
what the one of the things is to pull this back to founders of
36:34
evolution for a second. One of the things I tell folks in level
36:36
six to do is to write a book and don't publish it, because of how
36:40
this process has always already changed me. Right, there's
36:43
something that's I've written a lot of content, you know, I've
36:47
published a bunch of videos, I've done a lot of different
36:51
media types. Nothing comes close to the structural integrity that
36:58
comes from from writing it out in a book to actually get that
37:02
big of a cohesive thought all together in one place. I think
37:06
is a profoundly beneficial exercise. So I can tell you, so
37:11
far I know that all seven stages are desirable for some folks. I
37:16
didn't know that coming in. I know that, like, how much you
37:25
can boil down the world of what you have to focus on. That's so
37:28
much clearer than it was before. So I use that moan practice and
37:33
reminding myself what I need to be focused on, and the process
37:36
of getting that out into the world is so much more stretching
37:42
than I thought, like you and I have been talking recently about
37:45
endorsements, and like the vulnerability of endorsements is
37:48
uncharted territory for me, because it's like with this
37:52
video, we'll post it in the world, it'll be live, we put an
37:54
hour into it, and it's it's out there, and but when you've been
37:58
writing in a dark basement room for months and months and months
38:02
and months and months, and then you put it out in the world,
38:05
that's a different feeling. So I expect there to be change there
38:09
that I don't quite understand yet, but it's been quite the
38:13
process. It's been quite the process. Well, last as always,
38:18
it's a privilege and honor having you here, both as a
38:23
friend, as a colleague, and a fellow thought partner. Yeah, so
38:28
thankful for you and appreciative of our
38:29
relationship. Thanks for being here. And for those of you
38:32
watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the
38:35
world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as
38:39
I enjoyed it. At least I talked a lot, so I can't use my normal
38:42
outro here, but I can't wait to see you next time. We'll see you
38:47
there. Hey everyone, Scotty Timer here. Thank you so much
38:54
for listening to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast. I hope this
38:57
episode gave you exactly what you need for the level you're in
39:01
right now. If you want to discover what level you're in,
39:05
take our 10 question founders evolution quiz for
39:09
free@foundersquiz.com That's foundersquiz.com It'll pinpoint
39:13
exactly where you are and give you tailored tips to move
39:16
forward and reach that next level in your journey as a
39:20
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forget to subscribe, rate, or review. It helps us reach more
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39:30
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39:34
scaling, and succeeding, and I'll see you in the next
39:37
episode.