Latest / The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast / The Only Good Reason to Be In Whitewater with Scott Ritzheimer (stages 3,4,5) - Ep. 429

Transcript

The Only Good Reason to Be In Whitewater with Scott Ritzheimer (stages 3,4,5) - Ep. 429 · 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 levels of your journey as a
0:09
founder. I'm your host Scott Ritzheimer, and I wanted to take
0:13
a moment here before things got really busy, as we're looking to
0:16
launch my new book, The Founder's Game, which is coming
0:19
out in February, to talk about a conversation I've been having a
0:23
lot with my clients, and specifically, we're going to do
0:26
a little mini series here called "You're Not in Whitewater Yet.
0:31
Now, many of you will know what that means. You know that
0:33
Whitewater is a stage in Les McEwen, a dear friend and mentor
0:37
of mine, and in his model called the Predictable Success model,
0:42
and it's a tough stage. It's the thing that separates us from
0:46
when we could grow in the fun stage to when we can scale in
0:49
the predictable success stage, and it's a really, really hard
0:53
stage. And for that reason, a lot of people like me have gone
0:58
into the business of coaching, consulting, and writing about
1:01
the things that you need to do to get out of whitewater.
1:04
However, that's created a problem that a lot of people
1:07
didn't have before, and that problem is that trying to
1:12
prevent whitewater by doing several things we'll talk about
1:16
throughout this series-very common things, things that you
1:19
probably have done yourself-trying to prevent
1:22
whitewater is actually one of the fastest ways to land
1:26
yourself there prematurely. And to explain what I mean, I want
1:30
to tell a quick story, a funny story about one of my sons,
1:34
Liam. And this was when he was in elementary school, and they
1:39
have this thing at their school called the Businesses of
1:42
Tomorrow, and it's this cool little job. It's not a job fair,
1:45
but it's like a business fair where all of the, I believe it's
1:49
fourth graders, get together, and they set up a stand and they
1:53
they create a business and they pitch it to all of the parents
1:56
and the other kids from the elementary school who come
1:58
through. It's this really cool entrepreneurial endeavor in
2:01
elementary school, and it's a big deal to them because whoever
2:04
gets the most tickets, you you you award the best businesses
2:08
with tickets, and whoever gets the best ticket ticket, whoever
2:11
gets the most tickets gets bragging rights. They they get
2:14
to be the one who's got the business of tomorrow, and so
2:18
they do all kinds of fun stuff. They're pretty much all about
2:20
video games and sports, and every once in a while, some food
2:24
in there smattered in. But it's a lot of fun. So the day comes.
2:29
It's businesses of tomorrow day. It's pitch day, and Liam has
2:33
worked for months on you know his presentation, his little
2:37
booth. He's got all of his talking points. He's got it
2:40
already, and he's nervous as I'll get out. And so, what that
2:44
looks like for us is five a.m. The door to my bedroom comes
2:47
flailing open. I think it actually dented the wall, and so
2:52
that's the way to wake up, right? And Liam comes bursting
2:56
through our room, runs straight through our room to the
2:59
bathroom, and then into the big master closet, where you know
3:04
all of our clothes are, and he's like crashing around in there
3:07
for five or 10 minutes. And again, I'm like half groggy
3:10
because it's five a.m. I'm not really awake yet. I don't know
3:13
what's going on, and I just figure I'm going to ride it out.
3:15
Yeah, let's just see what happens. And again, about 510
3:19
minutes later, I don't remember exactly what it was. He comes
3:22
out of the bathroom. Every light is on now, and he's again. He's
3:28
in fourth grade, and he's he's a little guy. He's wearing one of
3:32
my suits, and I'm not the tallest person in the world, but
3:35
I'm taller than a fourth grader. We'll put it that way. And he he
3:38
looked really funny, and and in the cutest possible way, but he
3:45
thought that putting on my suit made him a businessman. But the
3:51
reality of it is that that wasn't going to help him in his
3:55
presentation because it didn't fit. It wasn't the right suit
3:58
for him, and so instead we we walked over to his room.
4:01
We we found his you know his uniform and his nice button up
4:04
shirt and everything that fit. We got him all suited up and and
4:07
sent him off. And he did a great job. He had a lot of fun with
4:12
it. And I I will never forget that story because it
4:16
illustrates something that I see my clients, especially my new
4:19
clients, folks that I meet for the first time, many of them
4:22
come to me because of Whitewater. It is a huge part of
4:26
what we do. It's a huge part of what we talk about, and so you
4:29
know, along with Les and our other scale architects, we're
4:33
known for helping folks get out of this Whitewater stage. But
4:39
the thing that's changed, even in just the five years that I've
4:42
done that, or the 10 years since I first learned about the model.
4:47
I have found it's actually far more likely to get into
4:50
whitewater than it ever was before, but not for the right
4:55
reasons, and that's what I really want to explore in this
4:59
series. Because there's a good chance that many of you watching
5:04
or listening to this will recognize and resonate with a
5:07
lot of the things that we talk about when I describe the
5:09
whitewater stage here in a minute or two, and you'll think,
5:13
"Gosh, I'm in whitewater, but you might not be, or at least
5:18
you probably aren't for the right reasons, and to understand
5:22
why that is, one of the biggest factors is that the whitewater
5:27
stage is a really hard stage. And again, we'll talk about it
5:30
in a moment. But because it's such a hard stage, there's lots
5:33
of people like me over the last 3040, 50 years who have entered
5:39
into this coaching consulting space, which almost didn't exist
5:42
50 years ago, and we've done it either intentionally or
5:48
intuitively with this intent of kind of helping people with this
5:51
whitewater stage. However, you can only help someone in
5:56
whitewater if they're actually in whitewater, and
5:59
unfortunately, the craziest thing happens. But what happens
6:03
is we start to teach people how to get out of whitewater by
6:07
getting them into whitewater. That's right. We we what's
6:11
happening now more than ever before is that folks are getting
6:15
into whitewater for the wrong reasons. They're not actually
6:19
being pushed into whitewater. They're pushing themselves into
6:22
whitewater, and that's just about crazy. But it'll make
6:25
sense why it's happening. We're going to unpack what's
6:28
happening, and we're going to help you to avoid that. and And
6:31
for those of you who are there right now, we're going to help
6:33
you to unwind it and really start to succeed. So to do this,
6:36
we've got to spend a little bit of time. We're in this first
6:39
episode here. I'm going to unpack the least you need to
6:42
know about a couple of models and frameworks that are relevant
6:45
here, so that you can understand the language that I'm going to
6:50
use. And the first thing that we have to address is we have to
6:52
address what these different stages are. Now, on this show,
6:55
we talk a lot about levels, and those levels are the individual
6:59
levels that you go through as a founder, and those run to some
7:03
extent in parallel with, or a better way of saying it is
7:06
alongside the stages that your organization goes through, or
7:11
your team, or your group. Any group of two or more goes
7:13
through these seven stages. And again, I know this is a little
7:16
confusing. There's levels and stages, so just bear with me.
7:18
What we're talking about here are the seven stages that
7:22
organizations go through from launch to death and at the end,
7:27
and the first of those stages is the early struggle stage. An
7:32
early struggle is it's just a fight for survival. We're trying
7:36
to find a profitable, sustainable market. It's very
7:40
rare that folks will confuse early struggle with whitewater.
7:43
Some do. I've actually had that happen, but the reason for that
7:47
is not because they're both easy or hard, or is that early
7:51
struggle makes sense for why it's hard because it's you're
7:54
creating something from nothing. And so those first few years of
7:57
just trying to make this thing profitable were in early
8:01
struggle. The second stage, very technical name. It's called fun.
8:05
Les named it fun. It's just brilliant name.
8:08
Unfortunately, most of us don't recognize that it's fun until we
8:11
lose it. However, the fun stage is a stage where we sell, sell,
8:14
sell. We just go and get it done. We we found our
8:17
profitable, sustainable market in early struggle, and because
8:20
of that, we're just mining that market, and less accurately
8:24
describes that the key here is to make sure that you're mining
8:29
that market, you're driving revenue, you're getting things
8:31
done, and fun really if you let it can be a whole lot of fun,
8:36
and then there's this whitewater stage, and and what whitewater
8:39
is is where the complexity in the organization causes us to
8:42
cause problems. We create so much success in fun that it
8:46
necessarily thrusts us to a new level of complexity in which our
8:51
mo, our modus operandi from fun doesn't work anymore, and that's
8:57
really important. That is the only reason why we should end up
9:01
in whitewater is because the complexity that comes from our
9:05
success, from the size and scope of what we're doing, pushes us
9:10
into whitewater. Now, there's three other ways that we can do
9:13
this unintentionally, and we don't want to do that because
9:17
when we do, we actually end up hitting whitewater way too soon,
9:20
way prematurely, and we end up looking like Liam dressed in
9:23
someone else's clothes. It's not pretty, so that's the whitewater
9:27
stage. And whitewater is what keeps us from really scaling. We
9:30
have to learn to build a decision-making machine by fully
9:35
adopting systems and processes. And you might want to pay
9:39
attention to that because it's an important part later in the
9:42
series. From there, we end up with the the fourth stage, which
9:46
is a pretty cool stage. Again, it's the predictable success
9:48
stage where you can scale to whatever size your market will
9:51
allow or that you want. And we do that by you know leveraging
9:55
the systems and processes we learned in Whitewater, and also
9:58
leveraging the innovate. And ingenuity and creativity and
10:02
drive that helped us get out of early struggle and into fun. We
10:05
put all those together, and that's what allows us to not
10:08
only achieve but sustain predictable success. However,
10:13
there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and what
10:16
happens is that we start to push too much system in process
10:21
because it got us out of whitewater and we end up in
10:23
treadmill where we're over processed for the first time.
10:27
And then there's a few other stages that aren't really
10:29
relevant to this journey. There's the big rut and death
10:32
rattle, and and we're not really going to talk about those too
10:34
much in this series. So I'm just going to leave those for another
10:36
time. If you want to know more about it, check out the
10:38
Predictable Success book behind me. It's fantastic, easy read.
10:40
It's a lot of fun. There's an audiobook too for those of you
10:42
who like to listen to stuff. What I want to dial in on then
10:47
is this whitewater stage, and namely the stage that happens
10:51
before, which is the fun stage. One of the common misconceptions
10:54
when I first teach fun is that fun we we misinterpret fun as
10:59
easy, and we think, well, if it's not easy, it must be
11:01
whitewater, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Fun is
11:05
this, you know, breathless sprint across the finish line
11:10
each and every day. The reason that it's fun is because we're
11:13
doing that and we're winning, right? It's the reason why
11:16
sports are fun for a lot of folks. Because if you look at
11:18
what you're doing in sports, especially in like something
11:22
like tackle football, you're getting obliterated most of the
11:25
time, but it's fun, especially if you win. That's kind of what
11:29
fun is like. It's a full contact sport, and it's not easy. And
11:35
so, in this fun stage, one of the things that you'll
11:38
recognize, and those of you who are familiar with the
11:40
predictable success model, will know that there are some people
11:42
who are very well suited to the predictable success to this fun
11:47
stage, and there are some folks who who aren't, and that's a
11:52
really really big deal because there are four different
11:55
leadership styles. There's four ways that we show up for work.
11:58
There's four ways that an individual can help lead a team
12:02
to success, and it's important that we understand these styles
12:06
as well because it's the intersection between these two
12:09
worlds that's going to help us explain what we get, what we're
12:12
getting wrong, and how to correct it. So, of these four
12:15
styles, quickly: visionary idea people, operators, get stuff
12:19
done, people, processors, process people, and
12:23
synergists-people, people. We have these four different
12:26
styles. We have other episodes on this, and there's a bunch of
12:28
stuff on the website. We'll link it in the show notes, but you
12:30
can check out all of those different styles. You can even
12:32
take the assessment for free if you'd like. However, one of the
12:37
things that we have to recognize is that there's an ideal style
12:40
combination, not just for a person, but for a team and for
12:44
an organization. And the the only two that I'm really going
12:47
to talk about now are the predictable success stage, that
12:50
one up at the top where we can scale. Well, the ideal
12:53
combination there is visionaries, operators,
12:56
processors, and synergists. We need all four styles for a bunch
12:59
of reasons. We're not going to go into here, but just suffice
13:01
it to say, there's a place for everyone, and the reason why I
13:04
want to start there is because I want to make it really clear
13:07
that none of the four styles is like worse than the other. It's
13:12
not like there are good styles and bad styles, but there are
13:15
stage appropriate and stage inappropriate styles, and that's
13:21
really important because that's most of what we're going to talk
13:23
about here: is how stage inappropriate style biases and
13:28
skews will push us out of the fun stage prematurely, and that
13:33
stinks because I mean even if you don't know what they are,
13:35
but you're just given the opportunity to grow in fun or
13:39
fight against whitewater, which one do you want? It's not a hard
13:42
choice, and so it's pretty obvious that what we want to do
13:48
here is to not have to fuss with whitewater if we don't have to.
13:51
In fact, I can say this even more concretely, and that is
13:55
that while you're trying to grow, even if you're trying to
13:58
get to predictable success, no one should ever want to get to
14:02
Whitewater. No one should ever implement a process to try and
14:06
get to Whitewater. In fact, we want just the opposite. We want
14:10
to keep Whitewater away for as long as we can, while we still
14:14
grow in in order with our vision and what we're trying to
14:18
accomplish. And again, that's really important because the
14:22
goal again is not to implement something that gets us to
14:25
whitewater so we can get to predictable success faster.
14:27
Instead, the goal is to implement things that allow us
14:31
to succeed in fun and run those plays into the ground. I mean,
14:36
run them again and again and again until we can't run them
14:39
anymore. And the reason we can't run them anymore is whitewater.
14:45
To to try and keep this from being too academic, I want to
14:50
show you the real reason why you should end in whitewater and
14:53
what that looks like inside of an organization. So the real
14:57
reason that you should run into whitewater is. Because you have
15:01
you've mastered the style combination that works best in
15:06
fun, which is effectively a visionary or two surrounded by a
15:10
whole bunch of operators, namely, processors and
15:14
synergists are missing from the equation. Now you might have
15:17
them inside your organization, but preferably they're in a
15:21
supporting role, or they're just a blend with some of the other
15:24
styles. But really, what we want to to have the ideal, right? Not
15:29
actual, but ideal balance inside of the fun stage to to get as
15:36
big as we can in fun, to have as much fun as we can, to stay in
15:40
fun as long as possible. The ideal balance is a visionary
15:44
quarterbacking a bunch of operators, and that's really
15:47
important because that is actually the description for
15:51
when fun is over is when that play stops working. What that
15:59
generally looks like is again we have a visionary. They've got a
16:02
bunch of operators, and they're just they're just getting stuff
16:05
done all over the place. Now it's a little haphazard because
16:08
there aren't a whole bunch of systems and processes.
16:10
Maybe some like SOPs at the front line, but like the minimum
16:14
system and process that we need. It's highly effective. It's very
16:20
effortful, and the best way I can describe it is is that it's
16:23
like we're making diving catches on every play, and we've started
16:29
to drop the ball. If you're making diving catches on every
16:32
play or almost every play, if you're relying on heroes and
16:36
it's worked for a long time, right, or it's worked to to grow
16:41
your organization, and that's not working anymore. What we've
16:46
what we've reached is the point where we are over operated. Does
16:50
that make sense? Where we've moved to the place where we have
16:54
too much operator because we've we've grown so big, we've
16:59
created so much complexity that just the operator style enough
17:04
isn't enough to do it anymore. We have too many operators to
17:07
just keep trying to operate. And the best kind of indication is
17:10
that your best operators, the folks that you rely on the most,
17:13
the ones blood, sweat, and tears inside the organization, you
17:16
know, godfather to your children, kind of a thing, when
17:20
they start screwing up, when they start dropping the ball,
17:23
that's a great sign that you've you you could be in the actual
17:29
whitewater stage. If you get to whitewater for any other reason
17:35
than your operators have been given free rein to drive it as
17:38
far as they can and they have hit their limit, you're probably
17:41
in whitewater for the wrong reasons, and we can boil down
17:46
those wrong reasons into three different categories. So the
17:49
first one is that we are over visionaryed; we have too much
17:54
vision or too many visionaries, and I'll tell you what that
17:56
looks like in the next episode. The next one we're going to
18:00
explore is where we are too processed. The real irony here
18:04
is that you can get to whitewater too soon by adding
18:09
system and process. And you might be thinking, "But Scott,
18:11
didn't you say we need systems and processes to get out of
18:13
whitewater? Yes, exactly. But I'll tell you why that doesn't
18:17
work in the the third episode of this series, and then the fourth
18:22
episode of the series, we're going to explore how being over
18:26
synergized or being too people centric in the fun stage will
18:31
prematurely put you in whitewater. In any of these
18:34
cases, being over visionary, over processored, or over
18:38
synergized, we can look like we're doing the right things. We
18:45
can talk like we're doing the right things. We can actually
18:47
follow what's in the book of some really intelligent people,
18:51
but end up making things a heck of a lot worse. And the real
18:55
problem with all three of those is not just that they land us in
18:58
whitewater, but they make whitewater two times as hard to
19:01
get out of, and takes two times as long to do it, and we don't
19:05
want to do that. And so, what I want to explore in this is what
19:11
we can do to make sure we don't end up in whitewater
19:15
prematurely. How to get out if you have ended up in white water
19:19
prematurely, and what the right way is to navigate all of this.
19:22
We'll do this throughout the rest of this series, and it's
19:25
going to be a whole lot of fun. So I'm glad you stayed with me.
19:27
I know this is a little long. I know it's a little academic. I
19:29
just needed to give you some of the language. I needed to give
19:32
you some of these styles. I needed to set the stage so we
19:35
can really dial in on one of these problems. And what I'll
19:38
help you do over the next three is identify whether or not this
19:41
is something you're falling into, and if so, what you can do
19:45
about it. I'll see you there. Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer
19:52
here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start Scale and
19:55
Succeed podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what
19:58
you need for the level you're. In right now, if you want to
20:02
discover what level you're in, take our 10-question Founders
20:05
Evolution Quiz for free at foundersquiz.com. That's
20:10
foundersquiz.com.
20:12
It'll pinpoint exactly where you are and give you tailored tips
20:15
to move forward and reach that next level in your journey as a
20:19
founder. If you got something out of today's episode, don't
20:22
forget to subscribe, rate, or review. It helps us reach more
20:26
founders like you, and let's be honest, it means a ton to me, my
20:30
team, and all our incredible guests. So keep starting,
20:33
scaling, and succeeding, and I'll see you in the next
20:37
episode.