Bonus Episode - Why Your Business Feels Harder at $1M+

Your business grows, your revenue climbs, and somehow the work starts to feel heavier instead of lighter. That’s the moment Chase Williams calls the million-dollar paradox: the skills that got you here are not the skills that will scale you forward. If you’ve been telling yourself you just need to grind harder, this conversation offers a more honest diagnosis and a more practical way out.

I walk through three predictable friction points that show up as you scale: people, systems, and key drivers. We get specific about what “people problems” usually look like in real companies, including how overfunctioning leaders accidentally create underfunctioning teams, why hiring too fast (or too late) stalls growth, and how lack of clarity gets mistaken for lack of capability. From there, we tackle accountability, retention, and the uncomfortable truth that if you’re still the best producer, fixer, and decision maker, you’ve become the bottleneck.

Then we shift into scaling systems and strategic focus. You’ll hear how to spot chaos patterns like whack-a-mole leadership and tribal knowledge, why leverage is focus not laziness, and how to identify two to five key metrics that actually drive business growth. The goal is an identity shift from operator to CEO, building a company that can run without your constant presence and creates real enterprise value.

If you found yourself nodding along, share this with a business owner who feels stuck, then subscribe and leave a review so more leaders can find it. What’s the friction point hitting you hardest right now?

Transcript

Welcome And Why You’re Here

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Welcome everybody. Super glad you're here. We're going to give everyone just a couple more minutes, uh, the stragglers to jump in. You know, I had a birthday yesterday, and so I figured I would play some classic rock. Seemed appropriate, but that last song had me feeling a lot older than I even am, so I'll have to rethink my choice next time. But I'm glad you're here. We're gonna jump in in just a couple of minutes. We got lots to cover, and I hope it's gonna be super valuable to you. So we'll get started in just a minute or two.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Could you make any friends? Would you like some action? Before I leave a gold. I've been walking behind you. You've been in the boot you to think about me. I've been able

The Million Dollar Paradox Explained

SPEAKER_02 4:10

to do one.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

I hope you have great plans for some fun around that today. Um, I'm excited for some tacos later today myself. Um, I'm gonna pull up a few of my notes here and we're gonna jump right in. I'm sure we'll have a few people joining us as we get started. Um, but I just want to say welcome. I um I'm so glad to have you today. I know how valuable your time is, and so I can assure you I'm gonna give it everything I got to bring you maximum value because time is limited and it's precious. Um, one of the reasons I get so excited about doing things like this webinar for business owners and entrepreneurs and leaders is I admire you. I'm one of you, uh, and I admire you. Business uh ownership, entrepreneurship is hard and it can feel lonely sometimes. We can have some of the highest of highs and the lowest of lows and pretty much everything in between. And I've experienced that myself, I'm sure you have as well. We're likely to experience some of that again. So I admire your courage simply for being in the arena in the game, and I'm glad you're here today. We're gonna talk about why your business feels harder at a million dollars. And by the way, a million dollars is a placeholder. We could have called it $500,000 or $5 million or $250,000, whether that's revenue or profit. There is good news and there's bad news around why it can be really hard sometimes or we can feel stuck. And frankly, being stuck sucks. My mother hates that word, so apologies, but it does. And there's good news and there's bad news. The the good news is that we can get unstuck. And that's what we're gonna work on today, no matter what level you may be at, or what uh how many times you've been stuck. And that's the bad news, is that it's not a one-time fix, meaning we we will we will naturally hit these ceilings, if you will, in business. Think of it like uh uh stairs. We have these periods of growth, then we have these plateaus if we're lucky, instead of downturns, and and we have to solve some stuff or change or evolve, and then we can grow again, and then we hit another stair. Good news is we can solve it at every level. Bad news is it's not a one-time fix. So that's what we're here to work on today and talk about what I'm gonna call the the million-dollar paradox, or again, five hundred thousand dollar paradox, two hundred and fifty thousand dollar paradox. Um, it can happen at any level, it does happen at many levels. And that paradox is this the skills that built your business are not the same skills that will continue to scale and grow your business. They're not the same. And uh that's uh we want to recognize that, we want to have awareness around that, but that can feel frustrating because you're really good at what you do, you're really good at what you've done, right? But it's why you can be amazing, excellent, world-class, top of your industry in what you do, skill-wise, and your business can still get stuck, right? Because the skills that built your business are not the same skills that will continue to grow and scale your business. And today, thank you so much for being here. We are gonna take a step forward to getting unstuck or solving some of those ceilings that we occasionally um hit in our business, right? So, as we jump in, some of you maybe know me, um, and some of you don't. And my name is Chase Williams. Um, I had a birthday yesterday, so I was sharing with a few folks early on. I was playing classic music, classic rock as you guys came in. Uh made me feel older than I thought. So I'm gonna rechange, I'm gonna re-choose my choice next time, my music choice. But I've had a passion for business from a really, really young age. Not sure exactly why. Uh my uncle was successful in business, and I got to watch him. My dad tried his hand at business uh a couple of times, and I got to watch that. Um, but it kind of put me on that pathway at a really young age. And I've done a few things in business. In addition to being an executive coach and an investor, um, I've built a number of businesses. Some from the ground up, founded them, some I took over that were failing, turned those around and have and have operated a high level and some others as well that I didn't even own. And I've continued to do that. And um, I share that because I've I've come out with a lot of bumps and bruises, which I'll share with you. So maybe you can avoid some of them. I've come out with some things that worked well, which I'll also share with you. So should you choose, you can you can use those as maybe examples or models to to grow your business as well. But one commonality I found in all of those is that every everything I've done in business, failures, successes, everything in between. Anytime that I I I had any level of success, it required me overcoming myself, right? And and dealing with some some some evolution with me as the leader or the owner or the entrepreneur. And it turns out I've led a lot of people over the years. I'm the hardest one to lead. It turns out. It turns out that that growth, although we all uh get excited about that word, is hard. And I've had to deal with things uh in my own life, right, in this business journey, like ego, like having control issues, like the fear of looking bad or getting it wrong, low areas of competency, right? Like I'm really, really good at a few things, but I'm really, really not so good, turns out, at more things than I'm good at. And I've had to wrestle with some of that. Does any of that sound familiar? Is it just me? Is it just me that I've had to wrestle with those things over the

The Lid You Put On Growth

SPEAKER_00 11:40

years? My hallucination is it's not just me. But here's the good news before we jump in. Um, it's worth it. Wrestling with those things is 100% worth it, even if it's not easy. And there's a few reasons for that, I believe. One is uh when we get better, we're better for others, we're better for those that we serve, right? There's a guy who does a podcast I really love. If you if you're in business and you haven't listened to uh Craig Groschel's podcast, it's super, super good. And Craig always has this line he uses, which I love, and he says, Everyone wins when the leader gets better. And I believe that's true. So when we wrestle with these hard things that are part of us and we get better, we're better for those that we care about and those that we serve in our business, in our families, in our communities, etc. Also, we get more joy out of our business. If you if you've experienced anything like me, it's like you we again we have these high highs, low lows. Not every moment of being in business for ourselves or leading businesses is is joyful. And sometimes we go through these seasons where we we have a hard time finding much joy. Usually that's when we're stuck, usually that's when we need to grow the most. And when we do, we reconnect to the joy that we first felt when we started that business or when we got involved with that business. And the last thing is uh legacy, right? Like when you build yourself and you build your business, you grow or scale your business. We're gonna talk a lot about that today. You have the opportunity to create something that can survive beyond you. I I have the opportunity to create something that can survive beyond me. And that's exciting to me. Whether it's for the clients and customers or community that business serves, whether it's a business that I want one of my kids to think about taking over, or I've brought someone of high value into that business that might want to take that business over, whatever it may be. Um, I think of um a guy named Dan Shields. He's actually the lead pastor at the church that I go to. And Dan always says, we want our church to have such an impact on the community that if we were ever to go away or disappear, that the community would miss us. Right? And I'm like, wow, that's a really cool way of describing what what's like legacy, something that actually has an impact and can survive beyond one person, one business owner, one founder. And we're gonna work on that today. So, what are we gonna cover? Enough about me. What are we gonna cover? Today, we're gonna talk about, and here's what you should walk away with. Um, we're gonna talk about identifying the bottleneck in your business. And spoiler alert, there's a good chance it's you. At Sherpa Consulting Group, we don't always uh ease into the water, sometimes we dive right into the deep end, and you can see with number one that there's a really good chance that in part you're a big part of the bottleneck of your business, right? And in order for us to change any of that or evolve through that, first we have to own it, right? We have to have some ownership in that. I love a quote by uh John Maxwell, and it comes from one of the leadership laws that he teaches in his book. It's called the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. If you if you notice today, I'll probably give you three or four book recommendations. Write those down. Um, highly recommend these for business owners, but the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. Great book. One of the laws is the law of the lid. The law of the lid says is that you are the lid on your business, and that your business will only grow to the extent that you do. My business will only grow to the extent that I do. And it's called a law for a reason. I believe it to be true. And so we want to own that piece. We want to own that we're the lid on our business so that we can we can get to work on changing it. We're gonna understand three friction points: common and predictable friction points, people, systems, and key drivers. That's what we're gonna focus on and unpack. We're gonna peel back the onion on those today. And then we want to recognize that we owners, entrepreneurs, leaders, we have an identity shift to make if we want to continue growing and scaling our business. And we'll talk about the cost of not doing that. But if we want to do that, awareness is the

Finding The Real Bottleneck

SPEAKER_00 16:10

first step. What got us here won't get us there. The skills that built our business won't grow and scale our business. We have to raise our lid, we have to um evolve. And we want to have awareness of that as a first step, and then we're gonna work on what that actually looks like. And then we can start to see a clear path forward, right? To a better future, a better us, a better business, right? It says here on the slide, and I've felt this, and I'm sure you've felt this at times. Um, have you ever thought, man, it's gonna be awesome to own a business? And then there's a lot of days you felt like the business owned you. Yeah, I have too. And that is not the goal. My hallucination is that's not your goal either. That you would like to own a business that serves you and serves others, not one that owns you. And so that's why this stuff matters. And then, of course, we'll talk about what might be your next step, right? One thing I can tell you for sure is that scaling a business is a team sport, period. Scaling a business is a team sport, period. It's not a one-person sport. And so we'll get to decide at the end there, and you can decide do you want or need someone like me on your team to support your growth? A business coach, a business consultant. And we'll have time to talk about that. But before we do that, we're gonna start to unpack these uh friction points that that can get us all stuck and that we all desire to get unstuck from. So here's what they are. We talked about people, systems, and key drivers, right? Sometimes people can be leading people, can be painful at times, and we'll talk about how sometimes that's more our fault than theirs. Like the problem of uh not having enough systems and operating in chaos all the time as a business owner, and then this perspective of finding key things, priorities in our business, rather than just staying busy. So, this is gonna be the three predictable friction points that we're gonna unpack. And we're gonna start with people, right? Now, have you ever heard someone say, you know, business is easy, people are hard. Or have you ever felt something like that? Like, man, my my widget or my service, my business is actually easy. It's simple, but people are hard and people are complicated. I I've certainly felt that way before. And it's not completely untrue, by the way. People can be hard. I already said I'm the hardest person I've ever led, but there's been others. And um,

Overfunctioning Creates Underfunctioning Teams

SPEAKER_00 18:40

and so they can be. But let's let's first remember before we talk about people challenges or our DNA on people challenges, let's first remember that they're the purpose as well, right? They're also the key to scale. They're the key to growth and the key to scaling your business is people, right? We just said scaling is not an individual sport, it's a team sport, which means we need people. And we want to be a good steward of the people in our businesses that we lead and that we support in some way. And and so we want to approach this challenge, this people challenge, which is real, um, from that perspective. Because ultimately, most of the people challenges we end up dealing with are usually us challenges. They're you challenges and they're me challenges. And so when when the leader gets better, everyone wins, right? Craig Rochelle says it better. Everyone wins when the leader gets better. This is our opportunity, and we get to own this park. So let's unpack this a little bit. And it looks a little bit like this. We're gonna spend a few minutes on this slide, we're gonna unpack each one of these. But the first thing that's actually happening when we think we're having people problems, one of them can be that we're actually over-functioning as the leader. Sounds weird, right? Let's let's talk a little bit about that. Sometimes we tend to rescue or jump in. Um, and that would be what I'm describing as over-functioning. When there's people in our world on our team, and we jump in or we do part of their work for them, or we we rescue them. We usually do it because it's faster, or at least we think it is, because you know, we know how to do it faster and it's just quicker that way. Or we do it because we think we're gonna do it more accurately. Maybe, maybe, or we mask rescuing our people as just helping them, like taking work off their plate and easing their burden, right? We we we we mask it with that heart, but it creates the same challenge when it comes to friction in our business. And that is this. And I want you to write this down. If you're taking notes, write this down. I'm gonna send you these slides. If you'd like at the end of the presentation, uh you can you can ask for the slides. Uh, but I hope you would take notes. And this is one I want you to write down. Overfunctioning leaders create underfunctioning teams. Overfunctioning leaders create under-functioning teams. And you can't scale and grow your business substantially with an under-functioning team. Let me give you an example. Let's say I wanted to teach my kid how to ride a bike for the first time. I did this actually with two kids. They're teenagers now, and good news, they know how to ride bikes, although they don't seem to do it very often. But let's say I was gonna teach my kid how to ride a bike, and after about three or four seconds, I realized like they're just not gonna get it. Like, get off the bike and let me let me get on and ride the bike and show you. Except for, I'm not just gonna show you, I'm just gonna ride the bike forever and do it for you. I'm gonna rescue you, right? I don't want you to skin up your knee. I don't want you to fall. I don't want you to have to go through the anguish of not being good at something for a minute. I'm gonna ride the bike forever. Right? Sounds stupid, sounds funny, but But that's how we operate in business sometimes. We we say, hey, let me just do it for you. I'll do it. It'll be faster, right? Like, ah, I see you're struggling with that. Let me help you. These are things we do as leaders when we overfunction. And ultimately, it can lead us to creating underfunctioning teams, even with the best of intentions. And we can't scale underfunctioning teams. So we have to watch for that in ourselves. The other challenge is sometimes we end up rewarding our highest performers with more work. We're like, oh my gosh, this gal is amazing, can get anything done. I trust that they can get it done. So instead of distributing this work appropriately, I'm going to give it to this person that I can just I know can get it done and I trust it'll be done, right? Have you ever heard this? Like the challenge of being a top performer is you get rewarded with more work. Well, we want to be careful not to do that too much in our businesses, because that can be the easy button for us. Here's the problem it can mask other underlying issues. Might be a lack of system in your business that you need. And we're going to talk about that. It could be that you should be giving it to, you know, employee X, but you're giving it to high performer Y because employee X is an underperformer and you're not dealing with it. Or they don't have clarity or they don't have the skill yet. So sometimes when we overload our best performers, we create burnout for them. They don't always want to be rewarded by being a high performer with more work. Right. And so we want to make sure we're not we're not missing an underlying issue by doing that for our top people. So here's an action item on this first one. Remember, overfunctioning leaders create underfunctioning teams. I hope you wrote that down. The action item is this identify one task that you normally rescue someone with, or you normally rescue in your business, or you have rescued in the past. Identify something that you've rescued, and then simply don't do that. Sounds easy, right? Of course it's not. But be aware and then don't rescue. Let your team, let that individual, let that person in the role that you've brought into your world to handle that, handle it. Let them skin up their knee learning how to ride the bike if they need to. It's actually okay. Right? Okay, let's jump to number two here, and that is hiring too fast or too

Hiring Timing And Role Success

SPEAKER_00 24:20

slow or too late, right? And the reality of this one is if you're not clear on who you're hiring, then no matter who you hire is likely to be the wrong fit, right? So we're gonna talk about that in a minute. But sometimes we hire too quickly. And again, this is us saying, are these people problems? Like this person's not really doing a great job in the role. Um, it's probably because you hired the wrong person, and it might be because you hired them too quickly. Usually we do this because we're in pain, like we're overwhelmed. It's like, oh my gosh, I gotta have some help. I can't work this many hours anymore, right? Like things are falling through the cracks. So I see someone over here that has a good strong heartbeat, and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's the perfect person for this help that I need. And because they have a strong heartbeat, I hire them too quickly and they're not the right fit. Anybody ever done that besides me? Yeah, more than once. We don't want to do that. Sometimes we uh hire too fast because we're overconfident or we just move fast, right? We we we're moving a little too quickly. That can be a good thing. It can also be a double-edged sword. We're we're overconfident in our ability to hire, we're overconfident in that, hey, anyone with a heartbeat can do this job. We get overconfident, we hire too fast, and we end up with the wrong fit. The challenge with that is a lot of us who've who've done this too quickly are also then really slow to solve that problem. Right? We think of like hiring slow, fire fast. You've heard that. Okay, maybe it's a little aggressive, but but but the concept is is is good, right? Hire slow, fire fast. But then we we hire fast and we fire slow, a lot of us, because we love people and we want to fix and we don't want to admit our mistake, all the things, right? So we want to be careful not to go too fast. Uh we also want to be careful not to go too late. This is like threading the needle, right? So it's hard. If we go too late, like we hire too late, then we're actually the bottleneck of our growth. We're still doing the job, or someone else who doesn't have the bandwidth to do it well or isn't the right fit is doing that job. And so we've now become the bottleneck by waiting too long, right? And we could dive into that for another hour of how we can prevent that. But we don't want to be late if we want to continue to grow and scale and have the right people in our world. The other uh challenge that that exists here oftentimes is who do we actually hire next? Who's the next right hire? And sometimes we don't have clarity on that. I was talking to um a prospective client the other day, and I've had this conversation with many of my clients over the years um about like, do I hire this role next or that role next? Right? You guys have have had to decide that at times. I have as well. Oftentimes it ends up being something like another salesperson or an administrative role, either or, which one's the right one? And I was having this conversation and it was like, I think we need to hire another salesperson. It's gonna cost us $100,000 a year to hire this person. I said, okay, well, how many more sales are you looking to achieve? Well, just a few more, not very many percentage-wise. Okay. How much administrative tasks are your current is your current team handling each person? Well, turns out about 30 to 40 percent of people who are not administrative people are doing 30 to 40 percent of their time is administrative work. Well, do you have any administrative focused people on your team? No. Okay. Well, you can either hire a $100,000 salesperson when sales isn't really your issue, or you can hire a $60,000 administrative person that gets everyone 30 to 40% of their time back, probably does all those administrative tasks better because that's their behavioral style and that's what they're trained to do, and make more money, right? Because those those other salespeople getting 30, 40 percent of their time back are gonna be able to close the gap on your sales goals rather than another sales hire, right? So we want to know who's next. And if we're not sure, we can ask for help. People have gone before us, right? And so please do that. So here's an action item on this second one, and that is before you make your next hire, define success in that role. Not just the responsibilities, not just the tasks that they will be performing, but clear outcomes that would have someone in that role being successful. Define those

Clarity Before Accountability

SPEAKER_00 28:50

before you hire, right? So that you have a better chance of making the right hire at the right time and scaling your business. Okay, this third one, ooh, big one. Lack of clarity, not capability. Oftentimes we think of people problems, we think we're dealing with low performance or performance issues. And many, many, many times it's actually lack of clarity. Here's the bad news, folks. I hate to hate to deliver it. No one can read your mind. I know. Sucks, right? Life would be so much easier and faster and better if people could just read my mind, know exactly what I'm expecting, what I want, when I want it, how I want it done, and then and do that, right? Wouldn't that be nice? Well, it's not real. We know that. And so um you have to communicate your expectations clearly. And oftentimes we've not done that, or we've not done that enough. We said it one time and we think everyone should know it forever. Well, you know, I've been married to for 20 years to Casey almost. I didn't tell her I loved her one time on our wedding day, and I'll let her know if anything changes. I got to tell her a lot and over and over, and we have to do that too as leaders. Sometimes we're not actually sure ourselves, if we're being honest. We're not sure exactly what we want, how we want it, when we want it, and and therefore we haven't communicated it well, if at all. And so if you're lacking clarity for yourself, that's gonna proceed creating clarity for someone else. You got to take the time to do that. And you might need to ask for help. You might need to ask a trusted person in your business, a peer in the same business that you network with, um, a coach or a consultant that can help you sort this out. But you have to provide people clarity. If you think you're dealing with performance issues, you might be dealing with clarity issues. And you owe it to those people to clarify for them so that they have the best chances of success. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your business. People tend to grow into the conversations we have around them. So when we give them clarity, the chances for their success go up dramatically. And if we've given them great clarity and they're still not able to perform at the level required, now we have clarity on making a different decision about that role for them. Does that make sense? Otherwise, we're just we have this subjective nature of like, I don't think they're doing a good job, but I'm not sure why, and I don't know how to solve it. Well, start with clarity, okay? All right. So there's another couple common gaps in this idea of people friction or people challenges in our businesses. And that is, um, sorry, I need to get you to the next slide. There it is. Accountability and retention. Right? These are challenges that sometimes we face as well. And we're gonna talk about both of these, but here's the reality. Another common challenge with accountability is if we don't have clarity or we haven't communicated clarity, just like we talked about, then accountability without clarity feels like micromanagement. Write that one down too. Accountability without clarity feels like micromanagement. Now, raise your hand if you love being micromanaged. Keep your hand up if you think other people love being micromanaged. Yeah, me neither. I can't actually see you guys because it's in webinar format, but I'm gonna assume no one raised their hand. And if you did, don't tell me about it. Nobody likes to be micromanaged. So if you're trying to provide accountability, but you're doing that without having first given clarity of what you expect and want, that's gonna feel like micromanagement. And so we want to avoid that by providing clarity. The other thing that might be worse is avoiding accountability, is you not offering or giving any accountability to those that you lead. It's I think it's definitely worse, although micromanagement's pretty bad in and of itself. But uh, when you're avoiding holding someone accountable, what it demonstrates is that you don't care about them. What it demonstrates is you don't care about them. You care more about whatever discomfort you may have in holding them accountable than you care about them, which means you don't care about them. Right? Now think about this for a second before you're like, whoa, this guy's this guy's going off the rails here. Hard conversations, we'll call them important conversations, are paramount to great relationships. When you have, when you're willing to have important conversations, even if they're uncomfortable at times, they're not always, but sometimes they are. If you're willing to have important conversations with people, that demonstrates that you love them, that you care deeply about them. Think about the deepest relationships you have in your life. They got that way because both of you were willing to have important conversations along the way to deepen and nurture the relationship. So accountability done well is uh is is loving. It really is. You're you're supporting someone's success. You're you're holding them accountable to their potential. You're addressing issues that would threaten that. That's love, right? So we cannot avoid accountability. And you can't use any excuse whether it's you're too busy or I can't afford to have conflict with this person because they might quit. There's no excuse that's worth avoiding accountability because any fire that may need addressing just will

Retention And Founder Bottlenecks

SPEAKER_00 34:20

get bigger with avoidance. And ultimately it's showing that you don't care about that person. So don't do that. You need help with that, let me know. It's not always easy. The second one here is retention. Again, we're talking about people problems that tend to be kind of us problems. And the reality is that retention is almost never a compensation problem. Not, it's not, it's it's not never, but it's close to never. Here's why I know that's true. Everyone on this call, if your best person on your team, the like the highest performer, came to you and said, I love working here. I love everything about this job, everything's amazing, except for I got the exact same opportunity elsewhere for uh 10% more compensation. You would raise their compensation today by 10% if at all possible to keep them, right? But the reality is that retention challenges are something that are usually caused by something much deeper, right? People leave confusion. People leave lack of leadership. If they don't see you growing or the company growing, and they're high performers, especially, they start looking elsewhere. They wonder if they're in the right place, they leave confusion. And so you it's your job to create clarity, right? And and your top performers are even more so this way. Strong people want leadership, they thrive with great leadership, but they don't want rescued. Remember, we talked about rescuing people? They don't want their toes stepped on, they don't want you to do their job for them. It doesn't mean they don't want your help, but they want your leadership, not your rescuing. Right? And that's actually your job. Your job is to lead them well, and your job is to uh evolve into the leader that they deserve, right? Everyone wins when the leader gets better. Okay, so these are a couple more things that we want to watch out for. So I love this quote if you're still the best producer, fixer, and decision maker in the company, you are the system and the main bottleneck in your business. And the main bottleneck for growth, for scale. And that might be the system working exactly as you've designed it. The trouble is that system can't grow and scale. So if you've ever felt like or said, Am I the only one around here who can solve problems? Does every single thing that needs to get solved have to roll up to me? Does anyone else around here know how to fix these things or solve these problems? If you've ever said or felt that way, and I know I have, as recently as this morning, then we know that there's still some growing left to do, right? And and and that's the evolution that we want to go through by using some of these tactics. So here's the here's the challenge, if that's the case, to whatever degree, is that you can't scale beyond your personal bandwidth. You already work really hard, you're already excellent at what you do, and it means that you can still get stuck. You still only have 24 hours in the day. As amazing as you are, you're only one person. And and true growth requires, no, true growth demands a team of people, right? And so, in order to attract and lead and retain a great team, we have to become a better leader and we have to think about these things that we're party to, that we have DNA in. So, in essence, any people problems, and we're gonna we're gonna go on to the next one here in a minute. Any people problems that we're experiencing in our business, they are likely uh us problems, or in part they're us problems. And even if they're actually a challenge with an individual, we hired them or we're allowing them to stay. So they roll up to us either way, right? And so um, beyond the the common and predictable friction point of people, the second one, which we're gonna go to next, is uh systems related. And or or I'd call it lack of systems related. And when we don't have enough systems in our business, we experience a lot of chaos. We experience a lot of chaos. And our job as business owners, in part, is to mitigate or eliminate as much chaos as possible so we can focus on what we're there to do. I love this picture,

Chaos Signals A Systems Problem

SPEAKER_00 38:40

by the way. This this picture on your slide. Um, this is this is an AI-generated picture. I'm sure you've already guessed that, but AI doesn't always get the pictures right. This one, I think it nailed, right? Here's this business owner, this entrepreneur, and he's spraying this fire that we can't see with this massive fire burning behind him, and there's probably another one on the other side, too, right? So this is chaos. It's like these one fire pops up, I start putting it out. This one starts back, I start putting that out one, that one starts again, and he's got this little tiny water hose that he's trying to put these fires out with, right? Love this picture because I've felt this, and I know you've felt this exact scenario. Maybe it's today, maybe it was yesterday, but we've definitely felt this. And when it comes to solving this level of chaos, I got a uh an aha for you. This guy getting a bigger hose is not the solution. Systems and leveraging systems is the solution. And that's what we're going to talk about next, because that's our next big opportunity. It's also the next key friction point that we experience. Okay, so here are some signs that we don't have enough systems, and we'll call it uh we're operating inside the machine, this chaos machine. We're operating inside of it instead of mitigating it or eliminating it with systems. The first one is we are um demonstrating what we call whack-a-mole leadership. Some of you will remember this arcade game where it's called whack-a-mole, and these like gophers or or or whatever they are, prairie dogs, they they pop up and we have this mallet, and we're like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you never know which one's gonna pop up next, and they start going faster, and you try to score on the game, right? Well, sometimes we're leading like that. We're like the guy in the last picture. This fire, that fire. Oh, back to that fire. Not enough water, period, right? And the the challenge with that is it's exhausting and it distracts us from the growth and the scale that we desire, right? We we we are busy, quote unquote. My my least favorite four-letter word, busy is a dirty word in my world, right? But that's the excuse we use. And so we're reacting, we're just constantly in reaction mode, which keeps us from being intentional and strategic. And so one of the action items I would give you around this one, this whack-a-mole leadership, is I want you to track one day or a week if you're really bold. And I want you to go back and look, you know, at the end of the week or the end of the day and say what percentage of my time was spent intentionally. Meaning, if I took a screenshot of my calendar before the day happened and I evaluate at the end, how well did I follow my calendar? How many things did I do today that were intentionally planned versus what percentage of my time was spent in reaction mode? I took that off my calendar because I was gonna do it, but then this fire started. This this mole popped up that I had to whack. And start to get an idea of how much you're operating in intentional mode versus um versus reactive mode, because it'll be a sign that you're operating inside of chaos and need some more systems. The second one, tribal knowledge, we we I used to call it institutional knowledge, is when really important information lives in someone's head, probably yours or or probably a few people that have been there for a really long time. They have this institutional knowledge because of their time and experience. The problem is that you can't repeat that, you can't scale that. It's hard to transfer it to other people, especially in a short period of time. And so we need to create systems with that knowledge. Let me give you an example. Was about a week ago, maybe two, um, one of the folks in one of the businesses that I that I help operate came and said, Hey, had a question about whether the company would be willing to sponsor this event that they wanted to participate in in the community. And we'll call this event socially energized for the sake of this webinar. One of those events, right? And I said, Hey, thanks for asking. Great question. Um, because I'm not the founder of this company, I was like, let me ask a couple questions, give it some thought, and I'll circle back with you. Awesome, great. Did that, gave it some thought, asked the executive leadership team in our next meeting about it. Turns out there was some really clear uh beliefs and really clear processes for this type of ask and this type of situation, which was awesome. Problem was it lived in two or three people's heads. And so I didn't know about it as a leader in the company. This person didn't know about it, nor could they have. And so uh it just took longer than it should have. But here's what we did, and here's what I encourage you to do. We said, hey, this is a problem from a system standpoint, because nobody knows this except for you two. So we took that belief, we took it out of their brains, and we created a brand standards policy, or at least the first draft of a brand standards policy. Someone else is going to ask about sponsoring an event that may or may not be socially energized, and we want to know how to respond. The company needs a repeatable system in order to handle something like that. Just one small example. Go from tribal knowledge to system, right? Okay, this third one is um this addiction to firefighting. Remember the guy with the hose? We get sometimes addicted to putting out fires and the urgency it brings, and frankly, Because it feels good to be needed. Feels good to be needed. Can we all just acknowledge that that's true? Here's to you. Feels good to be needed. The problem is we don't want to be needy. We don't want to be needy. Right? We we want to be careful that this doesn't bleed over into actually creating chaos in our business. Or not mitigating the chaos to the degree we're capable of because we're needed. Feeds our ego, right? And actually, I've seen a number of times uh business owners and entrepreneurs self-sabotage their success subconsciously, right? Not on purpose. I hope not. Uh, because they feed off the chaos. They they need a problem to solve. They they they they they need to be needed, they they get needy, right? I have a an old business partner that was like this. Um, his name is Corey, and Corey and I are like brothers. So he would be laughing and nodding his head if he was on this webinar. He may be on this webinar. Hey, Corey, hope you're out there. But Corey had this unstated uh, we were business partners. He had this unstated motto. If it ain't broke, fix it till it is. That was his motto. I used to tease him incessantly. Remember, we're like brothers. Like every week was like, new priority, new priority, new priority. I was like, well, what about these other priorities that we've been working on? Doesn't matter, new priority. And and funny enough, right? Like, he would create organizational whiplash. And and he would do it most often when things were going really well. There weren't there weren't the fires burning that he was used to, right? Now, to be fair to Corey, like the guy's a genius in a lot of ways. He's one of the strongest visionaries I've ever worked with. And and a lot of his ideas were amazing and excellent. But half of my life as his business partner was spent protecting the company from him in those ways, right? Because he was subconsciously creating chaos because he felt more comfortable in chaos than he did in calm. And we have to watch for that as leaders of our companies, right? This fourth kind of test we can give if we're operating inside the machine or we're or we're

Tribal Knowledge And Firefighting Addiction

SPEAKER_00 46:10

moving towards having more systems is I'll call it the the Kiyosaki test. Some of you are familiar with Robert Kiyosaki. He's famous for writing the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and others. Um, but his loose definition of a business in his book is something that the owner or founder can leave for approximately six months and not be involved in the business at all. And when they came back, the business would be as good or better. It would be functioning as good or better than when they left. That's his loose definition, or my loose interpretation of his definition of a business. And so if you don't have that yet, my hallucination is you might want something like that someday and you want to move in that direction. A couple things that you're gonna you're gonna need in addition to systems in order to do that. Remember, out of your head and repeatable so someone else can do it while you're gone, as an example. Um, you're gonna have to to give yourself an ego check. Remember, I I told you I've dealt with this over my career. Is if I'm gone for six months, like then do they even need me? Am I needed anymore? Right? Like, as I as I create systems and delegate things to others that can now use these systems and and I'm doing less of the things like, am I getting lazy? Am I getting soft? Right? We ask these questions internally. And this is kind of this emotional journey that we go through as we actually start to experience some of the leverage that we're working so hard to get that most people don't talk about. You don't hear this conversation much among entrepreneurs because it seems like, Chase, you're crazy, dude. I would love it if I had everyone else doing everything and I had very few things to do. I would love that. And the answer is yes, you would. Yes, you will. But you also go through this internal process of like, man, do I still have the edge I used to have? Seems like I do I even need, like, they don't need me anymore. It feels different, right? And um, you know, my my business partner and my best friend and and the founder of of Sherpa Consulting Group, Reed Moore, he said once in a class, he said, leverage isn't lazy, leverage is focus. Because trust me, there will still be things for you to do. And we're gonna talk about that as we move into kind of the the key drivers. So these are signs that maybe you're operating inside the machine. And if you are experiencing some of those things, then you may have what we see here on the left, which is kind of this founder dependent. Every decision runs through you, you become the bottleneck of your business. There's a model for this, actually. It's called the genius with a thousand helpers. And it's not one I recommend if you're looking to grow and scale. I have a client that initially, uh, when we started working together, had 21 direct reports. 21 people that directly reported to him. That's challenging for lots of reasons. That's a whole nother webinar, but but that's a sign that you're missing lots of systems, right? In part. And the the challenge with that is what we really want is on the right hand side there in the picture, systems driven. It's distributed to the right people, it's scalable. There's a sense of and a reality of teamwork that's scalable. That's something you can really grow and lead. The problem is you can't fix the machine while you're inside of it. It's hard to fix the machine when you're inside of it and you're you're already fixing all the things on a daily basis. So, what it requires of us is an actual identity shift. It requires us to go from what we'll call operator to architect or operator to CEO, right? And those are just placeholder words. But instead of I'm in the in the machine doing all the things, I'm architecting the um the strategy and the future in the direction. I'm being the CEO and overseeing all the things. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that, but I have an action item for you here. If you're feeling like some of this is hitting home, I feel like I'm in this chaotic machine. Um, here's what I'd ask you to do. Look at your calendar, and and today's only Tuesday, so you could do it this week, maybe next week. Block two hours, this week or next week, two hours for thinking time. And during those two hours, don't do anything operationally, don't perform any tasks, eliminate all distractions, don't look at your email, put on your do not disturb, don't take any calls, two hours, and just think about your business in the future, the strategic direction that you want to go. And I hate to burst the bubble. If you don't have habit around this, it is exceptionally hard. Because, in part, you and me, we're addicted to doing the things. Two hours to think feels like an improper use of time. Feels like us being lazy, feels unproductive, right? And if you do this, if you take on this challenge, you'll you'll you'll see what I'm experiencing, or you've done it and you know what I'm talking about. Two hours of thinking time to think strategically about the business. If you're the owner, founder, or leader, or entrepreneur, that actually is your job. That's a big part of your job. And we're not doing it often enough because we're addicted to this chaos. We don't have enough systems that help mitigate, maybe eliminate, but at least mitigate a lot of the chaos that we deal with. Right? So that's the action item. Block two hours just for thinking time and obey that time block instead of just putting it on your calendar. So here's uh here's a sharp one. If everything runs through you, you don't have a business, you have a job with overhead. Ouch. Ouch. Now, my hallucination is that's not what you intended to have when you started your business or when you took over leading your business. You didn't intend just to have a job with overhead. But that can be the case. Now, if that stung a little bit, and it did for me, it does for me, is here's some even worse news. Bare bad news today. You cannot outwork this ceiling. You cannot outwork this feeling of stuck, this legitimate stuck in this case. Which sucks again. Sorry, mom. It sucks because you're a hard worker, you're one of the best hard workers that exist. You wouldn't be on this call if you weren't.

Operator To Architect Thinking Time

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Hard work is table stakes for the position you've gotten yourself into. But you can't outwork this one. It's why an actual identity change, a transformation change is required because effort alone just won't do it. Trust me on that one. And you can almost kill yourself trying, but it won't work anymore any better. Okay, so let's go on to the third one, the third predictable friction point in business at different levels. Could be a million bucks, could be somewhere above or below that, but it's predictable. And that is um this focus on key drivers, or what I'll call lack of focus on key drivers. And before we go, I see there's some stuff in the chat. If we have time at the end, we're gonna get to that. My right-hand man, Nathan, is on it. I'm sure I don't I can't look at the chat and do all these things at once. It turns out, like I said, I'm I'm not very good at a few things, but I'm I'm I'm good at some others. So thank you for that. Keep putting those in there. Um, but lack of focus on key drivers is a major issue for growth and scale. For incredibly talented people like you. One of our biggest issues. And and there's a one of the biggest myths in business and in life is that everything matters equally. It doesn't. That's a myth. But sometimes we operate like everything matters equally. This concept is unpacked in another great book I recommend, business book. It's called The One Thing. The One Thing. And one is spelled out uh O-N-E. Sorry, easy for me to spell. The one thing. It's written by Gary Keller. It's a great business book. If you haven't read it, highly recommend. If you have read it, highly recommend you read it again. But it unpacks this myth that everything matters equally, and he does it brilliantly. Um, and so I'm gonna give you a couple of examples and what it looks like to actually focus on key drivers to grow and scale your business. But before we do that, this uh this works in life too, just to kind of put a pin on this point before we unpack it. I learned this in my marriage. So July 1st will mark 20 years of marriage to my wonderful, beautiful wife, Casey, uh, who's just amazing. And I'm a bit of a slow learner, but over 20 years I've learned that Casey's love language is quality time. Right? And so, of all the things that I can do to show Casey how much I love her, um, I could I could tell her I love her five times a day. I could give her a kiss when we wake up in the morning and before we go to bed at night. I could write her a handwritten note or send her a text. I could use lots of words of affirmation. I could buy her gifts, flowers or something else. She's not really a flower person. Um, I could do all those things. I could come home and cook dinner or get help get the kids off the school in the morning. I could do all those things, but if we miss date night, if we miss date night quality time, just didn't didn't nail it that week. I could do all those things combined. And if if I don't prioritize date night, it just doesn't go as well as it could. Now, I could prioritize date night, have an amazing quality connection with Casey on Wednesday nights. That's when we do our date night, and not do any of those other things. None of them. Crush date night. Life is beautiful, marriage is beautiful. That happens to be a key driver in our relationship. Quality time for Casey. We call it date night. And we've uh protected date night militantly over the years. Now we've not gotten it perfect. We had little kids at once, too. We had to move it to a different night for soccer practice or whatever it was, couldn't find a babysitter, all the things. But but we were gonna give maximum effort in our marriage to protecting that. Thank you, mom and dad, for a great example around that, but it made all the difference because it's a key driver. So this stuff works in life as in business. So let's unpack a couple more examples, right? So, what I want to talk about here is this idea of strategic altitude. And stick with me for a second. Strategic altitude means we we need to get to a strategic spot or altitude in order to see our business differently, in order to develop and grow it differently. So think 30,000 feet instead of down in the weeds, right? Now, a few weeks back, I went on an awesome excursion with some colleagues of mine up in Alaska. So some of our offices exist up in Alaska. We were up there for some leadership training, but we went out for a day of adventure and we were gonna take these UTVs, right? Like four-wheelers and side by sides, we were gonna drive them 20 miles up to this glacier, and it was gonna be epic. The day was epic, the weather was epic. There's still snow on the ground, but it's starting to melt off. And we we had to like cross snow, sand, gravel. We had to cross a river a couple of times in order to make it this 20 miles to get up to this glacier. And after a few miles, we got stuck. Now, not stuck like we couldn't move, um, and we weren't lost. We knew exactly where we were, but we were stuck because we were down on ground level and we couldn't find a safe spot to cross the river. Now, some of the ice was melting, it was a bit dangerous. There's lots of spots we could definitely not cross in, but there's a few we could, or at least we thought, and we couldn't find them. We're down on ground level. There's brush and trees and all sorts of stuff, and so we were kind of stuck. Luckily for us, one of our buddies, Joseph, had flown his bush plane in that day and landed on the sandbar right next to where we were all parked. Say, hey, what seems to be the problem, fellas? And we said, Well, we we can't find a safe place to cross the river. So I think we're gonna have to just hang out here for a few hours, have fun, or turn back. And he's like, No, no, no. Blake, come with me. We'll fly up, we'll we'll we'll take off again, we'll fly up and down the river a couple times, and at least let's see if there's a safe place to cross. So they did. They went up a couple times, landed back on the sandbar. Blake jumps out, he's like, All right, everybody, follow me. We saw it from the air. We know exactly where we can cross and go the rest of the way to the glacier, and that's exactly what we did. We couldn't see it because we were down in the weeds. Joseph and Blake could see it from the plain because they were at 30,000 feet. Fun analogy, but very accurate analogy for our businesses, right? And so when we don't get this right, here's what we tend to do. We confuse activity with progress because we're down in the weeds. We're doing lots of things, we're working really hard. They seem to be going well, and yet we're not having the growth that we desire, right? So we're confusing activity with actual progress, and we chase too many priorities. Top priority, top priority, top priority. Remember, Corey? No, it's not. When when everything's a priority, nothing's a priority, and we can't move the needle. This is what happens when we're down in the weeds and we don't have strategic altitude. And then we hit these predictable revenue plateaus or or profit plateaus. And by the way, they're predictable because they're not market-driven, usually. They're not a problem with your product or service, they're not a problem with whatever's happening in the market. They're a ceiling that you're hitting as a leader, right? Which is what we're talking about today, because we're down in the weeds, we're in the machine, we're operating in chaos. We don't have the strategic altitude we need, right? When we do this well, here's what we do. This is the pattern, this is the model I want you to, I want to encourage you to follow. You identify key drivers in your business, three to five metrics. And I would argue oftentimes it's less than that. It's one or two, but definitely no more than five. Key metrics, key measures, key levers that you can pull that actually move your business forward. You identify those, and then you protect those with your life. I know so dramatic, but you protect those ruthlessly with your time, your energy, and all the things that go with it. And in order to do that, you've got to be able to delegate everything else that's not a priority, that is um not a key driver. Because there's those things are still uh important to your business, they're just not as important, right? Execution of the vision is important, it's just not the job of the visionary, it's the team's job. Execution is the team's job. Leader's job, focus on key drivers, right? So I'm gonna give you a quick example of how I experienced this in my journey. So um, let's see, about 12 years ago, I took over as the CEO of a local company. It was a real estate brokerage, and this company was failing at the time. It was losing money, it was going backwards, and frankly, it was at risk of not being renewed by the franchise or. So this is a franchise company, and it had been there for 14 years, and they were literally maybe not going to renew the franchise because it was doing so poorly. And so they they brought me in to become the CEO and turn it around, right? And I knew I knew the state of affairs. One thing I love about franchise models, among other things, is they have a lot of data and information that you can glean from. Sometimes it's too much, right? But they at least have it available from all the franchises across the country. And what I identified with the help of some really great leaders in the company, smarter than me, and great uh coaches and guides, was that there were two key drivers that that had a very high correlation to success of one of these brokerages, right? And for us at the time, remember real estate brokerage, they were it was agent count, so total number of agents in the company, and what we called gross recruiting, which was the total number of agents we recruited to the company, which impacted total agent count, right? And the correlation of these two drivers to a profitable and successful business was so high that almost all the other stuff didn't matter. Now,

Key Drivers And Strategic Altitude

SPEAKER_00 1:02:10

it didn't matter as much. It wasn't a key driver. And so I decided, again, with the guidance and help of other leaders and guides in the company, that I was gonna ruthlessly protect doing those two things at an exceptional level, growing our agent count through gross recruiting. And I did that. And the way that I was able to do that is actually made a key change on my team. So I replaced and hired um kind of an operator or operations person, like an office manager, if you will, call it whatever you want. Her name was Julie, and she was amazing. And I remember saying to Julie very clearly, I was like, you run the business, I grow the business with these two key drivers. You run the business, you execute, I grow, right? We're gonna work on this together. And we did with a bunch of other people on our team. We grew this company from 130 agents to 350 in just several years. Uh, top two offices in the Northwest region, again, from maybe not getting renewed by the franchise or we went to a billion dollars in total sales on an annual basis and made a million bucks in total profit in a single year. Right? Now, I don't want to take the credit for that. However, unknowingly at the time, I followed this model, identified key drivers, focused on them relentlessly, delegated everything else. If you know anything about running a real estate brokerage, operating it and managing real estate agents as independent contractors and all the things that come with it is a massive job in and of itself, which most people get distracted with. That was Julie's job. She did it very well. My job, your job, focus on key drivers that allowed us to grow and scale. What happened? Billion dollars in sales, million dollars in profit. It was awesome, right? So, this is what I want you to remember identify key drivers, protect them, delegate the rest. Doesn't all happen overnight, but it is the process that we want to follow. Okay, so I kind of gave you a little story there as an example. I'm gonna give you one more, but um, the idea is operators manage tasks and CEOs protect drivers. We covered that. So here's the question for you, those of you on the call. Do you know what your two to three key drivers are? Do you know what they are? And how do you know? Do you have data to back it up? Is it a guess? Are you a hundred percent sure that these key drivers are directly correlated to the success and growth of your business? Don't guess. Be sure. Validate it with data. Ask for someone else's opinion that you trust. Ask for someone else to say, hey, I think these are them. What do you see? Right? Where's the data that shows that? Don't use your intuition and gut here. We want to make sure because heaven forbid we give all this focus to things that are not the key drivers. That's problematic, right? So I told you that previous story about how this process helped me. I got the opportunity to test it again. Maybe it was blind luck, right? Does this actually work or was it just blind luck? It was a circumstance of timing or whatever else. And by the way, I believe there's plenty of luck involved in my success and everyone's to a degree, but not pure luck, right? And so uh because of the success we'd had in this location, the franchise asked me, or the franchise or asked me if I would consider launching a new franchise in another location from the ground up. Didn't exist, the brand wasn't even in that market, and this opportunity was two hours away from where I lived. Now, I was still owning and operating the existing location. I had young kids, I wasn't about to move at that time in my life, two hours away. Away. But I said yes, like I often do to opportunity. I said yes. And so my job as the founder was to bring the capital and bring the vision. And because I lived two hours away, I had to go and hire an operator, which I did. And because I lived two hours away, I couldn't get stuck in the weeds. I just couldn't. I couldn't do all the things that I knew how to do. Right. I I my plate was plenty full and I was two hours away. So I had this strategic um altitude. Sorry, strategic altitude. And I was able to keep this person that I hired highly laser focused on the key drivers that I knew would work because I'd done it in my own business. This is the same business. And I couldn't get sucked down into the weeds. And by the way, there's plenty of weeds to get sucked down into. It was a challenge for her, just like it was for me. And it's hard. Even that conversation's hard. Well, you're two hours away and you don't know what we're experiencing. Yeah, I kind of do, but but we got to stay focused on these things, anyways, because we know that they will bring us success as hard as it may be. And and we took that business from non-existent in the market to number one in the market in less than five years because of the same process. Identified the key drivers. We knew that they were the right ones. We focused on them relentlessly, even though it's hard, even though there's lots of other things to do, and delegated the rest. Right? So that's what I want to encourage you to do as well. Instead of just being busy and working hard, I want to make sure you're focused on key drivers. If you really want to grow and really want to scale, um, that's the way to do it. If you don't, you will be stuck in the weeds. You will be stuck at the ground level, unable to cross the river like we were perpetually. And I know that's not what you want. Okay, so in order to do all these things and deal with these three key friction points, we have to shift our identity. We talked about that already, right? It's who we have to become. And I love this picture as well because it's like this metamorphosis process, right? Of the caterpillar morphing or or or changing into a butterfly. And it's kind of like partially through the process in this picture. Good job, AI. I love it. I couldn't, I couldn't have thought of a better picture, right? And so I want to remind you of the John Maxwell quote that we kind of started with. The remember the law of the lid. That's not the quote. The quote is your business will only grow to the extent that you do. And it's it's based on the law of the lid. You're the lid on your business. So in order to raise our lid, we have to transform. We have to go through metamorphosis. And it's not easy. It's worth it, not easy. Because when this starts to happen for you, you'll realize that success is no longer what you do. It's no longer what you do. It's what what you've done has gotten you to this point. But success becomes no longer about what you do, it becomes um what works without you. Success becomes what gets done when you're not there, what gets done without you. And that is a metamorphosis. That's moving from operator to architect, operator to CEO. And if you desire true growth and scale, this will be important. Right? So there's kind of four stages of this metamorphosis that we're going to cover. Right now, stage one is you're a high performer. You've gone through this stage already, or you're in this stage right now. You're the best at the work. The business runs because of you. It does not run without you. This is stage one, right? Then we move eventually, hopefully, intentionally, to stage two. That's where we become a builder, right? That's the word we'll use to describe stage two. That's where we start creating structure. We start hiring some people around us and start delegating certain tasks, but we're still very much inside the machine. We are still pulling most of the levers. Probably at this stage, everyone does report to you still, this building stage. We've we've moved past like solopreneur and we're in building phase. And this can feel exciting because it's no longer in you, can also feel really heavy because it's no longer you. You have a different level of responsibility for people now, right? You're not touching every single thing, although you're probably still touching most of it. And so we get into this builder stage with the idea of moving into stage three, which is the leader stage, right? This is where we're not just developing or holding processes accountable, we're developing people. Those same people that we hired that

Two Turnarounds Using Key Metrics

SPEAKER_00 1:10:40

report to us, we're not just holding them accountable to the task, we're growing and developing them. Right? This is where we start to get our leadership legs under us. Another part of the metamorphosis. Leading is very different than managing, leading is very different than doing yourself, right? This is where your success is tied to other people's growth and success. This is where you realize you can only win if they win first, which is awesome, but it's hard. Right? It's where we start to move from success to significance, right? Like our success will be tied to theirs. And you think about uh another anal parenting analogy around this. Think about something that you accomplished when you were young that you were really proud of and how good it felt. And then, and then some of you have experienced this or will. When you watch your child accomplish the same thing that you did way back, the joy that you get from that is exponentially more than how great you felt when you did it yourself. Now, extrapolate that out one more generation. Imagine yourself as a grandparent watching your grandchild achieve this thing that your child achieved, maybe that you achieved way back when, and the joy that comes with that. That's why grandparents and grandchildren have such a unique relationship. But you're talking about significance rather than just success. I did it, but I helped someone else do it. That's the stage three leader, right? And then when we get to stage four, I want you to think about like being a true kind of architect or CEO. You own the vision, you protect the drivers, you build a business that can run without you. Think about me being two hours away from this business that I never really did much in that went from zero to number one in the marketplace. Am I proud of it? Sure. Do I have much ego attached to it? No. Because I didn't do most of the work, but I stayed in my lane. I stayed in my CEO lane in this in this way. Right. Now, what happens at this stage is a couple things that I want you to be aware of. Because my, again, my hallucination is that most of us desire to get to this stage at some point. Um, we're gonna spend our time thinking about direction much more than we think about execution at this stage. Right? So we're gonna we're not gonna continue to ask questions like, how can we do this thing better or deliver this service better or sell this product better? We're not gonna ask questions like that. Someone inside of our organization is gonna ask questions like that because they're important, but they're not our questions to ask anymore. We're gonna ask more questions that sound something like, where are we going? Why does it matter? Who benefits when we get there? What's the right pathway to go from here to there? Those are the things we're gonna start spending time thinking about at this stage four level. Here's what I'll tell you at this level, you're gonna make way fewer decisions in the company, but the ones you make have a massive impact. So if it sounds like it gets easier, it doesn't. It just looks very different. Every decision you make at this level will have massive impact because that's the level of decision making that you're gonna be connected to at stage four, right? Quick little story here to kind of maybe put a pin in this. So when I had finally gotten to this stage, and again, it's not exactly black and white, but this stage of this is where I'm operating my business from with this strategic altitude. Uh Julie, the gal I told you about earlier in this one business, she actually moved and needed to go to work for another office. And so I had to replace her. And I hired a gal named Crystal. Now I'm fairly certain that Crystal was the best hire I've ever made to date in my life. She was incredible. I actually poached her from another uh government organization, believe it or not. So I don't feel too bad about it in the city that we live in, and she came to work with me at this company. And Crystal was incredibly skilled, very detail-oriented, an amazing operator of this business that we already had that was number one in making all this money, right? Um we certainly had our ups and downs, but Crystal was amazing. And so as we were learning to work together, because even though she was incredible, we were just learning each other's style and all those things that come along with a new relationship. Um, she used to occasionally ask me questions about the operation side of the business. She was still learning our business as well. So she would say things like, Hey, do you do you prefer this or that? Or do you think we should do that or this? And I would respond with, I don't, it doesn't matter to me. That's what I used to say at first. I would say it doesn't matter to me. Because number one, I was making sure she knew that's your decision to make. I trust you. And um it's at a level of decision making that doesn't matter to me. Now, Crystal was very gracious with me in my communication, and she said, I think it does matter to you. She's like, I think what you mean is you're indifferent. And I said, Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. It everything matters to me. This business matters to me, but but I'm indifferent around that decision. I trust you to make it, right? And so then we would get a little chuckle out of it from there on out for a little while. She was still like, hey, what do you think about this? What do you what's your preference here? And I would say, you know what? I'm indifferent. You decide. And so we get a little chuckle out of her kind of correcting my communication there. It did matter to me, but I was indifferent because I was operating at a different level. And she was operating at an incredible level at running the business, right? And so that's where we all want to get to to a degree. Okay. Now, here's the cost of those are the three friction points: people, systems, key drivers. If we don't change these things, if we don't work on ourselves and raise our lid, this is the cost of staying, staying where you are and not changing these things. These staying stuck, these ceilings that you can't break through, right?

The Four Stages Of CEO Metamorphosis

SPEAKER_00 1:16:40

A team that can't grow without your constant input. Right? Again, we strip down our ego. That's not really what we want. Decisions that pile up and wait for us, nothing gets done, nothing gets solved without us, right? A business that owns you, not the other way around, and a slow erosion or a sucking of our joy of what got us started in the first place. So if that's what you want, change nothing. If that's what you want, those are the things you want, change nothing. But if you're looking for a different level of freedom and you're willing to go through the process of evolution, metamorphosis, if you will, then you want to have a you might be seeking a leadership team that executes without you in the room, occasionally or all the time one day. Revenue that grows and doesn't require more of your hours. Maybe you can spend more of those with your families. Strategic clarity from an altitude rather than constant firefighting, whack-a-mole leadership, and the ability to step back without things falling apart. That's what we want to be working toward by going through this metamorphosis and a real business, a real business with enterprise value that you could sell, you could leave to someone, can operate without you. If that sounds more like what you want, then it's time to become a butterfly, folks. It's time to become a butterfly. I'm going to encourage you around that. Okay, so here's a question to ask yourself. Question to sit with. If nothing changes in the next three years, what does your business feel like? Not what it's doing in revenue or profitability or how many people you have on your team. What does it feel like if nothing changes? Nothing that you have today changes in the next three years. How will it feel to show up every day? That's the question that I would ask you to sit with. Right? Because that's an important one that only you get to decide. Only you get to decide. Okay, so we're going to start to land the plane here. Just checking our time. I think we're good. Um, how about a guide on the path forward? If you're like, nope, don't want to stay in the same spot, definitely want to pursue this growth, definitely want to have a different future in three years, then you might consider uh a guide on the path because the path is not easy, but it's worth it. And so this slide, I'm gonna modify this slide if I teach this again, says not everyone needs coaching. I don't believe that's true. I'm gonna cross that need word out and write want. Not everyone wants coaching. And I can appreciate that, but everyone needs it, in my opinion, in my humble opinion. We all need a great guide to help us get down this path that's full of um full of thorns and full of holes and full of all the things we can fall into. And so if you're thinking you might want and need a guide or a coach to help you along this pathway, or to go through this challenging metamorphosis for yourself, then you can scan the QR code. There's a few questions there. And ultimately, you see the two roads here. You have a choice. I'm gonna go it alone, may the odds be ever in your favor. Or I'm gonna go with someone who's maybe been there before and can help me get there with a few less bumps and bruises. So for those of you who are curious what it can do for your growth, you can scan this QR code. Um, and and by the way, uh, if you're not interested at all, but you still want the slides from this uh presentation, scan the QR code because that's how we know you want the slides and we'll send them to you. There's certainly zero pressure there to do that, right? And so for those of you who are curious, this is what it will look like. We're gonna we're gonna work on scheduling an exploratory leadership breakthrough call. Here are some of the things that we'll assess. There's no pressure. We don't know whether we're right to work together yet or not necessarily, but I'd love to help you either way as best I can. And here's some of the things that we may explore on the call. And if that's you, I want to make sure that you're um you're prepared for that call. So you might be still asking, I don't know, is this guy gonna try to sell me something? Not really. I'd love to know more about your challenges and where you're stuck in your business and see if I can help you, right? But here's some things you can think about if you want to know if this call's for you. This should help you clarify it. If you run a business and you're feeling stuck or you feel like you're bumping into a ceiling or you're anticipating one coming, right? If you're the smartest, hardest working person in the room, congratulations, but that's a problem for you and continuing to grow. If you want to scale without sacrificing everything, this one's near and dear to me because there's things I love business and I love what I do, but I love things like my family and other people much more than that. So I wasn't willing to sacrifice them on the climb. Uh, if you're ready to lead and not just do, if you're ready to start pursuing some level of significance, not just the success you can create on your own, or if you want a business that works without you or or doesn't require your constant presence, then this call's probably for you. It's not for you, and this is just and remember clarity, this is clarity, it's not for you if you're looking for a quick fix or some magic idea or um magic strategy. That won't create transformation in you, even if it existed, which it doesn't. If you're not willing to examine your own role in the problem, if you don't subscribe to the law of the lid that you need to develop in order for your business to develop, this wouldn't be for you. If you're looking for someone just to tell you what to do, I hate telling people what to do. And it doesn't work anyways. But I do love to help people think differently and challenge them, guide them, right? That's very different than like telling you what you should do. You don't need to be told what you do to do, you need to be guided into a butterfly, right? Uh, if you're not ready to seriously consider uh the right coach to help you break through, this wouldn't be the right call for you, right? Okay, a couple more here. Um, for those of you that are still curious, and I'm gonna put the QR code back up on the screen. So if you missed it, don't worry. Um, just scan that. And oh, by the way, um come ready to be honest about exactly

The Cost Of Staying Stuck

SPEAKER_00 1:22:40

where you're at and the challenges that you're experiencing. If you were not honest about that, then it would be really hard to improve or break through or tackle those things. And either way, you're gonna walk away with clarity. I can promise you that, whether we work together or not, right? The cost of waiting, we talked about even another year or three years, um, is high. So if you're ready, if this call felt a little bit like a mirror to what you're experiencing in your business, then this could be a great opportunity for you. So, once again, here is the QR code. By the way, if you're not interested in um the exploratory call, we would love your feedback. Please, please, please scan this QR code and give us some feedback on the content. It helps us bring relevant content to business owners like you. We want to make sure that it's valuable. We want to make sure we're talking about the topics that matter most to you, right? And we're bringing this content for free. And so your feedback helps us do that even better. And we would covet that and thank you for it. Um, thank you for being here, right? Before you guys go, I know we're just a few minutes here. And by the way, we could take a few minutes and I can we'll jump into the chat and see if there's any questions I can answer. So let's do that next. But thank you. Again, I I admire you. You have a lot of courage being a business owner, a leader, an entrepreneur, and that matters. And so may the odds ever be ever in your favor. Uh, I'm grateful for the opportunity to pour into you today. I hope, I hope it was valuable. And please give me feedback either way. And I look forward to connecting with those of you that are interested in additional conversations. So, again, Chase Williams, Sherpa Consulting Group. I'm gonna go to the chat here. I think I can do that, and my my buddy Nathan will help me if for some reason I can't. Okay, good. I'm gonna kind of just start back at the top here. Oh, thank you. Happy birthday yesterday. Appreciate that. One more trip around the sun. Uh Stephanie, no, I wasn't talking to you. Well, maybe I was, Stephanie. Great to see you. Thanks for being here. Um, what if you can't afford not to rescue? Jennifer, love

Coaching Invite Slides And Feedback

SPEAKER_00 1:24:50

that question. Um, the question is, what can you afford? Right? So the idea is like if I don't rescue this person, they make a mistake, then my business will be closed tomorrow. Okay, well, then that's a different scenario. That would be what we call a root issue that actually does require us until it doesn't. Here's the challenge that there's a bigger risk, or there's a, I don't know if it's bigger, there's a another risk on the other side. And that's that if we don't develop that person in order that they don't need rescue, we'll never be able to get leverage in that particular role. And so we have to play the odds a little bit, right? We can't let someone's mistake steer the company into the grave, but we can let someone's mistake consciously uh steer it off the tracks a little bit so that they can learn, so that we can correct. And it's up to us and knowing our business well, which ones are like that mistake takes us into the grave. I have to have my hands on that, right? Remember, like fewer decisions but massive impact versus I don't want them to make any mistakes, but that one we're we're actually gonna survive and they're gonna learn. And if I ever want to not have to do that myself, I have to be able to develop that person or find the right person. Hope that makes good sense. And we can connect more on that, Jennifer, because uh we're in the same town and we can do that easily. Um okay, let's see. I'm just gonna keep scrolling here. We're still seven minutes ahead. Uh, will the recording be available? Uh I think so, yes. Nathan, let's make sure we send this out to those that scan the QR code along with the slides. And if there's a problem doing that, we'll figure it out. Because sometimes I I don't want to overpromise, but that should be no issue. And if something changes, we'll let you know for sure. Oh, you're already ahead of me, Nathan. We'll forward it out. Thank you. Any questions? Thank

Live Q&A And Closing

SPEAKER_00 1:26:40

you. You're welcome. Thank you guys for being here. I don't see any more. Love and appreciate you. I'm pretty easy to find if you're looking to get a hold of me. I try to be, anyways. Uh, hope to see you on future webinars. Um, check out our podcast. You can go to Sherpa Consultinggroup.com for lots of resources, including our podcast, things like this and otherwise. And if you want to get in connection, we'll send you all the stuff. For those of you that are interested in connecting further, we'll do that for sure. Happy Cinco tomorrow. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. I appreciate all of you. Thank you so much for being here. And we'll see you soon.