In this efficient episode, Scott Abbott, Founder and CEO of BOS-UP, shares how to lead executives effectively by blending robust systems with human-centered leadership, EQ, and intentional "Boss Up Moments" to scale beyond founder-driven chaos. If you struggle with executives falling out of alignment despite a strong team, or if you find that your drive and decisiveness now work against you at this level, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why what got you here as a founder will now work against you as a CEO

- How to shift from managing people to building systems that create real alignment

- What it truly means to lead from the heart while maintaining strong structure

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 5 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Scott Abbott is the Founder & CEO of the BOS-UP Coaching Solution & Academy. He is also an executive coach, angel investor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. Over the last 35+ years, Scott has started, built, bought, and scaled companies worldwide. He has conducted more than 10,000 coaching sessions to help leaders and teams strengthen their systems, alignment, and performance. His latest best-selling book, BOS-UP Moments, blends leadership, psychology, and soft skills into a modern, visual field guide for growth in business, work, and life. Scott is known for his solution-centric coaching and his passion for unifying Business Operating Systems with AI and human development.

Want to learn more about Scott Abbott's work at BOS-UP? Check out his website at https://bos-up.coach/

Connect with Scott through his Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottabbottabc/

Grab a copy of Scott Abbott's book BOS-UP: The Solution To Build, Run, and Scale Great Companies Leveraging Business Operating Systems + AI + Coach at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FCY6LTC9

Mentioned in this episode:

Take the Founder's Evolution Quiz Today

If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.

Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the start, scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a

founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and we're talking

for those of you in the CEO stage today, folks who have

finally built that leadership team, that executive team around

you, only to discover that leading executives is an

entirely different game that nobody told you about, because

they're different they're different creatures, and if

you're doing it, you know exactly what I mean. And the

hard truth here is that leading those folks Well, their

expectations and their needs and how to succeed at this stage

requires a different set of skills, soft skills that got you

here, that drive decisiveness, personal output, those are all

good, but they're not enough, and if you're not careful, will

actually work against you when it comes to leading others at

this level to solve this problem. We're not going to try

and do it alone. We've got our guest today, Scott Abbott, who's

the founder and CEO of the boss up coaching solution and

Academy. He's also an executive coach, angel investor,

entrepreneur and best selling author with over 35 years. Over

the last 35 years, sorry, Scott has built, brought and bought

and scaled companies worldwide. I need to wear my glasses when I

do these and he's conducted more than 10,000 coaching sessions to

help founders and teams strengthen their systems,

alignment and performance. His latest best selling book, boss

up moments, blends leadership, psychology and soft skills into

a modern visual field guide for growth in business, work and

life. Scott is known for his solution centric coaching and

his passion for unifying business operating systems with

AI and Human Development. He's here with us today, Scott,

welcome to the show. I'm glad to have you here. I've been looking

forward to this conversation. We were delayed slightly, but we're

now together, so the anticipation is even greater.

You've worked with a whole lot of executives, and you've built

this entire framework around what you call boss up moments.

And I'm wondering if you could just unpack that, what are these

moments? Why do they matter so much, and how does success in

this area start to expand beyond these particular moments?

Thanks and thanks for having me on the show,

Scott, as the expression goes longtime listener, first time

honor, I guess, to use an old radio term, if you remember

that. So, so, yeah, I think you know the emphasis of boss up and

moments, specifically, the book moments, is we don't leap into

failure or stumble into success. It's stages and phases into your

intro about CEOs and the difference between a CEO, a

president, a founder, an operator, a visionary, a leader.

While they're all contextually in the same ballpark, they're in

different positions and require a different set of skills. And

so for me, the boss up coaching solution Academy is really three

parts. It's a systemic way to help companies build, run, grow

and scale and exit. Second, this little thing called AI

automation technology. And third, back to coaching and

consulting and counseling. So we think it's this blend of head

and heart purpose and profit, passion and production and so

with moments, what we really try to do is emphasize the human

side, the EQ, the ability to contextualize and harmonize, in

addition to the systems, and to your point, as you scale and

grow. And you know this, you know what got you here is not

going to get you there. And so between the boss up blue book

and moments, it's this, again, fusion of engineering mechanics,

this practical way to build, run, grow and scale. And then we

need these things called humans, starting with the founder, the

CEO, and hopefully they're going to be their best to lead and

guide and manage. So that's what it's all about, and that's what

we're just trying to emphasize, is, yeah, we love big picture

and systems and infrastructure, but let's make sure we

appreciate us as humans and those around us in the moment,

so we don't find ourselves in bad places.

Yeah, it's so true. One of the things that's

interesting about that is, well, I think a distinct challenge of

this stage is the level of complexity. It's not enough to

just have a coach, or to just build, run, grow, scale your

business, or to just implement technology, right? One of the

hardest things about this stage is that there are so many hard

things to tackle all at once. And the reason why we have an

executive team is because we can't do all of that on our own.

But the challenge that comes with that is we think it's a

little like, if you build it, they will be aligned, you know,

if you get what I mean, but like, that's a big mistake

thinking that just because you hired them, just because you

like them just because you're sitting in the same meetings,

that doesn't necessarily mean that alignment is going to take

care of itself. What is it that causes high performing

executives that we think should be in alignment to actually fall

out of alignment?

Well, I think one of the misnomers in the world,

especially with a lot of let's just call them entrepreneurs and

founders. Have this, you know, almost romanticized perspective

of grit and and hard work and to your to use your word likable as

you grow and scale, and especially if you want to create

enterprise value, both for a sales side exit or just a

succession plan and pass it off to another generation, another

person. You know, most founders keep a lot inside. They know

what to do and how to do it, and they and they got from here to

there based on that. Now it's time to call what you will

systemize. And you know, one of my favorite expressions to

emphasize this is by isdore sharp, the founder of four

seasons, and he's quoted as saying, systemized, predictable,

the humanized, the exceptional. And so you really want a 10x

which is a concept, not a binary equation. You've got to figure

out how to systemize. Let's just call it what they are, the

standard operating procedures. But it's not only that you can

actually embed values and standards and principles. I'm a

big fan of the Indiana Hoosiers. I live in Indiana and do a lot

of work with IU and obviously we know this little football team

went from the losing his program to 16 and oh, and won the

national championship. And if you listen to Kurt signetti,

it's around what we're talking about. Yes, teamwork, but he

always emphasizes production over potential. He emphasizes

systems and alignment. And when you do those things right,

moment by moment, and you focus on that, not the results, I

think that's another thing that happens. Hey, they people tend

to focus on the results or the outcomes or the achievements.

Well, you don't result in the results. You don't achieve. And

to achieve, you get there through ideally good systems,

good alignment people knowing what their roles,

accountabilities, responsibilities are, how to

measure, how to manage. And for a lot of founders, man and early

stage and entrepreneurs, that sounds kind of like corporate

bureaucracy. Yuck. And this is what's counterintuitive, the

better systemization you have to everything we just talked about,

you actually liberate yourself, Scott, you free yourself up to

be a better mentor, coach, leader, visionary. And I just

think that's not only counterintuitive to a lot of

founders, I also think it's not necessarily what they want to

do, right? But again, as you grow bigger, you realize it's

not about you, it's about others. You become more of a

servant leader. You become more even if you're not public. You

should think that way, right? You've got stakeholders and

investors, even if you don't technically, that's the mindset

you should have. And so we believe there's five stages to a

company. Once you get the stage three and above, you've really

got to have better structure, infrastructure, systemization,

otherwise, you really are kind of making about you, and it

shouldn't be about you as much as it used to be.

That's so true. It's so true. It's one of

the big dividing lines between stage four and stage five in the

founders evolution. So Scott, you struck a chord here that

wasn't planning on going down this route, but I think it's

really, really important, and it it ties a lot of the tension of

this all into one thing, and that is, you talked about

systematizing. You talked about adding SOPs. I think everyone's

heard that at this point. But here's the mistake that I see

folks still make, especially founder CEOs, is that they

delegate all of that to somebody else and a better language, they

abdicate from it themselves, right? And so here's the problem

with that. You might not be the best systems thinker in the

world, and most founders aren't right. It's just okay. That's

normal. That's not a problem. But if you don't include

yourself in that conversation, your systems will have values in

them. Now the question is whether or not they're your

values. So talk to us more about embedding values. What does that

look like? What does CEO involvement look like in

building out these systems?

Well, you struck a chord with me, because there's a

lot of frameworks and quote, unquote systems that are out

there, and I think ultimately, one a few of them are very

popular. Because I actually think, if everybody's being

honest, they abdicated to it, and they start to follow an

acronym or a term or a book title, and that's, that's not

the way you're supposed to do it. That's, that's lazy, that's

mediocre. But, you know, a lot of humans take that route,

unfortunately. So, yeah, I think the embedded, the inclusive, the

integrated, you know, it just reminds me of the classic, you

know, it's not personal. It's business rubbish, right? It's

all personal because we're humans. So the founders and

leaders who find that line between delegate just to

delegate and delegate to elevate both your team and yourself,

which means I need to learn. I need to roll up my proverbial

shirt sleeves and get my hands dirty. I need to know now look

at AI. Do I need to know agentics 205, and do I need to

be a coder? Absolutely. You need to be a strategist, you need to

be intelligent, you need to be practical. But I don't need to

know what. I don't need to know you with me. And so again,

ideally, everybody agrees to what we. Call rules based or

agreement based commitments. That sounds more humane, and

that includes, again, the day to day job and x's and o's and SOPs

and the KPIs and OKRs, all those acronyms, right? But ideally,

they also have an appreciation for X percent of their time is

to improve themselves working on, not just working in, yeah,

and if they basically embed that, I truly believe that

today, Scott leadership, learning and development should

almost be like a utility bill. It's a uncheck the box, not

check the box. And if you're not spending five to 10% of a

working week to invest in yourselves and those around you

to be better as leaders, managers, team members, you're

missing the boat, especially because of what's happened over

AI and the changes in workforce. Okay,

yeah.

So,

yeah,

it can't be a nice to have. It literally needs to

be part of the system, if that makes sense. And so I just this

concept of inclusion, of integration, of fusion, you

know, over the four decades, I've been doing it, sometimes

it's been pushing wet noodles, and my dad says, You can lead a

horse to water, you can't make a drink. I do think there's a

better appreciation of the why, the how now and the who and the

when. That's a different story, but, but I do think, I do think

we've gravitated to a more reasonable reality than when I

started working. There was much more of that classic

hierarchical, you know, do as I say, and this is my title, and I

get away with bad behavior. I think a lot of that is changing

for the good, but I still think it's a challenge to figure out

actually how to get it done.

Yeah, I think a conversation that I hear

outside the business world around AI, but not as much

inside the the business world. And I think it's a problem ties

directly to this and and I think, as CEO of of an

enterprise, especially if you're pursuing some kind of whole,

whole scale adoption of AI throughout your organization, is

that it has to align as well, this idea that AI is

automatically aligned with, you know, our Standard for customer

service or our direction as an organization, I think, is not

the case. And one of the things I don't see happening in a lot

of the AI conversations is, how do we make sure that the AI

tools that we use and the way that they're used is in

alignment with who we are and where we're going? Are you

seeing something similar?

Well, I'm also having a little deja vu. I'm a

little older than you, so I, I started my first company in 1995

as the joke goes, right after Al Gore invented the internet. Me

and my friends at IBM created what is now basically the way

commerce and communication gets done. Right? The internet's the

backbone to almost everything these days. So, so I was there

in the advent of that. Then, speaking of IBM, I wrote a book

and did a 28 city tour 18 months, about 15 years ago, when

this other major wave came in mobile technology and the use of

social media in the enterprise. And, you know, I have some PTSD

at a lot of you know, memory that that was freaking people

out big time. That's why I wrote a book called the cofactor, and

we talked about systems of engagement and a whole host of

new concepts and criteria. So maybe I'm a little more, you

know, positively pragmatic, having spent 40 years in tech,

both on the delivery and on the acquisition side, that, you

know, some good old fashioned things still need in place,

right? We need governance. We need policy,

yeah,

we need systemization. We need

alignment, right? We need all the above to do it right at the

same time. You know, we don't know what we don't know yet. And

so back to again, good systems. Make sure you do the present and

the future. Make sure you appreciate the hard and the

soft. Make sure you appreciate the fiduciary and the governance

with, again, culture, values, standards, as you said earlier,

and now today, just like I believe learning and development

should be embedded in your infrastructure, so should AI. If

you're on a leadership team, we call them roles,

accountabilities, responsibilities, and if each

one of your leaders and you does not have AI, and I'm not gonna

tell you what to do with it, how to do it, et cetera, et cetera.

But what I would say is it is absolutely an embedded

imperative reality that you've got to figure out what and where

and how it aligns. And it's a journey. It's gonna be a

journey. It's gonna be a long journey. I would just say again,

AI, is, is, is, is is, ideally, for most of us, a strategy.

It's, it's a way to provide a lot of great value, and

absolutely, we also have to be careful not to do things that we

shouldn't do.

Yeah, that's so true. So true. I think if I

were to sum up a big portion of this conversation, the advantage

that founders have is that they're the founder right and

that these values are highly aligned with who they are. You

have a good backbone and culture, but your job now as CEO

is to make sure that that's implemented in these strategies,

to make sure that it's pushed deep into these systems and. To

me, I think that's really the key to doing it without losing

yourself, is recognizing those parts of you and actually

embedding them, institutionalizing them in the

organization. Would you agree?

Yeah, well, sorry for the plug, but you know, I've

got a I've got one of our moments in here is called 1080,

10, and it's not going to happen overnight. But here's the

concept, if you've got good systems, and you've got the

right leadership team, and you're following what we call

the nine core competencies, and you're embracing the essential

concepts, tools and disciplines, that usually takes about a year

to get in. But once you feel you've got a good foundation

from a system, I believe founders, visionary CEOs, should

follow what we call the 1080, 10, and it's based off the

Pareto Principle, right? The 8020 rule. We've all seen that,

but ideally the 80% of the day to day, X's and O's, blocking

and tackling, the delivery, the production, the servicing of the

sales and marketing, that should be the system and your

leadership team. You with me? So the founder, the visionary, the

CEO, is actually now spending 40% of their life in the first

10% of what companies deal with, and that's marketing, innovation

right being out in the world, doing market, business, sales

development to generate new pipeline, new opportunities to

think down the road, and then the other 40% of their jobs

should be on the back end saying, Thank you, mentoring

their people, coaching them up, getting back into the market,

and say, you know, Would you like something else with that?

You follow me? And again, a lot of people get caught up and

think, Well, if I do that, I have to be a good coach or a

mentor or be a better talker than I am. That's not true. Back

to again, systems and being authentic. We have a principle

we believe in, called clear, and it's a pursuit of clarity, but

it's also an acronym, collaborative, logical,

empathetic, authentic and resilient. You notice I didn't

say anything about charisma or that you've got better bedside

manner than the other people? Have? You follow me? So, yeah, I

think the beauty today is Know thyself. Ideally you're still

developing yourself, right? Because you ain't growing,

you're dying, but don't try to be something you're not. And I

think that's the beauty of systemization, AI, when it's

done properly, right, and appreciation, what we call

humanization. And so don't try to BS anybody or be something

you're not. And I think leaders today, especially entrepreneurs,

founders and visionaries, frankly, the only reason Scott

why they can't get from here to there, given our conversation,

is themselves. And that happens a lot where people just can't

get out of their own darn way.

Yeah. So true. Scott. There's another question

I have for you, and then I want to make sure folks know how they

can get a copy of the book and find out more about the work

that you all do. But the question before we get there is

this, what is the biggest secret you wish wasn't a secret at all?

What's that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening

today knew?

I think I've said it. And, you know, they say

repetition, redundancy is the mother of learning. So I'm a

pretty redundant, repetitive guy guilty by by choice

systemization. Scott, and again, I know in this world today,

systems get a lot of guff, but let's be clear, systems don't

make bad systems people do. And just look around your life and

your world and think about the good things that happen thanks

to systems from the streets to the to the skies to the bridges

to your life. Just think how chaotic it would be if we're all

just making it up and following Nike's advice to just do it.

Yeah, so I think counterintuitive, and it took me

a long time. My dad's a mechanical engineer. I was an

entrepreneur at young age. I love my dad. He's my hero, but I

think he pushed my buttons. I moved around a lot, so I kind of

fancied myself to be this entrepreneur that adapted and

adopted and I see all this, especially tech MVP and agile.

And yeah, I get the concept. But believe it or not,

counterintuitive is this, the more better systemized you are,

the more it actually liberates you, Scott, to be what you want

to be and who you want to be. And that's, that's something

that, if I learned it earlier, I probably wouldn't be with you

today. I might be, you know, hanging out on a mountaintop

somewhere, you know, my own chalet. Good news is that didn't

happen. But, yeah, I would say it's just what I just said, the

power of good systems, the fusion of, again, the right

technology and automation. Harnessing the concept of

coaching and being coached, certainly it's central to boss

up. So sorry for that candor, but that's our passion. Our

mantra is to bring these three together. And I think if you do

it right, you can either scale 10x you can build something of

legacy and significance, or you're ready, you could just

have a great solopreneur ship and be, you know, a three person

firm, me, myself, and I, and that's another thing I think is

counterintuitive. Well, I don't need to worry about that because

I don't have a bunch of people around me. Yeah, you do,

because, again, maybe you don't want to work Fridays and

Mondays, maybe you want to take up a hobby or fishing. So the

better systems, even if it's just yourself, is the more

you're going to be able to have confidence and clarity and

courage and and just the ability to get from here to there. You

know, easier, better, stronger.

Yeah, so good. So good. Scott. There's. Folks

listening would love to get a copy of the book, tell us about

that, and then they'd also love to reach out and find out more

about the work you do. Where can they connect with you?

Yeah, so, you know, we always need to give

Bezos a little more money. So let's go to Amazon. And you

know, I wish I could say a bunch of other outlets, but Amazon for

all the books. I've got my own site. I've got four books, but

recently, boss up and boss up moments. If your coach

consultant, looking to to partner up with an organization

that can help you generate impact and income, go to boss up

dot coach. If your company looking to benefit from a better

way to build, run scale and exit, go to boss up dot work.

And then I've got a bunch of my own personal stuff at Scott

Abbott ABC, so on the interwebs, on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube,

I share quite a bit of information and thoughts and

ideas. So those would be the locations to go to, depending on

your situation and what you're looking for.

Fantastic, brilliant, something in there

for everyone. Scott, thanks for being on We're glad you're not

on a mountaintop somewhere, so you can share with us here

today. Really was a privilege and honor having you thanks for

coming on the show, and for those of you watching and

listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to

us. Hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I

did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care. Scott,

thanks everybody.