The focal point of our discourse today revolves around the imperative for CEOs to establish a breakthrough goal that will catalyze unprecedented growth in 2026.
We delve into the notion that such growth is not merely a tantalizing possibility, but rather a tangible inevitability—if we dare to embrace the necessary changes.
As we reflect on our own experiences, we recognize that each year in business presents a unique opportunity for transformative breakthroughs, provided we remain vigilant and proactive, rather than succumbing to the inertia of routine.
With a light-hearted approach, we explore the stages of a company’s evolution from mere survival to impactful growth, emphasizing the necessity of clarity and focus in achieving one's ambitious objectives.
Join us as we navigate the intricate pathways of leadership, exploring how to transcend the limitations of the proverbial hamster wheel and propel ourselves toward inevitable success—all while sprinkling in a few puns and playful observations along the way!
Takeaways:
Chapters:
00:01 - Strategic Choices for Growth
05:22 - Stages of Business Growth: From Existence to Survival
11:10 - Creating Breakthrough Goals for Business Scale
15:36 - Understanding the Spectrums of Success
27:43 - Identifying Your CEO Priority
32:14 - Identifying Leadership Tension and Constraints
37:56 - Identifying Constraints and Accelerators
43:31 - Finding Your Zone of Genius
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Coco Sellman, the host of the Force for Good Business Show, believes business is a force for good, especially with visionary women at the helm. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has launched five companies and guided over 500 startups. As Founder & CEO of A Force for Good, Coco supports purpose-driven women founders in unlocking exponential growth and prosperity. Her recent venture, Allumé Home Care, reached eight-figure revenues and seven-figure profits in just four years before a successful exit in 2024. A venture investor and board director, Coco’s book, *A Force for Good*, reveals a roadmap for women to lead high-impact, high-growth companies.
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Welcome, everybody.
Speaker A: ge for breakthrough growth in: Speaker A:One strategic choice that makes growth inevitable.
Speaker A:Think about what inevitability would be for you.
Speaker A:So just take a moment and pause, reflect.
Speaker A:You could design a way to double your business.
Speaker A:And it's not just a pipe dream, not just a possibility, but a certainty, an inevitability.
Speaker A:And so think about what that would mean for you to double, for example, double the revenue of your business or double the profitability.
Speaker A:And if you were to make that inevitable, just ask yourself what might need to change.
Speaker A:Just take a moment and start to write down what would need to change.
Speaker A:So we pinned it to a growth goal, doubling your revenue or doubling your profit.
Speaker A:And what would need to change in order for that to manifest?
Speaker A:Just start writing down whatever you can.
Speaker A:Every year you are in business is an opportunity to experience breakthrough.
Speaker A:Every year is a chance to create massive breakthrough.
Speaker A:12 months is an interesting amount of time.
Speaker A:In 12 months, a lot can happen.
Speaker A:Think about a year in your life where things radically changed, where maybe you moved to a new location, you started a new job, you, you had a baby.
Speaker A:A lot can happen in just 12 months, right?
Speaker A:So a year is a time that much can happen.
Speaker A:We start our years and we start our programs and we start our lives, and we hope that what is possible is we can have a breakthrough, but then we just resume back to our regular systems of operation.
Speaker A:Part of the force for good model is we're always honoring where we are and then seeing what shifts and changes are necessary to create a new outcome.
Speaker A:When you get up in the morning and you are going about your life and your business, that mostly you're on your hamster wheel.
Speaker A:You are going through whatever systems you naturally go through.
Speaker A:You have your regular habits, you do your regular things.
Speaker A:It's whatever you eat, how much you sleep, how much you exercise, what you do first in the morning, how much time you spend on email, how much time you spend reading books, how much time you spend planning, how much time you spend on sales, all these things are part of your hamster wheel.
Speaker A:And when you have a team, it includes whatever they're doing and whatever systems are in place.
Speaker A:So if you have a CRM system, if it's working, if it's being used, if you have a financial system, if it's working, if it's being used, all these things make up the hamster wheel.
Speaker A:And what happens most of the time is we get on the hamster wheel every day unconsciously, because we don't Realize that we're just doing the same things, maybe incrementally better.
Speaker A:And then we wonder why from year to year we don't have breakthroughs.
Speaker A:And it's not because that hamster wheel and the things we're doing every day aren't good.
Speaker A:They just aren't designed to do the next thing.
Speaker A:They're not designed to create a new breakthrough.
Speaker A:And so what we want to do today is help you look at how you can show up a little differently in your work, in your life.
Speaker A:You can be the leader of breakthrough.
Speaker A:And why this is really powerful as a CEO is because companies that are able to experience breakthroughs, just one breakthrough, can then become masters at breakthrough.
Speaker A:Companies that stay the same forever don't have the ability to innovate and grow.
Speaker A:Those are the ones that stay stuck.
Speaker A:I invite you to contemplate stages of breakthrough.
Speaker A:Companies go through stages.
Speaker A:As we look at this slide, I invite you to consider, where are you?
Speaker A:Which stage are you in first?
Speaker A:Think about that.
Speaker A:So the existence stage is the early part of a company.
Speaker A:It's where your ideas are formulating.
Speaker A:You're starting to get off the ground.
Speaker A:You bring your first main product to market.
Speaker A:You go from having zero sales to one sale.
Speaker A:You start to develop your first customers, maybe you start to have your first five customers, 10 customers, 20 customers.
Speaker A:And at this point you have your founder.
Speaker A:And probably the founder is the only full time team member and maybe there's a few other helpers that are lending some time, who are interns, who are working part time.
Speaker A:So that's your existence stage, the next stage, survival.
Speaker A:Think about the job of the CEO, CEO in existence, and then the job of the CEO.
Speaker A:It's survival.
Speaker A:Survival is the stage that most companies get stuck because they're on the hamster wheel.
Speaker A:The hamster wheel can only grow incrementally.
Speaker A:And incremental growth hurts.
Speaker A:It's hard, it's painful.
Speaker A:It's driven by how hard you work, not by the systems and leverage and people and teams that you have in place.
Speaker A:Survival is the next step.
Speaker A:And what we want to do in survival.
Speaker A:Every company goes through this stage is you want to pass through it intentionally, as fast as you can.
Speaker A:Because it's that stage where you have customers, you have responsibilities, you're trying to get things in and out the door.
Speaker A:Sales are happening.
Speaker A:You have a sales funnel, but it's up and down.
Speaker A:Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker A:It's very founder dependent.
Speaker A:Oftentimes you only get sales when the founder's focused on sales.
Speaker A:And when the founder's not everything dries up.
Speaker A:Business is hard and it's driven by the work of the founder.
Speaker A:Typically, the founder is making a lot of decisions.
Speaker A:There's not as many systems in place, there's not as many team members in place.
Speaker A:So the founder has to do everything.
Speaker A:Marketing, sales, product service, customer service, finance.
Speaker A:So if this sounds familiar, just know that you're not alone and that survival is hard.
Speaker A:I've worked with many founders and I've been in stages of my own companies of being in survival.
Speaker A:Like Illume, we had a point where we had very high revenues, high seven figure revenues, and we weren't at break even.
Speaker A:It was very, very stressful.
Speaker A:I was still involved in every single decision and really nervous about everybody making mistakes and doing things perfectly.
Speaker A:Survival stage, it's one that we become attached to.
Speaker A:It's like a part of our strength is living in survival, as women in particular.
Speaker A:But it becomes a bad habit.
Speaker A:It becomes that thing we need to learn how to transcend and let go of.
Speaker A:We're going to talk today about some of the things that'll help you shift out of it, but that's what survival looks like.
Speaker A:The most important thing about survival stage is it's not delivering freedom, prosperity or choices.
Speaker A:For the founder, in order to grow, you have to run faster.
Speaker A:The next stage is scale.
Speaker A:And this is the stage we want to get to.
Speaker A:We want to accelerate getting to scale.
Speaker A:Sometimes the path to scale is different than what our mind tells us.
Speaker A:The path to scale is really about breakthroughs.
Speaker A:It's about becoming good and powerful at growing in the way you decide you want to grow, doing it one thing at a time.
Speaker A:As you are scaling, there's complexity.
Speaker A:So you want to shrink back on as many things as you can so that you can be great at creating new scale.
Speaker A:What happens when you have scale is you start to have enough gross profit coming through the door so that your company can afford more operating expenses, more team members, better processes and systems.
Speaker A:You want to get to scale because as soon as you get to scale, you start to have enough money coming in at the top to invest in the things you want.
Speaker A:Oftentimes in survival, because we're doing so many things, we can't scale because you're focused on too many things and it's keeping you held hostage from the most important things and that will lead to scale.
Speaker A:Once you start to figure out how to scale, then your flywheel really starts to spin and then you have enough cash, you can then go and get loans from the bank if you need it, you can get investors if you want.
Speaker A:There's all kinds of things that happen when, when you are in a scaling situation.
Speaker A:And so the objective for you as a CEO is to move as quickly as you can through survival.
Speaker A:It's much easier to lead a cash flowing, revenue flowing company than it is to try to run one without it.
Speaker A:Release everything that gets in the way, right?
Speaker A:So that all the energy can be on helping you scale and deliver the promises that your customer needs.
Speaker A:The final stage is impact.
Speaker A:Impact happens in a force for good business.
Speaker A:When you achieve first level impact, we call it a 10 year impact goal and it's aligned with your long term vision, your hundred year vision.
Speaker A:It's aligned with your core purpose and your values.
Speaker A:It's aligned with who you serve and the transformation that you promise to your customers.
Speaker A:When you achieve a 10 year impact goal, you're at a place where your company is prosperous, generating cash flow.
Speaker A:You have a great team, great systems, you're continuously growing.
Speaker A:And it's not all dependent on the founder.
Speaker A:In fact, the founder has the choice to be in the business and have a role, or step away and be on the board or choose if she wants to even sell the business or hand it over to another operator and just really be an investor or shareholder.
Speaker A:What we want to do is help you move through those sort of the messy stages of survival.
Speaker A:This idea today of having a breakthrough goal and a CEO priority is the first step in helping you break out of survival mode and into scale mode.
Speaker A:What is a 12 month breakthrough?
Speaker A:Every year in business we have the opportunity to stage a massive breakthrough.
Speaker A:The only thing that's stopping you is just focus.
Speaker A:That's it, focus.
Speaker A:A 12 month breakthrough is a powerful goal that will create truly remarkable results for you and your company.
Speaker A:What would a 12 month breakthrough look like?
Speaker A:What would it look like to double your impact?
Speaker A:What would it look like to double your scale?
Speaker A:If you doubled the number of customers you have?
Speaker A:If you double the number of units you sell, if you double the number of prospects that you have every month.
Speaker A:And now what it would look like to double your profit.
Speaker A:How much profit did you make last year in the last 12 months?
Speaker A:And then think about it.
Speaker A:Doubling success, doubling freedom, doubling company value.
Speaker A:What would it look like to quadruple your impact?
Speaker A:Quadruple the number of customers you serve, quadruple the number of prospects you have every single month, the number of people you invite to be your customer, the number of units you sell.
Speaker A:What would a quadrupling number be?
Speaker A:And what about Profit.
Speaker A:If you could four times that number.
Speaker A:And what would four times the level of success look like?
Speaker A:What would four times the freedom look like?
Speaker A:What would four times the value of your company?
Speaker A:If you don't know the value of your company, that's something for us to talk about another time.
Speaker A:But it's important for you to know the value of your company.
Speaker A:There's different ways to measure the value, but as you're growing your company, it's good to know what the value of your company is both to yourself and to somebody else.
Speaker A:It is an asset, your company, it's producing value in the world.
Speaker A:It would be great for it to have its own intrinsic value separate from you.
Speaker A:As you start to think about this now, we've thought about goals.
Speaker A:Which goal would create the most prolific value and momentum to your company?
Speaker A:What would give you so many other new opportunities and allow you to have more flexibility and freedom?
Speaker A:What would allow you to have more choices?
Speaker A:What would allow you to do some things that you've been wanting to do but you can't?
Speaker A:What would make everything easier and more attainable and elevate the entire company to its next stage of evolution?
Speaker A:Go ahead and formulate your 12 month breakthrough goal.
Speaker A:Just create a goal.
Speaker A:It could be just the double the number of revenue, double the number of customers that you have having a specific goal that's big and breakthrough, even if later on you change it.
Speaker A:One of the things that gets in our way in creating growth is perfection.
Speaker A:Needing to know, needing to be certain.
Speaker A:There is no certainty.
Speaker A:There's only today.
Speaker A:There's only this moment.
Speaker A:We are running a thought experiment all the time in our business.
Speaker A:Create a goal that feels really good and really juicy.
Speaker A:Go ahead and write it down.
Speaker A:There are different spectrums of success that we operate in.
Speaker A:I catch myself often living in probable success mode.
Speaker A:And it's really when I become super aware that I can get myself into inevitable success mode.
Speaker A:But I spend time even in possible success mode.
Speaker A:Let me talk to you about these three spectrums of success.
Speaker A:Because we all live in these various states and what we want to do is identify how we can each live more regularly in the state of inevitable success where it's guaranteed we're going to double revenue this year.
Speaker A:So what does this look like?
Speaker A:The first spectrum is possible success.
Speaker A:Possible success is how we often live.
Speaker A:You have five goals this year and a list of 20 to do items.
Speaker A:If that is your state, chances are you're living in a state of possible success.
Speaker A:What it looks like day to day.
Speaker A:You have a Lot of energy spent in reaction mode.
Speaker A:Things are happening and you are acting.
Speaker A:The founder is pulled in lots of different directions and there is a lot of decision making that is happening.
Speaker A:Or you've made a decision and you're not sure about it and you keep making the same decision over and over again.
Speaker A:Should I do this program?
Speaker A:Should I not do this program?
Speaker A:Should I do this marketing thing or should I not do this marketing thing?
Speaker A:Should I do this partnership?
Speaker A:Should I not?
Speaker A:This is signs that you're living in possible success mode.
Speaker A:Progress at this stage depends on more effort more than on shared clarity.
Speaker A:Solving today's problems instead of building tomorrow's structure.
Speaker A:Carrying too much content in your own head, having all your plans, all your ideas in your head.
Speaker A:You're confusing responsiveness and I'd say responsibility with leadership.
Speaker A:This is one of the pitfalls we have.
Speaker A:I've seen this happen with a big company with eight figures of revenue and three figures of healthy annual profit, and they were still in survival mode.
Speaker A:It was because they felt that they needed to do everything.
Speaker A:They felt that if they didn't, the team would think they were being lazy, when in fact the team wasn't empowered.
Speaker A:So confusing responsiveness and confusing responsibility with leadership.
Speaker A:So the hidden cost is decision churn, draining energy, attention and momentum.
Speaker A:The neck is likely success.
Speaker A:When you set a goal and you feel like, oh, we're on track, we feel good about it.
Speaker A:So a lot of goals, you're in that spot, right?
Speaker A:You feel like, okay, I can see we're making progress, things are going in the direction we want, but it requires so much energy and active management.
Speaker A:There's fewer fires that you're dealing with every day, but you're still mentally exhausted because you've got so many things that you have to shuffle to.
Speaker A:It's too many priorities and decisions.
Speaker A:What you want is to have a plan that you can follow so you don't have to make decisions.
Speaker A:When you have some decisions being guided by a plan, but not all of them, that's when you're still in this state of likely success rather than inevitable success.
Speaker A:So there's focus, but there's periodical fragments where you're bleeding your energy.
Speaker A:Watch for holding too many priorities that are strategically important.
Speaker A:Watch for revisiting decisions.
Speaker A:Watch for allowing good results to justify complexity.
Speaker A:So this is like, okay, we can keep all of these products and all these programs and all these activities, even though only two of them are actually generating results, but we're going to keep doing it all because it's what we keep doing.
Speaker A:Watch for relying on lots of meetings rather than just having clarity.
Speaker A:You only need to have the weekly meeting.
Speaker A:Watch for still deciding your way forward instead of executing clearly on a plan.
Speaker A:Next is inevitable success.
Speaker A:Inevitable success is when you know every day that you are going to get to that goal because your focus and your plan is so clear.
Speaker A:One clear focus, top priority anchors everything.
Speaker A:Daily actions serve that priority.
Speaker A:You are clearly letting go of some other things.
Speaker A:This is one of the big signs that you're in inevitable success mode.
Speaker A:You've decided certain things are not worth your time and attention.
Speaker A:You've let go of certain initiatives, partnerships, maybe even customers, products, because you are going to focus on one thing.
Speaker A:Everyone on the team, including you, can wake up every day and know the top priority.
Speaker A:Their KPIs tied to that priority and where the company stands today relative to the goal.
Speaker A:This is the most important piece right here.
Speaker A:This is the litmus test.
Speaker A:If you don't know what that top priority is, figure it out.
Speaker A:Then what's the measurement stick that helps you know?
Speaker A:If you're getting there, you'll start to feel a sense of calm, you'll start to feel a sense of direction.
Speaker A:You'll be more confident and you'll also be saying no more often to things that are no longer aligned.
Speaker A:This is what inevitable success feels like.
Speaker A:And that's what we want to do today.
Speaker A:We want to create a place where you can develop inevitable success in your company.
Speaker A:The distinction here is that founders misalign with inevitable success not because they lack ambition or capability, but because they are still behaving as if success is optional.
Speaker A:If you haven't figured out that one thing that you want so deeply that will move everything forward, you're still letting yourself not be inevitable.
Speaker A:The moment success becomes inevitable is when focus becomes non negotiable.
Speaker A:When you become really clear, your power is no longer diluted and you can do the thing.
Speaker A:So today we're here to talk about helping you have a breakthrough.
Speaker A:I would love to share a little bit more about who I am and where this system comes from.
Speaker A:I'm a five time founder and an impact investor.
Speaker A:I've had five companies with varying levels of success.
Speaker A:My first company closed in two years.
Speaker A:We ran out of money.
Speaker A:The next ones were more abundant but entirely dependent on me.
Speaker A:My last company, Illume Home Care, was the redesigning.
Speaker A:Okay, I want to create a company that doesn't depend on me, that isn't about me and I want to figure out how to scale it.
Speaker A:So I took everything I learned from the Previous companies that I grew Elume was founded because I had this personal experience, as so many of us do.
Speaker A:I have a stepdaughter, her name is Amelia.
Speaker A:She's 23 years old.
Speaker A:When I met her, she was five.
Speaker A:Amelia is medically fragile.
Speaker A:She was born at 26 weeks rather than the regular 40.
Speaker A:She had a lot of medical complexities and still does today.
Speaker A:She has cerebral palsy, she's non verbal, she's in a wheelchair.
Speaker A:She requires around the clock nursing care and her life has been impacted by her early birth.
Speaker A:Now, when she was eight years old, we discovered that she qualified for around the clock nursing care.
Speaker A:That our health insurance would pay for a nurse to come in for 16 hours a day to deliver her care, and that Cigna, our health insurance, is going to pay for it.
Speaker A:And then we went to try to find an agency that would take us and no one would.
Speaker A:I called 30 different agencies and I discovered that this is a very specific area of home health.
Speaker A:This was hospital at home.
Speaker A:So I eventually found a company that would take her.
Speaker A:And in the meantime, I thought, this is an opportunity.
Speaker A:I can build something here that can scale.
Speaker A:And so that's what I did.
Speaker A:It was very hard.
Speaker A:First two years was all about building the systems that I needed in order to get licensure and accreditation.
Speaker A:With Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance.
Speaker A:We really followed the force for good model which was let's figure out our purpose, let's understand who our customer is, let's really understand how we're going to market and serve them.
Speaker A:How are we going to get there?
Speaker A:What's our growth model?
Speaker A:What does our funnel look like?
Speaker A:How are we going to measure it?
Speaker A:And then we looked at our long term plan.
Speaker A:What's our 10 year, 3 year, 12 month and quarterly plan.
Speaker A:We distilled it all down to four pages.
Speaker A:For people in the founder's circle, you know about this, you've been playing with the four page growth plan.
Speaker A:One of the elements in the four page growth plan is this 12 month breakthrough goal.
Speaker A:And it is, I mean, one of the most important pieces on the four pages.
Speaker A:Because when you know where you're going and you're putting your energy and attention into one thing, it produces results.
Speaker A:For Illume, we had every year a different breakthrough.
Speaker A:And every week and every month our team would come together and talk about this breakthrough goal, whatever it was at the time, early on we needed scale, we needed to break even, right?
Speaker A:So it was fill, bill and collect x number of hours of nursing every month.
Speaker A:We had our breakthrough goal of 12,000 hours a month.
Speaker A:Everybody was focused on that.
Speaker A:Whether you were in recruiting for nurses, meeting with referral partners, hospitals and doctors, or you were in finance, or you were the schedulers talking to the nurses.
Speaker A:Everybody knew that we had this goal of 12,000 filled, billed and collected hours per month, right?
Speaker A:So everybody, we get together every week and we wouldn't talk about everything.
Speaker A:We would talk about this goal of 12,000 filled, billed and collected hours per month.
Speaker A:Don't worry that the other things won't get taken care of.
Speaker A:They will.
Speaker A:The worry is that this won't get taken care of.
Speaker A:Because what happens is life takes over and life will still take over.
Speaker A:When you have a 12 month breakthrough goal, there will still be phone calls, there will still be emails.
Speaker A:What this does is it blocks your time, your energy and your focus.
Speaker A:It's not a lot of time.
Speaker A:This is a weekly meeting you have with yourself, with your team.
Speaker A:If you don't have a team, get a partner from this community and you focus on one goal, not 12 goals, one for a full year.
Speaker A:You can't not get there.
Speaker A:If you're really clear about what the goal is and it's a goal that you're going to focus on every week and every month to getting further.
Speaker A:Your CEO priority is akin to that.
Speaker A:It's part of the piece of who do I need to be and what do I as the CEO and need to do in relationship to that goal?
Speaker A:Everybody in the whole company has a different role.
Speaker A:If you're on your own, it's different than if you are in a scaling company or a survival company, whatever your stage is.
Speaker A:All right, so now let's talk about your CEO priority.
Speaker A:Today, the breakthrough tool is called your CEO priority.
Speaker A:I encourage you to pull this out so you have it.
Speaker A:We're going to be walking through it.
Speaker A:The CEO priority is the highest leverage area of focus that governs how you lead in this season.
Speaker A:We're all at different stages.
Speaker A:Existence, survival, scaling, impact.
Speaker A:So your CEO priority is the single highest leverage area of focus that governs how you lead in this season.
Speaker A:It's not what the whole company works on.
Speaker A:It's where you, the CEO focuses where you lead most intentionally to accelerate Progress on your 12 month breakthrough.
Speaker A:So we're going to enter your CEO priority identifier and I'm going to open up an example and we're going to walk through it together.
Speaker A:This is going to help you identify your very own CEO CEO priority.
Speaker A:The first couple pages really explain what it is and why it's important but we're going to go right into it, anchoring in your 12 month breakthrough goals.
Speaker A:The first step is your breakthrough goal.
Speaker A:I have a fictitious company called Savvy Kids.
Speaker A:I use Savvy Kids a lot because it's a simple company.
Speaker A:They're a company that provides educational toys for children.
Speaker A:One of the things that they have is shoelaces.
Speaker A:That's the first thing that they're selling is shoelaces.
Speaker A:Maya is the name of the founder and she is filling out this.
Speaker A:And it will give you, as I walk through, it'll give you context for how you might want to fill the same thing out.
Speaker A:So go ahead, write down what your goal is for Savvy kids.
Speaker A:Scales from 650,000 in revenue to 1.5 million in annual revenue by expanding school fundraiser and parent ambassador channels nationwide.
Speaker A:That's their goal.
Speaker A:So what's your goal?
Speaker A:It can be a revenue goal, a number of customers goal, a profit goal, something tangible that will move mountains for your company.
Speaker A:Then write down what would be available to you if this goal were achieved.
Speaker A:Why would it be valuable to you?
Speaker A:What would be meaningfully different in your company if you hit this goal?
Speaker A:Just take a moment and write down a couple things.
Speaker A:Why does this matter?
Speaker A:What would really demonstrate?
Speaker A:Maybe it helps you if you hit this goal.
Speaker A:Maybe it would help you develop a recurring go to market funnel that works.
Speaker A:Maybe it will fund something important to you.
Speaker A:Maybe it will allow you to pay yourself more.
Speaker A:Maybe it'll allow you to pay your team more.
Speaker A:Maybe it'll allow you to invest in another product or an existing product that needs improvement.
Speaker A:Maybe it'll allow you to hire somebody that you've been wanting to hire.
Speaker A:For whom will this matter the most?
Speaker A:Allow yourself to see the impact of achieving your goal.
Speaker A:Allow yourself to see how achieving this goal, this breakthrough goal, will help your customers.
Speaker A:How many more are going to experience the transformation available through your company?
Speaker A:What's going to become more possible?
Speaker A:And what about for your people in your company?
Speaker A:What about for your family?
Speaker A:We want to really ground in the value of achieving this goal.
Speaker A:What is the reason why this goal would be so great?
Speaker A:You want to keep coming back to it?
Speaker A:Because it's going to require saying no to certain things.
Speaker A:It's going to require that you align your time, focus, energy and pocketbook with this goal and take stuff away from other things for you to have the breakthrough.
Speaker A:The next area, part 2 of the identifier is you're going to identify areas of leadership tension.
Speaker A:Leadership tension is a signal, not a problem in this section, you'll name the areas where progress is heavy, decisions are stalled, or you keep making the same decisions over and over again.
Speaker A:Places where you keep getting pulled into the weeds, where everybody is looking to you for clarity.
Speaker A:Start to name the places where things are heavy.
Speaker A:Progress is slow, progress is heavy.
Speaker A:You keep trying.
Speaker A:You've tried a million things.
Speaker A:Identify areas of leadership tension.
Speaker A:Here's where you're listing areas that currently require disproportionate CEO attention.
Speaker A:If you don't have a big team, you're going to be in the weeds.
Speaker A:As a founder, you have to be even more clear about what your top priority is, because the weeds will always pull you in.
Speaker A:If you have lots of priorities, you're going to have lots of weeds.
Speaker A:Look to see where all those weeds are and see where where that tension is in your leadership.
Speaker A:Next, look for your constraints.
Speaker A:Every goal has a primary constraint, a primary problem that's holding it back.
Speaker A:It's something that's keeping things from moving ahead.
Speaker A:The core constraint is the single factor that most limits your company's ability to to deliver your goal.
Speaker A:So what is holding you back?
Speaker A:What's constraining you from achieving your 12 month breakthrough goal?
Speaker A:What's constraining you from hitting your goal?
Speaker A:Is it about sales?
Speaker A:Do you have a funnel that's working?
Speaker A:Do you have enough activities that are generating prospects?
Speaker A:Do you have enough activities where you're inviting people?
Speaker A:Are people saying yes?
Speaker A:Is it clear what the value is?
Speaker A:Are you offering too many things?
Speaker A:What are the constraints?
Speaker A:Maybe you have a CRM system that's causing you trouble.
Speaker A:Maybe you can't respond as quickly as you want.
Speaker A:What are the things that are constraining you?
Speaker A:What's the problem that's holding you back from really getting out there and hitting your goal?
Speaker A:Some examples here that Maya, our founder, wrote down.
Speaker A:Growth depends too heavily on the founder.
Speaker A:The school fundraiser expansion lacks a clear acquisition and activation playbook ambassador.
Speaker A:Productivity varies.
Speaker A:Channel strategy is intuitive rather than explicit or operationalized.
Speaker A:These might be some things that you can relate to.
Speaker A:What's constraining holding back the breakthrough?
Speaker A:So we want to find the core constraint.
Speaker A:The core constraint is consequential.
Speaker A:If it were solved, it would create a massive burst in progress.
Speaker A:Improving a non primary constraint might feel good and satisfying, but it won't necessarily create any meaningful results.
Speaker A:So you want to look for the constraint that if you fixed, would make a big difference.
Speaker A:Where does value slow down on the way to your customer?
Speaker A:Where does work pile up, wait or loop back?
Speaker A:Where do decisions bottleneck where does inconsistency erode trust?
Speaker A:And where does your team hesitate?
Speaker A:Where do you hesitate?
Speaker A:So just let yourself see that there is a place, there is a problem in the way.
Speaker A:What are the top three to five?
Speaker A:So for savvy kids, it lacks a scalable, repeatable growth system for schools and parent ambassadors that operates without CEO involvement.
Speaker A:Another is growth depends too heavily on the founder.
Speaker A:Another is that ambassador productivity varies.
Speaker A:Finally, you want to identify your number one constraint, the number one thing that's holding back your breakthrough goal.
Speaker A:Go ahead and write down what that is, what's constraining your growth.
Speaker A:So those are constraints.
Speaker A:Notice how this is for one goal and how much complexity there is when you're trying to solve for one goal.
Speaker A:If you've got five goals, are you really giving it this level of attention?
Speaker A:Can you optimize for that many constraints at one time?
Speaker A:Pick one and solve it.
Speaker A:Maybe it'll take you a month, maybe it'll take you a week, maybe it'll take you a year.
Speaker A:But figure out what that constraint is.
Speaker A:One constraint you can solve.
Speaker A:The constraint isn't something that necessarily will be forever.
Speaker A:It's the constraint right now.
Speaker A:The next question is, as you think about your CEO priority, what are the accelerators?
Speaker A:What can speed things up?
Speaker A:What are the multipliers?
Speaker A:Start to brainstorm your accelerators.
Speaker A:What would amplify your results?
Speaker A:What would be a force multiplier, for example?
Speaker A:It could be, I could accelerate if I were selling to bigger customers.
Speaker A:I could accelerate if the time I was spending wasn't going to result in a $20 sale, but in a $10,000 sale.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Where can you find those accelerators?
Speaker A:Accelerators can be all kinds of places.
Speaker A:One of the accelerators I found when I was recruiting, our goal every month at Alume was to hire 12 nurses per month and bring home three kids from the hospital.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And that was how we were going to fill bill and collect.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:One of the things that created that outcome of hiring and putting into the field 12 new nurses every single month was I needed to have people who are focused on certain stage of the recruiting cycle.
Speaker A:The first stage was getting enough interviews scheduled.
Speaker A:The second stage was the day they came in.
Speaker A:And we needed to get all kinds of compliance stuff done the day they were there.
Speaker A:So we needed to innovate a whole experience to make sure that the day they came in, we got everything done, including where they were going to go, which patient they were going to see, what time it was going to start.
Speaker A:We iterated and improved the that day.
Speaker A:They came in, that became an area of acceleration.
Speaker A:The other area of acceleration was having at the front certain people that didn't do anything else until they scheduled 10 interviews every single day.
Speaker A:We had other people in place so those people were not being interrupted with phone calls and email.
Speaker A:Someone else was taking up background so they could focus on 10 interviews either done or scheduled.
Speaker A:Where would that apply for you?
Speaker A:What would accelerate your success for your goal?
Speaker A:What are the things you could do?
Speaker A:Write down what those would be and write down your top ones.
Speaker A:What you don't want to do is have a whole bunch of accelerators.
Speaker A:We honed in on making sure we had the 10 a day.
Speaker A:We had people that were making sure before they looked at their email, before they had any meetings, that they booked 10 interviews.
Speaker A:And once we got that going, then we said, okay, how can we make this day of interview so powerful?
Speaker A:And then later we focused on the first day of orientation.
Speaker A:And then later we looked at, okay, how can we make the 90 day success program for our nurses?
Speaker A:How can we make sure that more of them stay?
Speaker A:So you focus on the accelerators one at a time, just like you focus on constraints one at a time.
Speaker A:Because if you start to tell yourself, I have to do everything, nothing happens.
Speaker A:Pick one.
Speaker A:All right, so then go ahead, write down what your accelerator is.
Speaker A:What could be an accelerator that you could focus on now for the foreseeable time, for this season, that you want to really accelerate and improve to help your goal.
Speaker A:And then you're going to now take a moment to be really clear.
Speaker A:If we remove constraint and amplify accelerator, our breakthrough goal becomes not just possible, but inevitable.
Speaker A:So write this down, identify your constraint, identify your accelerator, and see how it connects directly to that breakthrough goal.
Speaker A:In this case, we say if we remove our founder dependent growth constraint and amplify our school and ambassador activation energy engine, our breakthrough goal of scaling from 650,000 to 1 million becomes not just possible, but inevitable.
Speaker A:Write down something that actually lands for you.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:Now we want to focus on you as a human being and you leading from your highest and best use.
Speaker A:Every CEO has a zone of brilliance.
Speaker A:Every person has a zone of brilliance.
Speaker A:That place where your presence creates disproportionate impact.
Speaker A:So what is your unique brilliance as a CEO?
Speaker A:What is your unique brilliance as it relates to this goal?
Speaker A:What are you really good at?
Speaker A:When we hear these breakthroughs, constraints and accelerators, we think we have to do everything.
Speaker A:Let's make sure it's in your zone of genius.
Speaker A:Let's not have you doing things that you hate doing.
Speaker A:Let's have you doing things that you're great at, that you love doing, that feel natural to you.
Speaker A:So write down what your strengths are, the part of this problem that you're really good at, and where you should focus your attention.
Speaker A:All right, so your CEO priority is where your zone of genius intersects with your company's greatest need.
Speaker A:So define where you are going to be great and how you're going to lend that to your company in this season.
Speaker A:So what shows up for you when you think of this?
Speaker A:Where are you in your greatness?
Speaker A:And where can you apply your greatness to your 12 month breakthrough?
Speaker A:Write it down.
Speaker A:Okay, and then in order to do this, what are you going to stop doing?
Speaker A:What are the things you're doing now that waste your energy or take away your focus?
Speaker A:What can you let go of so that you can focus on this accelerator or this constraint?
Speaker A:What can you release?
Speaker A:Attention.
Speaker A:Write down three things you can let go of in your calendar, your time, your attention.
Speaker A:Maybe there's a priority that you're going to say, you know what, I'm not going to think about that right now.
Speaker A:I'm going to move it over until I figure out this problem, this constraint, or until I optimize this accelerator.
Speaker A:What's something you can stop doing or slow down doing or put into a box?
Speaker A:I'm only going to look at my email after I've done X, Y and Z, or I'm only going to look at my email 30 minutes a day.
Speaker A:What are you going to start doing now that you know what you're good at?
Speaker A:What can you start doing?
Speaker A:What will put you in the seat of power and then what are you going to amplify?
Speaker A:So now you see your accelerator.
Speaker A:What can you do?
Speaker A:What could you really amplify?
Speaker A:And then in the final step here, we just put it all together.
Speaker A:My CEO priority for the season is lead the design and activation of scalable, repeatable growth engine for schools and parents and ambassadors so that we can achieve our 12 month breakthrough, whatever that goal is.
Speaker A:We're going to remove this core constraint and amplify this accelerator.
Speaker A:This is your CEO priority.
Speaker A:You have the CEO priority now.
Speaker A:And we've gone through the tool.
Speaker A:This is one of the tools.
Speaker A:You have access to the tool.
Speaker A:You can go back, you can play with it.
Speaker A:Hopefully you're starting to see clarity about how you can really align yourself with what you're wanting to achieve.
Speaker A:You're starting to see how maybe you've been living in a state of Probable success or likely success.
Speaker A:But what about inevitable success?
Speaker A:We have the founder circle.
Speaker A:It is a way for you to grow your company in the company of other really wonderful women.
Speaker A:We help you install a system of breakthrough, a system of exponential growth so that it becomes your operating system.
Speaker A:It's a 12 month program.
Speaker A:It includes an annual one day planning retreat.
Speaker A:It includes three quarterly one day retreats.
Speaker A:This gives you the time to focus, create your plan, make the decisions right.
Speaker A:All these decisions that we were making oftentimes in the fly and then don't even realize that we're making the same decisions over and over because we haven't really committed to them.
Speaker A:This gives you the space to do that with others.
Speaker A:It helps you see other people make changes.
Speaker A:So you have an annual one day planning retreat, three one day quarterly retreats, four quarterly strategy sessions, one on one with me.
Speaker A:You get monthly 90 minute roundtables with the group and it includes leadership training for three members of your team to run your dashboards and includes all of the Force for Good tools, the masterclasses, et cetera.
Speaker A:There is 50% off Founder Circle Gold with VIP 50.
Speaker A:This is good for the next two days and it will not go this low again.
Speaker A:The other thing to note is that I will likely not be leading this again in the future.
Speaker A:It will be led by someone else.
Speaker A:This is a good time to get in there, be a part of of our community and have this year be the breakthrough year for you.
Speaker A:If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.
Speaker A:I do have office hours available.
Speaker A:I really appreciate all of you being here and we can continue to create breakthroughs together.
Speaker A:Have a remarkable rest of your day.