In this transformative episode, Scott Ritzheimer, Founder and CEO of Scale Architects shares shares a roadmap for founders to focus on stage-specific actions. If you struggle with content fatigue or feeling overwhelmed, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why focus on your current stage to avoid overwhelm and grow faster

- How to identify your stage with a quick assessment at foundersquiz.com

- What episodes to listen to for tailored advice at scalearchitects.com/podcast

This episode is ideal for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 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 helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits and with his business partner started led their multimillion-dollar business through an exceptional and extended growth phase (over 10 years of double-digit growth) all before he turned 35.He founded Scale Architects to help founders and CEOs identify and implement the one essential strategy they need right now to get them on the fast track to Predictable Success.

Want to learn more about Scott Ritzheimer's work at Scale Architects? Check out his website at https://www.scalearchitects.com/

To learn more about Scott, visit https://www.scattritzheimer.com.

To get help scaling your own business or nonprofit, visit https://www.scalearchitects.com

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.

2

Welcome for the very first time to the Start, Scale and Succeed podcast with your host,

that's me, Scott Rittimer.

3

Now, you might be thinking, wait a second, this is episode 301 and you're right, after 300

incredible episodes of the Secrets of the High Demand Coach podcast, I realized the real

4

secret behind it all was that not every secret applies to everyone, at least not all the

time.

5

And that creates a really big problem.

6

Okay, so if you listen to 50 amazing episodes and you hear 50 amazing guests say 50

amazing things, you're gonna be left scratching your head thinking, what do I actually do

7

now?

8

Which one of these things is actually going to change my business?

9

Which one of these things is going to take me to the next level?

10

And this is the one problem that I see plague every single founder today, no matter what

stage they're in.

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You don't need to be told another thing that you need to do.

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You don't need another thing added to your plate.

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We all know you have more than enough.

14

What you do need is you do need to know what are the very few, and I mean very few things

that you need to focus on now.

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So, I get it.

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I've been there.

17

When you're a founder, you're already juggling a million things.

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Maybe you're dreaming of starting your business, but stuck in a job that's draining you.

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uh Maybe you're...

20

You fast forward years and you're scaling fast.

21

It feels like chaos.

22

You're wondering, is this really as good as it gets?

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ah Or you're listening to all this advice and you're trying to keep up, but it's just

leaving you more and more confused, more stressed and honestly, maybe even a little burned

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out.

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I call that content fatigue and it's a real struggle today.

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You are not alone.

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If you feel like you're drowning in the noise, trying to figure out what's actually going

to move the needle for you right now, where you're at today.

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And the truth is most of the advice out there is not tailored to you.

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At uh least it's not tailored to when you are or where you're at right now.

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It's just a big pile of shoulds, right?

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You should do this, you should do that.

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And it's no wonder that many founders feel stuck.

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What you really need is a clear path.

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You really need a roadmap, something that just tells you exactly what to focus on at your

stage right now.

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was just sitting with a founder in her team and she said,

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I had someone to just tell me what to do.

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And as much as that would be the death of us to live that way all day, every day, you

don't need someone telling you every step of everything to do, but what you do need to

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stop spinning your wheels and start making real progress is someone to help you know what

things you need to focus on right now and then let you do your work.

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And that's the best way to grow without, and this is important, without losing your sanity

in the process, because let's be honest, that's a real threat some days.

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So.

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That's exactly what we're here to do on the new Start, Scale and Succeed podcast.

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From now on, and you've probably seen this in some of the episode titles uh leading up to

this, is we're actually gonna dive in for every episode on just one stage, just one of the

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seven stages of your founder's journey, maybe two if we're feeling a little fancy, if

there's something that crosses over that threshold, very few times that that happens.

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And you're going to see um that this,

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from a practical standpoint, you're gonna see the stage right in the title.

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So you can pick out the episodes.

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Here's a cool thing.

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That means I'm actually recording episodes that I don't want you to listen to.

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Think about that, a podcast that doesn't want you to listen to it.

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Now, not all of the episodes, but you get to filter out six out of seven of the episodes

at any given point in time.

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Because only one in seven, right?

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Those that matter for you and your stage are the ones that matter right now.

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The rest, even from us,

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Right now is noise.

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And does that mean that you can't listen to an episode to kind of remember the days of the

past?

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Sure, have at it.

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If that's fun, go for it.

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Does that mean you can't listen to episodes to get an idea of what's around the corner?

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uh Absolutely not.

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But you'll find that even when you listen to those episodes that are in other stages,

you'll be able to do it in a different way and you'll be free from the burden of having to

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turn that information into action.

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That's a beautiful thing.

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So.

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There's no more digging around endlessly through all the noise.

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There's no more, so here's what would happen, and I experienced this.

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You go and you're looking for a podcast, you're looking for some help, you're looking for

some advice, and you stumble on something that works for a while.

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So let's say we're relatively early in the journey.

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That's almost all sales and marketing, right?

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There are other things that are happening early on, but it's really about whether or not

you can find a profitable, sustainable market move forward.

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And so a lot of us will,

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pop into a podcast that is very well known, well produced, well done, heavy focus on sales

and marketing.

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And it seems like no matter what guest they have on, there's this sales and marketing

focus.

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And it's magical.

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It works wonders because it's the right thing for right now.

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But what happens is you keep listening to that, you keep growing, you implement whatever

it is they say, you master some of the techniques for sales and marketing, and your

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biggest problem isn't sales and marketing anymore.

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So what do you do?

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There's two equal but opposite problems.

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You either double down on trying to solve every problem that you have through sales and

marketing.

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I see it happen all the time.

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And this isn't unique to sales and marketing, just using this as an example.

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Or you have to start all over again.

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You gotta go back to the sea of possible podcasts, try and figure out which one's gonna be

helpful.

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See if you can really trust them.

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uh Try and somehow, and if you don't know what stage you're in, I don't know how you do

this, but.

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You gotta figure out if it's actually the right thing now, because really all you know is

that the thing that was working isn't working anymore.

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You don't actually know what will work.

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And so you hunt, you pick, you get a couple episodes and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't,

maybe it's not for the previous stage, but it's for a future stage.

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I don't even know what I'm saying right now because it's that confusing.

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so the way that this works is you get one podcast.

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for all the stages.

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So think about this.

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You start up your business, you're in stage two, you need to figure out how to sell, how

to price, to uh plan your time accordingly, maybe hire your first couple of people.

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And as you do, you create a bunch of success, you hire more and more people, boom, you

find yourself in stage three.

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And we'll talk about what these stages are here in just a moment.

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But it's a whole new ball game.

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It's a whole different challenge and endeavor.

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And instead of having to go and find another stage,

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All you need to do is go to our website and click on the next stage, stage three, and

boom, there's a whole suite of podcast episodes ready for you to binge.

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It's amazing, it's wonderful, it's glorious.

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And so the fruit of your uh well-earned effort uh to advance from one stage to the next,

to get to the next level is you've got a whole new host of brand new content just waiting

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for you that you know that you know is going to be helpful for you.

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That's what's really cool about the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast.

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And it's the only one that gives you a roadmap for every stage and allows you to grow

through each of those stages without having to go find something else.

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And we do that with some of the best coaches.

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I mean, just amazed at the quality and caliber of coaches.

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When you understand, uh Eve, especially those that sound really simplistic, uh those are

the ones who've really got it figured out because the challenges of any given stage are

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actually very, simple.

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The challenges of all the stages is very complex, too complex.

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No one can win that game.

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But when you realize what is necessary for right now in this stage, it gets a lot simpler

really, really quickly.

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And so that's what we're doing here with the podcast.

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Now, uh to make this work for you, there's a pretty obvious um requisite, if you will, and

that is that you gotta have a sense of what stage you're in.

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And uh so the stages are, very specific things, right?

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It's not some nebulous next level.

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These are the seven stages that I outline in my book, The Founder's Evolution.

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This is about conquering the journey that every founder must face.

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And in that book, I break down all of the stages.

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And you don't have to read the book.

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I'm gonna go through them real quick right now.

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You probably have a pretty good idea what stage you're in after that.

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And if you don't, I'll show you a shortcut, easy button to figure it out in 10 minutes.

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So.

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First up, stage one, it actually starts before you start.

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This is dissatisfied employee stage.

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uh It's the pre-founder stage of the process.

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uh you're consumed by this question like, there's gotta be a better way.

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It's like, it's everything.

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You wake up, you're thinking it, you go to work, thinking it, you're hearing your boss yap

on, and you're still thinking this.

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Like there has to be a better way, better way to lead, better way to do your product,

better way to make money, better way, period.

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And uh you're just driving to figure it out.

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And so there's some right things to do in this.

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This is a real stage.

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ah And the biggest mistake folks make here is that they try and skip the stage and go

straight into stage two.

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We'll get there in a second, but there are some right things to do on this.

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And if you check out our website, especially if you go to the podcast page,

scalearchitects.com forward slash podcast, you scroll down a little bit, you'll see that

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we've sorted all of the episodes for you.

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So there's a whole section on how to get stage one.

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Right.

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ah And so we're not gonna teach what all those are right now.

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You can check that out.

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But that's stage two.

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You're thinking about starting.

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Maybe it's a side hustle.

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You haven't gone full time yet, but you want to.

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That's stage one.

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We've got episodes for you.

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Next stage, stage two.

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The startup entrepreneur stage, right?

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This is where things get fun and terrible and wonderful and glorious and awful and

beautiful all at the same time.

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I don't know how you fit all of that in one stage, but you do.

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And if you're there, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

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And, you know,

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We kind of think that stage two is, uh if you're on Instagram enough, let's be honest,

you'll think stage two, starting your own business is firing up a website and then having

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two pina coladas on the beach singing Garth Brooks songs.

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And it really doesn't work that way.

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It doesn't work that way at all.

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It is just a ruthless fight uh for your business to survive.

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And you get in there and again, you have some pretty amazing experiences.

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But you find yourself more often than not thinking, what have I gotten myself into?

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What was I thinking?

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Because it's a lot, the whole stage is a lot.

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And it's very, very easy because it's really just you, maybe a couple helpers at this

stage.

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It's very easy to get overwhelmed.

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It's very easy to get distracted by the wrong things and they take your focus away from

the right things.

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And that's the fastest way for your business to fail.

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And unfortunately, a very large number do.

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uh Eight out of 10 fail in this stage.

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ah It's a really big deal.

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So ah there's some right things to do.

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Very few of them.

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Very simple and straightforward to understand.

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Can be challenging to do.

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Don't get me wrong.

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But it's much easier if you know what you need to focus on.

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And we've got a whole section of episodes just for you in stage two.

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All right.

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You focus on the right things.

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Usually a heavy focus on sales and marketing.

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Getting clear on your offer, your packaging.

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And then just rinse and repeat and drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive.

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That's the recipe.

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It's really that.

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And when you do, find, I can't do this all by myself.

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And you start bringing in some employees, one or two part-timers at first, and then more

and then more.

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And you wake up and you got a handful of people and they're a handful, right?

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You wake up uh Monday morning after working all week and cleaning up messes that other

people on your team who are supposed to be helping, but really just screwed everything up

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that they made.

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And you find yourself thinking, what's wrong with these people?

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And I mean, it's amazing.

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You feel like you're the only one asking that when you're the one asking that.

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But I can tell you from having helped 20,000 different founders, everybody asks this

question at this stage because they don't think like you, they don't act like you, they

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don't solve problems like you do, they don't anything like you.

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And that can be a real problem at this stage.

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And so the reality of it is you gotta learn to manage these folks well, especially folks

that aren't like you, but the right folks who aren't like you.

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If you're feeling the pain of working with a team, let's be honest, nobody starts their

business to go and manage a team of five people.

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That's never on someone's mission statement.

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I've never ever in all those 20,000 people found someone whose sole goal was to manage a

couple people.

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Way easier ways of doing that.

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You can go get a shift supervisor job at Starbucks if you want.

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You can manage five people real easy.

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So we don't want it, we need it to grow.

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And how do you master the challenge of that?

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Because let's be honest, you also still have your job to do.

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So there's some real challenges in that stage and we've had some brilliant guests on who

really unpack how to succeed through that, where to focus and how to succeed in it.

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It's very cool.

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So check those out.

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And what happens when you do, you get the right folks to kind of help you leading this

thing.

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You build some uh repeatable systems, simple repeatable systems.

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uh The team starts to grow a little bit more.

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ah You're now 10, 15, 20, 25 people.

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You've got a couple of leaders around and you see this leadership team start to form and

you start trusting them with bigger and bigger pieces of the business.

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And every time you do, it gets a little better, it gets a little bigger and it gets a lot

scarier.

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Because things are hard whenever it's up to you to get it done, but at least it's up to

you to get it done.

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And if stuff goes wrong, you can jump in and save the day.

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But what happens is you...

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You're looking around and a couple of things go wrong and you realize you can't just jump

in and save the day for all kinds of different reasons.

218

And you find that your profits scale nowhere near as fast as your problems.

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And what happens is you come into this stage, it's stage four, it's a natural, normal

stage.

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Everyone goes through it, it's called the disillusioned leader.

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Growth is happening really fast, but it's messy.

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um

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everything looks good from the outside, you're dying on the inside.

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Something has to change.

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And what has to change is you have to change the way that you lead.

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You have to level up as a leader.

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You have to step into your real role as an executive.

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And when you do, you build an executive team around you and you step into stage five,

which is the chief executive.

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You put away your superstar skill in decision-making and build a superstar team of

decision-makers and you hit your stride.

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business takes off, it starts to scale, and there's just like, there's a wind at your back

that you've never had before.

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Not like this, not for this long.

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You've had tons of growth in the past, but it has been through blood, sweat, and tears.

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Now it's like, just working.

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It's a really cool stage, and it's worth all the pain and frustration that you've

experienced to this date.

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But it leads us to a really interesting question that uh totally caught me off guard when

I experienced it and...

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ah and even surprised me as I found out that it wasn't unique to me, but it's something

that we all face, and that is this question of who am I?

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Like, who am I really?

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Who am I?

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Apart from my business, like, if my business isn't woefully dependent on me every day, do

I have any value?

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Now, that sounds ridiculous to say like that, but we all think it.

241

Let's be real.

242

And you gotta wrestle that to the ground, and if you don't, it's dramatically going to

undermine your effectiveness as a CEO, might push you back into stage four, quite

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honestly.

244

uh At a minimum, it's going to undermine your effectiveness in moving into stage six.

245

And stage six is where we do the organizational work and the inner work, right?

246

We get settled on who we are and what our value is apart from the organization.

247

And what that does is it sets us up for this really profound opportunity to own and not

run your business.

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Doesn't that sound amazing?

249

You get sent the distribution check.

250

and everything's taken care of.

251

Not just the day-to-day operations.

252

I mean, you've got a visionary CEO in there leading the charge forward, taking the next

hill, uh dreaming of things that you might have even found difficult to dream about in

253

your days because they're building on the foundation that you laid and they're able to

make your ceiling be their floor.

254

And it's amazing.

255

And you're one of the primary beneficiaries of it as a true owner.

256

That's stage six.

257

And stage six is very much about recovering from the life of a founder.

258

mean, you spent years, decades even, uh building this thing and now you're not running it.

259

You get this Ricky Bobby, like, what do do with my hands kind of a thing going on?

260

And uh you're asking the question, now what do I do?

261

And you can go golfing, you can go gallivanting around the world, you can spend more time

with your grandkids, but ultimately those things are not going to give you the purpose

262

that you need to sustain what can be the best years of your life.

263

And so most founders start to set their sights on stage seven, which is where they

actually become the visionary founder they've always wanted to be.

264

And what's different about it this time is when you were thinking there should be a better

way, a lot of that was there should be a better way for me, right?

265

And of course you were thinking about your customers, but that story was very me-centric

and that's okay.

266

That's appropriate for that stage of your journey, that stage of your life.

267

But now in the later stages of both,

268

your journey as a founder in life, you start to realize your legacy is not about you.

269

It's about what you leave behind in others.

270

And you start asking yourself the question, what do I want to leave behind?

271

And that changes the way, fundamentally changes the way that you start to see the world

around you and how you start to contribute to the world around you.

272

it is stage seven, being that guide, that coach, that mentor, uh that visionary founder

is...

273

I have to say the most rewarding of the seven stages.

274

It's not for everyone.

275

You're not a better person if you get there, but if you have the opportunity to get there,

you'll wanna seize it because it's amazing.

276

And so for anyone across that entire spectrum, across that entire journey who's listening,

from the dissatisfied employee asking, there a better way, to the disillusioned leader

277

wondering if this is as good as it gets, to the visionary founder wondering what they're

gonna leave behind wherever you're at.

278

we have episodes tailored just for you.

279

Now, some of you might be wondering, hey, those stages sound pretty good.

280

I recognize a couple of them, but I'm not sure.

281

I'm stuck between a few or I don't really know.

282

I'd love for you to tell me what stage I'm in.

283

uh Great news.

284

We have a free assessment that does exactly that.

285

And it does it in less than 10 minutes in 10 questions.

286

It's phenomenal.

287

Super accurate, super helpful.

288

It'll not only give you the stage that you're in, but it'll show you how much energy

you're putting into other stages, which is eye-opening.

289

And so if you're sitting there exhausted, it's probably because you're in a stage and

you're doing a bunch of stuff for other stages.

290

And if you get rid of that other stuff and just do the stuff that you want, you'll grow

faster, you'll stress less, you'll have more energy, and it's a heck of a lot more fun.

291

So what you can do is head on over to foundersquiz.com.

292

and just take a couple minutes of your time and it'll spit it out, tell you exactly what

stage you're in right now.

293

And then you can use that to jump into the episodes that you'd like.

294

So we've got a sense of the stage or you know how you can get it.

295

And so what I wanna do, I wanna invite you to keep listening.

296

um We've got a lineup of amazing episodes.

297

Again, one of the most effective, you can listen to it in your favorite podcast player.

298

can watch the videos on YouTube, they're in both.

299

The videos are fantastic, by the way.

300

We've totally upgraded our system and it's awesome.

301

ah So you can watch them there, but I'd highly recommend that you head over to the Scale

Architects website, scalearchitects.com forward slash podcast.

302

And there again, if you scroll down toward the middle of the page, if you will, you can

see we have a section for each stage.

303

And there's a little bit about the stage in there that's helpful, but what you'll find is

my favorite episodes,

304

from each stage.

305

So if you wanna know, hey Scott, what should I do right now?

306

uh You should go and listen to those three or four episodes for your stage because they

will change your life.

307

If you know what stage you're in, you go listen to those, I promise you it's gonna be

revolutionary for you.

308

Because it's gonna either give you insights that you didn't have before, it's gonna give

you the clarity of and confidence of saying, hey, I was focusing on the right things and I

309

can let some of this other stuff go and double down.

310

That might not seem, it'll seem more revelatory for some of you, not as revelatory for

others, but I'm telling you, if you go in and just do that simple work for your stage, it

311

will make a massive difference in the grand scheme of things.

312

So head on over to scalearchitects.com forward slash podcast, check out all the episodes

that apply to you.

313

Stay tuned.

314

If you're not on our email list, get on the email list.

315

You get early access to all the episodes and stick with us.

316

So Disillusioned Leader,

317

Startup entrepreneur, reluctant manager, I'm sorry, dissatisfied employee at the

beginning, disillusioned leader, uh CEO, true owner, visionary founder, wherever you are

318

in that journey, we've got episodes just for you.

319

So hang around, know that your time and attention mean the world to us.

320

I hope you got something out of this episode.

321

I can't say as much as I did because it's me and that's kinda narcissistic, but I hope you

got as much out of this episode as uh you need.

322

I hope it points you in the right direction as a founder, and I cannot wait to walk every

stage of this journey with you.

323

Take care.