In this insightful episode, Scott Ritzheimer, Founder of Scale Architects, shares how to discover and evolve your true organizational vision across all seven stages of the Founder's Evolution. If you struggle with unclear purpose, motivation dips, or building a team around something that doesn't truly matter, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why your organization should (or did) still matter 50 years from now

- What makes a vision compelling enough to fuel you through decades of sacrifice

- How to evolve your vision from short-term survival fuel → team inspiration → future legacy

This episode is ideal for 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/

Mentioned in this episode:

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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. Yes, it's the only

podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your

journey as a founder. And I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and

you get me today in another solo episode that's going to follow

up on the last solo episode we did, because I got a few

questions regarding a big, really, big piece that I just

didn't talk about, and that is the whole idea in the last

episode was that you should build an organization that's as

big as your vision needs it to be, which is great and well and

good. But then the question is, well, what is the vision? What

does that actually mean? How do you decide that? And how can you

get clear enough about your vision to know how big an

organization you should build? And more specifically, one of

the things that I talked about in the previous episode was, is

it actually your vision? And that's what we're going to talk

about today, is what is your vision for your organization?

And what we want to do is really dive into unpack what is vision,

right? And there's about a million different definitions

for this. I'm actually not going to offer another definition.

Instead, I'm going to give you a question that I think is really

helpful. And that question is this, if you're trying to figure

out what your vision is, the question you should ask yourself

is, why did or does this organization exist 50 years from

now? So if we were to fast forward the tape 50 years from

today, as of the recording, it is 2026 just hit 2026 and so

we'd be talking about 2076 that's a really long time. I

can't even imagine right now, with the rate of change, what

that's going to look like, but I can stop and think, will my

organization matter then? Now it might not matter to the globe.

It might not matter to my entire state or city or country or

whatever it might be. It might just matter to my kids or my

grandkids, and if it doesn't even matter to them, then there

might be a problem there. So we really want to get out of the

hustle and humdrum of daily life, really look further down

the road and say, Hey, why do we want this organization to exist?

Now, what I'm not saying in this I'm not saying that the

organization has to exist 50 years from now. That's not true.

You might be retiring. You might be reaching the end of the run

for your business, and you're okay with it going away. It

served you really well. That's fine. I'm not talking about your

business existing 50 years from now. It can, it can't. Doesn't

matter. What does matter is, does the organization still

matter 50 years from now? Does the impact that you're making

today matter in the long run? And that opens up a whole realm

of different possibilities. It really dials in on that. Why?

Why does your organization exist? Or, if we're looking 50

years from now, why did it exist? And the range of

possibilities is borderline endless, right? It could be

something as you know, what we would consider deep and

meaningful as finding a cure for breast cancer. Or it could be as

simple as I want to get enough money to put my kids through

college debt free. It could be something not interesting and

passionate, like transforming the city through giving away $10

million annually to charities, or it could be something

internal, like, Hey, I just want to prove that I can do it, not

to anyone else, not for anyone else, but I just want to prove

that I can build a $10 million company, or something like that.

Now that last one is dangerously close to violating the rule

around these, which is the vision itself can't just be a

$10 million company because, because the it's possible that

it can be. But the real challenge here is that when you

find folks who have visions that are round numbers, especially

around the orders of magnitude, like a million dollars or $10

million or a $1 billion IPO, frankly, those are almost never

real visions. They might be goals, but a goal, in and of

itself, is going to leave you feeling empty and void on in the

pursuit of it, and then even worse afterwards is what we

talked about last time with my amazing half marathon story that

was much longer than a half marathon and and so what we want

to look at here is really Staying away from the trap of

pursuing someone else's race really being clear on why we're

doing what we're doing and why it matters, and really when

we're looking at why it matters, the first and foremost, the only

person that it really matters to has to matter to is you if it

matters to. Everyone else, but it doesn't matter to you. It's

not going to work. I would highly recommend against that.

Now, in terms of, does it have to matter to anybody else? Well,

there's a couple questions to that. If it just matters to you,

can you create enough value with it that it will still have some

meaning 50 years from now? If that's so, then that's that's

great. If it doesn't, then it might not matter to you. It

might just be a selfish desire to you, which is something that

you'll want to explore. So will it matter a few decades from

now, at least, another group that you have to pay attention

to? Will it matter is those that you love most? I was just

thinking through my values again today, and rephrased my first

one, which is to remember who's going to remember you. And

sometimes we we pour so much into a vision for an

organization that we end up sacrificing our vision for our

family, for those that we love the most, or those things that

matter most to us. And so when you're thinking in terms of your

vision and what the meaning is of it, and does it matter, you

also want to think through, what does it mean for your family,

for those that you love the most, for your friends, even, or

for your faith, or those, again, those things that matter most to

you. How does it matter to them? Another group you're going to

want to think of, and this is something we're going to dive

into in a moment, because it becomes much more relevant as

you progress through the stages. But if you are going to need

other people around you, then you're going to probably want to

have a vision that motivates them as well. And so if it's

something that matters deeply to you, but in a selfish way,

you'll find it's very difficult to orient other people toward

that goal. But if it matters to you in a meaningful way, it's

far less likely to have that problem. We'll talk more about

that in just a second. But it needs to matter to you. It needs

to matter to those that who are going to remember you, and it

also needs to matter to those who are going to help serve you.

Now, to some extent, it has to matter to your market as well.

Although that's not inherently true, you can serve a market for

reasons that don't matter to the market at all. A good example of

this would be, I've just totally forgot the name Shoe Company

Zappos, because Tony Tsai was was you created that

organization to deliver happiness. It really had nothing

to do with the shoe market, but he did that really well. So

doesn't actually have to matter to your market. Other things do

though. So the market is important. It's just not as

relevant to your vision. And so if you're sitting there

thinking, Man, I just don't know what my vision is. I thought I

was clear on it, maybe I'm not. Maybe I was clear on it, but

it's not the right thing. How do you find your vision? Well,

there's a handful of questions that I think are really helpful,

and you can pause these think about each one. You can write

them down later. But the first question is this, what is that

better way that led you to start? So if you kind of rewind

the tape to Hey, why did you start this thing? For some of

you, it may be, hey, I needed money. I lost my job, I did

something, but you still chose to do something specific. Why?

What was it that led you to believe that you could make a

difference there, that you could add value there. What was that

better way? Even if it was a couple layers under the surface,

I'm pretty sure it was still there. So what's the better way

that led you to start sometimes, especially in stages three and

four, when that the chaos of life and work and organizational

doings, it can get real easy to lose sight of that better way,

and we lose sight of our vision. So go back to the beginning.

Might be a good place to find why you're doing what you're

doing. Another thing that might indicate your vision is pretty

interesting, and it's actually to think through what makes you

angry, and not just in your work life, not just within your team,

but like, what are the big things that make you angry? What

are those things that you find yourself just viscerally pushing

against? Because your vision may very well be the opposite. You

see this a lot in really clear visions, and one of the things

that's cool about the nonprofit world is that they do this

pretty well, and so you might see someone who experiences

poverty early in their life, and they know kind of viscerally how

that feels, and they dedicate their life and their resources

and their wealth to solving that. That's something that made

them angry, and their vision is to rid the world of it. That's

pretty cool. So think about things that make you angry

again, not just

how your team's driving you crazy, but the big things, the

big moving parts in life. The next one is you're going to give

years to this thing. You're going to give a lot of blood,

sweat, tears, emotional energy, mental energy, physical energy.

It's going to beat you up. You're going to feel rejection.

You're. Gonna have setbacks. You're gonna say no to a whole

lot of other things to make this organization a success. What

makes that sacrifice worth it? What makes the years of those

sacrifices worth it? When you really dial down on not just

what the benefits are, but what you're willing to give to

achieve it, you can really start to dial in on what matters most

to you. And one of the things that you can do the fourth

question here is actually a question that you can tack on to

any of these, but once you find an answer to one or even all

three of the other questions, the next thing you want to do is

just ask yourself, Well, why is that? Well, why is that? Well,

why is that? Well, why is that, and why is that? We call this

the five whys, and you might not make it to all five. You might

get to the bottom of it in two or three or four. But not just

taking that surface level concept, but really digging

underneath the surface is a great way to find that most

meaningful, most purposeful vision that you're looking for,

cool. I hope that's helpful in terms of practical ways of

pursuing and defining your vision. Now what I want to do

just very, very briefly, this is a kind of least you need to know

moment, but one of the things we have to recognize is the way

that we relate to that vision, the role that it serves in our

organization, the standard for what qualifies as an effective

vision, not a right or wrong, but effective. It actually

changes quite a lot over the course of your journey as a

founder. So in stages one and two, the vision is primarily

just a short term fuel that you need. It's whatever gets you up

again, whatever helps you get through the adversity, the

setback, the resistance. And many times I see folks like

their vision is just to make it in this stage, and that's fine.

What qualifies as a great vision in stages one and two are really

what do I need to get through this? What do I need to keep

going? What do I need to stay committed? What do I need to be

to feel purpose in what I do? And so it's really just that

short term fuel that you need to get through what can be an

immensely difficult season for a founder. After that, it starts

to change a little bit, and the reason for that is that your

team starts to change a little bit better yet you actually

start to have a team. And so what you'll see, and we've

talked about this many times in the past, but in stage three,

you need to have operators around you. It's really the key

insight for success in stage three. And operators have a

really interesting relationship with vision in that they don't

really have it in and of themselves. There's a fun story

that I like to tell. Don't have time for it now, but just

suffice it to say, when you really dig in for an operator

and try and get them to describe vision. It could be a real

challenge for those of you who are founders and you are

operators, you'll probably recognize that in yourself as

well. You might jump to like most people do when you ask them

their vision. Who are not visionaries, they'll just talk

to you about what they need to do, or what problems they need

to solve. We want to go deeper than that with a why. Now, just

because operators aren't good at coming up with vision doesn't

need that. They mean that they don't need it. In fact, you your

operators, great operators need great visionaries. For that

reason, they need someone else to give them a vision. They need

someone else to point them in a direction. And so what you want

to do in stage three is to paint an ever clearer picture of a

more promising future. That's really what the vision needs to

do. It needs to paint that ever clearer picture of a more

promising future and not send them in 1000 different

directions, which we're prone to do as visionaries, we want to

start to dial in on that one compelling vision, and that's

going to set us up for stage four. Because if you haven't

done it by stage four, you've got a big group of people around

you at this point, you've got to figure out how to make your

vision matter to someone other than you. It's not, you know,

something like a profit goal, or, frankly, even a revenue

goal, or some type of personal life satisfaction goal, those

don't cut it. Nobody can't say. Nobody. Very few people are

ultra inspired by you working three days a week. They're not

going to work five days a week to make that happen. Most people

won't, but they may be inspired by whatever you do with those

three days. And so we really want to dial in on a why that

motivates, not getting away from work, but why we work, and what

you can use to motivate your team. So by stage four, it has

to be more than clear. It also has to be compelling. And that's

a really, really important point for stage four. It's also a

place where we start to question our vision quite a lot,

especially if it's the wrong one. So some of you stage four

founders listening, who are really in that, man, is this it

mode? Or you're really struggling with the that

disillusionment that we face in stage four? A big part of the

reason might be that you've got the wrong vision you're going

after. And so what you want to really look at is, what is the

right vision for you and your and are you building the right

organization for it? All right? That takes us through stage

four. Stage Five is where this thing really starts to get

scaled up. And one of the things that I see for folks at in Stage

Five is that they've created so much success by this point that

they start to get a little bored with their vision. They start to

get a little distracted by things other than their vision.

They lots of good things. You can get distracted by sales. You

can get distracted by systems. You can get distracted by

synergizing with the people around you, but for success in

stage five, and I wrote about this in the book that's going to

come out later this year, the big question you have to ask

yourself as to whether or not you should be the CEO or chief

visionary officer even better for your organization, it comes

down to this question, do you have a vision for your

organization's future, not just for where you've been, not just

for what you've achieved, but for the future, and do you have

the energy to lead your team there? That's really it. That's

the qualification for a chief visionary officer in an

organization who is the founder. Right? You've proven you've got

everything else you need to get to that point. The one thing

that you'll continue to have to answer for yourself, not

necessarily prove to yourself, but answer for yourself, is, Do

I have a vision for the future, right? Are you willing to

challenge the vision of the past, for the vision of the

future, and do you have the energy to lead your team there?

If you answer no to either one of those questions, you either

need to figure out how to say yes, or it's time to start

looking at getting into stage six and handing off that role to

somebody else. And that's what brings us to stage six. Stage

six is where you own without operating right. You move out of

that CEO, Chief, visionary officer, CVO role, and what you

need to do at that point is shift from a vision for an

organization more toward a vision for your life. I call

this shifting from one to many. And so you start thinking about

your vision as something separate from and above, bigger

than the vision that you had for your organization, and that's

really, really fun. It's a little bit of a challenge

because you've only thought in terms of the vision for that

organization, and you've had to stay focused for so long that

removing those blinders can be a little harder than we think. But

the reality of it is, once you do, the world becomes your

playground. Again, it's a whole lot of fun at that stage. So you

want to shift your vision from one to many. And then finally,

in stage seven, this the fundamental change between stage

six and stage seven, is that your vision goes way beyond your

lifetime.

So in stage six, you're really looking at your vision for your

life. In stage seven, you're looking for a vision that

extends beyond your lifetime. And one of the things I like to

encourage my stage seven folks to do is to think of and really

develop and pursue and communicate 100 year vision,

something that is guaranteed to outlive you. And that's really

what allows us to run with this, the proverb you've probably

heard me say multiple times, but it's this for stage seven,

especially when it comes to vision, is that a society grows

great when old men plant trees under whose shade they'll never

sit. Brilliant, brilliant proverb. And couldn't describe

stage seven any better. So that's what that 100 year vision

does. It goes beyond you and starts to create things that

you'll never benefit from. But those who follow in your wake

will now one of the things that you're going to bump into, I'm

going to end with this. Sorry, this episode is a little longer

than normal, but one of the things I want to end with is a

paradox that folks usually run into when they find their right

vision, and that is, when you have the right vision. Achieving

that vision is more rewarding than you can imagine right now.

You can probably think of some pretty cool stuff that will

happen when that vision happens, but that pales it's not even

comparable to what the experience of fulfilling that

vision or of living a whole life in the vibrant pursuit of that

vision, it's way, way better than you think. If I told you

how wonderful that's going to be, you'd think I was lying.

Today, we'll put it that way. However, the road between here

and there, the road that you're going to have to travel to get

there, is a lot harder than you think. And so if you don't have

the right vision, that. Road is going to trip you up, but if you

do have the right vision, it's going to be worth it. So what do

I want encourage you to do if you haven't already done this?

Go back and listen through those questions. Really refine that

vision down to make sure that it is your vision for your

organization. Make sure you've identified why you want your

organization to exist or have existed and still matter 50

years from now, with that, I want to say thank you. You know

that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you

got as much fun out of this conversation as I got sharing

it. This stuff lights me up, and I cannot wait to see you next

time. Take care.