In this constructive episode, David C. Olcott, CEO of Samurai Success, shares how to move from reluctant manager to effective leader in stage 3. If you feel frustrated managing people, overwhelmed by constant questions, and stuck wearing too many hats, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why managing people directly creates constant frustration and burnout.

- How to build systems that allow your team to self-manage and scale sustainably.

- What role distinctions you must master to lead without losing your identity.

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 3 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

David C. Olcott is the founder, president, and CEO of Samurai Success, Inc., an international executive, organizational, and personal coaching firm headquartered in Denver, CO. David has poured the wisdom he has gained from 35 years of coaching into the trademark Samurai Success coaching system, which provides a proven roadmap for success. David’s clients become more purposeful, and their businesses become more sustainable and profitable. David is truly in the service of others, helping them create a successful life, meet their destiny, and leave a legacy of their own.

Want to learn more about David C. Olcott's work at Samurai Success? Check out his website at https://samuraisuccess.com/

Connect with David through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-c-olcott-1107bb1/

Get a copy of his book Swords of Illumination at https://www.amazon.com/Swords-Illumination-David-C-Olcott/dp/B0CF4CXVHJ

Mentioned in this episode:

Take the Founder's Evolution Quiz Today

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

Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

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

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a

founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and today I want to

talk to those founders out there who are experiencing the

identity whiplash that comes with leadership. Because if

you're a founder, you've probably created success by

being the person who made everything happen. You were the

closer. You were the problem solver. You were the one that

clients wanted to work with. But as you do that and you get more

and more clients, you need more and more help. At some point you

wake up, you've got 567, maybe 10 or even 11 people. You've

hired a handful and and those people, they just ask questions

all the time. They they need things all the time, and it

leaves you frustrated, and what I call a reluctant manager. And

it's it would be one thing if it was just a business thing, but

it's very personal as well. We start to look in the mirror and

wonder what we've become. And here's what makes this so

difficult. It's that the sense of self that you had being

wrapped up in being the expert, being the doer, the one who

delivers results, is now not where you get to spend most of

your time. Most of your results come through other people, and

here to help us navigate this space in a very, very clever way

is our guest today, the one and only David C Olcott, who is the

founder, president and CEO of samurai success Inc, an

International Executive, organizational and personal

coaching firm headquartered in Denver, Colorado, David has

poured his wisdom that he has gained from 35 years of coaching

and into the trademark samurai success coaching system, which

provides a proven roadmap of success. David's clients become

more purposeful and their businesses become more

sustainable and profitable. In throughout the process, David is

truly in the service of others, helping them create a successful

life, meet their destiny and leave a legacy of their own.

David, you've got this really cool business model, but you

also have a very interesting route to explaining it. Tell us

a little bit about the swords of illumination.

David C. Olcott: First of all, Scott, thanks so much for having

me on board. Brother, I just I know it took us a while to get

together, but, man, I'm really excited about being here and

having this conversation, especially with your tribe and

your audience. Swords of illumination, Samurai success.

Boy that started so many years ago, when I was just I was a kid

in Bible school, if you could believe that. And our pastor

said to us, he says, If you really want to live a

meaningful, purpose driven life. And I remember I was nine years

old. I remember the time he says, If you really want to live

a purpose driven life, then you have to understand about the

greatest life you can live is being in service of others. Wow.

And it hit me in such a way now nine years old, of course, it

didn't, you know, change my life and and stuff like this. But as

I grew up and I got involved in sales and business and stuff

like this, I actually read a book called samurai selling. And

in that book, it said the word Samurai, loosely translated,

means in service of others. Wow. And I took those two events

mother and pushed them together into creating samurai success.

Because I was like, what if a business owner truly understood

that they have a boss, that's the marketplace, and that really

isn't just an individual consumer. I'm talking about a

group of customers called the marketplace, and you could truly

be in service to them. What would a business look like if

you develop that business service philosophy, principle

based upon no matter service or product you're selling, but if

you had that principle and that philosophy, what would a company

like that look like? And that's what's thrilled me the last 35

years.

That's fascinating, because folks who

listen to the show will know the root of the word entrepreneur is

to go between and so fascinating. How similar those

are. Samurai is much cooler. I think we should just all call

ourselves samurai instead of entrepreneurs now, but I love

that. All right. So there are these, what you call swords of

illumination, and those are specific things that you outline

in the book. And so I'm wondering if you could just kind

of walk us through. We may not get to all six of them, but

let's just start at the top and work through these. And how

someone who's in this reluctant manager stage, who's who's

learning to, you know, to thrive within their market, you know,

to please their new boss, or 1000 of them. But also, you

know, get this ragtag group of folks around them, all moving in

the same direction.

David C. Olcott: So it's an interesting I love that you have

a step seven step phase that you talk about with your podcast.

And I've chanced to see some of those things. I really love

this. And we're at number three, this reluctant manager you talk

about, which is so perfect for what we do at samurai success,

because so many of our clients are great entrepreneurs and

they're great technicians, but they're really not good

managers. And what we mean by that is that we have the title

of manager, we have the paid grade. As a manager, but we

don't really understand what a manager means. And in our world,

Samurai success, you can have all those things, but if you

don't understand the five fundamentals of being a manager,

being organized, understand how to plan, how to really lead

through a system. And that's probably the biggest

differential that we make at samurai success, is because most

management concepts that are out there today talk about managing

people. We do not do that. Scott, we we stay away from

that, because I will tell you, if I took control of you and

manage you for the next five minutes, you know, how long

would that last? It's just not going to last. So people.

Managing people is a outdated concept and has been a long

time, but managing a system that everyone buys into. That's the

game changer, and that's how automation scalability comes in,

because if I have to deal with all those personalities and all

those questions you were asking about earlier, it's going to

drive me crazy. I'll never be able to do that. So I have to

replace all that with a structural system that allows

for people to answer those questions on their own, set of

standards, set of policies, principles, and those things are

doable if you really understand your business and the system

that you want to create and the outcomes you're after. Once you

have hacks, then you can get on to the fourth one, which is

really about understanding the controls of that system and then

staffing most models that are out there today, talk about,

let's put the people in the seats first. Good to Great. Is a

great example of that that says, hey, you know, go find the right

people and then put them in the right seats. Listen, that's a

company that has billions of dollars of debt. That's stock,

people, you know, debt stuff that you can go and get all this

money and have all the small, medium sized business. We can't

do that. We've got very limited resources. So the idea here is

that let's go build the system. First build the bus, know what

that seat looks like and the characteristics that fit that

seat, and then let's go hire the people for that seat. So it's a

very different way when you're a small, medium sized business

that you have to approach business to really be

successful.

Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. I love one

of the things I'll say is, you know, there's not a founder. And

tell me if you've met one, maybe you have, but I've never met a

founder who their reason for starting the business was to

manage a handful

of people. Yeah, it's just, it just, there's easier ways, you

know, there's easier ways. And so I love, it's a really hard

stage for a lot of founders. It's a really hard stage. And I

love the distinction that you made between managing people and

managing systems, and I think that's such a helpful way of

thinking about it, because you will always be reluctant if

you're trying to manage another human being, and that's such a

great distinction. So at the same in the same token, though,

like those people have to work within the system, and so it's

not necessarily quite as clear cut in the real world. So tell

me a little bit about what the difference between those two or

better. Yet, how about some symptoms that you're still

managing people when you could be managing systems.

David C. Olcott: So run a big systems, or what we would call

KPIs, key behavioral indicators. Most people know what KPIs are,

but most people, when you're dealing with people, you're

going to start moving into this realm of key behavioral

indicators. And if you have someone who is constantly

showing up late, even though there's a standard in place,

they can't follow a dress code, even though there's a standard

in place, if they can't follow a structured system that you have,

even though it's in place, then you've got some real issues to

deal with. And you're going to deal with one of these three

things, either you realize that there's a training issue and you

got to pull that person back into training about how to help

them. Second part is they're just not the right person for

that particular seat, and that happens a lot, especially when

you're building a business, right? Yeah. And the third one

is that potentially, you have to make a bus stop. Getting to Know

Your business is as much as getting to know yourself, and

that's what swords illumination is about. When you really know

who you are, then you'll start attracting people like this.

This is like frequency kind of concept. So if you're a tuning

fork, which we are, we're frequency generators as human

beings. And people sense this. For me all the time, right? And

so when you show up and you're authentic, for example, people

feel that when you're inauthentic, people feel that.

And what's the people in the sales game don't realize that

you can spend all your time on your scripts you want, your

structure, your principles, if you haven't lived what you're

selling, there's a missing authenticity and missing

vibrational frequency that your customers are picking up on,

that if you don't change that, they're not going to be buying

from Yeah. So there's this Attractor Factor that when you

start being authentic with being a manager, you're going to

attract other managers. If you are an entrepreneur, you're

going to attract other entrepreneurs. Even if that

entrepreneur isn't the right person right seat, you're still

going to attract them. And that's what we run into as

founders of a business, is that we don't realize we have to

change our frequency. We have to change our identity based upon

where the company is in these. Seven cycles, or these seven

steps, these seven elements, you've got to be able to make

that shift, and that's what swords elimination give you back

the power to be able to do. You can change your identity, you

can change your program, you can change those elements and

actually start attracting those people you're looking for.

It's so good because the other part of it,

it's not just an attraction, it's also an amplification. One

of the things that I see a lot of especially stage three

leaders, fail to recognize is their bad habits have a way of

showing themselves in the rest of the team, right? And there's

a lot that are really common, like founders are generally not

great at accountability. They're they're not necessarily, you

know, many of them are not great at discipline or routine and and

so when you get a group of people around, there needs to be

accountability, there needs to be some organizational routines.

There definitely needs to be discipline. And, you know, in

earlier stages, when it's mostly just you, it's kind of like you

live with it, you know, or you know it's but when it's the you

and then it's being amplified and compounded many times, the

frustration that we see in our team is just a reflection of the

challenges that we're we haven't dealt with ourselves well since.

Yeah, so when we're looking through this lens, I want you to

pull this apart a little bit. You said you can change your

identity, and I think that's a really important thing, because

one of the reasons why we get stuck in these different stages

because we can't let go of what served us well in the past. But

a lot of people would say your identity is your identity. You

can't change it. So unpack that for us a little bit. What have

you learned about identity and how can busy entrepreneurs apply

that to their life?

David C. Olcott: So there's a huge difference between your

identity and something called your role distinction. So for

example, there's three very classic role distinctions within

a business. You have the entrepreneur, you have the

manager, and you have the technician. So if you go back to

the E Myth, that's where you're going to get a lot of that

information from. Those are role distinctions. If you're a CEO of

a company, but then all of a sudden, you're a small business

owner and you're also the CFO and you're also the COO and the

CTO and the you know, M, O, U, S, E, you got to be able to

understand that your role distinction is something you're

going to be placing these hats on. But that doesn't change your

core identity about who you are. So core identity, your mission

and purpose. And also, then there's these, these forks, or,

sorry, these spokes in the wheel of this balance we call it. And

that is, those spokes are the different individual things that

you have to be able to accomplish every single day. For

example, you would probably not go into a nightclub and act the

same way that you do at church. And if you do, probably

someone's going to suggest some medication. Suggest some

medication to you. But the same thing is, if you approach just

being a CEO when you're being the CFO, you're going to find a

lot of conflict in that, because that mindset skill set, tool

set, that's necessary to make that person or that role

distinction be successful isn't the same mindset, skill set,

tool set, that makes you successful in other areas of

your life, and those discernments is what systems

allow you to see. Because if I'm going to do a presentation, I'm

going to be very right brain creative. But if I'm going to

jump into Financials, I'm going to jump right into my left part

of my brain. And if I don't understand those role

distinctions, my identity before going in that I'm going to

create some conflict. Another great example, if you've ever

been in a creative meeting, right where a bunch of

entrepreneurs are talking about ideas, and you walk into that

meeting as a technician, how are we going to do this? Oh, my God,

Scott, the conflict that create you don't understand. I mean,

I've seen great ideas just get blown out because there was too

many technicians in the room forgetting their role

distinction about, hey, this is just a creative meeting. We're

not figuring out how we're going to do this yet. We're just

talking about the idea and see if it really is of service to

the community, the marketplace and our business and our vision.

And then we jump right into that technician role, and you just

cancel that thing it's done, even if it was a brilliant idea.

So understanding the difference between identity and role

distinctions is the first three chapters of the book, because

that's exactly what we talked about, swords of identity, and

then outcomes, and then we wrote in a role distinction. So very

clearly you start to identify that there is discernment

between these aspects which take different mindsets, skill sets

and tool sets to really be successful.

That's such a great word, discernment. I love

that. Yeah, I love that. Because, again, it isn't

changing the fundamental of who you are, but it is changing the

skills that you have access to and the ones that you use. Got

it. Okay, we're 100% same page there. I love that. David,

there's this question before I let you go, I have to ask it. I

ask every one of my guests. I'm very interested to see what you

have to say. But the question is this, what is the biggest secret

you wish wasn't a secret at all? What's that one thing you wish

everybody watching or listening today knew?

David C. Olcott: It's kind of a reason why I wrote the book

selfishly on my own part, that if I. Okay if I ever come back

to this place, I wanted that book in my hand when I was at an

early age. Here's the most brilliant thing I've learned in

this entire lifetime. I'm 59 at saying some things that I've met

some really remarkable people in my lifetime. But my whole life,

I thought I was here to discover who I am. I thought like under

some rock or some treasure chest I was supposed to dig something

up, or I was here to discover and find out who I am. This is

not how successful people work. Successful people work with this

idea. They're here to create who they are. Your identity is a

self creation. If you're going to be successful this lifetime,

you think about any celebrity, whether you like that celebrity,

or President or anybody else. These people know this secret,

which is they are here to create who they say they are and do the

things that align with that beingness, if you will, that

identity. And that is a true secret that now that I know what

that is, it has truly changed my world.

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. I

was wrong about why I thought I was here. What a statement to

open that up. So good. David, there are some folks that have

been wrestling with this, these different roles and how to get

them all to work together. They'd love to get a copy of

your book. Tell us where we can do that, and then also, where

can they connect with you and reach out for more information?

David C. Olcott: Yes, the best hub for us is Samurai

success.com we have all kinds of channels. Matter of fact, I

think there's over 200 different videos available to you right

now that you can really get some of the insights in this. The

book is available on amazon.com. It's the number one bestseller

right now. We just passed the 10,000 sale points. So very

Congratulations. Thanks. And then as on also, what's the

audio.com you can actually pick up, so if you don't want to read

it, and I know a lot of entrepreneurs just like to

listen to stuff in the car. Really a great discounted price

right now on sale. Take a look at that. That's swords

illumination. Anything you want to know about our company and

how we might be able to be of service Samurai success.com. Is

our best hub for you to be able to reach us.

Fantastic, fantastic. Well, David, thank

you so much for being on today. It was real privilege and honor

having you here. So glad we were able to finally get our

schedules to work out together. For those of you watching and

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

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

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