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Welcome to the 'Lead Smarter. Not Harder' Podcast by David Kent, your window into the minds of visionary leaders, trailblazing innovators, and savvy business owners.
Get ready to immerse yourself in the captivating stories and invaluable lessons from the best and brightest minds in the business.
Hey, Matt, thank you for jumping on the call with me at the lead smarter podcast.
It's really exciting to get a chance to talk to you again.
I've really enjoyed the past few weeks of getting a chance to chat with you about your
business, about the, uh, your passion for leadership and the companies that you support.
Um, I'd love to hear more from you about founders that scale and the opportunity in that
you've noticed in out there for companies that need this kind of support from you.
Um, I know.
that your background is in building companies at a institutional level of developing the
infrastructure and the resources needed.
So when you went from having built companies yourself, where did you see, what was the
inflection point where you saw that this was the kind of thing you wanted to take out and
do yourself and help companies um scale their own businesses?
What was that?
Yeah, what was that?
Thank you so much, Dave.
I mean, I think it's having gone through the hero's journey, the cycle a number of times
and that cycle can be very lonely.
could be incredibly exhausting, massive burnout, a lot of sacrifice, know, health,
relationships, et cetera, when you're really trying to build.
something from the scratch, know, a scrappy startup, you're building technology,
especially if it's your first time as a founder, you just don't know what you don't know.
And you're highly passionate, you're rolling your sleeves up, you're willing to do
literally whatever it takes, but the gap of where you are and the vision you have is
massive in terms of skillset and just your ability to execute and get there, the funding,
you're essentially in survival mode the whole time.
And if you're a first time founder with other founders or co-founders who are also first
time at this,
Everyone's getting used to understand what their role is in the company.
You're getting used to how to collaborate with each other, how to build product and test
it.
Um, getting used to managing finances and, uh, you know, a runway and your monthly burn
rate and all that kind of stuff.
And you just keep going through this hero's journey, right?
You go through the trials and tribulations and it really tests you.
Like it, and I'll just speak for myself.
It has tested me more than I ever thought.
I oftentimes think that.
your romantic relationships are oftentimes your greatest teacher, your greatest mirror.
And I would also say that your relationships in business, particularly with your founders
or co-founders, are your greatest teachers and mirrors in life for growth, personal growth
and learning and all that kind of stuff.
And it could be both exhilarating doing it together, but it can also be incredibly lonely
at the same time.
And
What I experienced going through building, I co-founded my first startup when I was 22.
I was highly passionate.
We grew that we exited in 2019.
then um when started coaching and helping other founders of other companies kind of go
through the experience, right?
Like kind of passing the elevator back down in terms of knowledge and just, you know,
being there as a soundboard.
And then I went through the cycle again with another startup where I became a partner in
their company and they were
electrically fast growing.
mean, they had not raised any capital or fully bootstrapping.
and highly profitable.
And at the time when I was coaching them, it became pretty clear that they had achieved
product market fit.
And what had got them to that point was starting to collapse because they were growing so
fast and they were really only wearing the hat of a founder and like, I'm building a
product.
I'm trying to survive.
getting early traction, but they weren't able to pull back because yours in the day to
day.
It's no fault really to anyone.
Like I'm not trying to shame or judge any of that.
It's just the natural
cycle in my opinion, this is like a universal cycle for startups and their growth.
I like to think of them as a spiral.
You know, you kind of hit a lot of success and you're like, Oh shit, you start coming back
down and you hit this kind of descent and it feels very chaotic.
You almost feel like you're losing control, spinning out of control.
You start working harder, you burn out, you start operating in silos.
It can be really intense and
to break through, have to have a certain set of skills, awareness, and really to slow down
and speed up.
And it's in those moments where you realize you need to start institutionalizing your
business.
You can't just focus on growth for growth sake.
You can't just focus on building product and bringing more customers.
You really need to start building a company, not a product and earning revenue.
It has to be a systemic infrastructure you're building intentionally that's sustainable
for these startups to really turn into
scale up without imploding.
So the reason the long-winded answer to all this why start doing founders at scale is
because I truly just believe that when they say a huge majority of startups and small
businesses fail over the course of their lifetime, I truly believe it's just because they
don't know how to navigate that critical inflection point when they hit this part where
they're about where they want to take off and do a breakthrough, they collapse.
And it could be for a number of reasons.
lose their money, whatever it might be.
They don't institutionalize their business.
They don't hire correctly or onboard correctly, whatever it might be.
There's universal characteristics at that point that you need to address.
most companies and most founders at that point.
They don't, they're not thinking about those things.
It's like, you don't know what you don't know, or they have neglected those parts of their
business so much.
Like, you know, neglecting HR, not thinking about onboarding and developing their people
and scaling the organizational chart.
It's something that has been neglected and really needs to be looked at.
It's not like a nice to have anymore.
It's, it's a must have.
So I'm very passionate about helping companies become more successful in actually
fulfilling their mission.
And I believe that we live in a world where.
It's more important now than ever, especially like conscious founders, conscious
businesses, organizations who are actually trying to make a difference in the world and
create things that the world truly needs.
We need to empower leaders of these businesses with the proper skills and infrastructure
to take their business to the next level and actually succeed without them feeling like
they have to do it on their own.
because like I said, it can be very, very lonely.
So that's my passion.
I hope you can kind of feel my zest behind it, but that's why I got into this space.
I mean, I'll say from, really loved the description you had of it where it's uh maybe a
common path that most practically all businesses go through in that after product market
fit, the trajectory and then having to change from just being a product or a service to a
real business.
I've gone through the process myself multiple times.
I've had several clients where I've watched them go through it.
uh And interestingly enough, going through it myself, I don't feel...
necessarily less scared the next time I'm going through it.
doesn't feel like it's, yeah, I maybe I got through it once, but it doesn't feel like now
I've got the tools to get through it alone again.
Um, it's a new set of problems, a new organization, new people.
And I feel like when, when I have gone through it multiple times, I had to solve that all
over again.
And it felt just as lonely and just as scary the second time, um, for me.
And so like here you describe it like, yeah, if I, think it would feel very different, um,
as a founder, if
I just had someone who's gone through it as well and could see it maybe from, cause as a
founder, I'm so close to the problem that I'm still going to focus on like what's urgent,
what's right in front of me because it's still urgent and I don't yet have that business
in place and those processes in place that I know I can rely on.
So I don't feel like I can let go yet.
And it's like, I'm holding onto the gears of the plane all the way into the ground.
Um, so
I love that you can like the kind of help you would be able to provide is the, you know,
the navigator that tells you pull up.
you know, I think it's a, it's, I couldn't agree more with you.
And I oftentimes feel that, you know, lot of support that founders, early founders, first
time founders, and even like seasoned founders, you know, it's, not just the first time in
early ones, but especially when you're going through the cycle, your first, second, even
third time.
It can feel performative if you have, you know, advisors or.
Um, you know, a board who's trying to mentor you or you graduate in an accelerator, you
know, a startup accelerator, and you've got these people around you.
can feel very performative where you can actually be authentic about your real issues and
what's going on because people are looking at your business and they're evaluating.
They're evaluating if you're going to be able to raise more capital.
They're evaluating if you're the right team, they're evaluating your performance, you
know, and it can be really challenging, I think for a founder and a founding team to
really get.
like real support who's truly an objective third party but has their best interest in them
and can really support them in thinking correctly and just helping them make better
decisions, slowing down, understanding how to play the game a little bit better, just
being the navigator to your point, not here to steer the ship for them and make critical
decisions, but to really be that soundboard so they can come to the...
come to a place where they feel centered, they feel stable, they're confident.
They might have to make very difficult decisions that only they can make in that role.
And that is their job, right?
They're on the field.
They're on the field playing the game.
But the goal is to really equip them with more wisdom and structure and confidence.
So when they're making those decisions, it's not just in the best interest of...
Maybe the pressure that's being put on them from external sources or even internally, but
they're really thinking holistically and approaching it from a place of their core values,
not just the core values of the business.
know, we put them up on a website and all that kind of stuff, but really thinking about
like, what are their virtues?
How do they want to show up in their business leadership?
And that really requires you to graduate and become initiated from like a founder leader
to an executive leader.
And that's not really.
trained at all, right?
Like there's so much education out there on how to, you know, scale and bring in more,
more customers, how to enhance your marketing messaging, um, even operational systems.
But when you really think about scaling the leadership of a company and helping them
institutionalize their business and to do in a way that's sustainable and feels correct
for the whole company, um, that is an art as much as a science and it really requires
proper like
connection with those fatters that help them think about the game more not just
intelligently, really more from like their heart as well
How do you, so I, as a founder, I've been in the space where I know conceptually I need to
step back.
Like I think most founders who do any sort of like self-reflection, get any advice, they
know that they have to work, they have to figure out a way to step out and deal with the
work on the business rather than in it.
If there's like all the cliches out there that they are painfully aware is true.
But how do you, what is a way you can help a uh
a founder that is locked in the, I'm the only one that can do this.
I need to do the things that are urgent.
And therefore I never do the things that are transformative.
But then I also recognize if I don't, nobody will.
So my business is just never going to get to that next level unless I make that shift.
Sure, yeah, and it's a really challenging leap of the mind because as...
Not all founders this way, but in that example for a founder who's like really holding on
to their response, it's an ego thing, right?
Like I want to hold onto the things I feel like I'm really good at.
I can't trust other people where I just don't have the right staffing in place to delegate
things out.
Or I'm just so exhausted and burnt out and at full capacity to even think about that.
That's a whole project.
How do I accomplish this project?
Um, so the first thing is really connecting with the founder to understand like truly what
is going on.
What is the current status of the business?
What is the financial health?
How is the team structured?
How are the relations between you your other co-founders?
Are you guys siloed?
Are you guys meeting correctly?
Are you on the same page?
Do you actually even know what your strategic roadmap is?
There needs to be some sort of assessment of what's currently happening in order to make a
proper assessment on how to move forward.
We can't just come in and start like pulling things apart and dictating what should
happen.
It really does require some sort of evaluation and it could be a quick evaluation.
I'm not saying this is like a two month thing, right?
We can get this done in a week to two weeks.
Um, especially with how I like to work with my, my clients, um, I could do just very
simple one-on-one coaching once a week.
And that's very standard in the space, but something that I'm very passionate about that I
don't see really anyone else doing is I actually do more of like a strategic partnership
where I will embed myself for the first month to three months and all attend meetings with
them.
I'll offer up to five hours a week where I'm actually sitting in and assessing how they're
running their meetings.
I'll evaluate their books.
Like I will come in and actually look at what's happening.
not to dictate to them what needs to happen, but to help them start thinking more
strategically.
So I think practically speaking, right?
It's like the assessment is a nice part of like a process.
Hey, this is what we do and how we do it.
But practically speaking, this means that we need to really start moving the founder away
from a doer and like a day-to-day executor.
And there's different tools and frameworks, right?
Like to do this and to do it very quickly, but it has to come down to the founder
first being willing and having a desire to grow.
They have to have a willing and a desire to grow and they have to realize that them not
scaling themselves and delegating things out is literally collapsing their business and
their potential.
And if they can't make that mental leap, there's nothing I can do or anyone else can do to
help them get there.
They have to come to that inner flame to say something needs to change.
And it's actually me.
I've it's not just my team is hitting capacity.
I have hit capacity, so I need to elevate my.
leadership and if I'm going to do that so I can start looking down and observing and
building my business, I just naturally have to hand things off.
And that might require pumping the brakes a little bit and slowing down, which is I think
every founders worst nightmare.
They think that they need to be running 1 million miles an hour at all times.
ask you that because I heard now I've heard you mentioned a couple of times through this.
um You've kind of flagged that slowing down might be it can be often something that is
required to get through this process.
And it's it I completely align with the fact that that is like uh I can't sell that very
easily internally if I've got a team.
I'm just going to pump the brakes guys.
I'll figure it out and you know.
However that impacts us, don't worry about it.
That's not an easy message to sell.
Or you're a founder that maybe you're a solo founder, you don't have anybody that you're
collaborating with internally and it's just you having to buy that yourself.
Like I've got to slow down and it sounds like a death sentence.
Like sharks can't sleep without dying or you know what mean?
Like you hear that, it's like that's kind of what it feels like.
Like if I slow down, it's basically like giving up and getting ready to close shop.
Yeah, I think, you know, the best thing to do then in that case is to ask your team if
that makes sense.
You don't have to be the only one making a decision, but I think if you are truly
operating at a speed that's unsustainable and truly as a founder, you don't even have time
to hand things off.
You don't have the people in place, then you're actually the bottleneck.
You are moving too fast because you truly think that you need to and we're sold this story
that we had to do growth for growth sake and it's actually a liability at a certain point.
It'll get you to move faster and when you move faster, you can be hastier to achieve
certain things, but you will hit a point if you're not building proper infrastructure
along the way, it will collapse or you're going to burn your team out.
So my counterpoint to that would be great.
The founder feels that, you know, my ego is going to take
a hit, I can't just pump the brakes, this is going to be really challenging.
I'm not saying to pump the brakes and stop selling and building product and running a
business.
But what I am saying is you need to slow down the things you're currently doing because
you're likely just running on a wheel.
And if you are constantly moving at that speed, that means that your nervous system is
jacked up.
You are moving at a pace that where your nervous system is in straight fight or flight
likely all the time.
And I will say this till I die, but the leadership team is the nervous system of the
company.
So if the leaders of the company are in survival mode, they're moving way too fast or
they're not available.
And they could be not even really aware of this.
It's not to shame it or judge it.
Right.
It can come from really good intentions, but if they're moving so fast that they can't
actually build the company in a way that the rest of the team actually needs, they're not
being a solid leader at that point.
They're missing the mark because they think they need to perform.
It's not about performing.
Business is not a performance.
Relationships are not a performance.
Right?
And so as you start looking at that, we can go, hmm, it's just my ego saying that if I
pump the brakes, everything's going to fall apart or I set these crazy lofty goals for
this year, what's going to happen there?
It's not about not achieving revenue targets and growth and building the business, et
cetera.
What it's about is actually building a business that can scale.
And that's the reframe for founders.
It's like, if you really want to scale and get to the next level jump, it's not just
working harder.
And dear God, if you keep making your team work harder and wear more hats and take more on
because you can't take a beat to be strategic, to actually look at your business through
the lens of reality, it's going to really hurt the culture.
long term or you're just going to keep hitting a ceiling and never be able to actually
break through.
You're either going to break down or break up, right?
Leave or the company is not going to do as well.
You're going to do a down round or whatever, right?
um So that's kind of my perspective and my rebuttal to that.
Okay, well, one of the things you also mentioned I liked and you talk about business and
setting up the infrastructure to scale.
And you also, I've heard you mentioned a couple of times you discuss almost like culture
and values.
you didn't say it directly connected, but it sounds like they're associated.
To me, way you describe it sounds like you're effectively equating culture and values as
part of the infrastructure that makes the business more efficient.
And I recognize that as I've always
looked at it that way myself.
And it's always been something that like, I know I need to get to.
And I also think of it as something that always gets basically sidelined, especially when
you're trying to get product market fit and you're just trying to get to the next sale and
you're trying to make sure that there is a there there.
You've then basically always uh put on the back burner, the cultural values, let's just
call it like the
soft skill infrastructure of the business that tells people who you are as a business, but
also tells your internal people who you are so that you can operate within a framework
that makes you more efficient.
ah Is that like often something that you would end up would do with founders of scale that
like once they've reached product market fit, you kind of incorporate that as part of your
infrastructure work that you do with them.
Yeah, you know, it's funny because right when you're on the journey, you're climbing the
mountain, you're basically like in survival mode and everyone's just, it's wartime.
know, everyone's just like, Hey, like I'm in like, let's rock.
It's fun.
It's chaotic.
You know, it's a lot of dopamine.
Like it's, one of the most fun stages to be in because
the culture is so scrappy and everyone's so willing to invest so much time into building
something they believe in the vision.
It's really cool to see.
And so I'm not trying to, again, judge that part of the process, but it's oftentimes
during that phase, you're not really thinking about, because it's not the right time.
You're not really thinking about the things like, hey, what's our five-year plan and
like...
You know, what are our core values of a company and because you're not thinking about
scaling your organ, the team, right?
When you start thinking about scaling your team and developing them and you're being like,
Hey, we're going to be here for the next 10 years.
actually, we actually have an opportunity to do this.
We've now earned the we've gone through the battle and we've achieved and won so many
battles that we've we're now earning the right where we can grow this thing and be a big
player.
Right.
That inflection point is where this comes in.
to play.
It's not when you've got a few clients and you're just starting out and you've got a
scrappy young team.
It's important to have that because, but you're going to know really quick at that point,
it's just a small team.
if the culture is not good and people are treating each other poorly, you're going to have
a conversation about it because it's too high risk and high pressure for things to not be
working because of culture.
Yep.
But when you hit that inflection point and you're like, Hey, we need to start scaling and
bringing more team members on it's an operational framework.
It's a scaling framework.
And I didn't realize that my first go around.
I thought like core values and culture were kind like this nice thing.
You do it once you put it in a Google doc and don't look at you put on your website and
all that kind of stuff.
And it's kind of like as a man, not having core values or virtues.
Imagine living your life without knowing what your core values or virtues are as a man.
Well, how are you making decisions when, when shit hits a fan and things are going crazy
and you're in chaos, you're in the storm.
How are you remaining stable and making proper decisions?
that feel aligned with your heart, not just reacting.
And so, and how are you thinking about who's in your inner circle?
Who shouldn't be in your inner circle as a man, as a human, right?
The same is with business.
And so as you start thinking about, okay, we need to now scale this organization, your
core values and the virtues of the company, the culture is how you scale what works.
You need to scale the DNA of your company.
It needs to do this.
And it needs to do in a way that it's not the founder or the founding team, hand holding
everyone.
That's not scalable, right?
So everyone needs to be hired and fired off of core values in the culture.
You know, it's a code of ethics of how you create, how you collaborate, how you scale, how
you address conflict, how you treat each other, how you think about your customers.
It's really like the energetic frequency of the business, kind of like a soul.
So without getting so spiritual and esoteric about it, like I really feel that that
inflection point
It's such a fun exercise because it actually matters at that point because you can connect
it to purpose.
can connect it to a purpose, meaning it's actually practical now to go through that
exercise because you need to hire people or you need to let people go.
How do you do that?
we have a framework now where we can point to values and virtues that we operate off of.
And we're not just making, you know,
subjective decisions and people are like this is unfair and it creates risk.
This is how you scale your company from a people standpoint.
One of the things I've heard you do throughout this conversation is you talk about the
business ah almost in a biological way, like almost like as an extension of the people
within it.
it's, it's, um, what happens in the business, what happens in the business to the people
founders, for example, being the central nervous system of it.
Um, you know, it, you know, the culture values being almost like the energetic, uh, spirit
of the business.
Um, it's, sounds like you've.
uh, look at it in a way that extends from the founder and what would ultimately be the
people in it out as if it itself is an organized organism.
If that makes sense, it's alive.
Um, and the way you talk about it sounds, um, like the passion reflects something that is
living that you care about.
Um, so anyways, so just reflecting on how you communicate about it, is that kind of the
mindset that you have about it when you're talking with people?
Is that kind of the, or am I just putting things together that
aren't necessarily a good fit.
No, no, you're hitting the mark.
It's not like my own concept.
I remember years ago just thinking about this, like, you can't sue really the CEO or the
people of the business.
You have to sue the business because the business is a person.
I'm like, what?
A business is treated like a person?
And I was like, oh, a business is person.
I get it now.
OK, cool.
It's like.
all the people ourselves and you got different departments which are different organs and
are all collaborating to make this thing work.
And, you know, it's always like a little, you know, seed and it grows and it's a very, I
think, easily approachable concept.
But, you know, that also comes down to it's not just like the cellular nature and the soul
of the business and the organs and the departments, how everyone's working together.
But it's also like, you know, what's your North Star?
How are you making decisions?
How are you interacting with other organisms?
How are you interacting with your environment?
Right.
And this kind of touches on the B Corp nature of things.
uh you know, I'm a bit of a proponent for B Corp.
I think they're really cool.
think what they stand for is really interesting.
I'm allowing yourself to put purpose over profit, even at like the executive level and
your bylaws.
It's very fascinating.
Um, but I think if we can think about, know, the health of the business, like the health
of a living being, an organism, then we take it, take it way more seriously.
It's like, Oh, everything is connected.
This isn't just, you know, imagine smoking 20 packs a day and thinking that you're
healthy, right?
Like you're doing something you think is, you know, it feels good, et cetera, but like,
you're literally destroying the cells of your body.
You're creating cancer and toxins.
right?
So don't want to do things that are jeopardizing the organism as a collective, right?
And I think
come in as a doctor, is what you're saying.
You're basically a doctor.
Yeah, we're doing the assessment, right?
And we're really looking at the health of organism.
And, you know, I think it's really fascinating when a company is even at a later stage,
you know, when they're past product market fit, you know, probably the fit is you were
just a scrappy team.
You've achieved something we need, we need to now institutionalize and grow.
But once you get to that growth phase, that next phase where you've been around for a
while and you've scaled, you've built the infrastructure and now it's just about like.
Hey, let's get more growth capital.
We figured this out.
If we just get more capital, we can scale these systems.
can hire, you know, better VPs help bring this thing to fruition.
That to me is the point where this organism, you know, mindset makes the most sense.
Like, you know, like that analogy, it's like, okay, you've got departments now that are
literally working together.
They're formalized.
You know, everyone's cranking.
You're institutionalized at that point.
The question is, well, how healthy is the organism?
It doesn't need to be refactored.
at all.
When you're a startup, think the analogy of the central nervous system of the founders
makes the most sense.
Because at that point, it's just, hey, you guys were in survival, perhaps.
How do we get you into a more thrival state, right?
Like where you guys are all thriving.
We need to institutionalize things, restructure.
We need to get the nervous system aligned, right, to get ready for the growth.
That's kind of how come on and work with different stages of companies.
Well, you, you advise companies at different stages.
You advise founders how to navigate some of the challenges and experiences you've already
had yourself.
And you kind of see the other end of it.
Um, as we start to get towards like the later part of this conversation, I'd love to know
if you had a chance to advise yourself when you were younger, before you had these
experiences, you could only take back literally one piece of advice to try to get the most
bang for your buck out of it.
You only had a chance to give yourself 30 seconds to give one piece of advice before you
shot back to the future.
What would that piece of advice be?
That is a fantastic question.
The one piece, what comes to heart, I suppose, would be to not feel like you have to do it
alone.
I would have asked for more help.
in my business.
would have checked my ego and my doubt, my uncertainty, all the things that creep in to
you as a human.
I would have looked at them a little bit more and been kinder, and I would have approached
my founding team more strategically, and I would have spoken up way more around...
things I always spoke my truth a lot more in business because when you're in a high scale,
high intensity, high risk environment, a lot of pressure, um you got funding, people have
invested in you, you're building a team.
There's just a lot of pressure and sometimes you don't even want to rock the boat.
And so for me, I think it would have been really doing the deeper work to be a true leader
in the company and not just a builder.
but to really transcend that because I think I limited my company's growth, I limited my
growth by not looking at those things as early as I wish I had.
And it took me even my second time around to really even realize that that's what was
needed.
So that would be the advice.
You you well, I know that you took you gave yourself more than 30 seconds.
So you totally cheated but uh you brought up something that I struggle with as well, which
uh you mentioned that you wish you would, you know, maybe stepped into a leadership role
more sooner and rather than spent so much time being a builder.
uh I don't know how to naturally make that evolutionary jump without it just happening in
whatever time it's going to take.
because for me, I've always known that that was the biggest leap for me as well.
And I can still find myself every once in a while feeling a little bit more comfortable if
I sit back in the builder's space.
I'm not extending myself out where there's a lot less known and I'm really putting myself
out there and what fails really hits me.
And then by nature, all of my team, but it's my fault that it hit them.
So it's hard for me to know.
how do you, and I brought this up before, but you would tell yourself to step forward and
be a leader sooner, but how would you have convinced yourself to have done that?
um Yeah, how to convince yourself, right?
This just needs to become, it needs to be something you start seeing that again, you are
the actual bottleneck, right?
Like when you really start seeing that your limitation, your limits to your own growth is
what's causing your business to stagnate and create chaos within the company.
That just has to be at some point, I have to look at myself in the mirror and it's really
hard as a founder, as a business person to look at yourself in the mirror and go, I need
to grow because it's constantly, hey, you're not doing your job.
You're not hitting your KPIs.
You're not hitting milestones.
You know, we've got this competitor.
It's such a wartime game.
Um, you know, and so to me it's, it's also reframing, you know, what is building, you
know, oftentimes
think a lot of founders love building product or you know, you've got a founder who might
love building product.
You have a founder who might love building systems.
You might have a founder who loves building people or um revenue, right?
Building revenue system, selling, right?
So there's different things that people will gravitate towards that are necessary to get a
business off the ground.
um There's building and we can call that deep work.
Okay, like Cal Newport deep work.
Great book, great concept, especially for founders early days.
A lot of your time is deep work.
You're building things and you're, behind the keyboard programming or you're on the
phones, you're talking, you're selling, you're doing the things that need to get done.
And eventually there's a point.
There is another, and this is kind of like why I talk about the spiral because it feels
like you're hitting this amazing, you're on a rocket ship and you're going really, holy
shit, I took off.
And then you do this loop, right?
And this come back down is where you start realizing, oh
I'm neglecting certain things or I need to start handing things off.
You can't keep just doing this.
That's not natural.
Nature does spirals.
Nature literally works in cycles.
So we need to get back to nature, right?
So we have to understand that beating at a drum consistently and thinking that we're just
going to have linear growth at all times is just not realistic.
There needs to be periods of spiraling, learning, and coming back up.
And that's fantastic.
So
You know, one of the tools I like to use with my founders is a very simple tool, but it's
just a ABCD rule.
Take a list, get a piece of paper, write down all the things in column A that only you can
do that you love doing.
So easy.
Like what do you just love doing that only you should and can do?
B, what are the things you enjoy doing, but you know, maybe you really shouldn't do.
C, what are the things you don't really enjoy doing, but you're doing, right?
Like, you just map these things out and literally
everything that's in BC or D, you have to delegate out.
Because those things are eating up your capacity to be strategic and to go all in on the
things that you need to do.
Like your company, your team needs you to be performing at your best.
Right?
So it's not just that you as a founder and a leadership team need your team to be
performing.
Very rarely do we ever look in the mirror and go, how am I performing?
How am I leading this company?
And can I be
that, kind of be real about how I'm approaching this.
Maybe I'm not as good as I think I've been, you know, and that's okay.
So to me, it's about really looking at, you know, areas in which you should be building
and things that you should not be building, right?
And there's, there's, there's, uh, you know, areas where I think people, founders who are
really good at building product and that's fantastic, but sometimes they need to maybe
to be more strategic to push the business forward at a certain point, right?
And so instead of building the product, they're building the team.
They're building the strategies.
They can still be builders.
I'm not saying to not be a builder.
Like you need to keep building the company.
And I think it's just understanding there's a level jump.
If you want to take your business to the next level, you literally need to evolve with
your business or the business is either going to outpace you or it's going to just keep
hitting you as a limiter.
of the business.
And it's hard to hear.
Yeah, I like that you, you mentioned basically the antidote to it is looking in the
mirror.
So for it's, it's tough because when you are the founder, especially if you're by
yourself, you can really empower excuses because who's going to challenge you.
So it's like, okay, well, that means I have to really accept.
And what I loved about the growth, like, and the trend of growth and it can't be linear is
that I basically have to accept what the limitations are and the path of growth so that I
can.
except when things turn down, make changes, acknowledge that's a situation and continue in
a, in a sustainable trajectory that is natural, which even if you're terrified of it, it
doesn't mean that that wasn't naturally what was going to happen.
one of the things I wanted to ask you were already kind of, as I was kind of wanting to
get some insights from you before we ended the podcast, you, was going to ask you what
books you would recommend and you already actually brought one of them up, which was deep
work, but for other leaders,
uh Besides that workbook, what are other books you might recommend to a leader who's kind
of gotten past the uh market fit phase and now they're starting to try to learn about
themselves and learn about how to navigate this new space?
Yeah, I mean, there's there's so many amazing books out there.
I think if you're
like a very practical, like startup book is scaling people.
It's by Stripe Press, the company Stripe, you know, the payment processor, and they write
amazing books.
You know, they've written like high growth formula or the high growth playbook.
They've written, you know, all sorts of amazing books to help you actually scale your
company.
And so I think scaling people is a really foundational book for founders and leaders who
want to look at how do we not just scale the revenue and the operations,
but how do you really systematize and create a powerhouse culture and company and hiring,
like the whole people machine of your business?
It's basically a playbook for that.
um So it's a fun read.
It's got a lot of worksheets and stuff.
So I would definitely recommend that.
And then quite honestly, I think that instead of even reading books, I would just shout
out a app called Heroic.
And it's where I have learned probably 95 % of my coaching material, like, and the less
about business and more about peak performance mindset capacity.
leadership development and evolution.
Heroic is founded by this guy, Brian Johnson, not the dude who's out there trying to live
to 150 or whatever.
It's this other guy, Brian Johnson, who's just a living legend.
And what he's done is he built a company originally called Optimize and he's rebranded to
Heroic.
And he's basically read every single book on leadership, spirituality, peak performance,
mindset, literally every amazing topic, a founder or high performer
would want to engage with.
And then he recalled philosopher's notes.
And so these notes will be the top five big ideas of every single book.
So any leadership book you can possibly think of, he's done a philosophers note on.
And then what he'll do is he'll take, create like a 101 course on like an hour long course
of the top 10 big ideas on a whole theme.
So it could be like confidence 101, leadership 101, sleep 101, motivation, like all these
one-on-ones that take all the biggest ideas across some of the greatest thinkers of our
time and ancient times, right?
brings in stoicism.
mean, it's really foundational level wisdom that he distills way that is so incredibly
like accessible.
So I would just give his platform a huge shout out is remarkable.
And it's so cheap.
I think it's like 20 bucks a month or something like that.
It's so cheap for what you're getting.
It's like mind blowing.
That sounds awesome.
I will definitely be checking it out.
Thanks for sharing.
ah Before we go, people that are listening to this that maybe have aligned, resonate with
things that you've shared.
ah How would you like them to get in touch with you to get help from you directly in
growing their businesses and take it to the next level?
thank you man.
I appreciate the opportunity.
can go to my website, they can learn all about the services I offer.
They can dive more into my mindset and how I think about scaling businesses and founders.
It's founders at scale.com.
And then my email is matthew at founders at scale.com as well.
And then of course they can certainly connect with me on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active there as well.
And those be the primary channels to grab my attention.
Awesome.
Well, thank you, Matt, for your time, for joining us and for sharing everything about your
experience and the journeys that you help with others that are trying to get through their
own experiences in business and getting to the next level.
Really appreciate your time.
I'm looking forward to chatting with you again, but thanks for joining us on the podcast.