The Ultimate Leadership Strategy Explained | Stephen Scoggins

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Peter's on a boat, storm's raging everywhere. Jesus is asleep. He's taking a nap. They wake him from His nap, and they're all freaking out, "We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die." And He's like, "Well, peace be still.

You guys have little faith," right? The ability to be present and grounded in a storm will save you millions of dollars. You are going to face storms. Your ability to be resilient and believe in a vision, even when everything around you seems like it's not come to fruition the way you want it to come, will save you time, energy, and resource. I, I was researching everything you have going on, and there's so much for us to dig into.

Thank you. I'm so excited to have you here. Um, you actually have this quiz on your site, which I highly recommend- Mm-hmm ... everyone listening- Yeah ... go and check out. I'll have a link in the show notes. But, uh, in the, in, in how you describe the quiz, there was this sentence that I just, this is where I wanted to start.

Sure. It says, "When hustle and strategy don't work- Yeah ... there is a deeper reason." Yeah. And I... That c- clicked with me so much because a lot of the founders and entrepreneurs that, that have been hitting me up lately in, like, social- Yeah ...

DMs, it's this. They're like, "Man, I f- I feel like I got the right strategy. We're working hard. I got a great team." Mm-hmm.

"And for some reason, like, we're stuck at this moment." So I'd love for you to kind of dig into this, this spot. Like- Yeah ... I feel like this is a r- huge pain point- ... for a lot of entrepreneurs and founders. Gosh, well, I'm gonna go down a bit of a rabbit hole because I think it's important for people to understand from a, from a sheer place of perspective.

So one of the things that I see a lot of entrepreneurs and especially early stage founders of startups do, uh, which obviously I'm a founder myself, I've founded multiple companies, exited, I had four as a roll-up, um, which is a, a rare event in general, right? So, uh, just to break through the seven-figure ceiling, all right, so you, everybody knows that 8 out of 10 businesses fail in the first, you know, call it five years. Um, that means out of those 20% that succeed, only 86% of them ever break a top line revenue of, of a million dollars in annual revenue, right? And of those, only I think a subset of maybe 1% of those will actually break eight figures, and it just gets, continues to get more and more diluted, uh, as you go through the, the process, all the way to where you have a, you know, you have a nine-figure company or something like that. Um, and essentially what happens is, is now you've got this rarest of the rare.

And one of the things that I've seen that's been so instrumental of a lot of the entrepreneurs that I'm working with that have broken through the seven, the eight figure, and the nine figure, uh, ceilings, um, 'cause a lot of my pa- you know, a lot of my current clients and past clients are typically eight and nine-figure entrepreneurs that are trying to not actually fix their businesses as much as they are trying to get what I like to refer to as alignment. And the reality is, when it comes down to why businesses often fail, the, the economics or the statistics will tell you that it's, like, typically top five reasons: lack of sales, lack of product fit, poor management team, poor leadership style. Like, it's the same things over and over again. And then I had this epiphany. When I go back and look at my entrepreneurial journey that I've had over the last, gosh, 30, call it 30 years, just to round, round down or round up.

I think, I think, I think it's 33 years in now. But when I go back and look at that journey and I'm honest with myself and I look at the things that really either impeded my growth or basically prevented my growth, so there's, you know, impeding the growth, making it slower, making it stall, where we, we naturally think that we need to hustle more and do more and have more an- an- like, what I call anxious activity, um, which is n- I don't believe is healthy. I did all these things. I'm not, I'm not speaking from a place of, "Hey, you should go do this way, and I know it all," 'cause I'm not a, I'm not a guru by any sorts of means. I'm just simply someone who built businesses with my own two hands, basically.

And, but when you go and look at those statistics, you very quickly realize that there's something off there. So when I go and look at, okay, what impeded my growth? What prevented my growth? In almost every case, in some way, shape, or form, it came down to me, right? It wasn't how much n- it wasn't even how much knowledge I have.

It wasn't as much, it wasn't even a matter how much skill I have. 'Cause knowledge and skill you can develop over time. In fact, I used to tell people all the time, one of my greatest mistakes in building companies was not building myself along the way. And I mean legitimately, intentionally focused building myself. Not, not you do a, a seminar once a year. Maybe you, maybe you listen to a podcast once every two months.

Maybe you're reading a book every two or three months. Like, I mean, like intentional, "Hey, it's Monday. Today we're focused on my financial wellbeing. Hey, it's Tuesday. Now we're focused on my emotional wellbeing.

Hey, it's Wednesday. Now I'm focused on my spirituality. Hey, it's Thursday. Now I'm gonna focus on my relationships," right? There's, there's no growth path that's actually planned ahead.

I say all that to say that I discovered that no matter what stage of entrepreneurship you're in, if you're a founder wanting to start something, um, you know, desiring to make an impact, you know, and founders and entrepreneurs by def- I love them to death because by definition they create something out of thin air, okay? They s- they, they have a vision, and they literally bring that vision into reality. Right? Sometimes it's an esta- it's an established niche, sometimes it's in a not so established niche, sometimes it's in a completely new thing, right? We all know AI come out c- it seemingly came out of nowhere, even though it's been in development for a decade.

You know, but we'll go and look at all of these things, right? And if the seven-figure entrepreneur trying to get to eight figures, and the eight figure's gotta get nine. It doesn't matter what the thing is. I find that there's five core constraints. Five core constraints to actual growth, and it actually has more to do with the entrepreneur themselves than it does to do anything else.

All right? And I'll give you some examples after I break these down. But the first one is arrogance. Okay? The entrepreneurial vision a lot of times, and I see this a lot with founders specifically, um, there's an element of fear attached to it, but a lot of times founders, they don't understand that having the skill set of a CEO is very different than having the chutzpah, if you will, of the founder.

Right? The founder is absolutely needed, and should be honored for their impact, right? But unless they wanna go through the personal growth journey of becoming a CEO, they will impede or prevent their business growth by not bringing in a professional CEO that has been trained with the skillsets of a CEO, for example. Yeah. Okay?

So that's a, that's a form of arrogance. The next one is ignorance. Right? Ignorance and having major blind spots that you're not willing to look at, that you're not willing to get what I would like, again, I'd like to refer to as alignment, right? When you have these kinds of issues, what happens is, is this ignorance is now preventing you from learning the things you need to do, or preventing you from developing the relationships you need to develop, or simply just allowing it other additional levels of fear to creep in, right?

So we got arrogance, ignorance, right? Now we got the one thing that I see every single entrepreneur on the planet share. This is one common thing that we all share. We all think we should be further along than we actually are. All of us.

I don't care if you just busted through $100 million and you did it in three years, which is, would be in- unimaginable for most people, right? You still think, "Well, I should be at 150. I should have a team of 300 people," or, "I should have this over here," or, "I should be doing this over here." Uh, true entrepreneurship, I'll come back to this in a second, operate from a place of alignment. The most successful entrepreneurs that I see that really have it all, right?

They have a successful company, they have a successful relationship, they have a successful family, they have a succ- successful wellness program for them, they have a succ- successful level of fulfillment, right? They all have achieved what I would, again, I like to refer to as alignment. Now, if we go to the fourth one, the fourth one is called insecurity, right? So insecurity will pe- will prevent you from taking action when you need to take action. Or, you know, activating a certain segment of your business, or firing that team member because they've been with you for 10 years.

Or there's a whole number of different things that if you, if you have a low sense of self-worth, which you'd be surprised- Mm-hmm ... of the percentages of founders and entrepreneurs that honestly, part of the reason that they build something from scratch is to prove to the world that they're worth something, right? So this is some of these things I want to eradicate and kind of flip on their head, because I discovered that I had a s- I had a significant s- I had significant intrinsic worth long before I ever built the first company, let alone all the things that happened along the way. So I'd actually, I actually tell entrepreneurs all the time, "I prefer you not celebrate the success. I prefer you celebrate the sacrifice, the things that you're willing to do that no one else is willing to do right now." Because most entrepreneurs that do become successful, as my old man Myrick, my first mentor teacher used to tell me all the time, he's like, "Hey, you have to be willing to do today what others won't, so you can have tomorrow what others don't."

And he wasn't talking about the haves as far as houses and cars and planes and stuff like that. He meant the entire wellness of life, right? So that leads us to the fifth and final constraint, which is fear. Fear of success and fear of failure. Fear of firing, fear of hiring.

Fear of partnering. You know, I, I, you know, one of the biggest transitions that I had to do, uh, Ryan, was this. Um, I had to, I had to come to a point when I, when we were about a $60 million company with the company that I exited a couple years ago, where I had to decide, "Do I actually want to develop the skill sets of a CEO, or is it more important for me to bring in a CEO?" And I say that loosely because I feared that somehow if I brought in a CEO, that ultimately what was gonna happen in my life is I was not, not just lose control, but the vision, the thing that I'd spent the last, you know, 15, 20 years putting together, was gonna be so radically altered that it wouldn't even resemble me in the process, right? So fortunately for me, in my specific self, I, I had a lot of great counselors and mentors and coaches along the way, and I to this day still have coaches in a lot of different domains of life, and business included, right?

I was able to understand, okay, I do have what it takes to develop these skills, but at the same time, part of the reason I exited my company is because I didn't wanna take it to $200 million, right? So what I did was I went out and found a management team, partnered them with my existing management team, and created a, a roadmap for wealth for all of them, because I d- I knew I didn't wanna do it. I knew I didn't have the skill sets at that time to go from 100 million to 200 million. That's a whole other leap. It's just a leap, right?

So those five constraints create a certain level of anxiousness, burnout, and overwhelm consistently. So if you ha- if you have a, a, a, an entrepreneur, and I said, "What does burnout feel like?" Okay. Burnout feels like I wake up tired every day, that I can't get to all the places I want to get to, hug all the people I wanna hug, care, love all the people I wanna love, and instead I feel like that I'm just exhausted all the time. Okay, overwhelm on the other hand, feels like you have the constant weight of the world on your shoulders.

Like, if you don't make this decision just right, the whole thing's gonna fall apart. Or if you don't partner with this person just right, the whole thing's gonna fall apart. So I say all of that to say, and I know it's a long-winded answer to your first question, but, um, I wanna give a complete picture to the entrepreneurs to understand there's true empathy coming from me to them, 'cause I understand. I've, I've walked this journey out. But if I could summarize it all in one statement- It's this.

You cannot scale dysfunction. You can't scale a dysfunctional sales team, you can't scale a s- uh, dysfunctional leadership team, you can't scale a dysfunctional financial pipeline. You can't scale dysfunction. You can only scale out of alignment, and that is at the root cause of what I've seen that has to change in the founder- The holidays are here, and that means it's the most wonderful time of the year to save with Rakuten. Use Rakuten to stack cash back from your favorite stores on top of holiday sales.

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It's truly a no-brainer. Join for free today and get a new member bonus after minimum qualifying purchases. Just go to Rakuten.com, download the app, or install the browser extension. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Terms and conditions apply The CEO and the entrepreneur and the executive leaders of every single business is they have to get out of their own way and learn to collaborate and learn to align with the vision, align with their actual skill sets.

And if the skill sets and the vision don't align directly over top of each other, you look for the, the wise person looks for the piece, brings that piece in, and lets that piece operate in fulfillment and fullness, and then you can scale a company. To me, founder is a mindset, CEO is a job. Mm-hmm. And I love the way that you broke that down. Do you have a filtering system or method that...

And even maybe talk about your own personal journey and, 'cause I know a lot of founders deal with this issue, and they just this, there's this assumption, you, you founded the business, you become the CEO. There's just this assumption, and if somehow you take a different path, right, uh, maybe your peers, your colleagues are... And again, going back to insecurity and fear, you start creating all these things that don't exist where people are gonna judge me because I founded the company. I should become the CEO. Mm-hmm.

So you're feeling that pressure. How do you think through this process? How do you remove some of the emotion attached to this? Or, or- Yeah ... deal with the emotion might be a better way- Mm ... 'cause it's gonna be there. But think through logically, am I the right person to go from- Mm-hmm ... founder to C- 'Cause I might be the best CTO in the company.

Yeah. I might be the best- Yeah ... revenue generator in the company. Yeah. 'Cause CEO is a job, not a mindset. Founder is a mindset, CEO is a job. I- i- if you, one, if you believe with that kind of categorization, and two, I'd love to know your filtering system for that because, man, I know so many people are stru- especially as, and I, I- Yeah ... apologize for the long question, but you said- You're fine ... something that I think is very important.

Um, I think today more than ever, founders and CEO, founders considering this transition to CEO- Mm-hmm ... are thinking about their life sacrifices, right? I think there's less founders who are willing to go Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, I'm gonna live on a cot 24/7, you know, not see my family for months to get this thing off the ground, right? I think there's a lot more founders that are saying, "I don't want that life." A, a respect and appreciation that that's the decision they made, but that's not the life that I want. So maybe with that understanding, h- how do we think through this decision?

Yeah, I think, so when it comes down to filtering, first of all, you have to understand the, the complete stages of building a business, right? Um, well, I would call it the drivers actually. So in my world, I can take these five drivers, lay them over top of any business, doesn't matter what niche it's in, and because the, each niche allows for flexibility and, and for each of the, you know, the areas of a company. So ideation is the number one niche, and I'll come back to ideation super fast 'cause that's where I wanna spend the bulk of the time to answer your question. The second thing is sales, right?

So you got ideation, sales, fulfillment, finance, and you have a raving fan retention model, okay? We'll come... We can discuss those later, but ideation, okay? Ideation in so many cases is essentially the, the overall complete vision of the company. When I say vision, it's not just the pie in the sky statement that we look at on a wall every now and again.

It's legitimately this is who we are, this is who we're not, this is what we stand for, this is what we stand against. Okay? So that's filter number one. Does anyone that I'm considering bringing into the, uh, the business, or am I operating, and this is a good, a good question for leaders, right? Am I actually operating as if I'm actually embodying this set vision? 'Cause I find a lot of us, especially early days, we don't do that.

We don't do that. We, we, we say these things, but we're not embodying those things. Um, but in the grand scheme of things, the ideation process is obviously your mission, your vision, and core values. It's roles, responsibilities, and strategies of implementation. Okay?

So it's laying the groundwork of the other drivers, sales, finance, fi- uh, raving fan retention, so on and so forth, fulfillment and, and everything else. The reason that's important is because for me, there was one time in my business career where I should have gotten an outside person in and put them through a proper vetting process. Okay? Now, the vetting process for me is a little bit based on Patrick Lencioni in one of your elements. So he has this phrase called hungry, humble, smart.

Okay? They have to be hungry, they gotta be humble, and they gotta be smart, right? I think the third one is that they have to fit the culture. Okay? Now, I'm, I'll come back to culture in a second.

Now, when it comes down to actually filtering these people through, I'm gonna sit down with them and say, okay, how hungry are they? How humble are they? How smart are they? How do they fit the culture? Now, when founders are looking at CEOs, CEOs are naturally, especially trained ones, people that have already been CEOs with other enterprises and stuff like that, have a natural level of experience that you don't have Like early stage as a founder.

Okay? When I was a founder, perfect example was is I promoted a senior level accountant into a controller role that cost me, that one mistake cost me millions of dollars, okay? Because what they did through their... And then look, they were, they were a great human being. They didn't possess the skill set needed to operate an eight, a high-figure company at the time.

Okay? So what happened was is they literally created a hot mess that I had to spend about $200,000 of actual cash to come in and clean up, on top of all the erosion that happened through margin and profitability, right? So the founder has to be honest with themselves and say, "Do I have the skill set and the experience?" And after they've done it one time, so let's say that, let's say this is the first time the founder's created something from scratch, right? They've got a profitable enterprise, they've worked their ass off, they've sacrificed nights, holidays, weekends.

They've put the work in, they built the team. You know, they, they put their own money in continuously. They haven't paid themselves. They don't sleep at nights. Like all, that's all the stuff that they're, they're carrying when they're trying to make this decision about whether or not to bring an outside party in as a partner in many respects to this organization.

So what happens is, as they're doing one of the things that I used to do very poorly all the time until I got better at this, where, again, where alignment comes into play, is I used to make emotional-driven decisions. Okay? If you're going to be a seven-figure entrepreneur, an eight-figure entrepreneur, a nine-figure and beyond, you are going to learn to make decisions on data, okay? And radical honesty, right? So the filtering process is this is who we are, this is what we stand for, this is what we stand against.

Now let's get down to radical honesty. Here's the vision. Do I actually have the, do I actually possess the current experience level to take this thing to the next level? At least 90%. The other 10% you can learn, right?

Most founders, okay, and it's no dig on founders, 'cause again, I am one, right? Most founders struggle with this because what they remember is the past five years, the past year, the past 12 months, the past 6 ye- like, they have all this history of what they've done. So how a successful CEO would integrate that is a couple different things. So if we know the culture's a, a, a specific piece, when they go to interview CEOs, they're gonna take their time. Okay?

The more important the decision, the more time that needs to be taken. However, I might spend 90 days evaluating separate CEOs to see who's gonna be the best fit. Now, a quality CEO is gonna do two things very well. First of all, they're gonna come into the business and know how to optimize it. Right?

If the business has a, has a, a bil- a desire or need to raise capital, the CEO's gonna have a ne- uh, the ability to raise capital, monetize ef- efficiencies, read CF, you know, data that comes, coming out of the COO, the CTO, and the CFO, right, and then translate that back to the founder. 'Cause typically a founder will slide over to a visionary officer or something like that to keep the business growing, and that's putting people everybody in their sweet spots. A great CEO is also gonna do another thing which I think is super important. They're gonna regularly honor the founder publicly. They're gonna come up when they have their meetings with their team, it's like, "Hey, just like Jane used to say all the time when she was building this thing," or, "Joe used to, was building this thing from the, you know, from his card table, at his kitchen table," or whatever, you know, that, "We would do this, this, and this, and this is what we stand for." And when you have that aspect, what happens is the founder now feels like, "All right.

I'm seen. I'm heard. I'm valued. I'm, I..." And then, and then they will actually to go do what they do best, which is go create, right?

So the founder creates, the CEO optimizes, right? And both of those things are important, and it's very, very rare that a founder truly becomes a CEO. You can take... Let's look all the way back at Uber, all right? The young man that started Uber, founder, gritty, tenacious.

Because he wasn't a trained executive as the CEO, it took a while and they had a lot of growth pains early on in getting Uber off the ground, and getting... It, he had, he got in a bad rap a few times. They made movies about it. Mm-hmm. Right?

Because he wasn't operating from alignment, right? S- great CEOs, and the difference is, is operating from emotion versus operating from essentially data, okay? If you operate from emotion, you're gonna blow stuff up by accident. You're not even gonna mean to, right? And if you hire a CEO from emotion, you're gonna mess yourself up.

Right? What does the data say? What do we need? The data is the, is the, is the important piece. If entrepreneurs can move from the emotional side of their brain to the intellectual side of their brain and make data-driven decisions on a regular basis, they're going to be much stronger in the end.

So I would use those types of methodologies to filter in. So one, who do, who are we? What do we stand for? What do we stand against? Make sure that's clear, 'cause that, that CEO also has to believe heavily in that same thing.

They gotta, I mean, they gotta really believe it, right? The second thing is, okay, what is the culture, right? So is it, is this a comple- a culture of honor and respect? You know, because I found that if, if the founder has any level of emotional maturity, as they're honored, they also honor the CEO back, right? And honor has to be established with the leadership team.

A dysfunctional leadership team will create a hot freaking mess amongst hundreds of team members. Ask me how I know. Like, I've lived it. You see what I'm saying? All right, and the third and final thing is like, okay, well, how do we move from emotional behaviors and decision-making to basically data intellectual decision-making?

I think those three are the, are the core filters because, and, uh, this will be for the CEOs that are coming in for founders, um, not just the honor piece, but also understanding that that, that that founder probably has unique, um, instinct to a degree, right? And being able to respect that instinct and be able to sit down and say, "Hey, John. Look, I respect your instincts. Your instincts are awesome." Um, here, here's, here's, here's what I see.

Help me under- help me understand more about your vision. 'Cause a lot of founders have a really hard time really communicating the next level of vision. So being able to have that dialogue, right, founder and the CEO, is vitally important. Vitally important. Yeah. Those are my, probably my, my top three or my top ways.

No, you, and you, the, the, the third one is the one that maybe I, I, I'd love to just ask, like, 'cause a lot of founders, right, it was their gut, it was their intuition- Mm-hmm ... that, that gave them the idea to create the thing, right? Mm-hmm. So now, so to your point, because of that, they tend to over-index on gut feeling emotion. Yep. Yep.

But s- so but I completely agree with you, right? We have to live in reality, and this is a big part of what I talk about on this show. I talk about, like, my own leadership style I call a reality-based operating system. Mm-hmm. Like, you can't, you can't build your business on a fantasy or some sort of utopian version of how businesses become real.

Yeah. So we have to work off data. So how do we marry the... or, or fi- better put, how do we find harmony between- Mm-hmm ... the gut instincts of a founder or even a CEO or even- Mm-hmm ... you know, other founding team members with the data that's coming out that we see on a day-to-day basis? And, and 'cause sometimes the data might not show exactly what we want, but- Mm-hmm ... a gut call gets us over the hurdle, and- Mm-hmm ... but then the opposite can also be true. So how do we start to find harmony- Yeah ... between those two things?

Well, first of all, the, the management team and the business will only scale to speed of trust, okay? And trust is built through experience and over time, right? So if I'm sitting there, uh, with an executive team member and my gut says X. Now, I'm one of those weird people that my gut tends to be more right than wrong when it comes to business, okay? Now, that might be kind of how I've managed to get to where I'm at or played a role in that.

At the same time, um, I'll, I'll give you, I'll use the CFO example, so CEO to C- CFO. Let's say the founder became the CEO. The CEO is now working with a CFO. The CFO has been trained, trained to be a CFO, okay? The founder has not necessarily been trained to be a CEO, right?

So there's automatically a, like, this guy's coming at it, this guy or, or, or lady's coming at it from this angle. He's coming at it from this angle. What I've discovered is, is a, a s- very simple phrase. Can you help me understand? Help me understand your perspective.

Just help me understand. I wanna see it clearly. 'Cause my goal, Jane, as the CFO to the CEO, is I wanna make sure your vision becomes reality. That's why I'm here, right? I also have an obligation to you to make sure we get there in the healthiest possible way, po- you know, period. Which means once each party has had the chance to share openly without defense, again, this is where freaking alignment comes into play, 'cause only emotional mature people can actually be grounded in the moment and actually listen.

There's a difference in hearing and listening, right? If you can't regurgitate, so to s- pardon for the bad word, but it's kind of a joke tech word. But if you can't regurgitate the words back to the person, you didn't listen. If you can't ph- physically say, "Well, here's what I heard you say," okay? 'Cause a lot of times you, what you say, "Well, oh, here's what I heard you," "Well, I didn't say that at all. I actually, I was trying to say this."

"Well, why didn't you say..." You know, it's like, so that's how you avoid that, that complex nature. Once each party has had a chance to listen, how do we allow the visionary to create the stretch? So let's say the data says we can go from A to M by doing things this way, right? Sequential order.

This is how we build up cashflow. This is how we build up a sales pipeline. This is how we optimize our fulfillment. This is how we do it this way, right? Then you go, then you can go back to the founder and say, "Okay, this is, this is the strategy that I see to make your dream a reality or our dream a reality," on top of I want to learn to be in the stretch.

Here's where the s- the founder gets to be the, in the stretch. The founder gets to set the stretch goal. You see what I'm saying? And it's within reason. Hey, we're gonna agree that we're gonna, we'll, we'll, we'll strive for a 20% stretch.

So if you were gonna be involved in the fulfillment process, how would you see it differently, and what's that 20% stretch? What you're looking for is you're building co- a collaboration of communication. Or I'm sorry, communication of collaboration. As you build a collabo- a communication of collaboration, what happens is you build trust, and pretty soon you're gonna f- you're gonna find that the, the founders release more and more and more and more because trust has been built. But trust is only built by actually working together and actually operating in the tension.

In reality, here's the crazy part, is trust is built in the tension, right? That's when Jane and John are like, "Hey, I, I... you know what? We tried your idea, all right? And it worked fantastic. Yay, let's high five.

Hey, Jane had this great idea. She helped us with the stretch," right? Or if it didn't work, "Hey, this is cool. We learned, we learned a valuable lesson. Now let's, let's, let's see what the da- the data now supports," right?

It's, it's the tr... it may, it may seem like in the moment you're slowing the business down from growth, but what you're really doing is you're really setting up a firm foundation, because when trust is established, now the CEO can execute with excellence because the founders now trust, right? And the, and the founders is, the founder is getting honored regularly by repeatedly bringing back in the story of creation to the company. So as you bring on another value, um, uh, you s- let's say the, about the, normally about the time a transition can happen from a, a, a founder to a CEO is typically around the $10 million mark, sometimes a little before, depending on the industry. It's absolutely in place by the time you're at 50, 100. Like, you can't get there unless, again, the founder's willing to do the work to become a CEO, and that's, that is, that is a very, very- Not difficult thing, but pretty da- pretty stinking difficult in some respects, right?

Let's say all, uh, let's say all that happens. When all of that happens, now you've got this new level of team members constantly coming into the business. Okay? The CEO, part of what the CEO will do is they'll put a strategy in place with the HR department or whoever's actually operating in the HR area to say, "Hey, part of our onboarding process is to talk about how Jane built this business, how she helped us get going, how much we value her insight and her instincts, and how she sees things differently." Right?

So basically you put in the culture that supports to honor the founder, and the founder's gonna end up releasing more trust to the CEO because the, the CEO is already honoring the founder. Yeah. It's, it's, again, it's, it's all communication, it's all trust, and it's all honor and respect. Yeah. That's my opinion.

I know. I c- I completely agree with you. I think, um, I also think there is a s- there is a skill for the founder to strategically give their executive team opportunities to sink or swim, right? Like, you don't wanna give them an opportunity maybe, especially early on, that's like a, a bet the farm decision. But hey, on some of these tactical decisions where, where you, you might feel you know the answer, right?

Mm-hmm. But you wanna see how does, how does he handle it, how does she handle this, this particular decision, and let them go. And, and someti- and you have to be okay with they might take a path that I know is not gonna work. Yeah. But let them go down that path- Yeah ... be unsuccessful, learn the lesson themselves, and, and then you get to see how do they handle failure, right?

I mean, this is one of the things that, that if you don't provide slack to your team, if you're one of these helicopter founders, right? Mm-hmm. Helicopter managers. If you don't provide your team some slack to make some mistakes occasionally, right? Mm-hmm.

As long as they're pointing in the right direction- Yeah ... with their intentions and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Sure. Then, then you don't know, when the shit really hits the fan, you have no idea how they're gonna re- react. And now when, when in your worst day, you're getting your first experience with how someone- ... handles a negative situation.

Yeah. Which is the absolute opposite thing that you want, right? Yeah. So- Sure ... um, no, I love that. Um, I'd like to transition a little bit, um, to, uh, I, I wanna talk about faith and, and faith in your life.

You, you, you wear a cross. I, I, I do too. It's funny, we're actually opposites. I have a black- ... top, white shirt. You got the black shirt- Yeah. ... like silver cross.

Um- Yin and yang today. Yeah. But, uh- Yeah ... like, h- what role does, does God and your faith play in, in how you operate your life and how... And then I'm particularly interested in how you've, um, utilized that aspect of who you are in, in your business life and, and what role that plays and how it manifests. Yeah.

So man, I, I think the simpler question is what role does it not play? I operate all o- I, I'll tell you this. I, so my vision, my mission, core values, all the things that I've talked about in the ideation, uh, stage of building a business, and I look at those stages every 12 to 18 months by the way. That's how you, that's how you scale that, those, that same system. But I look at that as that's how I'm gonna conduct myself.

So it starts with, uh, embodying the examples. Elements of faith are honesty, integrity, compassion, empathy, boldness, right? So I say all that to say that my grandfather told me in, uh, 2016 before he passed away, just as, before I started speaking and writing books and then doing the things I do in the world now, you know, at the time I was like, 'cause my, my first company was a, a, a roll-up of a con- a bunch of construction companies basically. I was having a really hard time making the mental and emotional leap. You know, again, I'm, I'm facing those same constraints I'm telling you about in this transition.

And as I'm talking to my grandfather, he's like, he's like, "Here's the thing you need to know about leadership and business, life, love, everything. You have to be one, become one part lion and one part lamb." And when we started talking about the lion and the lamb, all right, so the lion is bold and courageous, protects its own, um, hunts on a regular basis. Then you've got the lamb, you know, in theory that is empathetic and compassionate and caring. 'Cause there will be times when you, yourself, or your team need a kick in the butt, which is the lion. There'll be other times they actually need a hug, which is the lamb.

The tricky part is developing the wisdom to operate in the, in the blank space, be able to be having enough situational awareness. So the way I see situational awareness is I studied the life of Jesus. I studied how he operated with his disciples, right? Most of the time he ended up giving Peter a bit of a, a hug because Peter was in his own way a lot. Few times he challenged Peter.

He gave him the lion. "Get behind me. Like, get behind me, Satan." Like I mean, I don't know about you, but like if my mentor told me that, I'd be like, "Oh." Be in kind of shock, right?

You know, and to me, faith is what happens in the quiet moments. Let's, if I go back to the alignment piece, I discovered when I woke up each morning and I just went straight into my phone, straight to my computer, straight to my activities, ma- and I've been hitting the gym for a long time, so the gym was my, you know, I'd be going to the gym. But I'd be thinking about my day. I'd be thinking about the c- the client. I'd be thinking about all these different things.

That created the embodiment of overwhelm. Contrast that with is I guarantee myself the first 30 to 40 minutes of every day with some form of grounding or presence practice. Okay? I have a journaling practice that I use from time to time. That's 'cause what I hear you say is I grab my journal, I sit in quiet, what I hear you say is, and I write down whatever I hear.

And lo and behold, sometimes it's three or four pages. Sometimes it's a few quotes, right? I'll get, I'll, I'll go touch the grass. I'll go put my feet in the grass nowadays, right? I'll go sit out in the first sunlight of the day.

I wake up every, almost every morning, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wise, I'm a steward of the Most High, and I love you, Stephen. That last one, I've discovered that nine out of 10 entrepreneurs that I've worked with can't even say that to themselves in the mirror. Right? And by getting those things in place, I become more grounded. And because I become more grounded, all I'm doing is mimicking what my Lord did.

That's all I'm doing. How many times did Jesus go off away by himself and go, quote-unquote, "be with the Father," be in a state of presentness? Like, he walked into a room and had presence consistently because he spent so much time being present in every moment. When he was, when he was with Peter or when he was with, uh, you know, John or any... He was very focused on being present with them, you know?

If I model that in my business, that means when I'm meeting with one of my executives, I'm very present with them. I'm not thinking about the other things. I got my phone off, turned over, don't have any dingers going on. We started this podcast, first thing I did was hit do not disturb so I, we wouldn't be disturbed, right? These are types of ways of becoming more present.

So presentness is a piece of it. Um, being grounded is a piece of it. Um, being more emotionally calm in times of stress. It's Peter's on a boat, storm's raging everywhere. Jesus is asleep.

He's taking a nap, and they wake him from his nap and they're all freaking out, "We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die." And he's like, "Ah, peace be still." Wanna make a difference in your community but not sure how? Go to gofundme.com right now and start a GoFundMe. Seriously, your next fundraiser doesn't have to start in a school parking lot or a church basement.

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That's therealreal.com. You, you, you guys have little faith, right? The ability to be present and grounded in a storm will cost, will save you millions of dollars. It'll advance you twice as fast. But on top of that, then you also have the resilience piece, right?

I don't care who you are, in business, in general, I don't care if you're a C-suite professional, I don't care if you're the founder, I don't care if you're thinking about being a founder, you are going to face storms period. Your ability to be resilient and believe in a vision even when everything around you seems like it's not coming to, coming to fruition the way you want it to come, will save you time, energy, and resource. Because again, you're gonna come back to alignment, come back to being grounded, come back to being rooted and being present. When you're present is when you make the best decisions. Almost every dumb decision I made, and I've...

Like, keep in mind, I'm saying this from a place of experience and empathy in that I have lost millions of dollars because of dumb things that I did. Putting the wrong people in the wrong seats on the bus, not paying attention to the financials. Like, literally just trying to be sheer instinct, right? Every one of those dumb decisions came from a place of what's, what's known in the marketplace now as what's called emotional dysregulation. It's being in the mo- ...

This is why I don't, this is why I'm not a fan of hustle culture. When I say hustle culture, I don't mean I'm... You don't have to wake up at 4:00 AM and go out for a run and pump a bunch of iron and, and then... You see what I'm saying? You don't...

It's, it's, it's actually better if you can start present. Yeah. There's a difference between working hard and working to work. Yeah. There's a difference.

Yeah. I, yeah. Exactly. So I say alignment leads to intentional focus. Intentional focus leads to diligence.

Diligence leads to positive outcomes, right? If you're emotionally dysregulated, I mean, you, you wake up in fe- in, in, in... Emotional dysregulation is nothing more than being in, in fight or flight, right? You're either... You can build your businesses in fight or flight.

You're gonna scare a lot of people. You're gonna scare yourself. You're gonna make dumb decisions. Or you can start now from someone who's, who's lived it, who doesn't want you to have to go through all this, those extra suffering moments. 'Cause there, there's already gonna be tension, right? There's a whole nother level if you're operating from emotional dysregulation, which again, is just more, nothing more than operating from fear or flight.

So I say all of that to say that my faith is what grounds me. My faith is what's true. It doesn't mean that I have to have, um, every team member that comes in the door, I, we have to share the same faith or the same values, right? But we do have the same, share the same core values of honesty, integrity, diligence, compassion, collaboration, autonomy. Like, we have to share those things, and it just so happens over a course of time, if you embody this behavior, you embody this, this, this presentness from faith- Not only will you attract others that are kind of that way, that kind of operate that way, so there's less chaos itself in the ... 'Cause there's less chaos in the business, like every position is, is based, has someone who's like emotionally grounded and regulated or can get there.

So there's a peace and a safety into that. But on top of that, you will also become, uh, a bit of an inspiration, a light to others who are trying to figure that part out. You know, 'cause it, it never fa- ... I mean, I've had this situation happen before where I had a team member with me for seven or eight years, rock star, and he got unexpectedly divorced. Their, their spouse did something that, you know, cata- created a catastrophic event in the relationship.

Now, obviously there's always two sides to things and how relationships play out, but that person really, it really rocked that person for a year. So what do you do? Do you fire them because all of a sudden their performance is completely tank? Or do you find a way to bring this faith element around them and compassion of the team members to say, "Hey, we, we got you right now. We know, we know you're not gonna be your best self right now, and we see you, we love you, we got you."

Right? I find that that culture structure creates a level of lift that most businesses can never find. That's why you can have a billion-dollar business and have turnover like it's going out of style. There's a, there's a really well-known, um, uh, dig- uh, digital marketplace business. Really well-known.

Billions of dollars. And if you were to actually look at the statistics of how many, how they churn their team, they are literally, part of, part of their major line item on their billion-dollar budget is headhunting constantly. They can't keep, they can't keep a position, and they can't keep a position because there's no compassion. There's no seeing the person. Everybody wants to feel seen, valued, heard, and appreciated.

I learned all of that from Jesus. All of it. Everything in my business, the, the skill set he gave me with my hands. 'Cause, you know, okay, so my dad taught me how to use my hands and my heart, right? You know, that, that's great, but my faith is what taught me resilience. It's what taught me compassion.

It's what taught me boldness in the face of storms. It's what taught me all these different elements that are intangibles, that if entrepreneurs can really tap into that, they can do some pretty unstoppable things. And I think you made the point in there that I completely agree with, uh, and have been talking about for a long time, which is the values, the, the belief structures- Mm-hmm ... the opinions of, of the founder of leadership. Like, these things have to be shared in public domains. Mm-hmm.

And the reason is, is not to build an audience or a personal brand or whatever. It, you know, it, it goes much deeper than that in my opinion. It, it, it, it signals, as you said- Mm-hmm ... to the individuals who align with or aspire to those values that this is a place that I can call home. Mm-hmm. And what it also does, and this is what I think a lot of, a lot of the, uh, uh, founders, business owners that I talk to that struggle with hiring, they struggle with hiring 'cause one, they've never shared their value structure.

Mm-hmm. And, and, or if they have, they've shared it in a very corporatized, PR, paid branding kind of way. Mm-hmm. So what they get is people, people coming to the business who don't actually align with their actual values. Mm-hmm.

Right? So it acts as a dual filtering system. You get people who align with or aspire with, to your values, and the people who disagree with your values- Yeah. Yeah ... they never show up. Yeah.

And, and you know, it's why, you know, I, I thankfully in, in all the businesses that I've ever run at a top level have never had a problem hiring, and it's because I'm so vocal with- Mm-hmm ... what I believe, how I lead, you know, I, you know, out front. So someone could go to my LinkedIn and be like, "I wanna work for this guy," or, "I don't wanna work for this guy." Exactly. It is very obvious. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like- Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And, and so, so maybe how do you, how would you coach a founder, a CEO, et cetera, through the, maybe if they have some emotional turmoil around being truly public, right? Like, like- Mm-hmm ...

I have no problem telling people I have conservative values. Mm-hmm. I believe in the American Constitution, and I believe in the Bible, right? So most of my value structure is the Bible with the original intent of the US Constitution sitting on top of it, right? Like, tho- Yeah ... that's kind of my v- Yeah ... value structure.

Yeah. If you don't align with that, right? Yeah. That's great, but that's mine. So- Yeah ... how do you walk them ...

But I get a lot of crap for that. People will be like- Mm-hmm ... "Oh, you know, you know, well, you don't, you know, d- y- why would you tell people you're a conservative? You know, you're gonna turn off everyone who'd buy from you who's a liberal." I'm like, "That's fine."

I don't- Mm. Yeah ... I, that doesn't bother me. Yeah. Now, one, I don't think that's actually true, 'cause I, you know.

I, but two, I think, like how do you become okay with that? 'Cause a lot of- Yeah ... people struggle with this. Well, I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm known for being a little too, little too transparent. Um, just in general. I just, I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Like, I- Yeah. Yeah, me too ... I am who I am, and I've discovered that I like who I am when I am who I am. I, I discovered I don't like who I am when I'm not being who I am, right? Some, um, some close to me now refer to it as ego man versus spirit man.

Like, I like being spirit man. Spirit man's solid, grounded, rooted. Ego man's, is concerned about s- you know, scarcity and fear and all these types of things. The first thing I would tell the founder is there's a big difference in filling a seat and filling a role, okay? If you have a really well-executed strategy, it's gonna define a role.

That role then defines responsibilities. Those responsibilities then define the key KPIs or, or key performance indicators, the metrics that are gonna be held to, okay? Now, the one thing that I think is really interesting is I personally am like you. I would rather hire well than not. And you hire well based on culture fit.

So yes, you're gonna attract people that share similar core values, things of that nature. But let's say in this instance, let's say that, um, there is a, a, at least in the political world, there's a, there's a disparity between one or the other, okay? Um, okay, great. I used Jesus again Jesus never forced himself on anybody. He also never shirked back from declaring, "This is what I believe the kingdom of heaven is like," right?

Calling the Pharisees out, right? Like, like helping, helping everyone he'd come in contact with that was actually in need. First one to say, "I came for the sick, not the healthy," right? So if we, if we just model that behavior, you can have an environment where there's mutual respect, which is, that's at the, that's at the core of why there's no bridge built between multiple different disparities of various people groups, is because no one's willing to just build a bridge, right? You build a bridge by modeling Jesus.

Jesus accepted them for exactly who they are, and then asked them point-blankly, "Do your values align with mine?" At least I think they, I, well, I think, I think he used this process, you know, because he went around and said, "Oh, Peter, I want you. Andrew, I want you. Hey, John, I want you. Matthew, I know everybody else in the world hates you, but I want you," right?

And he went around and uses the, he used that, that element, and I think you can do that in the workplace, right? I've, I had people working in my companies that didn't share my world values, but they shared my core values, okay? My core values, honesty, respect, honor, collaboration, autonomy, right, integrity. If they could, if we could agree on the core values, then our worldviews may not have to match as much because the core values actually built the bridge between the two worldviews, okay? It actually allowed for, you know, collaborative conversation later on to- af- after some relationship's built, some trust has been built.

"Hey, I'm curious. I'm, help me understand, like why, why do you, like how did, how did you, how did you get to your position? You know, what happened in your life that made you or that, you know, that inspired you or..." You know, you start look- you, you could start seeing how certain patterns of belief systems are formed when you're not so resistant to everybody else's, and that's how you build bridges. I actually feel like part of my calling, um, in this next season of life is to figure out a way to build bridges between different areas.

Like I'm, I histor- I, I mean, if it's biblical, that's typically what I'm at, you know, kind of thing. So, um, but at the same time, I also realize that others have had different traumas and different circumstances and different, uh, influences. So much of what most of us believe was, was taught to us way early on. Very few of us go through the architecture or the, the deep dive or the rabbit holes. I, I chose to, 'cause I, I, I found my faith through a process of compression, uh, as well as discovery.

Like I've, I can articulate how I got to where I got to, right? Most people can't do that, right? So how can you, how can you have a collaborative conversation to open that up? But you're not gonna have that happen unless you can build a bridge between core values, right? So honesty, respect.

You start looking for those, um, and then you can bring s- you can still bring a team member in, even though they j- may not share your worldview. Stephen, this has been wonderful. I, I have enjoyed, uh, this conversation. And man, I, I mean, I, I take, so I take notes, uh, just for my own wellbeing, and for those of you watching, like my entire page- ... is filled. Thanks, bro I got lines and all kinds of stuff.

This has been, this has been a masterclass, man. I, I appreciate- Thanks, bro ... the hell outta you. So I am positive that people are gonna wanna get deeper into your world who are listening or watching the show. How do they do that? What's the best place?

You know, I'm so, again, I'm so passionate about people becoming aligned so they can... So, so with alignment they have a better behavior set, right? Um, but the first piece of getting aligned is becoming truly self-aware. Um, we created a tool, an assessment, uh, we call the integrated alignment method. Um, it's exactly how I got from point A to point, well, hopefully it's not Z yet.

Like at least point M now, right? Yeah. Um, and, and how I now, uh, grow and scale companies and, and, and leaders based on integrated alignment, like actually being fully in. So I would invite them to go to stephenscoggins.com/alignment. Uh, they can take the, the s- the assessment for free.

Takes about six or seven minutes. It's not even super long, and best part is is I don't sell you anything. If you wanna book a call after that, you can. Um, but I don't sell you anything. This is strictly for you to become self-aware to start your journey.

Um, I'm mo- I'm on all the platforms of course, but, uh, uh, if you wanna like engage with me through DMs, on Instagram's I'm probably my best, uh, there. It's just stephen_scoggins. So those are the two ways. And dude, thank you for letting me share with your audience, man. I really appreciate it.

It's, I know it's, it's a process of selection. Like I'm highly selective of who I let on my show as well, and I'm just super grateful that you allowed me to share today. Thank you. Oh, dude, it was wonderful. It was absolutely wonderful.

I mean that in the truest sense. And, uh, and I, I just, I love the way you've actually... You know, so, you know, I've, I've been doing, I've been doing 400 plus episodes of the show. I, you know, if you go back to when I started podcasting, I've done like o- more than 2,000 interviews. Wow.

Um, which is a story for another day. Um- Congratulations. Talk about, talk about bad decisions made. Um- Yeah. I had a show.

Dude, so, so, and then guys you're listening to this, you, you've probably heard it before, but, um, so I actually started a podcast in 2012. Okay. And grew it in two years to 2014. I was the number ninth overall show in all of Apple. I have a screenshot- Wow ... of Ed Mylett two ahead of me and Gary Vaynerchuk two behind me.

In all of Apple, right? Wow. So this is like, and, and at the time I was doing 47,000 downloads a month. So you can t- tell how much podcasting- Yeah ... had grown in that time, right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. For sure. Back then I was the number nine overall show. Yeah. And then I got, uh, I took a job as a chief marketing officer making more money than I'd ever made in my life for- Mm-hmm ... for this company.

And when they initially hired me, they told me I could keep the podcast, and I was like, "Fucking great. This is awesome." Yeah. And then two months in, all of a sudden that story changed and it was like, "Podcast has gotta go or you gotta go." And, um, you know, for a whole bunch of reasons, I mean, I wasn't making any money- Yeah ... out of the podcast at that time, advertisers- Sure ... whatever, so I let it go.

And I think back and I'm like Holy crap, like where would the show have been- ... you know, if I had just kept it going. But, uh, that's a story for a different day. That just means you gotta keep going now, that's all. Yeah, no. Yeah.

And, and all that being said, I love the way you framed some of these topics, and, um, and, and I just... This, this idea of alignment, I've, I've never had, I've never had anyone on the show who spent so much time and, and emphasis on this idea, and really broken it down the way you did. Mm-hmm. So guys, I hope you pick that up. I will have the links to everything Steven just described.

Whether you're watching on YouTube, listening wherever you listen, just scroll down. You'll find the links. Highly recommend you connect. As genuine a dude as I've connected with on the show. Thanks, man.

And I just appreciate the hell out of you, man. Dude, I appreciate it. And again, I, I, I can't thank you enough for letting me share with myself, with you, and the audience. Uh, it's an honor to be able to do this work now, and, uh, I don't take it lightly, and I, I try to offer value every single time I pop on somewhere, and hopefully I left some stuff today, some people changed. Definitely did, bud.

Let's go. Yeah. Make it look, make it look, make it look easy. Hey, stand up. Thank you for listening to The Ryan Hanley Show.

Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Ain't made a thing for me. I never switched up, no changing me. The only thing changing is you. I don't know about you, but when I'm using AI for my business, I don't need it to tell me what to do.

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