The Ultimate Leadership Strategy Explained | Stephen Scoggins

25:30And, and cause sometimes the data might not show exactly what we want, but a gut call gets us over the hurdle and then the opposite can also be true. So how do we start to find harmony between those two things? Well, first of all, the, the management team in the business will only scale up to speed of trust. Okay. And trust is built through experience and over time. Right. So if I'm sitting there 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 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 out, this guy or lady's coming out from this angle, he's coming out from this angle.

26:32What I've discovered is, is a very simple phrase. Can you help me understand? Help me understand your perspective. Just help me understand. I want to see it clearly. Because my goal, Jane, as the CFO to the CEO is I want to 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 pop 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 because only emotional mature people can actually be grounded in the moment actually listen there's a difference in hearing and listening right if you can't regurgitate so just i'm probably for the bad word, but it's kind of a joke word.

27:23But if you can't regurgitate the words back to the person, you didn't listen. If you can't 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 don'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.

28:00This 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 can go back to the founder and say, okay, 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 founder gets to be 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 going to agree that we'll strive for a 20 % stretch. So if you were going to be involved in the fulfillment process, how would you see it differently?

28:36And what's that 20 % stretch? What you're looking for is you're building a collaboration of communication, or I'm sorry, communication of collaboration. As you build a communication of collaboration, what happens is you build trust. And pretty soon you're going to find that 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. Here's the crazy part is trust is built in the tension, right? That's when Jane and John are like, hey, you know what? We tried your idea, all right? And it worked.

29:16Fantastic. Yeah, 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 a valuable lesson. Now let's see what the data now supports, right? 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 founders is the founder is getting honored regularly by repeatedly bringing back in the story of creation to the company.

29:54So as you bring on another value, let's say the, about the, normally about the time a transition can happen from 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, like you can't get there unless again, the founders will to do the work to become a CEO. And that is a very, very not difficult thing, but pretty stinking difficult in some respects, right? 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.

30:33The 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. 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 the honor of the founder and the founder is going to end up releasing more trust to the CEO because 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.

31:08That's my opinion. I know. I completely agree with you. I think, I also think there is, there is a skill for the founder to strategically give their executive team opportunities to sink or swim, right? Like you don't want to give them an opportunity, maybe especially early on, that's like a bet the farm decision. But hey, on some of these tactical decisions where you might feel you know the answer, right? But you want to see how does he handle it? How does she handle this particular decision? And let them go. And you have to be okay with, they might take a path that I know is not going to work.

31:48Let them go down that path, be unsuccessful, learn the lesson themselves. And then you get to see how do they handle failure, right? I mean, this is one of the things that if you don't provide slack to your team, if you're one of these helicopter founders, right? helicopter managers if you don't provide your team some slack to make some mistakes occasionally right as long as they're pushing in the right direction with your engines and all that kind of stuff then you don't know when the shit really hits the fan you have no idea how they're going to react and now when in your worst day you're getting your first experience with how someone has a negative situation which is the absolute opposite thing that you want right so sure um No, I love that.

32:29I'd like to transition a little bit to, I want to talk about faith and faith in your life. You wear a cross. I do too. It's funny. We're actually opposites. I have a black shirt. You got the black shirt, like silver cross. Yin and Yang today. But like, what role does God and your faith play in how you operate your life? And then I'm particularly interested and how you've utilized that aspect of who you are in your business life and what role that plays and how it manifests. Yeah, so, man, I think the simple question is what role does it not play? I operate all – I'll tell you this. So my vision, my mission, core values, all the things that I've talked about in the aggregation stage of building a business.

33:20And I look at those stages every 12 to 18 months, by the way. That's how you scale that, that same system. But I look at that as that's how I'm going to conduct myself. So it starts with embodying the example. Elements of faith are honesty, integrity, compassion, empathy, boldness. Right. So I sell that to say that my grandfather told me in 2016, before he passed away, just before I started speaking and writing books and then doing the things I do in the world now. And, you know, at the time I was like, because my first company was a role of a bunch of construction companies, basically. I was having a really hard time making the mental and emotional leap.

33:59Again, 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 said, here's the thing you need about leadership and business. Life, love, everything. You have to 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, hunts on a regular basis. And you've got the lamb, you know, in theory, that is empathetic and compassionate and caring. Because there will be times when you, yourself, or your team need a kick in the butt, which is the lion.

34:33There'll be other times they actually need a hug, which is the lamb. The tricky part is developing the wisdom to operate 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 hug because Peter was in his own way of all. Few times he challenged Peter. He gave him the lion. Get behind me, 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, kind of shocked, right?

35:10Right. You know, and to me, faith is what happens in the quiet moments. 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. And I've been hitting the gym for a long time. So the gym was my, you know, I'll be going to the gym, but I'd be thinking about my day. I'd be thinking about 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 sort of grounding or presence practice.

35:45Okay. I have a journaling practice that I use from time to time. That's because what I hear you say is I'll 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 out. I'll go touch the grass. I can put my feet on the grass nowadays, right? I'll go sit out in the first sunlight of the day. I wake up 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 ten entrepreneurs that I've worked with can't even say that to themselves in the mirror.

36:20Right? 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 with Peter or when he was with John or anything, 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.

36:59I'm not thinking about the other things. I got my phone off, turned over, don't have any dingings going on. we started this podcast first thing i did was hit do not disturb so we wouldn't be disturbed right these are types of ways of becoming more present so presentness is a piece of it being grounded is a piece of it being more emotionally calm in times of stress it's peter's on a boat storms raging everywhere jesus is asleep he's taking a nap and they're waking 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 peace be still want to make a difference in your community but not sure how Go to GoFundMe.com right now and start a GoFundMe.

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38:12It works and it matters. GoFundMe helps you make a real difference. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. G-O-F-U-N-D-M-E.com. This is a commercial message brought to you by GoFundMe. This podcast is supported by The RealReal. Meet Christine. She loves shopping. And this is the sound of fashion overload. Too many fabulous things, not enough space. So Christine started selling with The RealReal. I've always loved collecting designer pieces. Gucci bags, Prada heels, but my style keeps evolving. Selling with The RealReal, game changer. I earn more and they do everything.

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39:36The ability to be present and grounded in a storm 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 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 fruition the way you want it to come, will save you time, energy, and resource.

40:13Because again, you're going to 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 keep in mind, I'm saying this from a place of experience and empathy in that I have lost millions of dollars because of the 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 known in the marketplace now is what's called emotional dysregulation.

40:49it's being in the mind 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 a.m and go out for a run and pump a bunch of iron and and then you see i'm saying you don't it's it's it's actually better if you can start present between working hard and working to work yeah different 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 wake up and emotional dysregulation is nothing more than being in fight or flight.

41:29Right? You're either, you can build your businesses in fight or flight, you're going to scare a lot of people, you're going to scare yourself, you're going to make dumb decisions, or you can start now from someone who's lived it, who doesn't want you to have to go through all those extra suffering moments, because there's already going to be tension. Right? There's a whole other level if you're operating from emotional dysregulation, which again, is just nothing more than operating from fear of 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 every team member that comes in the door, we have to share the same faith or the same values.

42:04But we do have to share the same core values of honesty, integrity, diligence, compassion, collaboration, autonomy. We have to share those things. And it just so happens over a course of time, if you embody this behavior, you embody 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 because there's less chaos in the business. Like every position 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 a bit of an inspirational light to others who are trying to figure that part out.

42:45You know, because it never, I mean, I've had this situation happen before where I hadn't team her for seven or eight years. Rockstar. And he got unexpectedly divorced. Their spouse did something that, you know, created a catastrophic event in the relationship. And 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 to other team members to say, hey, we got you right now.

43:21We know you're not going to 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 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 their major line item on their billion-dollar budget is headhunting constantly.

44:01They 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 skill set he gave me with my hands. Okay, so my dad taught me how to use my hands and my heart, right? 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.

44:39And I think you made the point in there that I completely agree with and have been talking about for a long time, which is the values, the belief structures, the opinions of the founder of leadership, like these things have to be shared in public domains. And the reason is not to build an audience or a personal brand or whatever. It goes much deeper than that, in my opinion. It signals, as you said, to the individuals who align with or aspire to those values that this is a place that I can call home. And what it also does, and this is what I think a lot of the founders, business owners that I talk to that struggle with hiring, they struggle with hiring because one, they've never shared their value structure.

45:28And, or if they have, they've shared it in a very corporatized PR paid branding kind of way. So what they get is people coming to the business who don't actually align with their actual values. So it acts as a dual filtering system. You get people who align with or aspire to your values and the people who disagree with your values, they never show up. And it's what I thankfully and 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 what I believe, how I lead out front. So someone could go to my LinkedIn and be like, I want to work for this guy or I don't want to work for this guy.

46:13Exactly. Very obvious. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And 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 I have no problem telling people I have conservative values. 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 U.S. Constitution sitting on top of it. That's kind of my value structure. If you don't align with that, that's great, but that's mine. So how do you walk them? But I get a lot of crap for that.

46:54People will be like, oh, you know, well, you don't – why would you tell people you're a conservative? You're going to turn off everyone who'd buy from you who's a liberal. I'm like, that's fine. I'm like, that doesn't bother me. Now, one, I don't think that's actually true because I – but two, I think – like how do you become okay with that? Because a lot of people struggle with this. Well, I don't know. I'm known for being a little too transparent just in general. I just – I wear my heart on my sleeve. 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 discovered I don't like who I am when I'm not being who I am, right?

47:31Some close to being referred to it as ego man versus spirit man. Like I like being spirit man, spirit man's solid, grounded, rooted. Ego man is concerned about, you know, scarcity and fear and all these types of things. The first thing I would tell a 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 going to define a role. That role then defines responsibilities. That is responsibilities then define the key KPIs or key performance indicators, the metrics that are going to be held to. Okay. Now, the one thing that I think is really interesting is I personally am like you.

48:09I would rather hire well than not. And you hire well based on culture fit. So, yes, you're going to attract people that share similar core values, things of that nature. But let's say in this instance, let's say that there is a, at least in the political world, there's a disparity between one or the other. Okay. Okay, great. I use Jesus again. Jesus never forced himself on anybody. he also never shirked back from declaring this is what i believe the kingdom is heaven is like right calling the pharisees out right like like helping helping everyone to come in contact with those 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?

49:09You 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, well, I think, I think he uses 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, I had people working at my companies that didn't share my world values, but they shared my core values.

49:46Okay. 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 after some relationships built, some trust has been built. Hey, I'm curious. Help me understand, like, why do you, like, how did you get to your position? You know, what happened in your life that made you or that, you know, that inspired you? You can start seeing how certain patterns of belief systems are formed when you're not so resistant to everybody else's.

50:31And that's how you build bridges. I actually feel like part of my calling in this next season of life is to figure out a way to build bridges between different areas. I mean, if it's biblical, that's typically what I'm at kind of thing. So at the same time, I also realized that others have had different traumas and different circumstances and different influences. So much of what most of us believe was taught to us way early on. Very few of us go through the architecture or the deep dive or the rabbit holes. I chose to because I found my faith through a process of compression as well as discovery.

51:10Like I can articulate how I got to where I got to, right? Most people can't do that, right? So how can you have a collaborative conversation to open that up? But you're not going to have that happen unless you can build a bridge between core values, right? So honesty, respect. You start looking for those, and then you can still bring a team member in, even though it may not share your worldview. Steven, this has been wonderful. I have enjoyed this conversation. And, man, I mean, I take notes just for my own well-being. And for those of you watch, like my entire page is filled. I got lines and all kinds of stuff.

51:46This has been, this has been a masterclass, man. I appreciate the hell out of you. So I am positive that people are going to want to 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 see with alignment, they have a better behavior set, right? But the first piece of getting aligned is becoming truly self-aware. we created a tool an assessment we call the integrated alignment method 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 and how I now grow and scale companies and leaders based on integrated alignment like actually being fully so I would invite them to go to stevenscoggins.com backslash alignment they can take the 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 want to book a call after that, you can.

52:41But I don't say anything. This is strictly for you to become self-aware to start your journey. I'm on all the platforms, of course. But if you want to engage with me through DMs on Instagram, I'm probably my best there. This is Steven underscore Skoggins. So those are the two ways. And, dude, thank you for letting me share with your audience, man. I really appreciate it. I know it's a process selection. I'm highly selective with who I let on my show as well. And I'm just super grateful that you allowed me to share today. Thank you. Dude, it was wonderful. It was absolutely wonderful. I mean that in the truest sense.

53:11And, uh, and I, I just, I love the way you've actually, you know, so, you know, 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 more than 2000 interviews, which is a story for another day. talk about bad decisions made. I had a show dude. So, so, and then guys, you're listening to this. You probably heard it before, but so I actually started a podcast in 2012 and grew it in two years to 2014. I was the number ninth overall show in all of Apple. I have a screenshot of Ed Milet to ahead of me and Gary Vaynerchuk to behind all of Apple.

53:52Right. So this is like, and at the time I was doing 47 ,000 downloads a month. So you can tell how much podcasting has grown in that time, right? Back then, that was my overall show. And then I got, I took a job as a chief marketing officer, making more money than I'd ever made in my life 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. And then two months in, all of a sudden that story changed. And it was like, podcast has got to go or you got to go. and um you know for a whole bunch of reasons i mean i wasn't making any money out of the podcast at that time advertisers 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 i had just kept it going but uh that's a story for a different that's what means you gotta keep going now that's all yeah no 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 anyone on the show who spent so much time and emphasis on this idea and really broken it down the way you did.

54:54So guys, I hope you picked that up. I will have the links to everything Stephen 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. And I just appreciate a lot of you, man. I appreciate it. And again, I can't thank you enough for letting me share with myself, with you in the audience. It's an honor to be able to do this work now. And 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

55:28let's go yeah make it look make it look make it look easy 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 anything for me i never switched to no change in me the only thing 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. I know what I want. I just need help making it happen. With Wix, I finally have an AI tool that gets things done the way I want. I just have to describe the type of website I need, and it's ready. I can even ask it to manage my inventory, plan my next marking campaign, or help out my customers.

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