Becoming the Owner of Business Not the Operator: From Executive Coach Cathy Cristen

0:00When I first started running my business, I had this image of what it would look like and I was super excited and then after like seven years, it looked nothing like that. I'm like, I hate my life and I'm so unhealthy and people around me think I'm just this obsessed workaholic. And even though in my head I was doing it for my family, for people I loved, all these things, the fact is my schedule didn't reflect my priorities. Kathy Kristen, all about how you can become the owner, not just the operator of the business. How do you handle building a business that works without you? True success lies in the ability to create life by design.

0:34How do you build a life you love and a business that makes it possible? Let's go to Kathy Creston. So, Kathy, your definition of success, how do you see it? For me, it is success for me has always been having the time freedom, time and money freedom, right? But having freedom, fulfillment and impact and just the ability to do so. So I think that true success lies in the ability to create life by design. That's how I look at it. Was it always that way or did you gradually come to that conclusion? I think that early on, I feel like that's what seemed like where I'd be the happiest, right? Even in my youth, watching people that had the ability from our church or people that I played sports with and seeing parents that could be at all the things.

1:21You know, when my parents were working multiple jobs to make sure that we were fed and just seeing that they had the freedom, like they could be where they wanted to be when they wanted to be. You know, they could support things they wanted to do and they weren't limited by money or time. And I think that I heard that so much being young, like we don't have time for this. We don't have the money for this. We don't, you know, and that was such a limiting factor that, you know, in and of itself became my definition of success was I just I will feel successful when I just I have the freedom to make choices and not tied to we don't have the money or we don't have the time, you know, but being able to really do what I want, when I want, with whom I want.

1:58I think that came pretty early for me. And I think that the what I want with whom I want shifted through the years, right? In the early years, it might have been real basic and simple where, you know, then as I've aged, that's been more of a being able to do impact, you know, around the world, being behind social causes and, you know, where I might not have been thinking about that when I was 15, right? But still the freedom to do what I want. Yeah. Where do you think success became your performance standard? Like, was it as a kid? Was it as a young adult? Where did success become your choice?

2:35Oh, my choice. I love, I love, I love this question. So, you know, honestly, my first thing that came to me is I feel it was beat into me when I was younger because I was the oldest of four kids. And I, I was, you know, I like to experiment with my younger siblings. And so I remember, you know, being in second grade and having the spanking of my life with my father saying like, you're the oldest, you need to, you're the lead. And it really started more with being a great example, you know, and I saw the struggles that a lot of our family had and just seeing my siblings and wanting them to be successful, wanting them to have, you know, the ability to live a full life and a life of joy and wanting to be an example to them.

3:20And at first that was in school, that was with sports, but it was, I always was achieving. I was the captain of this, captain of that, straight A, winning the awards. I was valedictorian in my senior class. And I think a lot of that, that was for me striving towards success and being the best and, you know, really opening doors and opportunities for myself, but really showing my siblings anything was possible at that time in my youth. Yeah, I love that. It's always interesting to visit where did success happen. Well, what do you think is your like formula for success? Like if you do these things, success will happen.

3:53or is there a strategy that made success happen in your mind? Yeah, you know, so for me, I really, I realized when I started my business 23 years ago, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't building a business. I was really building a job. And so that's really when I chose, I'm like, okay, like I need to be successful. Like I have to be a great leader. I have to trust my team. I have to be able to delegate. And I think that the first step was a conscious choice, right? Because I don't think that success just happens by accident. I think it requires commitment and vision towards something. And so I think that for me, it started with a byproduct of consistent habits, of intentional learning, of adaptability, right?

4:37And being able to get really clear first the vision, right? Getting clear goals, aligning those with personal values. and then the action of taking small deliberate steps daily, weekly, monthly that we're helping get towards that. And then the resilience, right? Like adapting to those challenges about losing focus. And that's really what I've taught for decades and put in my book, really where there's three segments. The first is like, what do you want and why? The second is how do we get it to nuts and bolts and where are the strategic aspects, which is what I get paid for big bucks now. And then how do you sustain it, right?

5:13Because life happens, and whether it's circle of influence, habits, different things that we're doing, we're really being able to persevere and adapt to whatever happens. And so I really believe success happens when preparation meets opportunity, but it's sustained through systems and leadership. Yeah. What's your thoughts on the relationship between success and failure? Do they coexist? How do you see that? I see failure as almost like the tuition we pay to success. I've spoken to so many people, people I've mentored, worked with, and they're like, failure is the opposite. I'm like, I don't believe failure is the opposite of success.

5:58It's part of our learning process. It's part of the journey. In some places, I've looked at it in seasons where I was like, it's a stepping stone to where you want to go. At times, I looked at it as it was this test to see if you really wanted what was on the other side, but it's all learning opportunities. But I think now just looking back, I feel like it's part of the toll that we pay as we're learning and getting to where we want to go because there are so many lessons. There's so much resilience. There's so much wisdom. There's so much opportunity that we can gain from those quote unquote failures.

6:31And I think that at one point I had a mentor tell me like, you just, there's no, he's like, you can call it failure. You can call it like, hey, this was a learning. This was a learning activity or learning season. And it's just, you know, I'm growing, I'm learning. And here I'm achieving and I'm doing this. And here I was just learning, right? Because every single thing that we go through and any quote unquote failure, if we choose it to has the opportunity to teach us so much. Definitely for sure. So Kathy, you touched on it when you talked about yourself and your business. what's the mindset difference between an operator and an owner in your mind?

7:14Well, I mean, an owner really should be able to have the freedom to not be in the business, right? An operator is in the business. An owner really works more on the business and through their people. And so there's a different hierarchy, proper delegation systems, and we can get into So whatever you want with that. But I think that there are so many. I remember being young in my 20s. I'm like, yeah, I'm building my business. And I didn't realize I was just building myself a full-time job that was 60 to 80 hours a week. And it wasn't until I had the ability to step back. And instead of taking pride in being the best at everything that I was good at, shifting that perspective to be the best teacher of those things, to be the best developer of people and taking pride in that, That completely shifted my business and that completely shifted my life because it created so much time for me to be able to travel and do the things that I wanted to do.

8:11As I had people who were aspiring to grow in my company and wanted the mentorship and then wanted to show me, you know, how they could take care of it without me there. And that was just such a shift night and day in my world from having very, very successful business where I was completely burnt out and hated my life and worked, I don't know, too many hours in the day to then being able to travel six to eight months out of the year and working in flow and working through people and developing more leaders. Because I think that's what the most successful business people do. They develop more leaders.

8:49I remember as a young man wearing it as a badge of honor, the old hustle and grind. I work six days a week and I sleep in the office. It was like a badge of honor that I was an owner and I worked all the time. I'm not sure when, but I know it happened one day where I just went, I think I'm the stupidest person in my business. You know, like, how do you start someone on that journey of realizing, hey, you're not to be the busiest one in the room. You're to be the least busy one in the room. How do you start someone thinking that way? I think it starts with really thinking about, like, when you've, right, because everyone has this, like, the pinnacle of, like, oh, when I'm successful or when I get here, right?

9:36Like, that end goal that they're chasing after. I think it starts with getting really clear on what that looks like. Like, what is that end? you know like what does life look like what do you have time for what are you doing who are you around and and getting really clear on that and so for me I always like to look out with clients a minimum of five but I usually look at a 10-year vision I'm like what does 10 years from now look like right and if that's too much for them then we'll look at five but business in its adult stage what does it look like what does it feel like what are you doing because I don't think anyone signs up like you know Brad when we started to go oh yeah let me start a business so I could work all the time, every day, forever.

10:13But that's what ends up happening a lot of times because you have all these like type A control freaks that want to do it all themselves and prove this person or prove that person and end up just working themselves into the ground. And so I think that being real clear on, okay, once my business is at its highest level or has succeeded, what does life look like? And being able to reverse engineer it because many times what we're looking for, we can achieve that a lot sooner you know and it's not about just burning ourselves to the ground as we chase after blank but it's about learning how to integrate a lot of the things that light us up that bring us joy the things that we want to be spending more time and starting to integrate more and more of those things in our life now um it really allows us to open up more space because it's it's really sad you know i've had i've unfortunately lost some people i love unexpectedly at a young age and just being able to see that.

11:09You know, I remember at one point it was like, okay, later, later, let me just hustle now, hustle now, hustle now. But like, you can't forget also, you are not promised tomorrow. And so what does that look like to be able to build, grind, do that, but also be living life now? You know, and that was a big reason why we started GoBundance. Like, how do we have it all? How do we have it all now, right? Like, what does it look like to have healthy relationships and to be able to have a thriving business and be doing great professionally, but also have a great time with your kids if you have children or, you know, be able to travel and go on epic adventures or have time to contribute, you know, whatever that might be.

11:42Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I teach all of my partners, all my franchise partners in Action Coach that, you know, we don't work weekends. We don't do those things. That's, you know, we build a business that serves us. When you start working with a business owner and setting that vision, how do you get them to actually make the shift that, because the ego wants to be needed with the business. The ego wants to be the boss. How do you get them to make that shift of you want to actually to be successful? It's got to run without you. How do you get them to do that? What's the steps? So I actually love looking at the, what would happen if you kept going like this and kept working harder and kept going, right?

12:30And looking at all the negative side of it, I like looking at that because I've noticed that human beings will do more to avoid pain than to work towards pleasure, right? And so sitting down and going, okay, let's say you keep this up. Like, what do your relationships look like in fire? How do your kids look at you? You know, how does your lover look at you? Do you have one? You know, are you alone? Like, are you okay with that? Right? Like, are you okay with that life? But kind of taking it to like a worst case scenario where it's like, oh, shit. It's like, hey, if you keep this track, here's what happens to most people.

13:01Like the health issues, the loneliness, you know, the depression, like all these things. And so, yeah, you've achieved, achieved, achieved, and then you're left alone. I'm like, is that, are you okay with that? Right? And they're like, oh, I'm like, okay, well then, you know, here are other possibilities, right? And here's what things could look like. And here's how people have set that up. But I think that there has to be this, they have to really see like, oh, wow, like if I don't make changes, like this is not going somewhere very good. You know, like life is not going to be what I thought.

13:31And I think that when I first started running my business, I had this image of what it would look like. And I was super excited. And then after like seven years, it looked nothing like that. And I'm like, I hate my life and I'm so unhealthy. And people around me like think I'm just this like obsessed workaholic. And even though in my head, I was doing it for my family, for people I loved, all these things. Like the fact is my schedule didn't reflect my priorities and people didn't want to be around me anymore, you know, and all I cared about, you know, was work. And, and at the end, when I looked at that and thought, wow, if I continue on this, what will that look like?

14:04That brought me to a place where it was like, all right, I've got to make some changes. Like this is not okay. Right. And, and even in my business, I had a, a really great friend and mentor who said, Hey, you've become the best in our, in our sector and the best in our company's history, you know, keep it up. You're going to burn yourself to the ground. And I remember like that hitting. And at first I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I've got this, you know? And, you know, he looked at me and said, like, start taking more ownership and excitement and being the best teacher, the best delegator, because you're going to lift others up and you're also going to create more time and space for yourself and the things that are important for your health, you know, for your fun, for whatever it is that's lighting you up because you just look miserable.

14:51So I don't know if you've experienced or gotten to that point. Oh yeah, I literally, there was a time when, if I go back, there was a time when I was doing 200 seminars a year, like 200 speaking events a year. So it was more than 200 nights in hotels, at least 200 flights, obviously. And luckily, I was very young and single, and obviously single, I mean, if you're doing that many flights. But I had to sit back and look and say, if I'm going to build this business, I need to build it to be a real business, and it has to work without me. If it doesn't work without me, it's not a real business. It's just a job, and I work for an idiot.

15:37So I came back to that. So let's talk about the actual steps then, Kathy. Let's start that process. If I realize, yeah, I actually want to build a business, I want to build something that I can sell one day, something that can operate without me, what are the steps that you see I have to take to get there? um well i think that there's overarching it's people processes and profitability right we've got to look at those things and so first we have to look at people uh and and who do we have on the team or even taking a step back and really looking at what is the dream organizational structure like what does this actually look like how many people report to me as the owner right if i'm the owner or am i the operator uh and am i speaking to the operator am i speaking to multiple people and making sure that you can set it up where it does not need you right because if the business depends on you, as you mentioned, you can't scale.

16:31Or you can't to a certain point. At a certain point, it stops, you know, if it's all dependent on you. And so we have to really look at, okay, what people are going to be needed, leadership development, you know, within that. I think that too many times people are promoted too quickly or they try to expand, but there's not the proper development of that leadership team. And so making sure that we're building, you know, a culture of ownership, of accountability, making sure that teams are empowered to take initiative and solve problems, making sure there's personal development for the people that are working around you, because as the leaders go, the company goes.

17:04And so if the leaders are really focused on being at their best, showing up at their best in their life, that goes into every aspect of their business. And so we do a lot of really making sure our leaders are growing and making sure we have the right people in the right places. The processes, I teach a ton on this. I have something called a faster system that we talk about in a lot of our education. And, you know, it's a faster way to scale. But the first thing, the F is the framework for decision making, right? And making sure that they have, everyone knows like for quick decisions, you know, like small impact matters, we're going to do this.

17:41Collaborative decisions we're going to have for team related issues. You know, we're going to make, have certain meetings for major high impact initiatives, whatever it might be. But just making sure that we have processes in place so it reduces mental fatigue, it streamlines actions. The A for that is the automation of routine tasks. I mean, if a task repeats, y 'all, and I'm sure you've heard this, but I'm going to say it again, automate it, okay? Anything that's repeating and really looking at what different tools are so much out there, but I still see, I meet with clients right now and they have multi-million dollar businesses and I'm looking at the amount of time they're spending on manual reoccurring tasks like scheduling or follow-up or, and I'm like, why, why are we still doing this?

18:27There are so many great tools that we can be utilizing to streamline this, make it quicker and let you focus your time in the big needle movers. Right. Uh, but too many, and it goes back to what you were saying earlier. I think it's like that. Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to do it like taking ownership into your baby. You're like, you just take pride and like doing all the things like we've got to let go of that. I think a lot of that is around ego. Right. And, and it's like, you want to scale, you want to be the best let go of you go you know and again take ownership of the best developer of others um the third is system size you know delegation and just making sure we have a delegation structure that power the team operates independently you know and and that we're using things like asana or trello or to assign priorities and go through this because all these things are going to be important we want to sell later we want to have a machine that's running you know that has, we can acquire new customers, we have processes and how we nurture them and how we're forcing sale, whatever it might be, depending on what the business is.

19:27But we've got to have a flow. You know, I met with a client last year and looking at her business, and they were doing very well. And she's like, you know, I really want to scale. We're not going to scale. But we looked like, oh my gosh, there were, I would have said at least a million dollars, at least a year in lost business just because of the lack of organization. and they didn't have a CRM. And I was like, what? I said, where do you keep all these leads, all these people that are actually like, oh, you know, we'll respond, we'll hold those emails. And then, you know, honestly, we just always have people coming in, so I don't really worry much about it.

20:00Leads weren't being nurtured, nothing. I'm like, you're making this harder for yourself. Like, yes, you're doing great, but why not have an extra million dollars in business just because you were organized? Just because we had an email that was automated. You weren't even doing anything that was following up and and nurturing that and putting more people in the funnel and holding more sales for you like why not you know have that oh wow okay are there crms for my line of work i was like there's crms for everything you can do in general or you can do specific and this was a woman in her 50s and i know like so much has changed but a lot of a lot of business owners i feel like haven't completely taken ownership of the possibilities with technology and what's available now.

20:43Right. And so there's just, but it blew my mind. I'm like, how is this, how is this business that's currently doing, you know,$3 million a year, like with no CRM? No, I'm like, oh my goodness. And again, for her to be able to sell, like you couldn't sell like that. Right. And so there's no organization. It's kind of a mess. So just really streamline. So the systems and automation, like that's FAS, where do we go next? Right. If you can't systematize it, you can't scale it, you know? And then I think about, you know, from there for me, it's making sure like, do we have, do you have someone that's actually looked at the numbers?

21:20Do we know the financial aspect and like the cost of acquiring a new lead? Do we know what it's going to take here? And just having a very clear picture of what the monies look like, right? Like if you're going to scale to a point knowing exactly at this point, we're worth this much at here's, you know, where we can open it up to have investors come in, or we just want to sell privately, whatever that might be. But we've got to know the numbers. They've got to be able to see that clearly. And that's another issue that I've seen in a lot of companies is they don't have great accounting, or they don't have proper projections, or they haven't worked with someone who really understands the money piece and what it's going to take.

22:00People go out and run businesses. They just spend the money and they're not thinking about it and knowing exactly where the numbers are going to, where they can come back, where they're overspending. And so I think having a great partner in that is super important for the scaling aspect. Got it. Got it. So when you think, okay, people, processes, finances, does it take a lot of learning for an owner to, well, let's shift. How much learning does it take in your mind to go from an operator to an owner? I don't think it takes that much. I think it starts with awareness and then it's intentionality.

22:43Yes, they're going to need some coaching. And I think that finding a great mentor, a coach, even a mastermind community can help with a lot of that. I mean, their systems as simple right now as like EOS, right? They put it all together for you. So I think that letting pride go, right? Letting the ego go and going, okay, I need to learn something because I'm working way too much. And so being able to dig in, I truly believe that just in a couple of weeks, someone can completely transform their business. So it's not like going back to school and getting another degree or anything. It's just being aware of where their business is at, making intentional choices that are going to align with how they want life to look like, and then making sure they get coaching and training on the processes, systems that they're going to need in order to take that next jump.

23:26Well, hey there, and thanks for listening. I've noticed that 78 % of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet. By subscribing, you help us bring on even better guests, better quality content, and serve you better with even more podcasts. So please hit that subscribe button. It only takes a second. It makes a huge difference. If you support us, we're going to support your success and help you achieve big success together. So let's talk about the end result of all this, building something that you can sell, right? It'll work without you or sell. I know when I've coached people to sell their business, it's almost like they're giving up their baby.

24:05How do you get someone to a point where they're actually willing to sell the business, where they're willing to let it go? Yeah, you know, I think that there's different people, too. Some people are very connected to building a family business that will be passed down generation to generation. And I think that's beautiful. But then there's also the opportunity and there's people that love to build, scale, sell, go on to the next one, build, you know, like and keep building those. And so I think that it depends on the person, first of all, you know, but for somebody that is excited about the opportunity to keep building, like we have to know what their motives are and what their lifestyle, like what do they want life to actually look like?

24:46Because that's going to differ in terms of, you know, what we're doing. and if somebody is excited about continuing to build or wealth building, I think it's really showing the possibilities and the numbers of what happens when you take the revenue and what's happened when someone sold and showing case studies and examples and how they can reinvest that and what that can build to and what that could look like. And so being given an example of people who've done it before, other companies, I think that creates excitement to actually want to take action. It's like, oh, wow, I didn't even know that was possible.

25:20And that's something I hear a lot from people that they're like, my business could be worth that. Well, if I did this, this one. Right. And so I think that showing those examples and finding those who are excited about those possibilities is huge. You know, and I think that it's important to know that there's a percentage that's like, I don't I don't want to sell. You know, and I find that I actually find that more in women. And I think that it's like the nurture in them that they're like, this is my baby. You know, and I think that all business owners feel that way. But I think that they have a different vision of like, I want to build this so my great, great grandkids could have this.

25:55You know, that's a different feel. But then they still need the coaching on how do we set it up so that it runs on its own? How do we set it up so that it continues to scale and build and be worth something and actually be here 20, 30 years from now? Because most businesses fail in a couple of years, right? So what does that look like? And being able to get coaching and support on that aspect. Yeah, I also didn't want my kids to drive. And the moment they got their license, it was like, oh, thank God they can drive themselves to school. And then it's like, I don't want my kids to leave the house.

26:26And then when they left the house, oh, thank God I could actually go out tonight where they don't have to, you know, those sorts of things. Having five kids, it's like, it's a real thing for me. But I know for me as the chairman of my companies, not the CEO. Talk about that role then. And if you do keep it and you're the owner, not the operator, how do you work with your CEOs in your mind? What's what's your thoughts on how you should work with the CEO once you are the owner? Yeah, I think you're the visionary. You know, you're the mentor. Different businesses will meet at a different cadence personally, you know, with my operator.