The Exponential CEO: Leading at Scale Through Multiplication, Not Effort

0:00A great exponential CEO, if things go bad, yep it's on me, I should have had it, I should have done it. Things go great. Yep, look at how amazing my team is. If you've got a problem in business, go to MyAI and ask it the questions. It'll coach you through how to fix those sorts of things. As that exponential CEO, you're going to set a vision and a culture that will inspire and enroll people. The exponential CEO leading at scale. Here we're going to take a look at exactly what it means to be an exponential CEO and how to scale yourself as fast as you scale your company. The$100 million CEO, or as I like to think of it, the exponential CEO.

0:38How do you become a CEO that grows the business exponentially? Well, we got to look at your growth too. See, leading at scale is different to leading a normal business, okay? If you're scaling and you're growing fast, then you've got to change. So what is an exponential CEO? I think the difference between a good operator and an exponential leader is, is if you go back and think about it, they multiply the results, not add to the results. They multiply the effectiveness of their people, not add to the effectiveness of their people. Exponential CEOs also scaled themselves as fast as they scaled their business.

1:14You're growing, and that's why I love that you keep coming back every week. That's why you subscribing here means that you every week are gonna get an injection of exponential growth, okay? That common factor that we all have here on this podcast is that we want to grow at scale, okay? We want to build something amazing out there in the world. So core shifts you've got to make to be an exponential CEO. You've got to move from control to trust, okay? If you have trouble letting go, you've got to let others lead. In fact, you've got to build them so that they lead. And you'll find it easy to let go if you've built them.

1:49If you've built systems and you've trained them and you've given them measures, it's pretty easy to hand stuff over to someone that you've built a great strategy for them to do it for. You got to move from a doing mentality to a multiplication mentality. If you get out of low value actions, meaning, and I do this with my assistant at the end of every year, we look back at the past year and we say, okay, how do we get rid of 80 % of the tasks from my calendar? 80 % of the things that I did last year should not make it onto my calendar for this next year. What do we got to stop me doing so that I can focus on the 20 % of things that have the biggest impact in the organization.

2:28And you have to do that too. Start cutting things out that don't have the biggest. Systematize it, train other people, delegate it to them, put a measure in place so that you know they get the job done type thing. We've got to move from short to longer term, okay? Now, it's hard to go straight from week to week to three to five year plans. We've got to build it. I've always said the most important plan is the daily plan. The most important goals are the daily goals. If you hit your daily plan and daily goals, you'll make your weekly, monthly, quarterlies, okay? But once you're good at daily, then you got to get good at weekly.

3:02Once you're good at weekly, you got to get good at quarterly. I skip over monthly because I think that quarterly sprints is about the speed or the cadence with which our organization should run if we're scaling. It gives you time to get stuff done, but also time to make sure we're reviewing before the world changes too fast, those quarterly sprints. but you've got to build more into capital value. You've got to build more into growth long-term. You've got to build into where are we going to expand, all of those things. So it's not just that tactical day-to-day running in the business. It's strategic and starting to think that longer term.

3:37Building more of a legacy than just a business, having meaning behind what you're doing. Phenomenal, leading, building the humans. Ego's got to move into impact. I think that's a really big part of the shift of becoming an exponential CEO. You gotta look at the impact you're having on the people around you. It can't be about, you know, too many CEOs, when the world goes well, they take credit. No, a great exponential CEO, if things go bad, yep, it's on me, it was up to me. I should have had it, I should have done it. Things go great, yep, look at how amazing my team is. I love the work they did, thank you team.

4:11You guys did a phenomenal job. That's a big difference between a normal leader and an exponential CEO. So if we start thinking of the disciplines of an exponential CEO, when I wrote pulling profits out of a hat, we went through the five core disciplines of exponential growth of a business. So an exponential CEO will focus on strategy. We do a lot of that here on this podcast, okay, looking at strategy and bringing it down to the four areas of strategy. Number two, you're going to be looking at business development. Being focused on your marketing, your sales, your customer experience, those two disciplines, massive power.

4:47Number three, the discipline of people. You as the CEO are going to be really core focused. Part of your time is building your people, working with your people. Definitely a part of it. Number four is the discipline of execution. Your systems, your planning, your finances, your management, all of those things are part of execution. You being strong enough to measure and manage those disciplines is real powerful. And finally, the fifth one, the discipline of mission. An exponential CEO builds more than just a company. They build a future. They build a legacy. Your business must have customers who love doing business with you, and it also must have team members that love what they do.

5:26Whenever you get to meet one of my action coaches, you will know they love what they do. They don't just enjoy it. They love helping people grow and succeed. It is their passion. They would probably do it even if they weren't paid, but this is a big part of what you do, those five disciplines. Now, as that exponential CEO, you're going to set a vision and a culture that others, it will inspire and enroll people. That vision has to have inspiration. It has to enroll people. People have to go, I want to be a part of that. It's really powerful when you can do that sort of thing. You've got to build teams that can run without you, which means you've got to build leaders who build teams.

6:06Not you building a team. You're building leaders who build teams in that scenario. you've also got to do the hard work the accountability the cadence of meetings and planning and reviews to hold your team accountable to doing the job they need to have done the meetings, the metrics, the planning cycles the key performance indicators the leading indicators, the lagging indicators the objectives and key results you got to do that hard work as well as an exponential CEO yes, you got to invest time with your customers yes, you got to invest time with your people But the numbers, you got to invest a bunch of time in the numbers, know the numbers inside and out, measure, manage, all of those different things.

6:47Also, I think as an exponential CEO, you got to have the personal discipline, the personal discipline to keep yourself healthy, to keep yourself focused, to eat well, to say no to time wasters, to say no to the things that won't work for you in your business. You've got to be focused on saying, look, I got to keep learning. I got to keep growing. I got to stay healthy. I got to have a good relationship with my family. I got to make sure I'm home and do these things so that I am a whole human and I can lead you better because I am taking care of me. And also, you've got to make sure that you are focused on that vision of the company.

7:24Those are the factors that you as an amazing exponential CEO got to keep in mind. Now, if I look at, for me, over the years, having to reinvent myself, yes, business has changed. I've been in business with Action Coach alone for 32 years, right? So you think about 30 years in business. How many ways has the business world changed? I've had to change my management style. Managing baby boomers now to managing Gen X, even Gen Alpha now, we're starting to, you know, when we start looking at how you manage different people, lead different people, all those sorts of things. Technology, how many times have I had to relearn?

8:01And this is an important aspect of it. Like simple things like AI. I always say to my team, you need to allocate a half hour a day to playing with AI, asking it questions, getting it to be your thought thinker for you, getting it to brainstorm for you. Like if you've got a problem in business, you can go to AI, go to my AI and ask it the questions. It'll coach you through how to fix those sorts of things. It's phenomenal what you can be doing today. But if you don't allocate learning time, I want to say this very clearly. You will not rise to your goals and dreams. You will fall to your schedule.

8:34I want to be really clear with that. Now, I know that people say you fall to your systems. I believe the most important system is your schedule. Do you have a default diary, a default calendar? Meaning, this is what I do in these hours every week. These are the number of hours I have allocated to this. If it doesn't fit, like for me, I have a certain number of hours allocated to creating content each week. And if it doesn't fit, it doesn't get done that week. Why? Because that's the only amount of time I have allocated to doing that task, to new phone calls with salespeople, to all the things.

9:07You've got to build your perfect plan, your default calendar, default diary into your system. One of the biggest shifts I had to learn, and I guess this was, I don't know whether it was because of age or because of just the changing way of the world, but for me as a young man, I thought I had to be the hardest worker in my company, and I still am probably one of the harder workers, but what I had to learn is how to build a business that worked so I didn't have to. What I had to learn was how to become a CEO and an exponential CEO. Then finally, and this is the shift that I had to learn, how to let go to a point where I was not even, how do I put this politely to myself?

9:50I had to learn to become the chairman of my company. I had to fire myself as CEO and allow another CEO to step in, take over and run the business for me. Yeah, I had to do that. Why? Well, let me think of it this way. Let's imagine you were Roger Federer, right? One of the greatest tennis players of all time, if not the greatest tennis player of all time. Roger Federer, the business is getting bigger. He's doing bigger. Federer Inc. is getting much larger. It's got clothing brands. It's got this, this, this, this, and this. What if Roger said, you know what? I need to stop playing the tennis. I need to hire someone to play the tennis and I need to go run the company.

10:29Just because I'm the owner doesn't mean I'm going to be the best CEO of the organization. That to me is a part of understanding being an exponential CEO is also understanding when it's time for you to allow someone else to run the business for you. Now, for me, I sat back and said, you know what? I'm the best value I add is when I'm teaching, whether I'm on stage at a massive corporate event where I'm brought in to speak, whether I'm on a stage where I'm it's my own event with my own customers type thing, or whether I'm here with you each week doing a podcast. to me, me teaching is of better value than me being CEO.

11:08So I reallocate my time, allow someone else to run the business. When I go and step out and I start running the teams and building and teaching and coaching and doing the things that technically the things that I love, I love doing this way more than I love sitting in board meetings and going through the finances and doing all that stuff. I'd rather pay someone who's a genius at that to be the CEO and I'll go and do the stuff I'm a genius at. Sometimes you have to recognize that the genius in you is what got the company successful. So maybe employ someone to be CEO while you go do the genius thing that got your company successful.

11:44Either way, the goal of this podcast and you keep coming back, keep hitting that subscribe button, making sure you're with me every single week. Why? Because I'm going to help you become a$100 million entrepreneur. Thanks for joining me on the$100 million podcast. If you've got value from today's episode, make sure you've subscribed and share this with all of your friends. Never miss a strategy that could change your business and your life. And remember, the fastest way to scale is to learn from those who've done it. That's what this show is all about. See you on the next episode.