1577 – Making Radical Business Shifts as a CEO with The Shift Spot’s Ken Paskins

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0:59with us right now it's ken paskins ken you are the co-founder of the shift spot you're found on the web at the shift spot.com ken it's great to have you great to be here josh really excited about this i should also point out that we we're already we already work together we're friends So it's great to have you on the show. So Ken, give us an overview of your work, kind of what you do, who you work with and the outcomes that you help create. Yeah, yeah. So the Shift Spot is a CEO, coaching and peer community, right? And we focus on working with business owners or CEOs, a hundred employees or less, right?

1:37And generally 10 years or less of CEO experience. And we help them elevate and get to the next level is the best way to put it. So, and we focus on the core areas, such as leadership and management, people, sales and marketing, finance, systems and process. And actually something that's really cool and unique that we do, Josh, is we have a concept that we add in there as well around mind and body, because we believe to be the best CEO, best owner, you also got to pay attention to the number one asset, and that is you. And our focus is to help business owners start working on the business versus in the business and in the weeds every day.

2:13I would imagine, Ken, that you end up working with a lot of CEOs that find themselves at a new level of CEO than they've been before. And, you know, I even think about my own experience and, you know, I'm pretty competent, you know, running a company, 25, 50 employees or under. Like, I feel pretty competent at that level. Yeah. 50 to 100. I'm not at that level right now. I don't know that I will, but I might. But I got to tell you that that, you know, I feel like I'd be hitting the Peter principle there. Like I've just I don't have any experience with that. I question whether or not I'd be the right person for that.

3:00Right, right. Yeah, I mean, it happens. And some people can actually punch through that. And at every revenue level, employee level, there's new challenges across the organization. One of the things that I've seen, you know, the past decade, I've been operating as a fractional CEO, COO, which actually created the concept of the shift spot. So people would hire me to be basically the fixer, Josh. They would bring me in and say, hey, look, I started this thing myself. And now I have 25, 30 employees. I'm pulling my hair out. I'm working 80 hours a week. I hate this. Should I scale backwards? So one of the key things I think a lot of leaders in that spot find challenging is how to actually shift from doing it all themselves to actually figuring out how to leverage and and, you know, get work done through others.

3:53So it's a whole leadership and management concept, right? So we pay a lot of attention on that. And, you know, and you're not unique, but there's lots of people, like I said, I've literally had CEOs ask me if they should scale back is the very first place they go to. Wow. Wow. How might a, you know, and I think you kind of illustrated this, Like, you know, obviously they're working too many hours. What might be some of those earlier indicators that they are probably getting to the point where they're going to need a, what I'd refer to you, Ken, as a CEO's best friend. Yeah. So early indicators are this.

4:34I think that I'm fixing problems, but they continually arise, right? I call it whack-a-mole, right? So we're not getting to the root cause of what a problem is, right? We have an employee turnover issue, so we go out and get new benefits. We still have an employee turnover issue, so we focus on our onboarding process. We still have an employee turnover issue, so then we focus on giving them better compensation. We're not actually solving it. So we find ourselves actually spending a lot of time, money, and effort to fix things that don't get fixed. Another key indicator or leading indicator, if you will, is, boy, in that perfect example, is employee turnover, right?

5:16Another one is, hey, why does my team not really understand my vision? Why do I feel like I'm the only person that gets it? You know, why do I actually have to solve all the problems? Those are some of the things that come up. And you feel like you're the guy or you're the gal. And it starts from the beginning of operating our companies. And believe it or not, I've worked with$250 million companies that three generations, I've seen this, but I call it, the employees actually lose what I call, Josh, the thinking gene at times, right? So when we start a company, right, everything comes to us. And think about it, when you started what you have, everything came to you.

5:53You have pizza on Fridays, employees go, Josh, should we do pepperoni or cheese? And then you get five employees and it's the same thing, 10 employees, and suddenly you find yourself, I've taught my employees to stop thinking and solving problems, and I'm solving all the problems. And I can't find any time for myself. So those are some of the things that, you know, we see day in and day out that people actually want to get themselves out of that crazy hamster wheel. Let's talk a little bit more about one thing you brought up that you probably saw my reaction. When you're talking about this idea of, and I wonder if there are other leaders who experience this.

6:29I know there is, right? And I'm not saying this is necessarily the case for, I think we're pretty good on our side. but I'm empathic to this where a founder says, you know, I have great people, but they kind of just, they do the job and there's not a lot of like thought beyond that. Right. So the way that that might manifest is, you know, where like they checked all the boxes, but you know, the person that was the manager that was tasked with getting that done, you know, I think the executive might look at that and say, well, now that it's all laid out, I'm seeing some new problems here. Did you not see these problems?

7:10Like I, you know, it's like we count, like if we want to create more of this culture where it's okay to start questioning things and think about things. And, you know, one thing that sometimes maybe I have historically seen is like, yeah, I don't think the user, like, yeah, you did it, but it's, I don't want to say this, but it's, it's ugly. And like, there's no way that's going to perform. Right. And so, you know, at the end of the day, like people don't know what they don't know. And so I don't want to, you know, you know, kind of squeeze blood off and turn it back. I don't know what the expression is.

7:44Right. Like, you know, if someone just doesn't have that skill set to know that that's ugly design or, you know, it's right. But do you get what I'm saying? I do want to give people more ownership over and to think outside the box. But if someone's encountering this problem that I'm describing, how would you begin to break this down and start solving this? Well, a couple of things. So I know it's hard for people to hear, but let's not assume that all of our people are great. Right. So sometimes it's easy, specifically, and we're a smaller company and we feel good with each other and we, you know, we do some socially and everything.

8:25we suddenly put a little cloud over them or protective cage over them where we fail to sometimes see what some of their flaws are. And we've got to remember that our job is to get the most out of our people, to get the best results for our company, because with the success of the company means success of our customers means success to the rest of our employees as well. The other thing is, and I saw this a ton when I was a drop-in CEO, COO, is when you when I drop into a company, a lot of times as people are bringing things to the owner or the CEO and they're asking them, hey, how do I do this?

9:04Or I've got this problem. They're tossing it to them. And I think a lot of newer leaders, if you will, don't understand what to do with that. And they don't understand the damage with telling them the answer. Right. So we've got to actually teach them to actually not do that. Right. So the very first thing I do is Josh comes to me and says, hey, Ken, I've got a really irate customer. What do I do? Josh, it's a great question. What would you recommend and why would you recommend it? Right. And at first, they're kind of startled and they sit back in their chairs like, man, my boss has never asked me this before.

9:36I have to actually think. You got to retrain them, but you also have to you have to give a little bit of trust to that. Right. And you got to have some checks and balances for that process as well. But a lot of times, some of these dynamics, I find that they start with us, right? We train our people to behave a certain way, right? We train them to react a certain way. We train them to maybe not problem solve the way we want. And then we get frustrated. So as a CEO and owner, we have to work on ourselves, you know, to help our people elevate, right? Because that's that's what builds a great scalable company.

10:17Yeah. You know, my wife is a family therapist and I know one thing that, you know, just ethically what, you know, what therapists will learn is don't do therapy with your friends and family because that's, and I, first off, it's unethical. Number two is if you, you're, you're training family members, you're training friends. And again, you know, if you don't have an official, you know, kind of client therapist relationship, it's just like, it's better to, you know, in her case, like she really has to there. She's like, there's so much I could say. She tells me this afterwards, like I am so not going to get into it.

10:58So I just give them, you know, just a friendly little dot, dot, dot. And like, what are you thinking? Like, what do you know? But it's, you know, and I've heard this too, like, like, let's say you run into a situation where, um, you know, you're, you know, one of your managers, directors, like they're messaging you and it's like 11 o 'clock at night or something like that. How you respond and if you respond, you're training them and, you know, asking ourselves the question, is this something that I want to continue to do long-term? If not, you know, even though there might be a short-term hit, it's because, you know, this director, this leader hasn't stepped up and they're still relying on you.

11:39And they may not be equipped for the answer at this stage. But again, the only way to truly equip them is to just, you know, like, I like, you know, kind of a way that you said that earlier. It's like, that's a great question. Listen, let me ask you a question. If you could not get ahold of me and you had to solve this problem, like what would you have done? And then they'll tell you and you're probably like, it's probably fine. Yeah. In most cases, it's just like, yeah, that's a good idea. But you also got to set expectations, too. And I think that a lot of us are bad at that as well. I mean, look, I've ran teams up to 450 people, P &Ls up to a half a billion.

12:17And any team I have ever ran, I will go in, I'll create just a simple PowerPoint slide. And these are Ken's expectations, right? show up on time, do what you say you're going to do, deliver results. But I will lay it out specifically. And in that instance, maybe one of them is don't call me past seven. Yeah. Yeah. Don't call me past seven. Yeah. Ken, what does onboarding look like when someone starts working with you? Explain what engagement looks like? Yeah. So the first thing that happens is we have a thing called a gap analysis, right? And actually I want to offer it up to your audience and any CEO and owner out there, if they just go to the shift spot.com forward slash gap, it's about a$5 ,000 value that I've provided as a fractional leader for years.

13:12We're going to do that for your leaders, but your listeners, but that's a very first step. They go through it. It gives them crystal clarity in some of the gaps and challenges of their business. And it looks at everything from, do we have financial controls? Are we onboarding our employees correctly? To how do I measure KPIs? And you name it. So that's the very first step. The second step is we assign them an accountability coach, right? And that coach actually works with them on a weekly basis, just a short 15 minute call to keep them on track to get to the next level and to execute more effectively as a business owner, right?

13:47And then they just drop into our community. And our community for the year is made up of 144 events of different coaches and experts that drop in. We also have professionally facilitated environments where if you can imagine a group of CEOs sitting around and we'll use a Six Sigma process to get to the root cause of what their problem is and actually map out a solution together as a collaborative group and solve that. But so they, they drop in, as I had stated, and then they're in the community and go and grow is the best way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. Your, your website, the shift spot.com. Tell me more about, cause you, you've got some great resources here.

14:30You've got a great blog. I mean, you, you share really good social media content as well. Tell me more about like someone that wants to spend more time in your world, what you recommend they do? Yeah, just go check us out. And there is a free downloadable ebook there that kind of walks through all the basics that you want to take into consideration and scaling a business. But honestly, I mean, look, Josh, we're not we're like you. I love your blogs. I love the way you come across. Do you position yourself? I'm not a sales guy. I'm not a pyramid guy. You know, those those old long letters are dead.

15:02We're not like that. Just pick up the phone, send us an email, pick my brain. I always like chatting with people, ask a question. And if it's a fit, great. We'll figure out how to work together. Yes. Who cares? Have a great life and prosper. You know, Ken, I don't feel like I did your background in authority service at the beginning. Would you mind? I mean, you're pretty uniquely qualified to do what you do. Would you, would you mind tooting your own horn for a good minute or so? Yeah, sure. So I've got several decades in high tech software specifically. And as I said, I mean, I've managed P &Ls up to half a billion, very large teams, 450 plus across North American internationally.

15:43And then for the most recent experience is I have a consulting business as well. And it was a drop in fractional CEO, COO. And the best way to explain it for my kids is literally a fixer. And I would have CEOs call me up and say, look, you know, I'm 10 million. I can't get past 10 million. And, and, and Josh, I'm not kidding you. I do. Maybe you've never been there, but I do have a lot of people say, maybe I should just scale backwards because life was easier when I did not have as many employees. Right. So I would get involved. Absolutely. Like that, that whole stage is a business, right? Yeah.

16:23What is it like, you know, when you're at that solo level, maybe you got a little part-time assistant like it is it's it's generally as long as you have okay business to like some you know you've got a good source of new business to do it is actually a pretty great stage of business in my opinion and the world gets more complicated when you start involving a lot more people yeah yeah and you know and i've got mna experience as well pe vc i've actually worked for a Sequoia based company. And your listeners know them. They're who's who in VC out in the bay. So but yeah, the shift spot is my legacy.

17:05I wanted to help more, to be quite honest, and being a drop in fractional guy, you know, two to three clients at a time, this way, I can actually give back and help a great deal more along with others. And I'm a firm believer, there's not one advisor, one coach, one expert that knows it all. That's why we believe that You can make radical shifts in your life and your business by surrounding you with a really smart community, just like yourself and just like the shift spot offers. Yeah. Yeah. So, again, grab the e-book again. Go to to our friend that's listening right now. Go to the shift spot dot com.

17:39Grab grab the e-book. There's actually a lot of really great resources. Spend some time here. Can you put together a really fantastic community, two of peers as well? So, you know, again, if you're especially I'm thinking of the, you know, friend that's listening right now that might have that lonely at the top feeling right now. Do something about that. I mean, I would just say, you know, again, friend to friend that doesn't get better on its own. I have to very intentionally set time, make plans, really step out of my comfort zone, join communities. Because otherwise, left to my druthers, I'm just going to stay busy working on work stuff.

18:23Take that time to truly work on me. And Ken, when we work on ourselves, we become more valuable to our audiences, to our clients, to our teams. And that's sharpening the saw. Which, by the way, leads to more profitability, which guess what? means that you can invest, give back, and help your employees and their families out as well. Yeah. Ken Paskins, again, co-founder of The Shift Spot, your website, theshiftspot.com. Ken, thank you so much for a great conversation. Thank you, Josh. Really appreciate it.

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