2276 - Level Up Your Leadership Game with Rhythm Systems' Patrick Thean

0:04Well, hey, Thoughtful Leader. Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. On this show, I interview purpose-driven founders, experts, and change makers who are making a real impact in the world. Want to be a guest? Simple. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click podcast. I'd love to promote your story to our audience of over 100 ,000 and across over 2 ,300 daily episodes and counting. Want to get booked on other great shows like this? Simple. Go to podverified.com and get your free guest authority score. Thousands of hosts are looking for high quality guests and Podverified connects you the right way. Now let's dive into today's episode.

0:58With us right now, Patrick Tien. Patrick, you are the co-founder of Rhythm Systems, and you're also a best-selling author. Your book has some pretty good buzz. It's The Journey to CEO Success, Seven Practices for High Growth Leadership. Eager to talk about that. Patrick, it's great to have you. Thank you, Josh, for having me. It's so exciting to be here with you. Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, before we talk about your work in the world, on a personal basis, what have you been, I don't know if there's any hobbies or things that you enjoy right now? Things that you have been enjoying? I'll tell you two quick things.

1:33One is I love photography, so I'm into that. But secondly, to get to know my daughters, I've got two beautiful daughters. One, Joy is 26 years old and Nicole is 23. And what I've always tried to do is to do stuff that they like. So Joy loves anime. So basically, I've started watching anime shows just so I can relate better to her and kind of do what she likes to do. And it also ups my curiosity. and helped me learn more stuff that I typically wouldn't do. So let me ask you, I want to ask you about that. So obviously I see anime shows all over the place and all the streaming services. And of course there's Crunchyrolls, nothing but anime.

2:14But for someone that hasn't, I think I've watched a couple of things, but it's been a long time. For someone today in 2025, who wants to watch something that maybe it's a little bit accessible, like it's you know might get them kind of hooked on the genre are there any are there any shows or movies films that you've watched that you would say great for newbies yeah i would if you like action i would go to crunchy roll what you just said and i would watch solo leveling solo leveling is exciting lots of action it's fun solo leveling yes what's it about it's about it's a world where these these these hunters are killing these demons in different places and monsters in different places and and you're born with a skill level but this is one special guy that his skill keeps leveling up and that is not possible but for this one guy somehow it's possible so it's his journey starting from like a useless the worst hunter in the world to leveling up to becoming really really strong so it's a beautiful journey oh my gosh yeah well i bet there's i i'm it's and one thing I know about a great anime is that there's usually some really great messages, like, and probably some messages that are applicable to business and, and to, to CEOs.

3:34Wow. All, all, all good shows, whether anime, TV movies, they, they all, they all have some good messages. That's great. That's great. Well, thank you so much. So Patrick, um, let's, I, you know, I'd like, I want to talk about the book for sure. Can, can we start off maybe just kind of introduce what Rhythm Systems is? Sure. So what Rhythm Systems is, is we're a software company, a SaaS software company that lets you take your strategic plans, create execution plans there, document them, and then help you become very focused, align your teams, cascade those goals, and have everyone be accountable to achieving them and achieving your plan.

4:10And by the way, I did that because a long time ago, I sold my first company. And I realized that from the outside looking in, we looked very successful, but from the inside looking out, we were running stressfully from one crisis to another crisis. And then somehow we succeeded. I don't quite know how, but we just kind of succeeded. And the world celebrated our success with a nice exit. And I would say that my journey taught me, or rather as I reflected, I realized that most of my problems came from poor execution, not poor strategy. And so I've been on this journey for the last 20 plus years to help CEOs avoid problems, avoid getting blindsided and execute well so that they can succeed and achieve their dreams.

4:55So Rhythm Software really is a selfish piece of software I wrote for myself because I couldn't help enough CEOs. And my book of business filled up so quickly in the first year. I said, all right, I got to go. And I'm a software engineer. So I said, OK, let me go build something that allows me to capture all this stuff and help a whole lot more guys and gals than I can by myself. Yeah. All right. So is Rhythm Systems, is this for kind of operating all of the company? Is it more project-based? Is it kind of for certain departments? I'm just trying to - It's really the CEO's software. So, you know, the CFO has the financial systems.

5:38The chief marketing officer has, you know, has, you know, their marketing software. The CEO doesn't really have a system. So this is really for the CEO and their teams to document the strategy, document the most important winning moves for growth and priorities, and then make sure that these enterprise-wide projects or priorities or goals get implemented and executed well. And if you do it correctly, you should improve your profitability. You should improve your revenue generation. You should improve your employee happiness and ultimately your client satisfaction. So it's really the CEO's execution system.

6:19Yeah. Well, and that's interesting. How would you answer this question? Because I was actually pondering this a little bit a couple of weeks ago. And that question is, what does the CEO do? Like, let's imagine that you're talking to a group of eighth graders or high schoolers and some, you know, bright high schooler raises their hand. They ask you that question. How would you answer that to the room of high schoolers? I would say that so much depends on the size of the company, right? If you're a startup, the CEO has to kind of get shit done and get stuff going. And you can't say shit in a high school.

6:56So we'll bleep that. That's right. We'll bleep that. I'm messing with you. So I would say that for the mid-market firms that we work with, we tend to work with companies that are 15 million to about 300 million. That's our sweet spot. I would say that this CEO needs to have a good leadership skills, has to really chart the costs and help people get there. So that's really that person's job is to chart the costs, choose your strategies, and help people get there. Yeah. Well, Patrick, I'm excited to learn about your book. I'm going to buy your book, The Journey to CEO Success, Seven Practices for High Growth Leadership.

7:38Can we talk about the book for at least a good five, six, seven minutes here? Just give us your mini TED talk. Yeah. So the book is actually, I think, my third book. So I wrote the book Rhythm First. And Rhythm is the whole operating system to run your business that's connected to the software. I've had the good fortune of coaching a lot of CEOs and one in particular, Michael Prager, who's the CEO of Avid Exchange in Sheldon, North Carolina. It's a public software company that I helped him start 24 years ago. So I've been coaching Michael for 25 years now. And so he and I got together and we said, hey, why don't we capture the best insights that we have or what made you succeed from zero, literally, to a public company.

8:24And that's what birthed this book. Michael wanted to help me kind of capture those insights and share that with other CEOs. So it's really a coaching journey that Michael and I have had over all seasons of his life for the last 25 years. Okay, so seven key practices. What I've realized is that I believe that for a successful CEO, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to work on yourself. You know, if you don't work on yourself, I don't think you have the right to work on others. I mean, you don't want to say, hey, don't do what I don't do. Don't do what I do. Just do what I say. That kind of leadership doesn't work.

8:59So you got to work on yourself. So the first two practices are to be curious and to level up, to continue growing. Because if your business is growing, but you're not growing, it's going to outgrow you. Oh, that's a problem that outgrows you. Then the next two practices. Patrick, can I ask you a little bit more about what does growing mean for a CEO? because I wonder that because I can, can I, let me ask this. So, so I wonder like how much of that, like, obviously I'm always reading great books. I'm always talking with smart other, you know, other smart people, but sometimes I'm wondering, am I learning and studying the right stuff?

9:32I think you have to level up. So, so reading and learning from books is one thing, but the question is going to be, are you then taking those knowledge points and insights and leveling yourself up in skill so that you can meet the need and meet the challenge at the right place. Yeah. Just like solo leveling. Just like solo leveling. See? Exactly. Yeah. So those are the first two practices. And then the next two are about being faithful with what you've been given. For me, that means we ask you to establish an early warning system so that you can kind of peek around the corner and avoid getting slammed by that freight train because all businesses that run have bad things that happen.

10:13And what you want to do is avoid them if possible. Otherwise, they become expensive crises. So you want to establish an early warning system. And then as your company gets bigger, you've got a lot of people working for you. You want to have full alignment. You don't want to have the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Otherwise, you have poor return on payroll. So that's the four. And then after that, you want to make sure that the people around you are successful. So your environment, your culture, and then building the right people ecosystem around you. And then finally, the seventh practice is about building strategies to serve the right core customer.

10:50So I think companies get mistaken. They forget who their core customer is. As the business grows, they start just making money. And sometimes we forget, like, who is the person we actually serve. It's not a market segment. It's not a 35-year-old woman who has children. No, that's a market segment. It's someone, it's a human being, it's a person, and you've got to really understand that core customer and build strategies for that core customer. So those are the seven practices that I think we have to keep doing in order to be successful as leaders and CEOs. All right. I should point out that your book is on Amazon, And I am so sorry, Patrick.

11:31You've got multiple books. And so the journey to CEO success, obviously, is the newest one. The other ones, rhythm and then predictable results. And then I think you have another, I don't know if it's a full book or an e-book, but execute without drama. Do you mind just like, here's a little fun thing we'll do. You got four things. And you could say, this book is for this person. This book is for this. Do you mind doing that? Give a quick prescription. I would tell you that the way you should read the book is probably the journey to CEO success is the prequel to rhythm. It is my philosophy of success.

12:09Rhythm is very. So the journey to CEO success is the why and the what. Rhythm is the how. Like, how do you take these principles and implement that? So, you know, when I wrote rhythm, I was very much of a like, how do you get things done kind of a guy? And so I did all that. And then when I wrote this book, one of my friends looked at it, the CEO journey success one and said, Patrick, you're amazing. You wrote a prequel. And I thought, really, I did. I didn't do it intentionally, frankly. But he said, yeah, because it captures your philosophy and all the things that you teach there. Implementation process is actually in rhythm.

12:42And then the third thing I would say is that Predictable Results is really a collection of true real-world case studies of companies that have employed the rhythm philosophy and the rhythm methodology and software and have great success. So those are the three books. They're all targeted for the same person. Execute Without Drama was my very, very first book written about 20-some years ago. Wow. I started doing some of this and it was really a very small booklet that captured my first 2 a.m. moment when I kind of woke up, cold sweat, freight train bearing down on me. What the heck did I do? And I built an early warning system for myself.

13:22So that one's a very tight book on building an early warning system. Yeah. All right. By the way, I'm going to point out the journey to CEO success. It's on Amazon. It's everywhere. you can get it by going to rhythmsystems.com. And then I found it by just hovering over your name, Patrick Tien, and then just click on books and find it there. You are also a podcaster. It's called the Journey to CEO Success Podcast. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that? But to our friend that's listening, you're listening to a podcast. Go find that search icon, little magnifying glass icon. type this in, the Journey to CEO Success Podcast.

14:03Your show is going to come up. Congratulations. How many episodes have you? I'm looking. I think it's a newer show. Yeah, we started back in October, and today we have 19 episodes. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. And I would say what I've realized is that the CEO journey is really hard. And what I really want to do is to help CEOs and leaders have a joyful journey and successful journey. it's not good enough in my opinion to be successful or i would say i don't think you can be really successful in life if you built a great company but then your life was empty so i think you want to have your cake and eat it you know i never understood the have my cake and can't eat it like why the heck would i want to have a cake and not eat it so to me you want to have a successful company and you want to have a joyful life all at the same time and so that's what this podcast is about.

14:56This podcast is about interviewing CEOs. It really was instigated or inspired by the book. So we'll go through various concepts in the book, but it's very much interviewing CEOs who are on a journey of joyful success. And hopefully we can all learn from that. I love it. I love it. All right. The website, rhythmsystems.com, the podcast, the Journey to CEO Success podcast, and the book, The Journey to CEO Success. It's in hardcover. It's in Kindle. And thank you so much for those of us who love some audiobooks. You've got an audiobook format too. Did you voice it or did you have someone else do it?

15:34I did not. I really wanted to. And my publisher said, Patrick, I really wouldn't advise you to do that. He said, you're not a professional voicer and it'll take you forever. And he said, Patrick, I love it when people tell me the truth. And he said, Patrick, you do have a little bit of an accent. I'm from Singapore. And he said, you do have a little bit of an accent. When you get excited, you speak a bit faster. He said, when you do your own book, some people may have difficulty understanding you. And you're probably going to be excited throughout the entire book as you're reading. You're like, yes, this is it.

16:09This is what I believe. It'd be hard to tap down the enthusiasm. Josh, what do you think? Do you think I should revoice it with my own voice? and do it. No, just incorporate it into the podcast. Just reread excerpts into your own podcast and talk about that. Yeah, you'll get that out of your system. Thank you. No, and I have friends that do voiceover work. I've been in broadcast journalism forever. I don't have the skills to do it. I'd have to, I would have to go to school to learn how to do that because it's very much like it's acting. I don't know why I'm talking about this, but Patrick, I want to talk about to our friend that needs to connect with Rhythm Systems, particularly for the services you provide or the platform you provide, what are their next steps?

16:57Well, come to rhythmsystems.com. There's a tab up there, Patrick Tannis by name, and everything, that's the best way to get to know me is right there. We have a variety of free tools on our website as well to help you. But I would say right now, the podcast is really cool. I guess I really think if you come to the podcast, It will, it will, you will learn a lot from the podcast and, and I would love for everyone to have a joyful and successful journey. So I would go to the podcast right there on the rhythm systems page. There's my name right down the tab. Click on that and you'll see. And the podcast, by the way, is on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio.

17:35It's on YouTube. We tried to hit as many channels as we could. Good, good, good, good. All right, Patrick Tien, again, co-founder of Rhythm Systems, author of the book, The Journey to CEO Success and others. And again, the host of the Journey to CEO Success podcast. Patrick, thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you, Josh.

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