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Tag: founder coaching

  • Founder Leadership Identity: Why You Can’t Scale What You Started

    Most founders hit a wall around $1M and never break through. Here’s why – and how to fix it. Hint: it’s all about their founder leadership identity.

    In this deep dive, I share my personal transformation from a burned-out, overweight founder stuck at $300K to building a 7-figure business while working 30% less.

    Founder leadership identity points

    What you’ll learn:

    • Why the same grit that got you here keeps you stuck
    • The 3 critical stages of founder evolution (0-1M, 1-10M, 10M+)
    • The 5 domains you must align before you can accelerate
    • Why belief comes before ability in leadership growth
    • How to shed your operator identity and become a true CEO

    Key takeaways:

    • Vision: Do you know where you’re going or just hoping next month isn’t worse?
    • Health: Your body is the first business you lead
    • Leadership: Are you a CEO or an overpaid firefighter?
    • Systems: Is your business a machine or are you chasing trends?
    • Standards: Is your team a community or a headache?

    Key problems addressed:

    • 8:44 How do you transform from a struggling founder to a successful one?
    • 18:21 What’s the secret to true success in business?
    • 19:21 What are the 5 domains every founder must align before accelerating?
    • 22:42 How do you align who you are with how you grow?
    • 28:00 Why is the person who started your business not the person who can scale it?
    • 30:08 How do you transition from 0-1 million in revenue?
    • 30:31 What must you master to grow from 1-10 million?
    • 32:02 How do you scale from 10-30+ million in revenue?
    • 34:52 Why does belief come before ability in leadership?
    • 39:04 How do you identify what’s holding you back as a founder?
    • 41:48 What belief do you need to claim to grow your next leadership identity?
    • 43:05 What stage of the founder journey are you currently in?

    The harsh truth:

    The person who started your business isn’t the person who can scale it. Growth isn’t about mechanics – it’s about identity transformation.

    If you’re a founder ready to stop drifting and start building a legacy, this is for you.

    Summary

    Focus and Growth for Founders

    Simon hosted a focus hour session for top 1% founders, discussing leadership identity and the challenges of building a business. He shared his personal journey, including how he transformed his business from $300,000 in revenue to significant growth, and explained that focus means different things to different people – for him it’s a state of being where he’s “locked in” and “zoned in.” The session aimed to help founders who feel stuck or burned out, offering a space to connect and discuss their challenges.

    Personal Transformation Through Coaching

    Simon shared his personal transformation journey, highlighting how coaching and relationships have significantly impacted his life and business. He discussed his struggles with weight, alcohol, and business growth before finding clarity and success through coaching and mentorship. Simon emphasized the importance of relationships in achieving results, noting that hiring coaches and building connections have been crucial to his transformation. He now leads a fulfilling life, balancing work, family, and personal growth, and advises other founders while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

    Founders’ Vision and Personal Alignment

    Simon discussed his journey to becoming a leader with vision, focus, and control, emphasizing the importance of aligning personal and business growth. He shared that scaling a business at the expense of health and family is not successful and highlighted the five domains every founder needs to align for accelerated growth: vision, health, focus, execution, and alignment. Simon explained that vision is critical for business success and shared his own 10-year vision, contrasting it with his previous approach of hoping for improvement month by month. He also stressed the importance of founder health, noting that an unhealthy body can hinder one’s ability to drive value through their business.

    Founders’ Path to Business Scaling

    Simon discussed the five key components of business success: leadership, systems, standards, team, and alignment. He emphasized that founders must evolve from doing everything themselves to delegating, systemizing, and scaling as revenue grows. Simon shared his Revenue Journey framework, which divides business growth into three stages: 0-1 million (where founders must learn to delegate), 1-10 million (where systematization is crucial), and 10-30+ million (where scaling becomes the focus). He stressed that founders cannot scale their businesses while remaining in a hands-on leadership role, and must transform into a different type of leader to achieve significant growth.

    Leadership Growth and Identity Transition

    Simon discussed the stages of leadership growth, emphasizing that each stage requires a new identity and that belief precedes ability. He highlighted the importance of growth being about identity, leadership, and resilience rather than just mechanics or information. Simon also shared his experience of hiring a coach to help him see aspects of himself during a transition to the next leadership level. He concluded by urging leaders to focus on belief and faith in what’s possible rather than fear of failure or loss.

    Founders’ Identity Transformation for Growth

    Simon discussed the importance of personal growth and identity transformation for founders seeking to scale their businesses. He emphasized that founders must shed old identities and embrace new beliefs to break through growth ceilings, sharing his own journey of transitioning from an ideator to a builder. Simon highlighted that business performance is deeply personal, and leaders must address their own limitations to unlock their companies’ potential. He encouraged attendees to reflect on their current identities, question what beliefs they need to claim for growth, and consider how personal development aligns with their business goals.

    Simon’s Alignment Program Overview

    Simon discussed his alignment program, a 12-month initiative aimed at supporting world-class founders, and emphasized its significance as his flagship program. He highlighted the importance of alignment in achieving success, contrasting it with drift, which he claimed can destroy dreams. Simon also mentioned a two-day workshop called the Alignment Intensive and offered a free document for those interested in an alignment check. He concluded by encouraging viewers to join his live sessions on LinkedIn every Thursday at 1 PM Mountain time and invited questions via email.

    Full Transcript

    My name is Simon. This is just a space here for us to connect, for me to show up on LinkedIn and be present and have conversations with anyone else who might be a founder or might be interested in connecting.

    The reason I started doing this is because every week I would have conversations with founders, leaders, and business owners here on LinkedIn in the comments. We would comment on each other’s posts or DM, and it was like, “Hey, would love to connect.” I’ve been on some calls – we would hop on a call here and there, but that can just be time consuming. Oftentimes it’s hard – sometimes people don’t check LinkedIn messages or whatever. So what I ended up doing was just creating this space. I’m calling it Focus Hour, and it’s just for me to show up.

    So if you follow me, if you want to connect, if you want to chat, this is just a space to do that. We’re going to go live for about an hour and hang out. I would love to have you, and if you have any comments, feel free to just make them. If you have any questions, I will see them on my side. If I can, I’ll bring you onto the call, and we can chat back and forth if I can figure that part out. But would love to have you here, and maybe we can connect.

    Let me share my screen, and we’ll get into the material for today.

    Today’s topic is Leadership Identity, and Focus Hour is this space for the top 1% of founders who refuse to drift. If you’re a founder, if you want to build a business that’s great, you want a life that you love, you want to be the best, you want to perform, you want to grow, you want to build, and when I say top 1%, you go “I want that to be me” – you’re in the right place.

    This is what we’re going to be talking about – what that looks like, how to be that, and what it takes to be that. I’m going to share what I’ve learned in my journey. I’ll share about me, I’ll share from what I’ve learned from other founders who are in the top 1%, and we’re going to explore and grow together.

    Here we are. This is for you if you’re frustrated. If you’re staring at the ceiling at 3 AM stuck in a loop – you know what I’m talking about. That was me last night, and oftentimes we all have this experience if we’re trying to build something. Straining your family to carry your team, wanting growth, but it feels random and distant. If you just feel like, “Man, if I quit, everything falls apart, and if I keep going, everything falls apart” – this is for you.

    Let’s get focused.

    That word focus – I know that maybe means some different things to different people. I talked to my wife about this the other day, and for her focus means having her calendar aligned, knowing what she’s doing when, knowing what dates things are coming. She’s got everything in its place, and for her it’s very tactical or operational or pragmatic. For me, focus is more of a feeling. It’s more of a state of being where I’m locked in, zoned in.

    That’s where a lot of founders that I know and have worked with – 7 and 8 figure founders – that’s what we just long for, that feeling of being focused. It’s like if you’re on a run and your heart’s caught up, it’s not struggling to keep up anymore, and you’ve got that runner’s high going, and you’re just locked in, and you’re just lost in that run. That’s what we’re talking about here.

    But unfortunately, your freedom vehicle, this business that you’ve built, may feel like a prison. It might even feel like every decision, every crisis, every dollar is on you to make, to do, to create. You think that if you push harder it’ll finally all click, but when focus is scattered, every distraction looks like an opportunity.

    My Story

    I’ve been there too. This is my story, why I’m here, why I’m talking about this – because this is so personal to me. It’s something I’m passionate about and is also something over the last 10 years that I’ve helped founders go through and work through as well.

    I’ve lived every moment of these pains. When you say you’re the bottleneck of your business – yep, I get that. You’re burned out and spinning – oh yeah, I know exactly how that feels. You’re lost and confused – yes, been there, most days or every day.

    I totally get that. What I want to share is just a little bit of my story. This is me on the left and me on the right. They are the same person. They may or may not look that different to you, but to me it’s a massive difference. I see a completely different person.

    Both photos, I’m smiling, but on the left this was back at the start of 2022. We were at a point in our business where we were stuck at about $300,000 in revenue. I look happy, my wife was happy – this is us in Coeur d’Alene taking a walk on the boardwalk. But the truth is, I was 50 pounds overweight. I was doing anything for anyone who would pay me as a functional alcoholic, wandering through my life trying to lead and figure out how to build a business and figure out how to manage clients and a growing family.

    It was a bit of wandering, struggling with constant sinus infections because it wasn’t only my business that was struggling – it’s not this compartmentalized thing. It was affecting my body, and the drinking was tearing my system down. Like I said, struggling, capped at $300,000.

    On the right, this is me at the start of this year, 2025. This is a picture of me and my son Peter going to a Phoenix Suns game. Totally different guy – 50 pounds gone. I’m in a place where I’m doing what I’m best at, and I’m doing what I love, and I know what that is, and I’ve delegated everything else. I’ve got a clear 10-year vision for my business and my life, and I’m operating on my one-year goals. I’m building an intentional business and intentional life that’s going somewhere that I know exactly where it’s going.

    I’ve got visible results in my body and in my mind. I’ve lost the weight, working on abs, working on getting some bicep veins starting to pop out. It’s not there yet – it’s still a work in progress, but it’s completely different from fat Simon, struggling Simon, embarrassed Simon, insecure Simon from 2022.

    In my mind it’s clear. I show up every day with clarity. The difference is like I’m not hungover for half the day trying to make it by. Totally different Simon. I’m up at 5 AM doing a run or a workout, getting my kids to school, getting to work, operating a 7-figure consulting business and coaching business while working 30% less than I worked then.

    But the thing is that I tried on my own for years to break through. It was crazy because I just remember this one moment – I tell this story often. I think it was like a Labor Day in September, and I was working (my whole team was off, of course), and I was pacing around the room in my master bedroom, losing my mind, stressed out. This was back in 2022.

    I was losing my mind trying to figure out: what am I going to do? How do I grow this thing? How do I get out of this stuck spot? I thought of someone who could help – this person I’d followed for years. I thought maybe they have a business, I know they coach or consult something, maybe they can help me. So I reached out, set up a sales call. They could help. We set up a meeting. It was a massive breakthrough.

    What I realized out of that moment is every time I got stuck, every time I’ve gotten stuck, it’s been a coach that’s helped me grow.

    The Power of Relationships

    I just want to share with you – these are some of my coaches. I tried it on my own for years. And it’s taken many, many people to help me through this journey.

    If you’re a founder and you’re in this position, you’re probably using ChatGPT, you’re probably Googling growth hacks, you’re probably trying to figure stuff out. But I think what I realized for me is that I could Google growth hacks, I could ask chat questions, but what I really needed was alignment and execution. It was really the people, the relationships, the coaches that were in my life that gave me the roadmaps I needed to get clear and focused enough to transform.

    Yes, I’ve used chat while getting coaching, but the point is between Chris and Matt and Scott and Dale and James and many others – Carl – my list could go on and on. There have been so many transformative moments in my life that these people helped me through.

    Chris is helping me see with clarity and focus on operations. Matt is getting data and precision on my numbers. Scott is helping me become more of an operator, more of a builder. Dale helped me learn how to dream big and see what’s possible in life as an entrepreneur. James helped me overcome internal battles and hurdles and limiting beliefs that were holding me back.

    I remember he said some of the most mind-blowing things to me. Our first meeting in a coffee shop, I went to get a coffee refill and sat back down. We were talking, and he’s like, “You know, I know what your problem is now.” I was like, “What?”

    He said, “You have this big old sticker on your head. It’s right here. You have a sticker and on it says ‘I’m too busy for you.’” It just shook me up. He’s like, “You’re sitting here saying you want to grow, you want clients, you want opportunities, but you’re walking around this coffee shop and you’re walking a hundred miles per hour. You’re not looking anybody in the eye, you’re not saying hi, you’re just saying I’m busy, so nobody’s going to approach you.”

    It just wrecked me because I was saying I got all this time, how do I use it? He just totally wrecked me. I could probably keep telling stories, but I should probably stop there. But what I want you to see is my transformation journey was a series of relationships.

    There’s this phrase that I use: relationships determine results. No matter what goal, what type of thing you’re trying to achieve in your life as a founder, in your business as a founder, the way to get there faster and straighter is to have relationships, to have coaches to help you.

    I know a founder that also runs endurance marathons and stuff, and every time he signs up for a new race, his first job is to hire a coach to help them get there. Anyway, I just want to share with you – this transformation that I’m sharing is not on my own.

    Current Results

    Today, because of what I’m going to share with you today, what I’ve learned from others, I’m leading with clarity in my life. My marriage runs on midday syncs, not midnight arguments. You know what I mean – if you’re married, you know those arguments, those conversations have to happen. If you don’t have a place for them, they happen at the worst times.

    My kids get one-on-one daddy dates, not just my evening leftovers. We have a time on Friday that I take them out in the afternoon. It’s pretty special, means a lot to them, means a lot to me.

    I’m advising 7- and 8-figure founders without working 80-hour weeks. Like I said earlier, I’m in a place where I can do what I’m best at, have a team who does the other things, and I can play a role that includes me living my best life and doing what I’m best at. It’s possible. It doesn’t mean it’s perfect – that’s not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is that you can be a leader who grows with vision, focus, and control.

    What I want to share with you today is how I became a leader who grows with vision, focus, and control, and how you can do that too.

    The Key Insight

    One of the key things I want to point out at this point is the transition. That was my story. Now I’m going to share a little bit more about today’s topic, which is leadership identity. What I want to share is that growth and scaling in life and business is different than what I thought. I thought growing and scaling my business was something I could just do, or that it was operational, or that if I just had the right piece in the right place, or if I found the secret.

    The secret that I found is this: scaling at the expense of health and family isn’t winning, and it’s not wealth. True success is having an aligned life and business. What we’re going to get into is how you are going to create the most success and how you’re going to feel the most successful – it’s through aligning your life and your business, because you don’t get business growth without personal growth.

    My question is: if I can transform, if I can lose 50 pounds, if I can go from $300,000 to breaking $1 million, if I can go from frustrated to focused, why not you? If I can make a transformation, why not you? Well, there’s a plan, there’s a path that I want to share.

    The Five Domains of Alignment

    These are the five domains that I believe every founder needs to align before they can fully accelerate. Let me share one more thing. Why I created this is because it has come from my life. This is what I believe, this is what I know, this is what I’ve seen, and this is what I’ve walked clients through. I’ve also seen this go through other people.

    When I say these are the five domains every founder needs to align before they fully accelerate, I say that because over the last 10 years I’ve built a marketing agency, and the founders that have come to me for growth – many of them have come to me wanting to accelerate their business. They want to scale, they want to increase revenue, they have these growth goals. Let’s do it.

    We’ve served hundreds of clients over the last 10 years, and what I’ve found is that the ones who actually grow and succeed, the ones who go to the next level, the ones who break through, do this – they align to accelerate. The ones who just want to accelerate without doing the alignment work fail, inevitably, every time.

    At first I thought maybe it’s just maybe they’re on the wrong platform, maybe there’s not product-market fit, maybe the market is not favorable for this type of product, maybe the messaging is bad. There’s all these factors to growing that you go, “Oh, how do I get all these pieces right?” And they’re all important.

    But what the most important thing that I saw was not just messaging, was not just platforms, not just strategy or content mix – what it was was vision, goals, vision, execution, alignment. Whatever we did, whatever they did, aligned with who they are and how they believe.

    This phrase has come out of this for us, which is: aligning who you are with how you grow. When these companies aligned who they are with how they grow, they could grow.

    I created this out of that to help our clients get growth-ready so that they could accelerate at the level that they want to and reach those goals. This is basically the pre-work process.

    1. Vision

    Do you know where you’re going? It always starts with vision. I did a session – the first session I did was on vision. I will keep talking about vision.

    • Vision is massive.
    • Vision isn’t just elusive and big – it is critical.
    • Vision is very tactile, very specific, very operational.

    But vision is the core of the puzzle. You can’t build a business without execution, but without vision, the old proverb says, “Where there is no vision, people perish.” It’s so true – your business will die, your team will die, everything will die when you have no vision.

    So do you know where you’re going, or are you just hoping next month won’t be worse than this month? I understand that – I’ve been on both sides. Now I’m operating out of a 10-year vision. Before that 2022 picture, it was just a hope that next month is not worse than this month. We’ll see how it goes.

    When you have vision, it gives you clarity.

    2. Health

    Do you have rhythms that help you grow, or are you running on fumes and burning out? I did a session last week – you can go back and watch it on founder health. The big concept here is: your body is the first business that you lead. The first business. If your body is unhealthy, you’re not going to have what it takes to show up fully and drive value through your business that you hope for.

    When you have health, it gives you energy.

    3. Leadership

    Are you the leader your business needs, or are you actually an overpaid firefighter? This is what we’re going to unpack a little bit more today. When you have leadership, you get confidence. You feel confident, your team feels confident, the market and the clients feel confident. This is a massive component.

    4. Systems

    Is your business running like a machine, or are you chasing new trends just to survive? Big difference here – the machine runs itself. The machine requires inputs. The machine with the right inputs and the right processes spits out outputs. This is how business works: leading inputs, actions, systems, outputs.

    As a founder, you can be at a million dollars and not really realize that because you’re so deep in the hustle and grind. I say that because that’s me – that was me. I’m not saying that out of theory, it’s literally true. But without systems, you can’t really build a business that’s going to survive the time, survive trends, technology, market shifts, your life, team changes, bad performers – all this kind of stuff. Systems are going to create resilience.

    5. Standards

    Standards and culture. Is your team a community you want to be a part of, or are they a headache you want to get rid of? Team is a massive topic. Team is a very popular topic. If there’s any topic from any content I put out on LinkedIn or TikTok, team always gets the most views. Team always gets the most engagement, and it’s because teams are hard.

    Leading a team is so hard, managing a team is so hard – there’s so many components to it. We’ll continue to unpack that over time. But when you have a team, you can get results. One of the biggest things that I want to share is that you will not be able to accomplish your vision without a unified team. I mean, unless your vision is very, very small. But if you are here because you want to be in the 1%, you’ve got a 10-year vision, you’re trying to accomplish something big, you want to build a legacy, you can’t do that without a unified team.

    These are the main pillars to alignment so you can accelerate. Without clarity and alignment, you’ll drift into shallow, wide growth. With clarity and alignment, you’ll build a durable, focused legacy growth. That’s what I’m here to do. What about you?

    Leadership Identity: The Core Challenge

    Let’s talk about leadership identity specifically. We’re going to dive into this topic and start unpacking it from a high level. The key thing that I want to unpack is: the person who started your business isn’t the person who can scale it. This is a harsh truth. If you’re the person who started it, you cannot be the person who scales it.

    Now you’re instantly going to say, “So are you saying I have to hire an outside CEO?” No, I’m not. But I am saying change, transformation is needed. That may be an outside CEO, but it may not be.

    This is really the leadership identity trap in a nutshell: the same grit that got you here – and if you’re like me, if you’re here, if you want to be a top 1%, if you’ve got a legacy vision, you are probably a gritty person. You put up with a lot. You can weather some storms. You’re going to put in the work, and it’s easier for you to grind and hustle than it is for you to sit back and relax on the beach with a margarita. But that same grit becomes the very thing that keeps you stuck.

    The Revenue Journey

    What I want to show here is what I’ve called the Revenue Journey – the founder journey by revenue stage. I’ve got three stages. I learned this through my coach Chris, who learned it through the Infusionsoft or Keap founder Clay Mask. Clay actually is here locally in Phoenix – I met him and been to some of his events. I’ve simplified this. I think Clay has maybe seven stages, and he breaks it up in a lot more detail. But I don’t want to really do that right now. I’ve simplified it into three main stages for our conversation here today.

    Stage 1: $0 to $1 Million – Learn to Delegate

    At $0 to $1 million in revenue, you as a person, as a leader, as a founder, must learn to delegate. You can go from $0 to $300-500k on your own. I have heard in rare cases founders going to $1-1.5M with them and like an EA, but that’s pretty rare. Usually around $300,000, you hit your cap.

    • You can’t go further.
    • You can’t spread yourself more thin.
    • You can’t acquire new skills fast enough or even have the time enough, no matter if you’re working 10-12 hour days.

    You’ve got to learn to delegate and work through others. So this is when you start building a team. This is when you start really feeling leadership pains. You don’t really have to change a lot until the end of $1 million.

    Stage 2: $1 Million to $10 Million – Systemize

    From $1 million to $10 million, you must systemize. This requires you thinking beyond “I do work.” You think of it more like a machine, a thing that runs that you have inputs that you plan, you design, you create, you plug other people into, and that spits out outputs at the end. If you’re not to a million, that concept doesn’t quite make sense unless you’ve been through this multiple times.

    But this $1M to $10M is systemizing, running the machine. That’s team building, it’s leadership, it’s all the things. But what it is is you disassociating from that thing and you being someone who contributes to it so it can run.

    Stage 3: $10 Million to $30 Million+ – Scale

    From there, $10M to $30M+, and I’m not going to go too much beyond that right now, but this stage – I work with founders in each of these stages – and this $10M to $30M is where you must scale. If you’re not delegated, if you’re not systemized, and if you’re not aligned with your vision and values, scale really can’t happen. Scale is fairly boring, but it’s really hard if you haven’t become the leader who can scale.

    At this point, this is where people bring in external CEOs because they get to this moment where they think:

    • Do I have what it takes to keep building this?
    • Do I have the resources?
    • Do I have the skills?
    • Do I have the stamina?
    • Do I have the knowledge?

    That’s where they bring in someone else who they think is more experienced, usually on the upper side of the stage.

    But each of these stages requires a shift, an identity shift, a different person to lead the business. What I want you to start to see as we go through this is: if you don’t change, if you don’t grow, if you don’t expand who you believe you are over time, you will not be able to take this ladder and go to these stages or these levels.

    This is a process of being bold, of being very tolerant to insecurity and new things, of learning and growing. It requires a lot of faith and a lot of imagination.

    Guiding Principles

    Here are my guiding principles along this leadership identity:

    1. Every Stage Requires a New Identity

    If you feel like you’re out of your depth at any of these stages, especially as you go to the next one, you’re normal and you’re in transition. I have seen this, and I’ve watched my clients go through this. I have been through this, and this is very real. It’s a very real moment where you feel out of your depth.

    I just want to say: lean into it because it’s very normal and you can use it as an opportunity to transition.

    2. Belief Comes Before Ability

    Do you believe in your ability to be CEO at every stage? Now this is maybe if I had one thing to say on this topic, it might be this one right here: belief comes before ability.

    What most people don’t do, but they should do, is when you go into starting a business, you should look at this ladder, these three stages, or get the whole thing – get Clay’s thing and look at all seven stages – and ask yourself: “Do I believe that I can do what it takes to take a company through every stage?”

    It’s not failure if you don’t, but the question is:

    • What do you believe?
    • What do you think is possible?
    • What is possible for you?
    • What do you want?

    These are really great questions. But the key here is that you can have the ability, but it all starts with believing that you have that ability.

    3. Growth Is About Identity

    Growth isn’t just about mechanics. It’s not just about hacks or tricks or information. This is the thing that ChatGPT can’t give you, that Google can’t give you, that just another course can’t give you. This is why I hired another coach. My CFO Nick just asked me the other day, “Why did you hire another coach?” My answer is: because I need to see what I don’t yet see about myself, because I’m in a transition. I’m going to the next level, and in order to do that, it helps seeing what I don’t see.

    Growth is about identity, leadership, and resilience. It’s about believing.

    So the question is: are you leading from belief or faith in what’s possible, what could be, or fear of what is or what could be – like being found out, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of losing it all?

    Oftentimes as founders, we definitely struggle through growth because instead of operating from “what if it works,” we spend all of our time avoiding, supplanting, dodging the barriers.

    There’s this great analogy that Dan Martell has used. He’s CEO of Martell Ventures, runs a coaching program called The Elite. He talks about skiing downhill, skiing through trees. He did this gnarly course one time with some friends and a ski instructor, and the ski instructor said, “Hey, here’s the rule: Don’t look at the trees. Look at the gaps between the trees. Look at the sun shining, look through, look at the end.”

    He said, “If you look at the trees, you’re going to hit a tree. It’s all about what you look at.” So Dan’s going along like, “Look at the sun, look at the sun,” dodging the trees. His buddy over there who came with him couldn’t help but look at the trees, and the dude whacks himself on a tree. They’re like, “Dude, what happened?” He’s like, “I just was looking at the trees.” It’s like, “You’ve got to stop looking at the trees.”

    Same thing here. Growth is about seeing through the trees. Growth is about looking at the opportunities and the possibilities. But if you’re always constantly looking at the obstacles, you’re going to hit them.

    Identity Alignment Prompts

    One of the best ways to see yourself in this topic is to ask yourself some questions about leadership, about leadership identity, and actually explore for yourself and chew on where you’re at.

    Some questions that I want to ask as a mirror for you that are also helpful for me are:

    Where are you clinging to the gritty operator identity that got you here?

    What got you here won’t get you there. So there’s this element of you’re going to have to let go of some parts of who you were. Doesn’t mean you have to toss out gritty operator – gritty operator probably can take you somewhere, but the question is: what’s helping you right now, and what’s not? Does that make sense?

    A lot of founders that I talk to, what happens for them is hustle and grind – they cling on to. “If I just work harder, if I just do more, if I just can get more hours in, or if I can just get more…” And there’s something to say about hours. There’s something to say about working so hard and so much that it becomes unreasonable for you to fail. I mean, that’s Alex Hormozi’s thing. Is he wrong? No, he’s right. But is he all right? Well, no. Do you have to do that? Is it serving you anymore?

    Alex is great, but if you’ve got a wife and kids and your wife works in the business with you, maybe you can put in 16-hour days and it’s actually part of your lifestyle, your values, and how you live your life. But the question is: is that aligned with who you are? Because I’ll tell you, I’ve got four kids, a fifth on the way – my wife’s pregnant. We just put our kids in school, and we’re building our business. The truth is, I can’t operate like Alex does if I want to be true to my legacy and my future and aligned with my vision.

    Those are the questions to ask.

    What belief do you need to claim in order to grow your next identity as a leader?

    This is the tough one. What belief do you need to claim (that you don’t yet have, that you have not yet claimed) in order to grow your next identity as a leader? In order to go from $1M to $10M, $10M to $100M? What do you need to believe about yourself that you don’t yet believe?

    For me, I know that recently one of the things that I needed to claim was that I can be a builder. I associate so much with ideator, visionary, futurist, that saying “I am going to submit to a process and endure systems, build systems and run systems and love the machine, master the machine” – that was something I had to learn to believe about myself as a CEO and as a leader in order to get to the next level.

    What’s that for you?

    What stage of the founder journey are you in, and what shift must you make to break through that ceiling?

    What stage are you in of the three that I mentioned? Which one are you in? And then the question is: what shifts do I need to make?

    These are good ways to reflect. Most – what I want you to see if you’re just here right now, if you’re watching this – I want you to know most founders never break this trap. They stay stuck here. Only the few willing to shed and rebuild their identity step into true visionary leadership.

    There’s a quote that my wife, founder and co-founder of Structure with me, shared yesterday, and I hope I don’t botch it. She learned from another entrepreneur that was telling her: the ones who win aren’t the best, they’re the boldest.

    I think that’s really important to know – if you want to grow, if you want to step into your next level, what’s probably not standing in your way is just operational complexities. You’ll figure them out. But what’s really standing in your way is who you believe you are, and further, who you think others believe you are. Rebuilding that, recreating that, changing that, shedding parts of that is what’s really scary. It’s really scary, and I’ve been through that as well.

    The Future Is Yours

    What I want you to know is the future is yours. Imagine for a second being one of the few founders who doesn’t just win but is recognized with a brand, body, and a legacy that lasts decades, not just days. Imagine what that would look like. What if? What would that look like? The truth is, that’s possible. Lots of people have done that. Why not you?

    This is what I’ve learned: reforming my identity as a leader, going through these stages, is the hardest, most rewarding work you’ll ever step into. When you say “I want to be a founder,” you think “I want to make a million dollars.” However, what you’re really saying is “I want to become someone who can make a million dollars.”

    That becoming is the thing we overlook, but it is the key to growth.

    How I Can Help You Transform

    I’m here to help. I would love to answer any questions. Any questions – what’s keeping you stuck right now in your business, in your life? Please share feelings, opinions about this topic. I would truly love to hear it. Does this resonate with you? Does this click at all, or does it feel like nonsense? Something you’ve never heard? Do you like it? Do you not like it? I would love the feedback, and not just for me, but I want to know for you.

    Do you see how life performance growth drives business performance growth? Do you see how who you are as a leader determines the potential of your company?

    There are these phrases that I like to use that are the core of everything I do. One of them is: business is personal. We’ve probably all heard that phrase in the negative form, which is “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” This comes from The Godfather, where I think it’s Sonny who says, “It’s not personal, it’s just business. You’ve got to just do this thing.”

    We hear that when you get fired, you hear that when there’s company changes, you hear that any time there’s something bad or negative or change happening in a company. It’s just a freaking excuse, and one that bothers the crap out of me because it’s a lie and it’s not true, because business is very personal.

    But business is personal isn’t just an excuse – it’s actually an outcome. It’s an outcome that who you are determines how your business performs if you’re the founder.

    There’s another quote that I love to use: business problems are just personal problems in disguise. That’s something I’ve shared with my team, that’s something I’ve shared with a lot of leaders, that’s something I remember every day. The truth is, if your business is held back, is stuck, is at a ceiling, it’s something that has to do with you, likely.

    Three Ways I Can Help

    I’ve got a few ways I can help, and I don’t want to overwhelm:

    1. Alignment Check

    Quick clarity on your biggest bottleneck. This is a little scorecard that I put together, a document that I would love to send you for free. If you are watching this and you want quick clarity on your biggest bottleneck as it relates to life and business and the five domains that we talked about today, let me know. Hit me up in the DMs and just ask for the alignment check, and I will send it to you for free. I’d love to share that.

    2. Alignment Intensive

    This is a two-day workshop – deep dive to reset your vision, rebuild belief, and sharpen your focus. We’ve done many of these, and they’re always very high impact. We walk out of this session with a bigger vision of the future, clarity, and just a drive to make stuff happen. It’s cool to see how pieces always come together and align during that just two days.

    3. My Alignment Program

    This is a 12-month program into the hardest, most rewarding room you’ll ever step into. This is my flagship program that I am building. I’m going to be building this, and this is the next thing I’m most excited about right now.

    My goal is to be the number one business coaching program for world-class founders out there, and I want to help world-class founders grow better than anyone else. This is the core of that mission. I’m very excited about that. If I can help you with that, if you’re interested in that at all, let me know, and I’ll be happy to share more about it.

    Final Thought

    If I can leave you with one thing at the end of this – if you don’t remember anything else, remember this: if you don’t align, you drift. You can drift through business, you can drift through life, and that’s what happens if you don’t align.

    Here’s the thing: drift destroys dreams. Drift destroys dreams, but alignment builds legacy.

    See you next time. If you joined to watch, thank you so much. I will be doing this live here on LinkedIn every Thursday at 1 PM Mountain time. If you have any questions, hit me up with an email. Hope to talk to you soon. Thank you so much.

  • Frustrated Founder to CEO: The Inside-Out Business Growth Method

    Are you a frustrated founder stuck at $1M, staring at the ceiling at 3am wondering why nothing seems to work? I’ve been there.

    In this live Focus Hour session, I share my raw, unfiltered journey from being 50 pounds overweight, numbing with alcohol, and nearly burning out my business to breaking through to 8 figures – all by learning one crucial truth: business problems are personal problems in disguise.

    Focus Hour: Vision & Values

    Watch LinkedIn Live: https://www.linkedin.com/events/founderhourlive-stopspinning-st7363610474489237505/theater/

    What I’m really about is growth – personal growth, business growth, and as a founder, how I can really help is helping other frustrated founders grow and learn how to grow and break through areas they’re stuck in.

    If you’re a frustrated founder and you’re here today, welcome by the way. I know what this is like – you’re staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, stuck in a loop. You’re straining your family to carry your team, and you’re probably wanting growth, but it feels random and distant. For me as a founder, I’ve gone through many seasons where I felt like, if I quit, everything falls apart. If I keep going, all fall apart.

    The Reality of Being a Frustrated Founder

    Let’s get real as a founder – your freedom vehicle. We all become frustrated founders at one point or another because we don’t want to do the job anymore. We don’t want to work in a business, or maybe we have a great idea, or maybe we have to. Either way, that freedom vehicle starts to feel like a prison, and every decision, crisis and dollar ends up being on you. And you think if I push harder, it’ll finally click.

    This happens for many founders between – it can happen at any point from the beginning to eight figures. I’ve seen it along the journey. I know for me, I really felt this, and this became very real to me and a very pivotal moment in my life when this was crushing was between $300,000 revenue and a million. It was that cresting $300,000 to get to a million that really almost broke me.

    For me, I was answering support emails and processing payroll at midnight – that was my life and my situation.

    My Personal Story

    I just want you to know – if you’re here, if you’re this person, I’ve been there too. This is a little bit my story. I was 50 pounds overweight, numbing with alcohol every day. I was building a successful company that was growing, that was working kind of, not at the rate it could have, but while honestly failing myself, and I was feeling alone. Something stuck, and I was just spinning out.

    I remember telling my wife – I’ve shared this in some different posts that I’ve put out, but there was a very distinct moment where I told my wife like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I feel alone.—like I’m pushing this thing forward alone, and I don’t know where to go. It’s like I don’t know what to do, and I just don’t like it.”

    Really, what ended up happening is, I just kind of survived through it, medicated through it, and most of my evenings ended in Netflix, whiskey and guilt. My wife was so loving, and with me the whole time, but she knew I wasn’t healthy. She knew I wasn’t doing well, but our life wasn’t really set up to do things differently.

    Why I’m Here

    The honest truth is, I lived every moment of this pain that I just shared with you, and I’m on a mission here, and I really want to help you and any other founder that’s around grow through that pain instead of running from it.

    My Transformation Timeline

    This 2022, I labeled as “Frustrated Founder.” That was kind of the pinnacle, the peak of my frustration, of my pain, of this season. This is where I was 50 pounds overweight, doing anything for anyone in terms of work and business. I was taking on all kinds of work that wasn’t taking me anywhere, and it was bogging me down and crushing me.

    I would call myself looking back, I would say I was a functional alcoholic. My mom would use those words, and which is true. I remember traveling and thinking, “Okay, if we stay at this Airbnb, is there a liquor store nearby so that I can get some whiskey if I want it?”

    I’m saying that, but you may have actually felt that too, or thought that. I hope that by sharing that maybe it even gives you permission to own that for yourself.

    I just went wandering, just numbing

    Constant sinus infections, which I found out was because I was drinking so much. My business was about $300,000 at this point, and it was struggling.

    Fast forward. This picture is almost a year ago. This picture is kind of a transformation of me. That’s me and my son Peter, right before a Phoenix Suns game. That 50 pounds gone – lost it.

    • I’m sitting here creating content, sharing with you.
    • I’m on LinkedIn.
    • I’m creating posts.
    • I’m sharing my thought leadership.
    • I’m providing strategy for clients.
    • I’m creating a new program.
    • And I’m doing what I’m best at.

    At the time I was doing anything for everyone – everything from video production to support emails to web design development. I was spread so thin. I’ve got a clear 10-year vision, and one-year goals. Totally different situation. I work out 3 to 4 times a week, and I eat a macro-based diet. It’s pretty intense, and you don’t have to do that. But I’ll tell you it’s changed my life and my performance.

    Now we’ve broken through 1 million dollar a year business, and I’ve got business family team really following my lead in a whole different level than it was before.

    The Breaking Point

    I remember one night – actually a lot of nights – but I remember this moment happening a lot of times, 3 AM staring at the ceiling. My family was strained, my team was confused. I was personally depressed, and I was realizing I wasn’t just losing traction in my business. I was actually losing my life, losing traction in my life.

    My wife was distant. We’ve always been very close, honestly, but compared to now, emotionally distant. I didn’t create space for her because I was filling up so many other things. My kids were watching me fade away. They didn’t know any different. But the truth is, I was watching them watch me fade away. I honestly just hated who I saw in the mirror.

    I saw something from Andy Frisella this morning that I think is totally worth sharing, because it’s just so relevant. He says: “You don’t change when you’re comfortable. You don’t change when it’s kind of bad. You change when you hate your life so much you feel disgusted with yourself.

    • When you look in the mirror, and you can’t stand what you see.
    • When the way you’re living makes you sick to your stomach.
    • When the cost of staying the same feels worse than the pain of changing.

    That’s the switch—the breaking point. That’s when things change. So if you’re there now, good! It means you’re ready. Ready to rebuild, ready to create the life you actually want. Disgust isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of everything you ever wanted.”

    That’s where I was at at this moment.

    The Real Problem

    All the advice was, “Don’t work in your business. Work on it, Simon,” and it’s good advice. I love Michael Gerber. I love The E-Myth, and the advice was great, because it’s true – you shouldn’t spend all of your time working in your business, you should work on it. But the truth is, no matter what I did, I could never get out of that trap.

    Turns out, it doesn’t matter what books you read – systems, processes – I couldn’t get out. I don’t think systems can fix a broken founder if they’re active in the business. Business systems can’t fix a broken person in this way. Maybe it can fix a broken employee, to be honest, but the truth is, as a founder, your relationship with the business – you are so closely tied to it. If you are struggling, your business is probably going to be struggling. At least that’s my story and my experience.

    That’s when I realized what I had going on wasn’t just a business problem. It was actually an alignment problem. It was actually a business problem that was actually a personal problem in disguise.

    My Focus and Mission

    This is where I’m really leaning in. This is the edge, the focus, the differentiator of my story—and what I’m coming at is that I want to help you fix your business by helping you grow yourself. I want to help you grow your business by helping you grow yourself.

    The problem was my vision, my habits, my leadership – none of it matched who I wanted to be. I was saying one thing over here: “I want to grow, make 10 million dollars, write a book, whatever it is.” Over here I’m Netflix, and still drink a bunch of whiskey, feel like a piece of shit in the morning. You’re not living an aligned life, Simon.

    I think what I see in a lot of founders that are struggling is that’s their life too. Not everyone’s like this. If you aren’t like this – cool, congrats. If you figured this out already, if you are dialed, if you are living, and I see these founders too – congrats, that’s a huge win. But this isn’t the case for everyone. A lot of us really struggle. I actually know a lot of founders, and have watched founders, and had mentors that I know have been through this exact same story.

    Rebuilding From the Inside Out

    I rebuilt from the inside out. This is crazy because I work with a lot of clients that come to us because they want to grow their business. They want to work with a partner who knows how to market and grow a business.

    The truth is, the best growth systems are growth from the inside out, and the clients that we have been the most successful with that have been the most successful with marketing in general, are the ones who already are aligned at the core. The ones who just want to throw money and bodies at the problem, they actually have a deeper problem that they need to solve first.

    Same thing here with the founders. If you’re stuck at ceilings, there’s a lot of ways to break through that. But if you don’t address the core issues, you’re going to keep finding yourself spinning.

    When I rebuilt from the inside out – my vision, my habits, my health – something powerful happened, and my marriage got stronger, and I started actually living again. I started being clear and understanding and thinking, and growing in a new way. It was this moment where only after I started working on myself did my business grow, and that’s the year that we broke a million dollars.

    We had spent years before struggling. The company’s coming up to about 10 years in business, and the first solid 5 or 6 or 7 years, we struggled, stuck at around $300,000.

    Four Truths You Can’t Ignore

    Walking out of this, I think there are really 4 truths that I want to share with you, that you can’t ignore if you’re a frustrated founder:

    1. Business is Personal

    Every business problem is secretly a personal problem in disguise. I’ve already said that, but the truth is, business is personal to you as a founder. Your business is personal to you. The business problems that you’re running into aren’t just isolated, containerized, individualized, detached business problems. We do that emotional detachment as a way to cope with the pain. But the truth is, if your business is struggling, you’re struggling. If you can’t figure it out, it’s because you can’t figure it out. This is what I’ve learned. I’m not saying that just because I’ve heard that – I’m saying that’s literally was my problem.

    2. How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything

    Great founders can take mediocre markets, mediocre ideas, and still win honestly. The best founders perform in the worst circumstances. You can’t compartmentalize.

    3. Align to Accelerate

    You don’t speed up to slow down. That’s how I thought – run fast, and then coast, because it’s easy. You slow down to speed up, but when you get to the speed up, it’s not all on you either.

    You slow down to speed up, and so if you want to grow, if you want to accelerate – you’re in your mind, you’re thinking, expand, accelerate, grow, build. Any of those words are on your mind. What you need to do is think: align, slow down, clarify, specify. The point is align to accelerate. I’ve seen it over and over, and we have a 4-step process that we run with our clients at Structure, our marketing agency.

    I call it the acceleration loop. It’s 4 steps, and it starts with align – align, get clear. 2 is activate. So you activate those ideas, you start doing them, creating infrastructure, things around them. 3 is amplify – talking more about it, creating more content around those ideas. And 4 is acceleration, which is measuring, iterating, pruning, expanding and growing.

    That is how we think about growth. That’s a growth process.

    4. Relationships Determine Results

    Nobody wins a championship alone. Every champion has a coach and a team. Just this morning I was listening to Nick Bare, the founder of Bare Performance Nutrition. He has a podcast and he has been doing this thing for maybe a couple of years now where every once in a while he does an episode on building the brand, and he shares his journey as a founder through building Bare Performance Nutrition to – I don’t know, it’s a large business now. I mean not large like Google, but large like $100 million. Maybe I’m not really sure but it’s somewhere near there.

    He was talking about his races. He does endurance training, and endurance competitions. Crazy ones like the Leadville 100, which is the 100 mile race in Colorado. Lots of things like that. Marathons, crazy marathon times. Every time he sets out a goal – and let’s call it a project, it’s a goal, it’s a project, it’s a race – what he does is, he hires a coach.

    This is wild to me, and he tells these stories about these events that he’s done, and every time he says, “and I hired a coach,” and it’s never the same coach. That’s the wild thing – he finds a coach that’s done it before, or has coached in that area before, or knows the terrain, or something like whatever it is. That person’s been there, done that, is experienced, they get it. They know how to replicate it again.

    He goes and he hires one, and then he builds a team around him to support his journey, so he can follow through.

    I think this is so key for founders

    The key is because most founders just go at it alone. I did. I did for a lot of years, and luckily I had coaches alongside me, who mentored me and came alongside me, and helped me, even though I didn’t know how to help myself. A lot of it was fear of spending money for me – coaches cost money, and I didn’t want to spend money. I didn’t think I was honestly worth investing in, because I thought I could grow the business without growing myself.

    What I learned looking back – I’ve had a lot of coaches. I’ll introduce you to them in a minute. What I learned is that every time I’ve had a coach I’ve grown faster. I’ve gotten where I wanted to, faster. I’ve become someone quicker who could accomplish the goal that I set out.

    It’s really important to have that help

    Have those relationships, have the coach and have the team. I’m not just saying this because I’m a coach. I actually do believe it.

    The first business I ever started, my first client was actually a bartering agreement with a coach. Wild. They’re an executive leadership coach and they work with large companies like Pacific Foods, and Fortune 500 companies. But he agreed to coach me. So I was getting this elite level coaching at the start. It’s not the only time this has happened, but it happened that time, and has happened over and over.

    I couldn’t have made it through that first year, that first 3 months of business without that coach. Then I didn’t have a coach for like 5 years. I remember getting to a point stuck. I’ve written about this too – it was sometime in the fall, and it was a holiday. My team wasn’t working, but I remember I was, and I was stressed out, and I was pacing around actually our bedroom with my phone researching, trying to figure out what to do, because I remember being in such a stuck spot. It was about 2022, 2021 somewhere in there.

    It was this moment and I decided, “I need help, and I need to reach out to a coach.” And they really helped me break through. It was a big push in that direction. They helped push me in the direction to help me get to a million.

    My Question for You

    Here’s my question: If I can break through, if I can grow, if I can transform, if I can get there, why not you? What’s holding you back?

    Founders almost always think that their growth problem is strategy or sales. “Sales fixes all” – it’s true, it’s not wrong. But it doesn’t fix forever. I think that’s something to remember – “sales fix all” is true, but if you continue to self-sabotage yourself and your business, it’s never going to solve really the long-term problem.

    What I’ve learned is that every business problem is a personal problem in disguise, and there are 5 domains every frustrated founder needs to align before they can fully accelerate. I don’t say “master,” because it’s not that you’re perfect. It’s not that you conquered this. It’s that they’re aligned, that you see them working together, that you see that one takes you to another, that you see that getting where you want to go requires having these things in place.

    The Five Domains

    1. Vision: Do You Know Where You’re Going?

    Do you know where you’re going, or are you just hoping your next month won’t be worse? There’s a difference between proactive growth and reactive growth. What I want you to see is if you’re stuck, one of the first things is getting proactive, getting clear, getting ahead and stop reacting to fires and months and revenue spikes and drops.

    2. Values: Is Your Business Built on What Matters to You?

    Not just “We believe X” and these are our standards that we don’t follow when we put them up. So people say them, but nobody knows they are. Is your business built on what matters to you? Like how much money you want to make, seriously. Where you want to live. How much you want to work, what kind of work you want to do. Who you want to hang out with. How many people you want to manage.

    Or are you just chasing new trends just to survive? What often happens is because we don’t have values, because we don’t have standards, because we don’t believe – we don’t name what we believe, or we don’t believe anything hard enough. We just chase, chase, chase trends. Chase things to keep something right, to solve problems. There’s always a new trend or technology or something to band-aid it. But the problem is, you’re chasing. You spend your life chasing. It’s a lot of energy spent.

    3. Identity: Are You the Leader Your Business Needs?

    Or are you actually just an overpaid firefighter? I like this one because this really gets to – are you a frustrated founder or a visionary CEO? The question is, who do you want to be?

    A lot flipped for me between 2022 and 2024, 2025, where I decided I am going to become Simon 10.0. Version 10.0. So pretending I am 1.0 right now. What is 10.0? What does that look like? That was vision.

    I had to go, “Well, what’s my vision? Okay. Well, what are the things that matter to me in there? Okay.” What can I do right now? Oftentimes this is the crazy thing about vision and values – values just comes out of vision. Vision makes this massive gap that then you want to close, and you have these questions where you go, “Why am I not doing those things right now?”

    I literally just went through this again. I’ve done this many times, but my coach pushed me to create my 10-year vision, and I did it, and I wrote this thing – I don’t know how many pages, 10 pages. At the end of it, I looked at it, and I went, “Well, I could do that now. I could do that now. I could do – well, I have to wait 10 years to do some of these things.” Some of them take 10 years to build, some don’t.

    Are you being the person that can get you there? If you’re not, that’s okay. But start now, start doing some things now.

    4. Systems: Do You Have Rhythms That Help You Grow?

    Or are you running on fumes and spinning out? What anchors you? You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

    I can say I want to make a million dollars a year personally, but if I don’t have systems, if I don’t have rhythms, if I don’t do the things that it takes to get there, it’s never going to happen. So what are the rhythms? What are the things to help you grow?

    Let me tell a story

    Not too long ago my family went to San Diego for a week, and we took our kids to SeaWorld and played on the beach. It’s really fun, because it’s hot here in Arizona and Phoenix, and it was great to get out and do something a little bit different. But it was really hard, because it was a hard week, and looking back, I just felt totally spun out and lost the whole time.

    When I look back on it, one of the big things that I realized, and I told my wife, is I was so out of sync. I think I worked out once in the gym, and it was kind of short. My diet was all over the place. I mean, we’re eating out. Not bad food, but some of it was. I wasn’t getting the same nutrition. The sleep – I mean, we were in a hotel room, so the sleep was kind of bad.

    I’m not complaining here

    What I’m saying is, I have rhythms that anchor me. If I am going to play at this level up here – Simon 10.0, 10 million dollar level – the problem is that when I spend extended amounts of time in environments that I can’t – that I spin out in, or I struggle in, or that my body starts to – I don’t know, can’t keep up, and when I – you get my point. I can’t perform at that level.

    That’s really what this is about – your environment and your rhythms that keep you growing, and keep you stabilized and keep you going on a day-to-day basis.

    5. Relationships: Do You Have the Right Team?

    Or do they look to you for every answer, every time? This is really about your culture. It’s about your community, it’s about your standards. It’s about the people around you. I could even just call this community.

    The point is that you’re not doing this alone. You can’t grow alone.

    You’re going to need…

    • A team around you.
    • A coach to help you.
    • Friends that elevate you.

    Building the right team is really important

    At my company Structure, my lived experience here is we built up a team. At one point I think we were about 10 people, and it was a little overbuilt at the time for our revenue. For a couple of reasons. One, we had poor systems and operations that required a lot of people, and a lot of handholding and a lot of steps. They weren’t efficient enough – it just took a lot of work, and for me to survive we had built it up.

    Really, it needed to be simpler

    So that was a mistake on our part. I totally see it. The other one was we had a big contract with a client that was a multi-year deal that we built our team so that we could deliver that contract. We actually hired to do pre-work for the contract, because it was a big front-loaded thing.

    The bummer is, the contract actually didn’t work out and we had to let go of a number of those team members. What I learned, though in that process of building and going down is we had people that rose up and were great and leaders, and we had people that left on their own, and this is normal for every business. But what I’m saying is, there were a lot of times in that process where I realized that I was carrying my team, and I wasn’t empowering them.

    They weren’t working on their own off of my clear vision, values, identity and systems that I had built around us, that they could operate in. It was just chaos.

    So do you have the right people that can help you build that, or that are willing to work in that, that you don’t have to carry? That’s on you. Some of that’s on them. But there’s a lot to explore there.

    Your 10-Year Vision: A Practical Tool

    I want to jump into your 10-year vision as a tool, as a takeaway tool for you, because we talked about these 5 domains. What I want to do is pretty much every week or every call, I want to dig into these a little bit more, and share more with you on them. The first one I want to tackle is the 10-year vision. It’s just the right place to start. Every workshop that we’ve done with every client to grow their business, every founder to clarify their vision starts with this conversation. This exercise, and everything flows from here.

    The Goal

    Your 10-year vision. The goal is to align your business around a big vision of the future. The vision is where you’re headed, and why it matters. Most frustrated founders are stuck because they’re working in the business without clarity on the business. Without a clear vision, honestly, you’re just building a machine you can’t control that goes nowhere.

    The goal here is to create an inspirational, detailed, and actionable 13-1 for your life and work. Your 13-1 is your 10-year vision, 3-year mission, 1-year goals. We just called it 13-1, because it’s kind of a package that works together that you can run with.

    Business is personal, and your business is an expression of your life and your vision, good or bad. So it starts with you. Your 10-year vision? And how does your business fit into that. We don’t want to compartmentalize it and just do like, “what’s the business 10-year vision?” No, this is you. Inside of you is the business. You can do another 10-year for the business, but we’re going to look at the whole picture.

    Getting Started

    Start by multiplying your revenue and income 10x what it is now. This is the easiest way to imagine a 10-year vision is, you have an anchor that you drop, which is 10 times income.

    So if you’re making a $100,000 a year right now, personally – $1 million. If you’re making a million personally – $10 million. If you’re making 200K – $2 million. Those are easy jumps just to make and say, “what would life look like if I’m making 200K a year now, and I build my life around a $2 million dollar income, what’s possible?”

    Now that’s your anchor. I don’t want it to be your limiter, but it is a good way to really get started and go from there and figure that out.

    Eight Areas to Explore

    You want to create vision around these 8 areas:

    Home and Environment

    What’s my home environment? What’s my life like? How many homes do I have? What’s the environment at the home like – bedroom, outdoor, indoor. Noise levels, smells, all that stuff.

    Daily Rhythm

    What’s your day look like on a regular basis? This goes back to what we talked about – do you have rhythms that help you grow? So it’s looking at what are those rhythms that are pushing you towards 10-year vision?

    Marriage and Family

    What does your marriage look like? What does your family look like? How many kids you have? What do you do to invest in your marriage? Invest in your kids? Are you closer? Are you farther away? What does that look like?

    Health and Vitality

    What does your body look like? Do you have energy? What does exercise, movement look like for you? What is that? Specifically? What do you want it to look like? How often?

    Impact and Contribution

    This is like philanthropy. This is like, what are you going to give to the world beyond just making money? All of this is your contribution to the world. It’s a little more specific on how do you give? What is the specific give back, pay it forward, component in your life? The reason that’s important is because of meaning. Purpose – it drives a life that isn’t just driven towards you. It’s driven towards others. That’s a really important piece to think about. Often we don’t think about that till we have money, but the truth is, it’s an important part of who you’re becoming, whether or not you have money or not.

    Lifestyle and Adventure

    This is a hard one for me, because I’m busy with my family and my work. But this is really important. What does lifestyle and adventure look like for you? What are you doing? What does adventure look like? Are you traveling? Are you going out of the country every year? Are you wakeboarding? Are you skiing? What do you do for that stuff?

    Personal Growth and Legacy

    What does your ongoing growth, ongoing future look like? What does that legacy look like as you go forward? What do you want to be known for? This is really important.

    The Process

    It’s okay if it takes a little bit of time. I just did this like a week ago, and it was so good to do it again. It’s amazing when you do this, you start losing yourself in your future, and it starts feeling really real, and then it can be really hard to come back to the day-to-day reality of your life. But then, what happens is this vision starts holding you.

    This is really important

    You can either push a vision forward, which is a lot of work, or your vision can pull you forward. I’m in a season right now where I’ve spent a lot of time pushing visions forward, and I’m trying to create a vision that pulls me forward.

    That’s my challenge for you too. You may not even realize that. But a vision that pulls you forward is a lot more effortless. Growth happens a little more easily. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s very hard. But that’s where you want to be.

    What I noticed when I wrote this vision – this 10-year vision of mine – I think it was like 15 pages, a lot of content, a lot of great dreams. I had this moment where I was like “I should do that now.” One of those things was like, I want my kids to be coming to me for advice. I want to do one-on-one time with them, and I want them to connect with me.

    I was like “what the heck. I’m not doing that now, but I could.” I was like “dang, put it on the calendar.” Every week I’m taking a kid out – one of our 4 kids. We’re going to have 5. Taking a kid out and doing one-on-one time with them, ask them questions, learn about them, see what they’re struggling with, seeing what they’re excited about. That was something I could do now. And I made my vision real.

    The 10-3-1 Model

    What you want to do is use the 10-3-1 model to clarify your vision. This is the tool. It’s comprised of 3 things:

    10-Year Vision (Your Trajectory)

    This is how you see your company looking and feeling in every category of your business without getting bogged down by data and numbers. Typically 10x revenue and income. This is what we’ve done in our workshops, and it’s always a great exercise – mind blowing usually.

    3-Year Mission (Your Target)

    This is the detailed written description of you and your company’s desired future state over a 3-year period. Financially specific and time bound.

    So you might say, “in 10 years we want to be at $10 million in revenue. And this is what this looks like. In 3 years, we want to be at $2 million in revenue, and that’s at this date.”

    The cool thing is, the 10-year vision can be a little bit disconnected from the data and numbers. And that’s okay. You use that 10x revenue as an anchor. But what you really want to do with that 3-year mission is, you want to get specific enough that you actually know you can achieve that. You say “this is how much money we’re going to make in this amount of time, and we’re on a mission to achieve that amount of money in that amount of time.”

    It’s not a fluffy mission statement, like “we were on a mission to eradicate poverty from all the areas of the world.” Great mission – do it. But that’s not your mission statement, because it’s not specific enough to get behind. That would be more of like a purpose statement. That’s your purpose is to do that. But your mission is to make money by a certain date.

    1-Year Goals (Your Steps)

    These are the clear, integrated steps that get your family and your team passionate about how the big picture and the day-to-day come together. This is really key. This is the most helpful thing for your team and for your day-to-day operations.

    My mentor Scott has a model called the North Star. Really good. Check it out. What he does is he splits those 1-year goals into outcomes, and he says, to create like 3 or 4 outcomes for each goal. So you have tangible outcomes. If we achieve this goal, A, B, C, D will be true. It helps you get really clear on that. You can even make those your quarterly targets if you want.

    I don’t mean to get too far into strategic planning here, but what I want you to see is seeing this picture, zooming out, start with your 10-year vision. Being able to think about your life, your work, your business in this way is game changing. It really is. We do workshops with clients, and this is a big process, and they pay us a lot of money to do this, because it’s very, very high impact. But you can do it yourself too. Just pull up a doc. Take a voice note. Whatever you want, and push that down.

    How to Go Deeper

    Thank you so much. I’m going to do this live every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 PM. Would love to see people here. I’ll keep teaching and talking and sharing, but would love to make this more interactive over time. That was my goal. So if you joined today, thank you so much. I appreciate you and have a great rest of your day.

    Frustrated founder key points

    The 4 Truths Frustrated Founders Can’t Ignore:

    • Business is deeply personal (and why that’s actually good news)
    • The best founders perform even in the worst circumstances
    • The “align to accelerate” mindset changes everything
    • Relationships truly determine your results

    The 5 Domains Framework:

    1. Vision – Do you know where you’re going, or just hoping next month won’t be worse?
    2. Values – Is your business built on what matters to you, or are you chasing trends?
    3. Identity – Are you a visionary CEO or an overpaid firefighter?
    4. Systems – Do you have rhythms that help you grow, or are you running on fumes?
    5. Relationships – Do you have the right team, or do they look to you for every answer?

    My Story:

    At my lowest point, my evenings ended in “Netflix, whiskey, and guilt.” I was building a company that looked successful on paper while completely failing myself and straining my family. The breakthrough came when I realized I couldn’t fix my business problems with business solutions – I had to rebuild from the inside out.

    The Result: Lost 50 pounds, reconnected with my family, broke through $1M in revenue, and now help other founders do the same without burning out.

    Timestamps:

    • 00:00 – Welcome to Founder Hour
    • 03:05 – Why I Started This Live Series
    • 07:14 – My Story: The Breaking Point
    • 18:04 – The 4 Truths Frustrated Founders Must Know
    • 25:00 – Business Problems = Personal Problems in Disguise
    • 36:00 – The 5 Domains Framework Explained
    • 43:00 – Building Your 10-Year Vision (Tool Walkthrough)
    • 56:00 – Resources & Next Steps

    Key problems addressed:

    • 7:14 – Why do founders feel trapped between growth and failure?
    • 9:05 – What does it look like when your freedom vehicle becomes a prison?
    • 10:41 – How do you know if you’re in the dangerous $300K to $1M revenue gap?
    • 13:01 – Why do founders end up medicating through their pain instead of solving it?
    • 18:25 – What are the four truths frustrated founders can’t ignore?
    • 21:05 – Why can’t business systems fix a broken founder?
    • 21:49 – How do you recognize when business problems are personal problems in disguise?
    • 24:47 – What does it mean to rebuild your business from the inside out?
    • 25:29 – What are the four truths every struggling founder must accept?
    • 27:54 – How does the “align to accelerate” principle work for growth?
    • 28:48 – What is the 4-step acceleration loop process?
    • 29:38 – Why do relationships determine your business results?
    • 32:00 – How do you know when you need a coach versus trying to go it alone?
    • 34:29 – What’s the real reason founders think their problem is strategy or sales?
    • 35:55 – What are the 5 domains every founder must align before accelerating?
    • 36:56 – How do you move from reactive to proactive business growth?
    • 38:02 – How do you build a business based on your personal values?
    • 38:49 – How do you transform from firefighter to visionary CEO?
    • 39:33 – What systems and rhythms help founders grow consistently?
    • 41:25 – How do you build the right team that doesn’t depend on you for every answer?
    • 45:05 – How do you create a 10-year vision that actually works?
    • 47:31 – What are the 8 key life areas to include in your vision planning?
    • 51:43 – How does the 10/3/1 framework clarify your business direction?