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Hey founder, on today's podcast, we're talking all about the core thesis of your company cannot be everything to everyone, and trying to do that will hold you back.
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And how are some of the ways that we're doing that?
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One really important way that we're doing that is by focusing on our weaknesses instead of maximizing our strengths and how that holds you back.
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And so today I'm going to talk about what to do instead and how you can get your life back, how you can stop being chief everything officer and become chief executive officer in your business.
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Just like you, as chief everything officer, are not thriving in your business and in your role when you're trying to be everything to everyone inside of your business.
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You've got the goal of becoming chief executive officer where you are not in the weeds, you're running your business, you're making strategic decisions, and you are able to run your business from a higher level instead of being stuck trying to solve all the problems and deliver all of the results to your customers.
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In that same context, your company cannot have the same position of trying to be all the things to all the customers in your industry.
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You have to figure out what your company was built to do really, really well.
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Can you answer that question right now, today?
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Do you know what you and your company do better than any of the competitors out there in the market?
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What is your strength?
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How do you show up differently in the market than your competitors do?
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Most strategy tells us that we need to focus on fixing our weaknesses and turning them into strengths.
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And that has never sat right with me because it is a lot of work.
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It takes a lot of effort.
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It takes a lot of your energy and a lot of your focus away from what you do really, really well.
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And it puts it in a place that may or may not give you the results that you want.
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So I am very much against focusing on weaknesses and turning weaknesses into strengths.
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It's just a frustration and something that I avoid and I encourage all of the founders that I advise to avoid that.
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What should you do instead?
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Well, using a tool like a SWOT analysis where you're looking at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, that is a good analytical tool.
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But the caveat of we don't want to focus on the threats and the weaknesses as much as we do the opportunities and the strengths.
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And that's because what really matters when we're looking for a weakness or a threat would just be something that jeopardizes the actual health and safety of your team.
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It jeopardizes your cash flow or position or the business as a whole.
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It puts the business at risk.
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So we would look at weaknesses and threats probably together in that context to really decide what are the things that really matter when you're doing that analysis.
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One of the risk factors of focusing on the SWOT analysis and putting too much into it before you're really focused in understanding your strengths really well is the human mind, the human brain is built to look for threats.
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It's built to survive, it's built to keep us out of harm's way and safe.
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And so what we naturally will do is we will kind of forget about the strengths, forget about the opportunities, and focus too much on those threats and weaknesses.
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And then we're too focused on what everyone else is doing in the industry.
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I'm a big fan of the Gallup's strengths finder approach.
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I use that system when I consult with my founders and their teams because we have to uncover what each person individually does really well inside of the role of the business.
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So when we're creating the organizational roles that support the business and doing what it does really, really well, we have to name those strengths.
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In this role, this person needs to have these top three to five strengths to be able to carry out this role successfully to support the business and its one definition of success.
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And so I always start with the founder, obviously.
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What is their top five strengths?
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And how does that influence how the business is strong?
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What does that do with the value proposition of the business as far as making the business different than its competitors?
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How does the founder's strength show up and influence the team?
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Also, what that tells me, too, is that sometimes these strengths, just like everything, can have the opposite effect and they can actually weigh us down a little bit.
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And I'll give you an example of my own self.
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One of my strengths is ideation.
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All my top five strengths are strategic in nature, which makes me a little boring.
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I'm not a connector per se.
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I'm more strategic in everything I do.
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And so one of my strengths is ideation.
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And what that means is I have a ton of ideas, and most of them aren't really good.
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And I can come up with lots of ideas.
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So I'm a really great brainstorming partner, but there are very few ideas that actually make the best sense.
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And so I'm full of great ideas, I'm full of a lot of really bad ideas too.
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And so we have to know the balance of our strengths.
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And so when we pull that back and we look at your organization, your business, how do you as the founder influence your strengths influence how your business shows up in the market?
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And then what it is you want to be delivering and what it is you want to be known for, not you personally, because we're trying to get you out of the weeds, but your organization.
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What does it want to be known for?
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What are the strengths in the marketplace that you want to be known for?
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So my process is first we build around the founder's genius zone, and we don't know what that is necessarily until we pull those Clipton strengths.
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And there's some other tools that I use as well.
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And then I do the same thing with the leadership team, managerial team, and down the line.
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And then we look at what the customer values.
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So, and not just any old customer, we look at the best customers, your favorite customers, the right customers.
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So the ones that are profitable, and we see how those things align.
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How do your strengths align with your customer values?
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And then that should equal the work that makes the most money in your organization.
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And so we align them around each other.
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Strengths, your customer, what they want, what they're willing to pay top dollar for, and then how your team pulls it off with the strengths that they have.
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What that does is it tells us, it kind of fills in that threats and weaknesses that you may not see by doing an ordinary SWOT analysis because you're looking at the obvious stuff and not necessarily the stuff that's deep inside and intrinsic and already built into your business.
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Gallup has spent years studying what happens when people work from their strengths.
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Their research shows better performance when people spend more time doing work that fits what they naturally do well.
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They report stronger profit, sales, engagement, and retention in strengths-based
organizations.
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So that's one of the reasons why I'm a huge fan.
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Um, the other one is when you're working in a role, you're naturally doing what you're really good at doing, you enter a flow state typically.
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When you're working in your strengths, even in a grueling industry like my firm is in the CPA world, when you're doing what you love to do and what you do well, for me it's strategy and strategic advising, then it doesn't feel like work.
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It feels really enjoyable.
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And again, there's a warning that it can get too good and then you work too much.
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So we have to have limits on that as well, even when the work is enjoyable.
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So think about your own work.
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Are there things that you can do for hours and still have that energy?
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Uh, are there problems that you see faster than other people?
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Are there things that you can do, but they take twice as much effort?
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That's something that's not in your genius zone.
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That's something that's probably not a strength for you and should be done by someone else.
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The same is true for your team, and it's true for your business as a whole.
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So, again, my philosophy is every business is a system, and it's a system made up of team members and processes and various information technology systems, customers, stakeholders, all of these things have to work together in unison for the system to be healthy, happy, and whole, right?
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So, what you need to figure out is what work is your company unusually good at?
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What is it that y'all do better than your competitors and build from there?
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It shouldn't be.
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And it's not going to be the most profitable when it is everything to everyone.
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There's just too many moving parts.
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And you founder, you can't be good at everything for your company either.
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So we have to get you out of the weeds, we have to get you out of that chief everything officer role and into your executive role.
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So when you're thinking about that role and what you want it to be, what it looks like, what are the strengths that you have that you want to be utilizing every day or most days inside of your business?
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And what are the deliverables that help you do that?
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The goal is not to build a company with no weaknesses, because that's impossible.
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We know that, but it's to build a company where the strengths matter more than the weaknesses.
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The strengths compensate for the weaknesses.
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There are weak spots in every company.
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You have to deal with those, especially if it puts a customer or a team member or another stakeholder at risk, then you need to worry about that.
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You need to worry about cash flow, you need to worry about liabilities, quality, you know, things like that.
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But those things should not be the key strategy or inside of your business, is mitigating weaknesses or threats.
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It's an important component, but it's not the primary component.
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The primary thing to focus on is your strengths.
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The other thing is fear of missing out on uh customers or opportunities in the market.
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So, again, that's the other strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
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If you focus too much on opportunities, that too takes your focus away from your strengths.
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It takes you away from what you're really good at and it gets you into other areas that, okay, maybe you do want to develop some competency in a different area and in a different opportunity in the market.
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But when you take resources from what you're really good at and put it toward opportunities that are unproven, that does weaken your business.
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And so you have to be in a position, a really strong position, to be able to play around and have some exploration inside of the opportunities.
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So we can look at that in a way that is like, okay, saying yes to everything, saying yes to every customer ask, saying yes to every customer demand.
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Uh, this is especially true inside of service-based businesses, where even if you can do it, even if you do have a competency to be able to do it, doesn't mean that you should do it because it may not be something that you're really good at.
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And it's going to, you know, destroy your bottom line.
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It's going to take resources away from the things that you are really good at, that you are very profitable at, and put it towards things that you aren't profitable at doing.
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I have experience with a contractor that has done this for many years, exploring opportunities in a different market in a different country.
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And we're talking going on more than a decade now.
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All of those resources could have been put to use inside of the existing business that's already very profitable and made even more profit and even more financial success for the founder, or paid the team better and
mitigated some turnover problems, or just had cash reserves so that they didn't have to work as much.
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There's a lot that could have been done with that money instead of playing around with opportunities that have brought nothing.
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Also, opportunities take you away from your strengths, what you're really good at.
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So businesses get harder to run when we don't focus on our strengths, when we are too busy playing around with opportunities, or we're too busy trying to fix weaknesses and turn that around.
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And we're too busy worrying about threats, especially threats that aren't imminent or that are just not going to ever affect you or your industry.
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So when we shore up our business around our strengths, it gets a lot easier to maintain, a lot easier to make the profit and the cash flow to give you the life that you want, the role that you want inside of your business.
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And it makes your team a lot happier too, because they know what to expect and they know what they're really good at.
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And they know that they're not going to be put in positions that take them away from what they're really good at.
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Now, I know that sounds a little bit like I am against exploring and I'm against experimentation and I'm against pushing people past their limits or comfort zone.
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And that is not the case.
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So don't get that idea.
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When you are in the position of being very, very profitable and really solid on your strengths and what you do really well, then you have the opportunity to go and play around and do the stuff that Google does, where 20% of the time is spent on innovation and that sort of thing.
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Most of us aren't Google or a huge company that can afford to play around too much, especially in the mid-7 to mid-eight figure, you know, stratosphere.
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It's just not going to happen for us.
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It could, but um, I think it's far and few between.
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And I think what we really need to do is focus on shoring ourselves up first.
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And if that's a goal to eventually be able to explore and experiment and spend even 10% or 20% of your time um doing other things and exploring those opportunities, there will be a time for that, but we have to shore up your business.
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If you're still a stuck in chief everything officer mode, you're not there yet.
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If that's a goal, we can get you there.
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Question you want to ask yourself is what work uses your best thinking and delivers the best results for your customers, the ones that they're willing to pay top dollar for.
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Your team members have to have work that fits them the best too.
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The mistake is thinking everybody needs to be equally good at everything.
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That's why when I work with my founders, I help them create the roles inside of their business that's going to support their one definition of success built on what their customers pay top dollar for.
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There's a difference between a weakness and a missing strength.
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A weakness says we're not very good at this.
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And a missing strength says this really matters to the customer and the business.
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So someone here needs to be really good at this.
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And so I see that like in my own firm.
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Someone needs to be really good at tax, someone really needs to be good at profit and performance advising, someone really needs to be good at the bookkeeping and accounting, someone really needs to be good at creating software and accounting uh systems so that my team can get the information that they need to be able to be really good at the bookkeeping and the tax advisory and the profit and performance advisory.
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So we have those deliverables, and that's what we know we need to be really good at.
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And that's what the customers want.
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That's how we base our one definition of success.
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So that might mean that we have to hire someone to fill that role.
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We may have to partner with external providers to fill that strength as well, or changing roles inside of your company.
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So one of the big mistakes I see founders make often is creating the role for the people that are already inside of the organization.
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And that is a huge mistake because that's not going to support your business and it's not going to support you getting out of the weeds.
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It's just going to support that team member.
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And that's not what we want.
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So we want to create the role regardless of who's in the organization today.
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Um, and if that strengths profile isn't in the organization today, we need to hire for it.
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And if we have extraneous strengths in the organization that aren't really needed, they need to go somewhere where they are needed.
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So it's it is a win-win for your team members and for you as well.
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Because what happens is when we have the wrong people in the wrong roles, you, founder, get pulled back in to fix it and fill that gap.
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As chief
executive officer, your job is to help shape the business.
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And it should not be the emergency fill-in for everything that you know is missing inside the business.
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You are not the weakness person that fills all those gaps.
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You cannot be that person that keeps you in chief everything officer mode.
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So when I talk about your strengths aligning with what your best customers want, I'm not talking about something clever on the website.
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I mean what is your company unusually good at that fits the right customer that they value?
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Can your team really deliver on it very well?
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How much money does it make?
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Is it profitable?
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And I can envision it as a Venn diagram where we're like, okay, here's what we do really well, and this is what the customer wants.
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And then that middle piece where they overlap, that's where we build.
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The overlap is your strengths, your team strengths, your customer value, healthy profit.
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That's the business that we want.
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And so the clearer you get about that, um, the easier it is to run your business.
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The easier it is to say yes to all the right things and no to all the wrong things, and to find the right people to support you in chief executive officer role instead of chief everything officer role, and to make the most money and work the least amount inside of your business.
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Some other benefits would be fewer odd promises, fewer pricing exceptions, uh, less information that only lives inside of your brain as the chief everything officer.
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Um, your team gets clearer on the business and on that one definition of success.
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You get an easier business to lead and grow.
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And you get to understand what your weaknesses are and how your strengths can also turn into weaknesses and safeguard against that as well.
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And the rest of it, you don't really need to worry about it.
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You monitor opportunities, you monitor the threats, and you monitor the weaknesses, and you fill those weaknesses with the gaps that are missing from your strengths.
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So I'm going to challenge you to stop spending your resources trying to become less weak and spend your resources trying to become stronger and more knowledgeable about what you do really well in your business and how you want to show up and the type of team that you need to support you in your chief executive officer role.
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And I want you to put more of your resources toward where your genius lives inside of your business so that you can get your life back, founder, because that's what it's all about.
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Getting your life back, funding that role that you want in your business, protecting it, and making sure that you are working for the good of you, your team, and your customers and all the stakeholders in your business, including your people in the industry.
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You could be a pioneer, you could be somebody that is breaking the glass ceiling or creating a new way of doing things that's better for everyone.
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So I encourage you to give it a try and see where you land as far as what do you think your strengths are.
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And obviously, if you need help figuring that part out, I'd be happy to help you.
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That is what I do.
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So book your strategy call, or you can also book a profit and performance visibility assessment with me, which is a little bit of a bigger engagement, but it will give you your roadmap.
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It will let you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, what your opportunities are, and where we can work to build you the business that you really want so that you are chief executive officer and your team is autonomous and accountable.
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I encourage you to check out the links below and thank you for watching today.
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Bye for now.