In this episode of Executive Connect, Chris Prenovost joins the show to talk about scaling, delegation, accountability, and how founders can grow a business without sacrificing their sanity in the process. Chris explains what actually changes at the one million and ten million dollar stages, why meeting cadence and scorecards matter so much, and how leaders can move from technician to manager to entrepreneur. He also breaks down the difference between delegating tasks and delegating accountability, why founders struggle to let go, and how better clarity creates more ownership across the team.

 

This conversation also explores fulfillment, burnout, profit, team trust, and what legacy means when the business becomes bigger than the founder. It is especially useful for entrepreneurs, owners, and leadership teams who want more structure, better delegation, and a healthier path to growth.

Chapters:

(0:00) Why frustration at work usually starts in the mirror

(0:26) Meet Chris and what changes at one million and ten million

(3:34) The systems that help businesses scale without chaos

(4:49) Delegating tasks versus delegating accountability

(10:17) Why founders struggle to let go

(12:36) How to decide what, when, and who to delegate

(14:52) The real cost of waiting too long to delegate

(16:44) Ownership culture, clarity, and the MMO framework

(26:27) Why great leaders ask more and tell less

(30:51) Fulfillment, burnout, and why success should feel worth it

(37:22) Chris answers quick questions on growth, profit, and leadership

(40:25) Final thoughts on fixing the root problem instead of reacting all day

Chris

(0:00) Anybody who’s unhappy, who’s frustrated with the results they’re getting, whether it be lack of profit, frustration with your team, just not getting the results you’re after, stop and look in the mirror and focus on what am I doing to fix this? (0:16) Because if you’re just getting frustrated and you’re not being very purposeful and intentional and systematic in what you’re doing to address those things, then there’s opportunity there.

Melissa

(0:26) What if scaling your business didn’t mean that you have to sacrifice your sanity? (0:32) Today’s guest, Chris Prenneveau, has built and sold multiple companies, made the Inc. (0:39) 5000 list, and still believes success isn’t worth it unless you actually enjoy the ride.

(0:45) From hitting million-dollar ceilings to mastering the art of delegation, Chris is here to show that growth doesn’t have to come at the cost of happiness or control. (0:56) Welcome, Chris. (0:58) Now, let’s start with those infamous ceilings entrepreneurs hit, the one million mark, the ten million dollar mark.

(1:05) You’ve been there and guided plenty of others through it. (1:09) What really changed at each stage and what does it take to break through those different levels?

Chris

(1:15) You know, I think it’s an interesting question because there are certain things that are different at the different stages of business growth and there are certain things that are the same, right? (1:25) And when we talk about, you know, reinforcing the purpose and just making sure that that is crystal clear for everybody in the organization, that’s one of those things that never changes, right? (1:37) Everybody on the team needs to fully understand why we exist as a company, why we’re here, our values, our principles, those types of things, and that should just be consistent.

(1:49) But when you talk about, you know, being at the one million dollar stage and kind of everybody’s wearing all the hats mode, we’re still kind of, everybody just tackles everything, right? (2:03) It’s like watching a bunch of kindergartners play T-ball, right? (2:08) It’s like tackle T-ball.

(2:09) The ball gets hit and everybody runs to it. (2:12) And that’s probably okay when you’re a startup. (2:16) You’ve got a couple people, but as you scale and grow the business, it becomes much more important to put some processes in place, some clear lines of accountability, decision-making, responsibility, those types of things, so that we can kind of let go of some of those.

(2:34) And shift, like they talked about in the e-myth revisited by Michael Gerber, he talks about the technician to manager to leader, entrepreneur kind of transition. (2:47) And you’ve got to, as the entrepreneur, you probably started doing the work. (2:53) At some point, you’re going to hire some people, delegate some things, shift to managing a few people.

(3:00) And at some point, you probably have to shift if you want to continue to scale the business to being more of a leader and entrepreneur type mindset. (3:09) Those are very different skill sets. (3:11) The job looks very different.

Melissa

(3:14) Yeah, definitely. (3:15) So at one million, everyone is doing everything like you mentioned. (3:20) At 10 million, what new risks emerge around the efficiencies and overhead that you’re referencing with systems?

(3:30) What kind of systems did you put in place at that break point?

Chris

(3:34) I was very lucky because I engaged with Michael Erath, the founder of Next Level Growth in my business at about $5 million. (3:43) So we engaged a little earlier than 10 million, which was great because it set us up to be able to scale rapidly through that ceiling. (3:52) So we talk about things like having the right meeting cadences in place with the right levels of people, having the right scorecards in place so everybody understands what success looks like in their role, clear priorities for everybody in the organization.

(4:08) So it’s not just the owner, manager, leader, owning all of the strategic decisions and all of that stress associated with that and everybody else is doing the work. (4:21) You’ve got to disperse that a little bit and get that load spread out with other people. (4:28) It’s too much weight for one person to bear.

(4:30) And having the systems and processes and frameworks in place to be able to do that is really, really critical.

Melissa

(4:38) Yeah, well said. (4:40) I agree. (4:40) I think systems are everything.

(4:42) I use them personally and professionally. (4:44) Everything has a system and it’s how I get things done the fastest and most efficient. (4:49) I want to talk about one of my favorite subjects and something that I had to learn and it took me a long time to get this down, the art of delegation.

(4:57) And one of the biggest growth constraints I see is delegation and leadership. (5:03) And so you make a strong distinction between delegating tasks and delegating accountability. (5:09) Walk us through the difference and what that means.

Chris

(5:12) Yeah, so if you think about that technician to manager to entrepreneur transition, right? (5:17) The technician to manager, you can get by with delegating tasks, right? (5:22) Hey, here’s the task.

(5:23) Go do this. (5:24) It takes me five minutes to explain that to somebody. (5:27) If it’s a 20 minute task, I save 15 minutes, right?

(5:32) The problem is, is they’re going to come back 15 minutes later and say, okay, what next boss? (5:37) And you’ve got to then delegate another task, right? (5:41) So you’re continually having to have hands-on management, inspection, expectations, all these things.

(5:49) So it’s just, it’s a, you’re just changing your work a little bit, right? (5:53) And there’s a big difference when we say, go do this and they come back and say, go do this and they come back and go do this versus when you say, hey, here’s what success really looks like for this project or this section of the business, right? (6:07) And you say, here’s all the boundaries that are associated with that, right?

(6:11) Think about it like playing football, right? (6:15) You’ve got sidelines, there’s rules, there’s an end zone, there’s a clear, clear success metric there. (6:22) You’re going to go score a touchdown.

(6:23) There’s rules to play by, right? (6:25) You can’t go off sides. (6:27) You can’t grab a face mask, these types of things.

(6:30) So think of that like your playbook that you’re giving to the team, right? (6:35) And then you’ve also got your actual playbook where it says, okay, you’re going to give the ball to the running back. (6:40) He’s going to go to the right.

(6:41) These guys are going to block this way. (6:42) It’s really clear whose job it is to do what. (6:48) And then it’s really clear where the success metric is.

(6:51) They know that their job is to go score touchdowns, right? (6:56) The coach is not on the field with them yelling in their ear, go right, go left, right? (7:02) If that’s how we had to play games, they wouldn’t be very fun to watch and they probably wouldn’t get very far.

(7:09) But because we have these rules in place, these boundaries and success metrics and process playbooks, now we can get really clear as far as your job is to go score touchdowns, right? (7:24) That that allows is it allows decision-making at a lower level. (7:29) Those players on the field can then decide, go right, go left, go block that guy, right?

(7:35) Versus having to tell them exactly what to do every step of the way. (7:39) And that’s a really big distinction between the task delegation versus the goal project success delegation. (7:47) And it’s much more effective in the long run to delegate at that level.

(7:56) Okay. (7:56) A couple of different reasons. (7:58) The biggest one of which I think is when you delegate the success to somebody, they’re the ones who are on the field.

(8:08) They’re playing the game, right? (8:10) They’re seeing things that the leadership team up top is not seeing. (8:14) Okay.

(8:15) Especially as you scale the organization and grow, the leadership team, by definition, is going to become further and further detached from the actual work. (8:25) So if it’s just the leadership team up in their ivory tower talking about do it this way, do it that way, that’s very different than the people down in the work doing the work who are saying, you know, I can make it a little bit better by doing this. (8:39) I can improve the process by doing that.

(8:41) I can keep the customer happy by doing that. (8:44) That’s better because you have dispersed decision making. (8:48) But beyond that, you’ll have a better level of ownership of the actual success.

(8:54) What I mean by that is if your employees are just doing exactly what you tell them to do, if they follow the process exactly as you lined it out, you have every SOP and every step is documented, and you don’t achieve success. (9:14) It’s a failure. (9:15) Whose fault is that?

(9:17) It’s yours at the leadership, right? (9:19) Because you told them exactly what to do. (9:22) If you tell them what success looks like and they’re able to manage some of the smaller decisions along the way, they’ll take ownership of that.

(9:30) Whose fault is it when it fails? (9:31) Now it’s the employee’s fault, right? (9:35) But the better question is, whose fault is it when it succeeds?

(9:40) Now it’s the employee’s fault that it succeeded too. (9:43) So they will figure out ways to go win. (9:46) They will figure out ways to go score touchdowns for you.

(9:49) If you give them a little bit of lateral space to maneuver in, a little bit of ownership, it creates so much better engagement, retention, buy-in, stickiness with your team. (10:04) It’s just so much better for idea generation and it’ll really help propel the business forward if you can share that ownership with other folks, not just to keep all at the top.

Melissa

(10:17) Yeah, and also giving the freedom to do things a little bit different. (10:21) I know when I was first working through delegation, a lot of times I would want it done one way and other people had different visions and sometimes giving people the freedom to do things differently than the way we see it. (10:36) And I’ve seen a lot of founders struggle pretty regularly with delegation and emotionally letting go.

(10:45) So I’m curious to get your perspective on why do founders struggle so much with letting go and it’s just hard for them to do. (10:56) Ready to lead smarter and invest wiser? (10:59) On the Executive Connect podcast, we unpack executive strategies for wealth and influence.

(11:06) Hit the subscribe button now. (11:08) Don’t just watch, act.

Chris

(11:10) Yeah, there are a lot of different reasons that people hang on to things, particularly as founders. (11:19) If you think about it, your name is probably attached to that business, your friends, your family, your community. (11:26) They know you as the business and the business is you.

(11:32) And it’s interesting because I think, especially in today’s day and age, especially with men, so much of our identity comes from our work. (11:43) So you’ve got that kind of personal connection to the work and it’s difficult sometimes to let go of those things because of that attachment. (11:52) A couple other things that I see a lot of times is some of the work we don’t like doing.

(11:59) I was not a fan of keeping the books. (12:02) Not my strong suit. (12:05) And we have this bias in our brain where we kind of assume that we’re normal, so other people are like us.

(12:12) And in that instance, well, I don’t like doing the books, so nobody else likes doing the books. (12:18) I don’t want to put that on somebody else. (12:21) If this is not a fun task, if it’s a horrible thing that somebody has to go do, I don’t want to burden somebody else with that.

(12:29) So there’s another bias that can come into it, is we don’t want to put those things on other people. (12:34) Yeah.

Melissa

(12:36) Now let’s talk a little bit about the who, what, and when, as far as the delegation piece. (12:42) So it sounds great in theory to easily delegate a task and tell people, please do this assignment, but really it’s messy in practice if we’re not clear in what our expectation is. (12:57) So how do leaders decide what to delegate, when to delegate, and who gets the ownership of that task?

Chris

(13:06) So a couple of different questions there. (13:08) First, what to delegate? (13:10) I would start with the things you don’t like doing or you’re not good at.

(13:15) So for me, it was the bookkeeping. (13:17) I wanted that off of my plate because I didn’t like it. (13:21) I was pretty good at it though.

(13:23) I’m detail-oriented, so I did a good job, but I didn’t like it. (13:26) It didn’t give me life. (13:28) So that was one of the first things I wanted to get off of my plate.

(13:32) When it comes to who to delegate to, you’ve got to make sure you trust that person, right? (13:41) And trust on a couple different wavelengths here, right? (13:44) Trust that they actually have the skill set and ability to do the work, but also trust that, like I was handing off bookkeeping.

(13:51) You’ve got fraud concerns, theft, all kinds of funky things that can come into play there. (13:57) So you’ve got to have a decent level of trust there. (14:00) You also want to look at what excites that person, right?

(14:03) And that was one of the things that really allowed me to let go of bookkeeping. (14:07) Because again, going back to what I said, I didn’t think people liked bookkeeping, right? (14:12) But there are some weird people out there in the world who do.

(14:16) Luckily, I found one and she’s great at it, right? (14:19) She really, she gets excited about making sure that all the numbers are correct and the reporting and all that. (14:25) So she was adamant about like, give me that.

(14:28) I want this piece. (14:29) Let me do this for you. (14:31) And finally, I relinquished that and I was pleasantly surprised.

(14:36) She actually does a better job at it than I did, right? (14:40) Which allowed me the margin now to go and do other things that I love in the business and stop doing that thing that I didn’t enjoy doing. (14:49) Much more life-giving.

Melissa

(14:52) Now, what’s the cost of waiting to delegate or not delegating or delegating too late?

Chris

(15:00) You know, kind of goes back to the intro, right? (15:02) Like the biggest part for me is you get stuck in your business doing things you don’t love. (15:09) And that can cause a huge internal conflict for an entrepreneur.

(15:14) Because if you are not in love with your business, you can learn to resent it. (15:21) You can become disengaged. (15:23) You can start to withdraw, right?

(15:25) That’s a really dangerous place to be as an entrepreneur. (15:28) So that’s first and foremost, right? (15:31) We want to make sure that we are excited about our business because we put so much time and effort into this.

(15:38) So much blood, sweat, and tears. (15:41) You should get a meaningful return on that. (15:44) Part of that comes from satisfaction.

(15:48) And if you can get those parts of the business that you don’t like doing off of your plate, find somebody who enjoys doing that task, that area of the business, hand it to somebody you trust. (16:00) They’re actually going to benefit from that because they get to level up. (16:05) They get to become more engaged.

(16:07) You actually benefit from it because you’re not having to take your time and put your energy into those areas of the business that you don’t like. (16:18) You can then refocus that time and energy into the parts of the business where you do like it. (16:22) And you provide the most value to the business.

(16:26) You’re most effective in those roles. (16:28) So it’s really critical as you scale to figure out where your strengths are, find people who will fill in those weaknesses and start to hand off those things and create that clarity as far as accountability goes.

Melissa

(16:44) I want to talk on one of my newest favorite topics, ownership and building a culture of ownership versus blame the blame game, the victim game, somebody else’s job, all the things that are the exact opposite of taking ownership and building a culture of ownership. (17:03) And so you teach a clear framework mission, most critical outcomes and obsession.

Chris

(17:09) Yep.

Melissa

(17:10) Break that down and explain to us why it creates clarity instead of control.

Chris

(17:17) Yeah. (17:17) So clarity is key, right? (17:21) To be unclear is to be unkind.

(17:23) And I, you know, one of the things I think I’ve just come to realize over time is most of our frustrations are because we did not create clear expectations up front. (17:36) Okay. (17:37) And I’ll take that one step further.

(17:40) You can’t drive accountability around an expectation. (17:45) You can only drive accountability around an agreement, right? (17:49) You have to create the clarity with the expectation first.

(17:52) The person on the receiving end has to agree to it, buy into it. (17:56) Then you can hold them accountable for whatever they agreed to, right? (18:00) Nobody wants to be the person who doesn’t do what they say they will do, but they don’t really have a problem not doing what you say they will do.

(18:09) There’s like an internal difference there, right? (18:12) So the system we teach is called the MMOs, the mission, most critical outcome and the obsessions. (18:17) And if you think about accountability, one of the problems with it is many people overcomplicate it, right?

(18:27) There are some people out there with job descriptions that are five pages long. (18:32) Good luck trying to hold somebody accountable for that, right? (18:36) If you can’t remember it like that, you can’t remember what their expectations are, they can’t remember it either, right?

(18:44) So you got to make sure it’s simple enough to where you can keep those things top of mind. (18:51) On the other side of the equation, you’ve got some systems and processes out there that are too simple, right? (18:56) They don’t create enough clarity regarding what success looks like.

(19:00) And we think we’ve really cracked the code here with the MMOs because it creates clarity in a simple manner, okay? (19:07) So let me run you through what that means. (19:08) The mission is a one sentence, simple statement.

(19:13) What does success look like for that seat? (19:16) Okay, one sentence. (19:18) And don’t overthink it here, right?

(19:21) A lot of times I’ll see people try to create a sentence that’s really a paragraph. (19:25) It’s like, no, just keep it super simple, right? (19:29) The most critical outcome is if you had to measure one thing for each seat on your chart, on your accountability chart, your organizational chart, if you had to measure one thing, what would you measure to tell you that you are getting a strong return on investment for the payroll dollars you’re spending with that seat?

(19:48) Are they earning their paycheck, right? (19:50) And for every single seat on your bus, I guarantee you we can find one thing you can measure that would say, yep, they’re earning their paycheck. (19:58) The obsessions are the handful of things that we want that person obsessing about while they’re in pursuit of their mission, okay?

(20:07) And obsession is a strong word, which shows it intentionally. (20:10) We want them thinking about this constantly, right? (20:13) And when I say handful of things, it’s typically somewhere between like two and six items, okay?

(20:19) So let’s look at what a mission would be for, let’s say a salesperson. (20:26) If you think about sales, sales is easy. (20:28) It’s pretty industry agnostic.

(20:30) Everybody can relate to this. (20:32) But if you think about the mission of a salesperson, right? (20:36) So marketing is going to generate the leads.

(20:38) The salesperson, their mission is generally to take this lead that they’ve been given and convert it into a customer, right? (20:47) So the mission is really simple to build relationships with your prospects and convert them into paying clients, right? (20:55) A lot of times I’ll see something like, and set up operations for success, right?

(21:02) So if your salesperson is doing those things, building relationships, converting prospects to clients, and setting up operations for success, you’re generally pretty happy with your salesperson, right? (21:14) Most critical outcome, what are you going to measure? (21:17) It’s super easy on sales.

(21:18) What’s their revenue number? (21:19) What was their sales number, right? (21:21) It’s a trailing indicator that says they earned their check, right?

(21:26) I see people around sales all the time trying to measure things like how many appointments did they set? (21:31) How many presentations? (21:32) How many quotes did they send?

(21:33) Those are leading indicators. (21:36) You could theoretically set a million meetings and sell $0, right? (21:41) At the end of the day, the sales is what really matters.

(21:46) The obsessions, okay, anybody who has direct reports, who has anybody who’s below them on the accountability chart, their first one is always to lead, manage, retain, and hold my team accountable, okay? (21:58) They’ve got to build a team and lead a team that’s doing the stuff. (22:02) That’s first obsession.

(22:03) The second one that belongs on everybody on the accountability chart seat, they have to interact with the playbooks in some way, okay? (22:13) They’re either going to own the playbooks, they’re going to drive the playbooks with their team, or they’re going to follow and execute all the playbooks, okay? (22:21) So if you were talking about a salesperson, they are going to follow and execute all of the sales processes, okay?

(22:28) That’s a loaded statement, right? (22:31) Because it means they’ve got to do all the stuff and all the processes, right? (22:35) The third one that belongs on everybody’s seat is to meet or exceed all of my goals and metrics.

(22:42) So that’s how you bring in the other leading indicators there. (22:46) So now we’ve got leading indicators, we’ve got the MCO, we’ve got all the obsessions. (22:51) Every once in a while, I’ll see somebody add a couple other ones.

(22:55) In my company, urgency was key. (22:59) Speed wins in sales, and we found out that our competitors were really slow at responding. (23:04) So each individual salesperson owns a sense of urgency, okay?

(23:11) They own setting up operations for success, because that was a big issue we were having, was they would go sell something and wouldn’t provide the right information to operations to be able to actually deliver on that something. (23:25) So we want to put that in there as an obsession. (23:28) So they have like four obsessions, and now you’ve got clarity regarding what that person’s mission is.

(23:34) They can probably tell you, my job is to go convert sales, build relationships, and set operations up for success, right? (23:41) I’m measured on how much did I sell, and these are the things I got to obsess about. (23:46) You can fit that on half a page, right?

(23:49) If you get clarity now, every single person can keep those things top of mind, and they know what success actually looks like. (23:56) The likelihood of them achieving that success goes way up.

Melissa

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(24:23) Just visit moneyripples.com forward slash secrets and enter the promo code EXEC. (24:31) Yeah, there’s so much in that, so much to unpack, but one of the things I love that you said, I’ve had so many job descriptions in my career. (24:42) All of them were a page or more in length, and the longer I stayed at the company, the more my job expanded.

(24:52) What I was originally measured on and what the future I was measured on, there were so many different buckets, so what’s top of mind? (25:00) If we correlate to what you were saying, if you’re a salesperson, but you’re supporting delivery and you’re supporting the marketing team and you’re supporting all these different divisions, you’re not really selling. (25:13) What happens is what you’re supposed to be doing and what you’re supposed to get graded on, and what’s clear in your job role, you’re not actually doing, you’re distracted.

(25:23) I love that you said that, getting really clear and really obsessed with your role. (25:28) As a salesperson, I love that you said, really at the end of the day, sales is signed contracts, not I’ve done a hundred calls today, or I’ve booked whatever meetings, or I had these many leads, it’s really closing deals. (25:42) Keeping whatever your role is front and center into a couple things and getting really clear and really obsessed is that’s how not only companies win, but employees win in their jobs because we know this, we all think we can multitask and do a hundred things at one time, but really after a while, we have so many open tabs in our brain.

(26:04) We either burn out or don’t get what we need to get done. (26:09) It’s so simple in thinking about it, but it’s something that in small companies, it’s easy to have job description creep when there’s less people working at a company. (26:21) Really getting clear on who’s doing what and wrap accountability around it is so true.

(26:27) I want to switch and talk about asking good questions. (26:32) Something that I love, empowering through questions is really, you said, great leaders empower by asking, not telling. (26:41) That’s a real shift for entrepreneurs because they’re doing a lot of telling and a lot of talking and a lot of leading.

(26:48) What does that look like in real conversations?

Chris

(26:53) I think it starts with the ratio that I’ve heard is God gave you two ears and one mouth, start there. (27:02) You’re right. (27:02) It’s a mindset shift.

(27:04) It’s a style shift from directing people on what to do versus asking them what they think they should be doing. (27:13) Let me tell you a quick story because I think this is pertinent. (27:16) I was at my company about a year ago now and I had an account manager come in and pepper me with a bunch of questions about a job she was working on.

(27:25) How do you think you should do this? (27:27) How much should I charge? (27:28) What materials do you use?

(27:29) All this stuff. (27:31) I just kept asking her questions back. (27:33) Well, what do you think you should do?

(27:34) How much should you charge? (27:36) How would you handle that? (27:38) She got visibly frustrated with me because I was not answering her questions.

(27:43) I kind of chuckled. (27:44) I was like, you look upset. (27:46) What’s going on?

(27:47) She said, I came in here for answers and you’re not answering my questions. (27:50) I said, well, why did you come in here? (27:53) She goes, well, you’ve got 25 years of experience doing this stuff.

(27:56) You know all the answers. (27:58) I said, that’s true, right? (28:00) I can answer every question you ask me, but I want you to understand something.

(28:06) I had to answer these same questions like 25 years ago before I had any of that experience, right? (28:13) But I knew where we were going as a company. (28:16) I knew our purpose.

(28:17) I knew our values. (28:18) I knew how we treated our team. (28:21) I knew it was important to us.

(28:24) I said, you know all that stuff, right? (28:26) And she said, yeah, you talk about it all the time. (28:28) I said, great.

(28:30) Go make a decision. (28:31) I trust you. (28:33) And like a light bulb went off in her head because she understood and realized at that point that the decisions I was making were not based off of 25 years of experience.

(28:43) Now there’s some nuance there, right? (28:45) Some of that stuff plays into it. (28:47) Don’t make the same mistake twice.

(28:50) But the decisions I was making was based off of knowing where we wanted to go as a company, right? (28:55) So if you can empower your team by letting them know your purpose, your vision, all of these types of things so they know where we want to go, push that down into the organization and then ask them how they would handle situations. (29:10) And you can course correct through those asking, right?

(29:13) You want to help lead the horse to the water. (29:15) But again, I go back to it’s their idea, right? (29:20) The solution was their idea.

(29:22) It’s not your idea. (29:23) So they own the failure. (29:25) They own the success.

(29:26) They will be much more engaged in making that thing come to fruition versus if they just did exactly what you told them to do.

Melissa

(29:36) Yeah. (29:37) And I see this repeatedly a lot with founders. (29:42) They’re hiring really great people that are really smart and really good at their job.

(29:47) And then they’re either telling them what to do or solving their problems. (29:51) And then what happens is over time, I don’t want to say they lose respect, but they hired them for a reason, but they’re directing them to do so. (30:00) It’s confusing for the person at the other end.

(30:02) And so training people to solve their own problems and think for themselves and giving them the trust to solve their problem, you’re creating a producer versus somebody that’s going to kind of take your time. (30:16) And so you’re really doing two jobs and solving the problems for them. (30:20) So it’s so true.

(30:21) It’s getting really good at giving your team members the confidence to solve their own problems and empower them to do it. (30:29) And then really, I always say is my job is the leader to keep you on the yellow brick road. (30:35) Your job is to walk the yellow brick road and tell me what I need to know and solve the problems.

(30:40) And so I’m really teaching people to have ownership in what they’re doing. (30:45) So I absolutely agree with everything you said. (30:48) I think it’s so true.

(30:51) Let’s talk about loving what you do. (30:54) First of all, I love talking about loving what you do. (30:56) And I think your career with a really simple belief, life’s too short to be unhappy, even if you own the company.

(31:04) So how do you help leaders reconnect to their joy job and their bliss while still driving performance?

Chris

(31:14) I think it starts with the understanding that there’s only one person on this planet that you can control, right? (31:21) The nice thing is you have full control over that person. (31:25) You can literally decide what to do.

(31:27) And as leaders, that’s where we need to start. (31:29) We need to understand that we are in full control of this one and make sure that everything we’re doing, we’re very intentional about. (31:40) That starts with figuring out what we’re doing, what’s on our task list, what’s on our daily list of things that we’re focused on that we’re not enjoying.

(31:52) Get clear as far as what that is and then start being intentional about offloading some of that stuff. (31:59) We’ve been talking about delegation, right? (32:02) So start getting clear as far as what you’re going to delegate and get those things off of your plate so that you can go and focus on the parts of the business you love, right?

(32:12) You’re going to have much more fun, much more fulfillment and enjoyment. (32:16) But I would venture to say that’s where you’re going to provide the most value to the organization as well. (32:22) If you’re doing things that are constantly driving you nuts and you’re frustrated with, you’re not happy with, you’re going to bring that type of energy.

(32:30) But if you’re doing things that you’re really excited to go do and it’s thrilling, you’re going to bring that type of energy. (32:38) And as a leader of the organization, you set that tone. (32:41) It’s a lot more fun to go to the office, to go to your shop, to go to the job site and do the stuff you love doing.

(32:47) So let’s focus on that, right? (32:50) Let’s be very intentional. (32:51) Let’s control the one we can control to make sure those things happen.

(32:56) You can’t control other people, but you can control everything you’re doing. (32:59) So make sure that what you’re doing is leading to your success and your enjoyment and fulfillment.

Melissa

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Chris

(34:03) I don’t know. (34:05) What is that?

Melissa

(34:08) I don’t know. (34:08) I would say burnout.

Chris

(34:09) Yeah.

Melissa

(34:11) Resentment.

Chris

(34:11) That’s where my mind went was the burnout side. (34:13) It’s where I was, right? (34:15) If I think back to, you know, 10 years into my business, um, we were successful.

(34:22) We were making good money, but we weren’t, we weren’t happy. (34:27) Right. (34:27) And it was to the point where we were going to shut the business down, um, sell it for $0 because it probably had no value to a buyer.

(34:36) Um, or I jokingly say I was going to murder my brother, right? (34:40) Cause we were 50, 50 partners. (34:42) Um, one of those three things was going to happen, um, because we were burnt out and we, we got to the point where it was like no more.

(34:50) And luckily we were able to, to build the systems and framework and do all those things to, to find that fulfillment, right? (35:00) Do all the stuff we’ve been talking about, right? (35:02) Proper delegation, recentering on your purpose, you know, getting clear with your team as far as what that looks like and why, why we’re here, right?

(35:10) Why do we exist as an organization? (35:13) And one thing I want to mention too, as you scale and you grow your organization from zero to a hundred dollars to a million to 10 to a hundred million and beyond, the purpose can change a little bit, right? (35:27) I don’t know that there are some people out there, real visionary type people that when they start their business, they’re, they’re starting it to go take over the world, right?

(35:36) And that’s their aim. (35:37) But there are a lot of people out there that like accidentally start a business, right? (35:43) Their, their, their initial purpose was to like pay their mortgage, right?

(35:48) To, to feed their family. (35:50) And that’s a noble purpose. (35:52) There’s nothing wrong with that.

(35:54) And at some point it’s grown to a million, it’s grown to 10 million. (35:57) It becomes something bigger than just paying the mortgage, right? (36:01) You’ve now got, you know, 50 to a hundred employees.

(36:05) Now you’re talking about paying a hundred mortgages, right? (36:09) That’s very, a very different purpose. (36:11) I think it’s, it’s important that, that the leader of the team really sit back and say, why are we here?

(36:18) Because once you’ve reached this level of, of sustainability, like revenue and sales and profitability are there, and you’re not worried about that so much, you can start working on order and process and those things. (36:30) At some point you can start working on legacy. (36:33) And that is when it becomes really, really fulfilling when you can switch those gears.

(36:38) But that’s that whole evolution from technician to manager, to leader, to entrepreneur. (36:42) Right. (36:43) So it’s fun.

Melissa

(36:45) Yeah. (36:45) And I think it’s, we get energy doing the things we like to do when we’re living in our joy and living in our bliss and we’re happy versus, you know, taking out the trash when we’re enjoying what we’re doing or enjoying our life, life is easier just to take out the trash. (37:01) When you hate your job and hate who you work for and hate what you’re doing, taking out the trash can be so absolutely painful, you know, taking out the trash.

(37:10) And so really finding your bliss is so key. (37:12) And so I want to kind of switch gears on that and talk a little bit about like fast, quick answers, your first instinct on different questions. (37:22) So one sign that a founder needs to let go.

Chris

(37:29) I think it would say, it would start with like, how are they getting up in the morning? (37:33) Like, are they getting up like excited? (37:35) Let’s go.

(37:36) Or are they getting up going? (37:38) Oh, I have to go to work today.

Melissa

(37:41) Biggest myth about control.

Chris

(37:45) It’s overrated and it’s not necessary.

Melissa

(37:50) Best metric for healthy growth.

Chris

(37:54) I think profit. (37:55) I mean, at the end of the day, it’s profitability. (37:58) A lot of people will tell you revenue.

(38:00) And I think revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. (38:04) So having the right profit numbers are really, really what it’s about.

Melissa

(38:09) One question every leader should ask themselves weekly.

Chris

(38:14) Who on my team did I help empower and make better this week?

Melissa

(38:22) I love that. (38:24) Delegation fails most often because of what?

Chris

(38:27) I think it is not delegated. (38:32) It is abdicated. (38:34) They’re not set up for success to start with.

Melissa

(38:38) Yeah. (38:39) Best book. (38:40) Yeah.

(38:40) Right. (38:41) Right. (38:44) Best book for scaling leaders.

Chris

(38:48) Oh, gosh. (38:49) I mean, you can tell you probably can’t see behind me. (38:51) I’ve got a whole bookshelf of stuff behind me.

(38:54) I’ve got to go with the obvious answers, the five obsessions of elite organizations. (38:59) Our book is it is really the key to building that framework and sustainability model of growing your business while not going crazy.

Melissa

(39:09) A red flag in leadership teams.

Chris

(39:14) Oh, gosh. (39:15) So I’ve seen this many times. (39:18) Um, silence.

(39:20) Right. (39:21) When people are afraid to speak up, they’re afraid to push back on each other. (39:26) Somebody gives their opinion and everyone else is just quiet.

(39:30) I know there’s underlying stuff going on.

Melissa

(39:35) Loving the climb starts with what decision?

Chris

(39:41) I think you have to decide where you’re going. (39:45) If you don’t know which mountaintop you’re climbing towards, then you just end up kind of meandering up the hill, going around the hill a few times, chasing a bunch of rabbit trails. (39:57) And that’s not fun.

Melissa

(39:59) I like that. (40:00) OK, final question. (40:01) What does legacy mean to you now?

Chris

(40:05) You know, this has changed as I’ve matured a bit as a as a person, as an entrepreneur, as a leader. (40:12) I think it really comes down to how will I be remembered? (40:17) What is the impact that I am leaving on this earth beyond myself?

(40:22) That’s really what legacy is about.

Melissa

(40:25) That’s great. (40:26) Thank you so much for being here today, Chris, and sharing your knowledge and time with our listeners. (40:31) I want to get any final thoughts that you want to leave and then share a little bit about the best way to connect with you to learn about the good work you’re doing.

Chris

(40:42) Yeah, I would say that just anybody who’s unhappy, who’s frustrated with the results they’re getting, whether it be lack of profit, frustration with your team, just not getting the results you’re after. (40:54) Stop and look in the mirror and focus on what am I doing to fix this? (41:01) Because if you’re just getting frustrated and you’re not being very purposeful and intentional and systematic in what you’re doing to address those things, then there’s opportunity there.

(41:12) Many people, when they are in that state, they’re reactive. (41:16) They’re not being proactive. (41:18) And I think it’s really important just to take a few minutes, let those fires burn.

(41:24) I know it sucks having to deal with the smoldering over there, but you’ve got to figure out where the fuel source is at to the fires so that you can be intentional about going and turning off the fuel source rather than playing firefighter all day long with a fire extinguisher running around trying to put everything out. (41:42) Let those things burn, focus on the fuel source, but turn that off and you’ll be much happier in the end.

Melissa

(41:49) That’s great. (41:50) Thank you so much for being here, Chris. (41:53) That’s the Executive Connect podcast.