Ep 567 | How Belief in My Role Created My Belief in Myself w/ Katelyn Saunders

Thank you for joining me. This is not Brian Gubernick. This is Kaitlyn Saunders, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Now, you probably tuned in today to gain some wisdom or knowledge from our friend Brian, but he actually asked me to step in and share something that he and I were just talking about recently. I was sharing with him how I had this breakthrough in the early days of working with him. And honestly, it might be one of the most pivotal moments I've had in my career so far. So I want to share a concept that completely changed the way I saw myself, my role in business, and my role in the future of our business. So if you've ever wondered whether you need to be the one calling the shots to be successful, or if you've questioned your value because you're not the big idea person, or the one who started the business, or the quote-unquote boss, well, you'll probably resonate with what I'm going to share with you. Back in college, I studied entrepreneurial management where I took many business classes. I learned the ins and outs of what made businesses successful. I learned how to start them, how to run them, and I was really excited about the potential of being a business owner. I also grew up watching my parents build their own successful businesses where they were the business owners. They were the ones calling the shots, the ones in charge, and you got it, they were successful. So in my mind, success meant ownership, but, and it meant being the person at the top making the calls. And so I realized if I wanted to be successful, then I had to own the business. So about 7 years ago, I started working with Brian. I started helping him build our company Metrix. And while I loved what I was doing, I always had this underlying feeling or this small inkling that maybe I wasn't living up to my full potential because I wasn't the business owner. I wouldn't say I felt like a failure, but I will say that there was this slight disappointment I had in myself. And then about a year into my role at Metrix, I learned something that made me realize that I had adopted the wrong beliefs and mindset around business ownership. Brian had introduced me to a book called Rocket Fuel, and this was a turning point for me. Rocket Fuel is written by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters, and it's all about the relationship between a visionary and an integrator in a business. So let me break down what a visionary is and what an integrator is. The visionary is typically the founder or the big picture thinker in the business. The one you might call the boss. They're responsible for setting the long-term vision, driving innovation, creating new ideas. They tend to be creative, passionate, future-focused, but they can also be easily distracted or inconsistent when it comes to execution. Which leads me into the Integrator. An Integrator is a person who makes the Visionary's ideas actually happen. They're the glue of the organization. They are responsible for execution, alignment, accountability. They're process-driven, detail-oriented, and excellent at managing people, priorities, projects, you name it. So the Integrator is the one who takes their— the Visionary's vision and they make it real. And then they build the systems, they manage the execution, and they hold everything together to bring that vision to reality. Without integrators, ideas never become reality. So when I read this book, it was literally like flipping a switch in my brain. I immediately realized that I was in an integrator role, which didn't mean that I was a step down. In fact, I started to really understand that. This role is what every successful business needs. I understood that this is what our business needed and what Brian needed in order to bring his ideas to life within our business. So once I understood this, I started to really own my role and really see how critical I was for the success of our business. And I stopped feeling like I had to be the one with the grand vision or all the bright ideas to be valuable because I was valuable. I was making our visions happen. Even today in my role at Metrics, Ben and Brian are the visionaries. They cast the vision for where the business is going or new ideas they want to bring to our mastermind members. But what I love is I get to take that, their vision, and figure out how we're going to get there. I go build the roadmap, I create the systems and I even get to exercise a little bit of a visionary muscle as I design some of these solutions or some of the resources that we use to get to the end result. So I don't want this to come across as boastful or egotistical and make it sound like the integrator is the most important person, because you need both. You need the integrator and the visionary, but I do wanna emphasize how important it is to know. How important you are in your role. And if you're the integrator, that you actually do bring value to the business. So if you're a business owner, or dare I say, a visionary listening right now, I want to challenge you to think about your integrator. Do you have one? Are you empowering them? Because if you truly want to scale, you can't do it without someone in that role. And not just someone filling it, but someone who really understands it, owns it, and that feels backed by you, backed by your trust. Brian empowered me to excel in my role as an Integrator, and without that, I definitely wouldn't be where I am today. And to be honest, our business might not be where it is today either. So read Rocket Fuel, have your Integrator read it too, help them start to see the value they bring to your business, and then Quite honestly, get out of their way and let them do their thing. So if you're a fellow Integrator listening, or you think you might be an Integrator, I want to speak directly to you. You bring real foundational value to any business that you're in, and I want you to remember that you don't need to be the person who started the business to lead with impact. But I also want to challenge you. Is there a part of your life, another project, a side hustle, a passion, where you could step into more of a visionary role? Where you maybe get to dream a little or stretch that other muscle? Because the truth is, you can have both. You can be an integrator in one space and a visionary in another. And it's fun because I'm actually working on a couple side hustles myself right now, and I do play more of a visionary role in some of those. And then I come back and I work with Ben and Brian in metrics and I'm an integrator. So I get to play both of those roles. This concept of the visionary versus the integrator gave me the confidence early in my career. And when I finally understood my worth in my role, it quite literally changed the way that I started to bring myself to the table. And how I started to show up in our business. So I hope it gives you something to think about, whether you're leading the vision, bringing it to life, or maybe you're doing a little bit of both. Whatever role you're in, the important thing is that you own it and you master it and you never stop growing inside of it, because of course that's what No Days Off is all about. So if this resonated with you, I invite you to share it with someone who needs to hear it, maybe a teammate or a business partner, maybe your Integrator. And if you haven't read Rocket Fuel, go grab it. It's a game changer. I promise it's going to make a difference in your world. So with that, let's wrap this up the way our friend Brian would. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get after it.