71. Outgrowing Your Growth Capabilities

Foreign Kenny Chapman here, your host of leadership in a nutshell, where we're cracking the code of the driven mind that you and I have been blessed with. And today we're in episode 71 where I want to talk to you about outgrowing your growth capability. Now there's no question we've seen a run here in the last 18 to 24 months of contractors in the home service space and service businesses and many, many markets and verticals are having massive growth. Private equity, you know, Wall street has come to Main street like we haven't seen in probably 15 years. Ish, maybe maybe even a little bit longer than that. We've seen a couple of roll ups in my career, maybe three now. And as these different things happen, there's scalability that takes place, there's some massive growth that takes place. And my responsibility is to help you think about your thinking as a driven leader. And today I want you to think about where you could be outgrowing your own growth capabilities. And when I say growth capabilities, I'm talking about yourself as a leader. I'm talking about your team of leaders that you have at the business, talking about maybe your technology, maybe your training, maybe your coaching, maybe your communication. Like there's a lot of things that go into what our own growth capability is. And so I want you to think about or write down speed and scale and those are two words that are being thrown around a lot. And obviously with different possible tax laws changing and Wall street wanting to gobble up as much as possible, there's been speed of acquisition like we may never seen before. There's scalability that is definitely having some massive short term growth. Time will tell if it's going to be long term or not. I think when Wall street meets Main street, if there's not massive communication, training and indoctrination into cultures, there will be some challenge and pain as well as massive opportunity that follows as some of these different types of things shake out. I want you to think about speed and scale, whether you sold, whether you work with private equity, whether you're a principal at a private equity firm. I don't know if who's listening today or who is listening to this podcast specifically, but I want you to think about speed and scale, what's right for you. Okay. So you know, I'm fortunate enough to work with a couple million dollar businesses that have revenue, turnover of a couple million, as well as friends that do a half a billion dollars in revenue. And I'm able to share experience and coach in different perspectives around both of those types and sizes of business. And what I know is that speed and scale is very intimate. Speed and scale is very personal. And when we give up what it is to us and try to do it for something other than our own desire of growth, because our careers and our businesses are simply creative expressions for us. Those of you that are entrepreneurs on the line, you became an entrepreneur as a creative expression. And now how you're having success is really how well you're learning the lessons and what you're willing to change. And as a business leader, as a manager on the line, if you're with us today, as you're thinking about your position, is a creative expression of who you are. You became a leader for a reason, and that's because you want to share this. Now what happens is there's market pressures, there's financial pressures, there's supply chain pressures, there's all kinds of different pressures which kind of influence and impact speed and scale of growth. And I want you to really kind of think about this and be honorable and I'll share a quick client experience here in a minute with you. But the reality is it's okay if you want to go really fast and it's okay if you want to grow at 10%. It's not about that. I've talked about different levels of growth and different speeds of growth on this podcast in the past. And really, I want you to be mindful that you're honoring your truth and your team capability before you lay on more. Because what I'm seeing in acquisition is there's very fragmented acquisitions happening that are bringing teams together that aren't used to playing the game together. And what that creates is a lack of a growth capability. And so when you think about your own team, you know, how long you've been playing the game together, how focused you are on growth, how intentional you are on growth, what it means to grow is that top line focus, is that bottom line focus, is that stock price, is that profit sharing? What does that mean to you? It means different things. Because what's fascinating is some companies are chasing the next turn, meaning that, you know, in the private equity game where you sell the entire operation every five to seven years, you gotta hit certain stack, you gotta get revenue, you gotta get your EBITDA in a certain place. You gotta have for owners doing earnouts different, there's a speed and urgency that doesn't generally exist for the smaller, closely held family business that's building a legacy that plans to be around for the next 15 or 20 years. There are two completely different methods of operation. One's not right and the other one's not wrong. One's not good or one's not bad, although sometimes there's some fallout that creates pain for people, but people sign up for pain a lot of times as well. And so I just want to think about your own situation, because we're seeing a lot of scale that doesn't have growth capacity and capability behind it. So we're seeing companies really outgrowing their growth capability. And I was, you know, just thinking about you today before recording this, as. As an operator, as a leader in the home service space that I. I want you to just be aware that, you know, change is very challenging for most people. So you may be loving it, you may be engaged, you may be diving in, you might be going deeper and deeper and want to go faster and faster, but you're also the one that might be tasked with saying, hey, I want to add five more trucks by the end of the next quarter. Like, okay, cool. Well, that creates a lot of complexity for the people that have to go get that done. Now, I'm not saying don't do it and don't go as fast as you want to go. I'm saying understand what the capability of the team is of executing what it is you're asking to be executed. Right. So I personally live by kind of a mantra or a belief system where I can accomplish anything in the world as long as I only have to play in unique, unique ability. As long as I don't have to do anything I don't want to do or I'm not good at, I can do anything. And people laugh at me. And people call me crazy for that. But I'm also building and continue to build companies and structures and teams that are in their own unique ability. Because I want to be in my unique ability, I understand the value of it. But what that means is sometimes we can't go as fast as I might want to go. I can see double in the company in the next three months, but our capability may not be there. And that could be a limiting belief that I say that it's for you to actually think through. And my role here as a leader in the space, as a coach in the space, is simply to challenge you to think about your thinking. And today I want you to think about that speed and scale, what's right for you, what's right for your team. It can't be right for your team and not right for you. If you're the Leader like, you've gotta have team that wants to grow. You can't have an abundance minded leadership team full of scarcity minded frontline team either. You can't have an abundance minded president and a scarcity based CEO or vice versa, right? So you've got to be mindful of what these things are and understand change is challenging for people. But your responsibility is to honor that and then help people guide through that. And I really want you to start honoring your own role and your own capability of being able to leverage and honor other people's behavior. So I think that one of the number one skills of a leader is being able to leverage the skill of other team. And as people continue to elevate with your organization, like that's what it's all about. And the top leaders in the world understand how to leverage other things. And you know, I think it's about really leaning into who you are. And I'll do some deeper spiritual podcasts in the future about kind of going deeper into what I'm talking about. But today's not about that. Today's about your own scale and the speed in which you want to go and really honoring that. And I had a client call me recently and they said, man, I'm just, I'm having a rough week. I'm in a funk. I know I'm going to be, I'm working through it and you know, it is. But I just wanted to touch base and ask you. He's one of my life architecture clients and I was, I do some deep level, you know, work that's not specific around the business, but it's around him as a leader and his own thinking process. So when he hits a wall, he gives me a buzz and he's like, you know, I know things are going great, but I'm feeling a little challenged. I feel like we're, you know, have some things dropping through the cracks. First of all, give me a head shake or a hell yeah. If you've ever felt like you're growing fast and things might be slipping through the cracks, right? It's part of the growth cycle. Most people attach pain to growth, so they call it growing pains, but it's part of the growth cycle, right? And it's just something that you want to be aware of and mindful of. And so this individual called me and said, man, I'm just not sure this is going on. We're adding another location at the moment and we've got this going on. And then I realized, oh my God, there's this different stuff. And he reflected back to me where when they were adding their next location, I was saying, what are some things that you are pretending you don't know yet that might show up in that new location? I like asking questions for people to think I might know what I think, but I don't have any answers. People have answers, but that need the right question to unlock them. And the same is true with you. And that's why I do this podcast, to just get you to ask yourself some questions or maybe ask yourself a question based on something I've asked you and then you have the answer. I don't have the answer. I know this business inside and out. I know the human brain inside and out. I know the subconscious mind inside and out. But you know your path and your walk and your business and your team. So this is about you. It's not about me. And so today I just really want you to kind of think about that and think about this person was like, oh, my gosh, we're going so fast. And I got these different things happening. And I said, remember when I asked you a while back of what are we missing from leadership training? What are we missing from leadership capability as we scale? Because we're in the human skill business, we're in the human development business, and we can only scale our businesses at a rate that human skill can keep up with. And the challenge of why you see some really grow fast for short periods, and then they retract back to a smaller area because anybody can up a marketing budget, can add a few trucks and get a pop, but if you don't up leadership capability and capacity for growth, then you're not going to be able to sustain the growth. It's a very. It's a very fluid thing. And so for you, whether you're experiencing rapid growth, whether you're experiencing growth that's kind of slow and moving along, very methodical, or you're wanting to experience faster growth, anything is fine. We have clients that double every year, and they're at 6, $8 million range now, gonna do 12 and 14 this year. We've got clients growing at 30, 40% on 20 million in revenue. Like, there's massive growth that. That is taking place from what I see and what I'm involved in, but it doesn't mean that it's right. We also have clients that are 4 million that want to go to 6 million in the next three years. And that's fine. Whatever it is, is fine for you. So I want you to think about the race is against yourself. But you are only going to be able to sustain the growth that is done within growth capability. So maybe if you want to grow more, it's time to elevate capability. What about that? Or are you outgrowing your growth capability? I would encourage you, like my client, to take a step back and say, what do I already know about this growth phase that is going to need to be addressed? But I'm kind of just waiting for it to show up and then address it. You already know, my friend, you've got a gut. You know what's in your gut. You're aware of some of these things. Reach out to somebody, have a conversation, reach out to a coach maybe. But whatever it is, you know, whoever you get your advice from, this is not a blue collar success group podcast. This is a Leadership in a Nutshell podcast for the home service space. I don't care who you belong to or who you work with. I'm just telling you, get good answers to good questions. And sometimes the best question is the question that you get asked for you to find your answer. That's what it's about. Keep growing, keep elevating your capability. And until we talk, my friend, make it a better than fantastic week. This has been episode 71 of Leadership in a Nutshell. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.