Scott Ritzheimer: Bring Predictable Success to your Organization | The Tyler Wagner Show #1115

All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode. Today we got Scott Ritzheimer with us. So welcome to the show, man.

Hey, Tyler, glad to be here. It's fun. I always like to kind of kick off and say a podcast actually totally transformed my life. It allowed us to triple our bottom line as an organization. We added over $1 million in profit in a single year. And totally changed the trajectory of my own personal career as well. Because after I did that, I decided, hey, it's time to sell. There's something else I want to be doing with my life. So I always get a little excited. I get the goosebumps before a podcast, even though, you know, it's just you and me, because I know that the power that something as simple as an episode like this can have to transform someone's life. I know it did it for me, and I hope it does it for somebody else. And so, yeah, I'm excited about this conversation. I've had this really cool opportunity. Just a quick intro to me for anyone who's watching on video. The beard helps a little, but I look like I'm about 14 years old. So the things that I'm about to say, they probably don't add up, but I promise you they're true. I had this really cool opportunity to help launch and scale over 20,000 different organizations. I worked with 20,000 visionary leaders to help them scale their businesses and their nonprofits. It was a total accidental experience getting into it, but it dramatically shaped how I see the world of business and organizations. And it gave me the opportunity to see this thing we call entrepreneurship at scale. Right. And when you see something happen that many times, you start to see patterns. And as we're doing this, it's about 14 years, that, that timeframe of all of this and I started seeing, you know, folks succeed. I started seeing folks fail. We had launched some and they didn't work. We launched others and they were the fastest growing companies and nonprofits in the country. And I started like, why is that? Right? Because there are a lot of things that were similar. It's a visionary leader with a wonderful idea. They had great people around them sometimes. But why is it that some of them failed and some of them didn't? And while there's so many unique stories inside of a pool of that many people, the thing that I started to discover and what Nick nailed me right in the forehead whenever I realized I was in it too, is that we all follow the same pattern. And those that succeeded either intuitively or intentionally recognized the pattern and followed the appropriate steps, and those who failed didn't. And again, when it became real was when I found myself walking in that same pattern, you know, as a CEO, as a founder myself. And the biggest frustration that I experienced as a founder, and I've seen this happen to so many folks, is this feeling of being blindsided, right? Yeah, it feels like every time you figure out the game, something changes, the game changes, right? I heard one person describe it like a Rubik's Cube that's fighting back. You know, the world of entrepreneurs is like a Rubik's Cube that's fighting back. And frankly, there was a point I just got tired of of being tired. I got tired of, you know, not knowing what was in front of me. At first, that was really exciting, right? I felt like there was no map. We were making the map as we went. We were walking into virgin territory and, you know, uh, exploring it all. And that's great while you're winning. Uh, when your profitability starts to fall, or you have a sales rep, a new sales rep that comes in completely fails, or you have a manager that has been walking with you for 10 years and is clearly in over their head, and there's no easy way to get out of it. Like, when you have these big things happen and you still feel like you're walking off the face of the map, it loses its luster really quickly. And, and what I did, you know, like, like a lot of folks do, uh, when I realized I'd kind of reached my own ability to, to figure stuff out, I went out and tried to hire people who could help. We hired a coach, we hired a couple of different consultants, and we went out of the frying pan and into the fire. I lost more money following the well-meaning but incorrect advice of coaches and consultants than I did in any other business endeavor along the way. And that sucks. It's— that's neither here nor there. The hardest part about that was not the money I lost. It was the feeling of isolation I was left with afterward. Because if I couldn't figure it out and I couldn't hire someone else to help me figure it out, then I was truly alone. And, and that's where, again, this podcast kind of interrupts my life. This guy with a funny Irish accent— I can say that because he's now a dear friend and colleague of mine— but he's got this funny Irish accent, starts talking about, you know, really boring business stuff. But it was the very first time I realized I was on a map. It was the very first time that I realized I was actually walking the same journey that everybody else else was. I just couldn't see it because I was so bought into my own uniqueness. And, uh, and, and, and once I understood what the pattern was, once I understood I was in the same story as everybody else, I knew what I needed to do. I had the confidence that if I did it, it would work. And it gave us the impetus, both me as a leader and my team together, to make the changes we needed to make to build a scalable company and achieve what we call predictability. People's success.

Yo, that is actually, um, I mean, one thing at the end that stuck out there was like the uniqueness part. I think that's what happens to a lot of people actually, is they, they like, they think that their situation is different than everybody else's, and it like prevents them from doing like the tried and true things that not necessarily every business does, but It's like maybe a high percentage do that make them successful, right? Like, because, you know, for people that don't know, me and you, we just met a little while ago, but we had one conversation on the phone and I was telling you about how I've scaled my company just with like scaling referrals. And now that you just said that, it just clicked in my head. I've actually literally have heard this. It's not common, but a few times on calls when I brought this up to people, they're like, referrals don't really work with my company. And I'm like, how is that possible? Like, you're telling me that somebody, like, you can't, even if it's not in your niche, right? Just think about it. Because I like to think about this really outside the box. Even if it's not directly in your niche referrals, you could just like tell a bunch of random people about your business, like the postman, like what people at the grocery store, and eventually you'd probably get a referral just like randomly it would occur, be just like likelihood. So I don't know. It's just interesting to me. Like you said there, a lot of times people, they do, they get stuck because they think their situation is like one of one and nothing else out there can work for them. When in reality, yes, some things about you are unique, but in reality, growing a business, there's tried and true practices. And I think in this podcast here, we'll probably learn some of them from you. I would think, right? So, I guess, First question for you, uh, that I have is when you were younger, say like middle school, did you foresee yourself doing anything like you're doing now, or like completely different, uh, vision for your life?

Not even remotely, although fun little tie-in. So in middle school, uh, I had this fascination with, uh, with architecture, uh, and, um, and I, I, I, it was right around that time, uh, a, a One of my teachers gave me a book by Frank Lloyd about buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, and they're just stunning, right? One of them was actually close by and had a chance to go visit it. And it's literally got a waterfall. They built the house on a waterfall and it's just like just the coolest, you know, architecture and you can live in it. It was just this really neat combination. So I was fascinated by it. I would nerd out and draw blueprints for like fun. I was that guy. I was not selling candy on the playground. I was too busy drawing blueprints of future houses. And, and so the idea of entrepreneurship was not something I was really thinking about. It was actually at that time around when I was in middle school that my dad started his first business. And it, it was tough. It was, it was really, really tough. There was all the kind of virtue and promise of it. But I saw firsthand the cost of that, the toll that it took, the volatility that some founders can experience, and wasn't particularly enthused by it. And so there was, however, this underlying fascination with how businesses work. So not necessarily entrepreneurship, but how businesses work and architecture. It's really those two things that now, kind of coming full circle, it really helped create and shape what we do now. So the business that I started, we help folks to scale their businesses, particularly founders. We call it Scale Architects because what has to happen to scale— early-stage growth, some people will call this scaling, but it isn't really scaling. It's just very fast growth. Early stage growth is— it happens by muscle, right? It is growth by multiplication. The more we do, the more we get. We figure out what works and we just do more and more and more of it. We kind of liken it to, you know, running up and down a flight of stairs, right? If we want to get to 1 million, we got to go up 10 flights of stairs. So we hustle up, we throw everyone on our back and we get up there and then we do it all over again. And the next year we're going to go to 11 flights of stairs and the next year 15 and whatever it may be. And it's just sweat equity, right? Like we are just muscling it and making it happen. I know there's a part of your story that you did this. Yeah, yeah.

I'm like thinking in my head.

Volume play, right? It's just do as much as we possibly can. And then, you know, as we're doing that, we can't do it all alone. So we, you know, we go and bring in a team and they start helping us out and they start doing some of it for us. And that has dramatic implications on how we lead and what it means to lead. We can get to that later. But what ends up happening is that type of a growth strategy, right? It only lasts for so long. You will hit some kind of a barrier and it's not inherently a market barrier. In fact, it's actually almost purely internal. We will run into a place where the complexity of our operations actually causes us to cause problems. We'll run into the size of our organization exceeds the way we show up as founder and CEO. We have to stop acting like founder and start acting like CEO. And to do that, to really scale an organization, it's not a— it's not actually about a marketing strategy, although a great marketing strategy, you know, three legs to the whole thing, that's all necessary. To really sustainably scale an organization, you have to build a scalable organization because you can only do so much work for so long, right? The couple of heroes that are driving the growth inside of your company can only take it so far. But if you can move from, you know, the heroic, you know, we call it the fun stage. If you can move from that heroic growth by multiplication and build a scalable organization, then you can move to growth by exponent, right? That's where you can scale to whatever size the market will allow, whatever size you want the company to be. You have the control of knowing when to say no. You have the flexibility of knowing when you can make the big bet and it'll pay off. And but again, to do that, you can't just muscle it through. You have to take a step back and design a scalable company.

Yeah, I think that's probably actually the first mistake most founders make. And I feel like it's almost impossible. It's not impossible not to make, but because for me, and I don't know if I told you this when we last spoke, but my first couple of years I was running a one-on-one coaching business. So instead of high ticket done for you and courses, which is what we do now, I was doing one-on-one coaching, helping people write, upload their books to the publishing platforms, and then setting them up with marketing plans. And it was like low 6 figures for a few years. And that was the max I could hit. And I was doing more work then than I'm doing now. And it was like, it was just insane. Like I had literally like 100 clients at a time. People were texting me for advice. And that's when I very quickly realized, and look, maybe other people can scale this type of business. I don't know. I couldn't figure it out though. Like one-on-one coaching. And I guess, you know, you could move to group coaching. That could work. But I kept trying to do it and I would add more clients, but eventually I just hit a point where I was miserable and I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I switched from coaching. We don't do any coaching anymore. And I went, switched to just done for you and courses. So do you find, is that common? Do you think like a lot of times coaching businesses have struggle scaling or just?

Yeah. So, and here's how I'll describe it. Uh, there are lots of one-on-one coaching businesses that have scaled. So it, it's not that a one-on-one coaching business can't scale. Some models lend themselves to scalability. But here's the thing, coaching businesses are very easy to start. They're very difficult to scale. And it's not for the mechanics of one-on-one coaching. It's for a much deeper and more universal reason. And that is that most coaches set up their business to put them in what I call star player mode. Right. It is where they are the superstar. And it's not an ego play, right? They're very wholesome, wonderful people. It's not like they're making it all about them, but they have completely designed the organization and the offering around them. And no one person scales, right? We all have the same number of hours in a day. We all have the same amount of, you know, we all have a finite ability to use those hours. We can't work all 24 of them. So What happens is that they get stuck, perennially stuck, in star player mode, right? In startup entrepreneur mode. And they, they never really make the leap to being able to bring in other team members that will actually move the business forward. Now, they might have some helpers or a virtual assistant or something like that, and there's a couple things here. One, that's not inherently wrong. There are lots of folks who— that's just, that's all that they want, right? They— now, you don't have to get stuck making low six figures with that. There There's lots of million-dollar coaches out there and there are ways of scaling that. But you have to understand if you are trying to build a solo practice or if you're trying to build a company. And if you're trying to build a company, then you have to do it around systems and structures that other people can run. You either have to get out of the fulfillment side of things or you have to get out of the sales side of things and eventually both to be able to lead it effectively. And so what has to happen is you've got to shift from star player mode to what I call being a captain on the field.

Mm-hmm.

You've got to make the move. Now, what happened for you was the shift in strategy made that easier to do, right? Because it wasn't selling you and your expertise. And, you know, Tyler Wagner will tell you all the things to do. You shifted to, hey, here's the product, here's what we're offering. And it made it much easier for you to make the leap. To that captain on the field stage.

Yeah, no, definitely. And I guess, because yeah, the one idea, and I'm like, some coaches do this, I know, I think Tony Robbins does it, is you actually have coaches underneath you, right? Like they're like trained coaches. So it's not literally Tony coaching you, but Tony trained these people and they're coaching you. And then, you know, if you want one-on-one with Tony, I'm sure it's like, who knows now, like $5 million or something for one-on-one. So that, that's definitely a way to do it now that I think about it. And then obviously the other way is like group coaching, but some people don't want group coaching. So, either way, I guess you're right. Some people have found a way to do it. And I think for me, I probably didn't try that hard actually now I think back to find a way because I was just fed up with coaching. I was like, I actually enjoy it when I do it for free and it's not like so many of clients, but when I was trying to make money with it is the most miserable thing in the world to me.

The coaching profession is an interesting one. It's just a little sidebar on this. The average coach here in the US makes, I think it's $68,000 a year. Huh, that's insane for someone taking the risk and going out on their own and doing all the work that they have to do to develop business and sell theirs themselves. That's insane. Uh, and, uh, and so what ends up happening, and I actually have a couple articles on this on the site, but it sets up something called the doom loop, right? When you're, when you're that razor thin on your income, what happens for coaches, they go in and they, they have a tendency to be too helpful. They say yes to everything, right? Yes, I can help you with your book. Yes, I can help you with your marketing plan. Yes, I can help you with this. Yes, I can help you with that. And in doing so, they fail to ever create a structured process for how they deliver their material. And so what you're able to achieve by getting out of one-on-one coaching is the same thing that coaches have to achieve, even if they're not scaling beyond the solopreneur stage, but to get into that high six figures. I've interviewed a ton of folks for my show. It's called The Secrets of the High Demand Coach. And I've interviewed not just on the show, but actual interviews, close to 1,000 coaches now. The number one thing that separates high demand coaches, right, folks that are making $500,000, $600,000, $1 million, $2 million, $3 million a year, the number one thing that separates them from the rest is that they have a structured process that they use. So whether they're solo or not, and what, what's really cool about that is once you build the structured process, it's very easy to hand off to another coach and it's very easy to hand off to another coach and another coach. So, but you can't do that if you're just saying yes to everything, right? You have to become very, very clear in who you serve and what you do for them. Then you can build the structure to do that. And when you do that, that's what creates the raving fans and the referral engine, to go back to some of your world, that really starts to work very effectively in the coaching community. So that structured process is an enormous part of the problem, uh, problem in the coaching world in particular.

Got it. Yeah, mate. And now that I— there is a lot of coaches. I don't know, it's still— I, I don't know if that industry is probably growing I just remember there was a time where I felt like I was living in San Diego and I felt like everybody was a coach. Like, I literally just like meet people and they'd be like, I'm a coach on this, I'm a coach. But maybe it was just kind of like that community or something. But literally like everybody, you'd be like, I coach, I'm a life coach, or I'm a business coach or whatever. And it was like every single person in that town was a coach. And I was like, how are we all succeeding? Here. We all, we're all coaching each other on different things, I guess. But either way, so, okay, so then when you're younger, your dad starts the company and that, that kind of was your first insight on entrepreneurship. What were, what were some of your like successes and failures personally on, on your companies like or company?

Yeah. So fast forward to 2008, I had started working for a locally owned business, about a year and a half earlier, about 3 months after I had started there, it was sold on an owner finance deal. And the new owners kept everybody on, at least they tried to for a while. And I watched this company that I'd just been hired into systematically but unintentionally destroyed. And to make a very long story short, September 2008, the previous owner gets a call from the new owners. They say, hey, we're going to declare bankruptcy. Uh, you can have the business back if you want it. And at this point, it's like 3 broken chairs and, uh, you know, those office chair— 3 broken computers. And you know those office chairs that have like this much, you know, padding on them and it's all worn out from the middle? You know, that, that, that was it. That was like the symbol of what was left of this once great company. So, uh, as he's driving in the U-Haul van to go get the broken computers and the worn out chair, he calls me and says, hey, I think we can relaunch this company. I think we can make it work. Will you help me? September 2008. We had no idea what was about to happen. Oh yeah, first 6 months of starting the business, uh, stock market goes down 32% or something like something crazy like that. And I mean, it was just— we were just making everything up as we went. We were fighting and scrapping and calling and doing anything that it took to make it work. So many stories from that era. But it was, you know, that was my, my journey into entrepreneurship was I just wanted to stay working for the business I was working for. And now I'm an owner. Now I'm an entrepreneur. Now I'm a founder. And I'm trying to figure all this stuff out as we go. And somehow we made it work. I mean, even despite all the circumstances that were happening during that time, we, we— what we got right in those early days was a relentless focus on sales. Everything that we did, and I didn't know how important this was at the time, but I had intuitively learned it by watching the previous company focus on systems. And systems are good, but not if they come at the expense of a focus on sales. You have to sell and you have to use systems to support existing sales. You're not going to create new sales through systems if it doesn't already exist. Systems will move you faster in whatever direction you're already going. If you're running your business into the ground, your systems will do that faster. If you're growing it up and to the right, your systems will do that faster. Some of the success we had early on, and I attribute a lot of that actually to my business partner, he could sell ice to an Eskimo. Fantastic at it. And we had that, we just had that combination. So he was selling, I was making sure we were delivering, and it was just, you know, it was like rocket fuel. And I still remember waking up one morning and, you know, this is probably about a year in. I think we had 5 or 6 employees working for us. Some we had rehired, some were, you know, most of them were friends of one of us, right? We just— anyone who would come in and bear the shame of working from his basement. Basement. Yeah, that's— they were still working in his basement at this time. Uh, that's, that's, that was our hiring strategy. And they drove me nuts, right? Like, they, they didn't think the way that I did. They didn't act the way that I did. They wanted to be told what to do, right? It was just like, I'm not— I don't have time to tell you what to do. Go figure it out. And, uh, and again, I didn't really realize this at the time, but that, that's a very natural stage that every founder goes through. And it's what we talked about earlier of that move from the star player to the captain on the field. Now, this is actually a really hard transition for not just coaches like we talked about earlier, but for every founder to make. Because what happens in this stage is that we are moving from being, from doing, right, from being the success of the company to having to manage others to do and be the success of the company. And that I have never— you tell me if you've met one, but I have never met a founder who started their company to manage a small team of people.

No, dude. And actually, I remember going through that. I might still be a little bit going through it. It's difficult, like, because the natural reaction, I think, is like— because, you know, as the founder, a lot of that stuff, because you've done it so many times, comes so easy to you already. So when somebody else is like asking you over and over and over again questions, it just, to me, my reaction is just like, oh, I could do this so easily myself. But then I remember, no, that is not the right reaction. You know what I mean? Now my role is to actually help everybody within the company to bring them up, and that brings everything up. I don't know, but I think that's, maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe it's just me and I, maybe I'm—

No, you're 100% right. But here's what makes it so difficult, right? It is that you're still in the game. Right? You're like most folks. What this looks like is they're hiring people to help do the work that they have sold. And so not only are they not doing things the way that you— that, like, they're not figuring things out, they're not thinking the way that we would. Now we're having to sell 4 times as much just to make payroll, right? So it's like, what the heck? You know, it's like, um, you have to— you— we, we think that as you grow a business, you hire people and it's easier. And then we— what happens is we hire more people and we find out it's actually harder. It's the first glimpse into a really important lesson for every— that every founder will figure out at some point in time. And that is that businesses get bigger, they don't get better.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Businesses get bigger, they don't get better. And so there are things that you can do to make an organization better at every stage. So I'm not saying that it's always this bad, but it's not going to get better just because it gets bigger. It never works that way. In fact, the problems get bigger at at a faster rate than the revenues do. And, and so what happens is we, we're still in the game. It would be easier if we could just stand on the sideline and coach, but we still got, you know, we use the football analogy, we still have 300-pound men trying to sack us before we can get the ball out of our hands. Like, it's, you know, you're getting punched in the face and it's not comfortable, and someone's asking you a question. It's just, this is not the time for that. And So when you look out, like you put yourself in that position, everything's happening in real time. You know, everyone's on the field trying to figure this out as we go. You don't have time to sit and read a whole bunch of business books, right? First off. And if you did, you'd find out that none of them are written for you. There are so few books, there's so few resources that are made for folks that are still in the game and having to lead. There is— there are enough leadership books to repave every road in the world, but they fall desperately short of what a founder needs in this stage, because it's not just leadership, it's actually management. And most leadership books actually downplay and speak negatively of management. And again, it just kind of reaffirms that I shouldn't have to do this. I should not have to tell these people what to do. I shouldn't have to lay it out for them. And to an extent, that's true, right? And we're not going to go into this, but there are 4 different types of people who will work for your company, and 3 of them are not the type of people that you want at this stage. And so if we don't know what these types are and we don't know which type we want, we end up hiring the wrong people. And intuitively we get, I shouldn't have to answer all of these questions, right? I shouldn't have to light a fire under their ass every single day. Like, these people should have at least some degree of motivation. And so what happens is we hire poorly, we don't get the right people in, we manage even more poorly, And we don't know how to fix it because we don't know if it's us and our poor management or if it's them and they're just not the right people. And we get stuck in this stage. We become reluctant managers and it's exceptionally frustrating. Now, there's a couple of things we need to do on that. One is I can give you guys the secret here is you have to hire operators. If you go to the Scale Architects website, there's all kinds of stuff on who operators are and how to find them. But that's the key ingredient here. You have to find operators, plural, The second part is you have to find yourself a great operator who can carry, who can shoulder the weight with you, right? A second in command. And, and when you look at companies that really accelerate through this phase, they get that relationship working really well. Most of it is by chance, right? Most of it's no— there's no grand design behind this. We just burn through a couple of people until we find the right one, or we make a lucky hire out of the gate. And we get someone who just loves to get stuff done and they can, they can run circles around us in terms of getting stuff done. When you get that person on the team, when you get that second in command, someone that you trust to drive through, allow you to focus on sales and really grow that side of the business. That's where you'll see double, triple, quadruple digit growth. And it's a really beautiful thing.

So I wonder I feel like, well, there's got to be books about it, but I just don't know one off the top of my head, but like an organizational chart or something. You know what I mean? Like I think if business owners had that and like maybe in, you know, in some cases businesses are different, but I think in a lot of cases the order of hire is pretty common. And you would probably know that to be the case or not the case. But because with what you just said, I could see some people thinking an executive assistant But I don't— that's not the same thing as what you're saying as a second-in-command operator, because the assistant's more helping you mostly kind of with the behind-the-scenes stuff that you need help with, like email and stuff. A second-in-command operator, like, that's basically a COO, right? Like, that, that's what you're saying?

Like, yeah, I, I stay away from the word COO, uh, although many of them are called that. To me, COO is something very different. That is an executive caliber person. When you have a company of 10 people, you don't need executives, right? You need folks who get stuff done. And so what this person is, is somewhere in between those two. But that's why I like the idea of second in command or 2IC, the gender normative version of your right-hand man or woman. I don't like using that because there's lots of wonderful second in commands that are women, but that, that, that person who's going to lead shoulder to shoulder with you. Sure, they report to you, but it's someone that you trust to bring into your inner circle. That is not a virtual assistant. They may have access to your emails, right? But they are not helping you lead the company forward. And so we're looking for someone— they can be a director of operations, they can be, you know, whatever the business is that you're in, right? They tend to be the top one of those, right? So if you're in the roofing industry, they're great at putting on roofs and they can do it all day, every day while you go out and sell them. Uh, they, they are typically at least slightly better managers, uh, than you are. It relieves some of the management pressure from you. Uh, and together, uh, a friend of mine, uh, we used to say we make one great executive, right? And, and when you get a second in command at this stage, together you make one great manager. Neither of you can really hold it all on your own, but together you make one great manager.

Got it. No, that makes sense. Okay. Yeah, that would be, and maybe you have something like that on your website or you give it to your clients, but I feel like a legit organizational structure chart would be super helpful. And it's like, hey, when you're at this stage, these are the hires you need. When you're at this, these are the hires. I don't know. I feel like a lot of people would find that'd be like a good—

It's totally there. So I agree with you and I disagree with you. And here's, let me explain what I mean by that. What I've found is that that is true for the top rung of the organization, right? Once you get down below that, there's some industry-specific stuff, but you can kind of muscle through just about everything else. So when we say org chart, we tend to think of a top to bottom, you know, all the bubbles, all the names. And if you're honest, you and that other person would fill about 19 of the 21 bubbles, right? So it can be a lot of work to do an org chart right and not a whole lot of help in having it there because it's going to expire before it's ever even done being built. So I'm not crazy about org charts in small organizations, but I am crazy about getting that number one, number two relationship right. Now, once we do that, the success that that creates, well, that's what starts to drive us into the next stage. That's where we actually move from being that coach on the field— I'm sorry, the captain on the field— to being the coach on the sideline. And it's at that stage when we have someone else on the field all the time, someone heading up sales, someone heading up operations. We realize now we need administrators too. That's when a legit org chart, especially for the top of the org chart, but that's when a legit org chart becomes massively beneficial. And in the book, we outline some of those key roles that you need to bring in because they're essential for that stage.

Got it. Well, that was— We couldn't have set that up more perfectly. That was not planned. My next question was going to be about your book, so couldn't have done it more perfectly. So what's the title? And tell us a little bit more about the book.

Yeah. So name of the book is called The Founder's Evolution. And what it is, is it outlines the 7 stages that founders go through from pre-launch to post-exit. And the reason why this is so important, one, we've talked about how these stages change over the course of this conversation. But one of the points that I didn't make and you might have seen as we're going through is that there's no clear point where somebody tells you that your stage has changed. Right? When do you move from being that startup entrepreneur to being a reluctant manager? Does it happen when you hire a virtual assistant? Does it happen when you hire 30 people? When does it happen? When you look at the leadership journeys that most people undertake, right? And this could be in sports. It could be an employee's journey. It could be parenting. There are clear delineation points that show, hey, the game has changed. Take an employee, for example. They start off, they're a frontline employee, they're doing their job really well. Someone recognizes this, this, this lady's got leadership potential and they promote them to a project supervisor. Well, that new title comes with new responsibilities and they got to figure out how to manage now, right? Their success. They're that captain on the field and that's a really difficult transition to make even when it's being validated externally. But for founders who've been founder and CEO from day one and are still founder and CEO at day 1,000, when does that actually happen? How do you know when you need to change how you show up as a founder and what you need to do? And so what happens is founders will, will just— they'll grow their business, but they won't keep up up with the growth that has to happen in them personally. And they'll find themselves fighting against 2 and 3 and 4 of these stages all at once, showing up with the strength of a past stage when their business needs them to be something else for success. And so by laying out all 7 stages, I've found a way of making it ultra, ultra clear to folks as they're walking through the journey so they can know exactly when the stage changes, what stage they're in now, and to an extent, even better, what stage they want to get to.

What was the experience like on writing the book? Just because a lot of our audience, just from my business, they are authors or want to be authors. So, I'm just curious, when you decided that you were going to write a book, did you set up a morning routine, write a little bit every morning, or how did you write the book?

I have never had success with that. It's what you hear from everyone. I was just listening to— was Steven Pressfield's War of Art. He talks about going every day, 9 o'clock is his thing. I've never had success with that, but I can write 8,000 words in a day if I sit down and block it off. For me, I don't know why, it's just the way that my brain works. I was writing a lot of blog articles at the time and I started recognizing this pattern coming back up again. I was like, wait a second, these are all connected. I actually cheated a little bit. I used my blog as the place to start each of the chapters in the book and then went back later and compiled all those together, added the rest of the content that needed to be in there. And so there wasn't this kind of big, you know, long-term concerted effort. It was just part of kind of like my normal flow. Usually twice a month I would set apart writing days where I would just go in and knock it out. And so that was my experience with it. I have a couple more books in me. I'm excited about this journey. I really enjoy the work of writing. And so I'm— I know that the— I'm gonna have to pay the piper at some point. I'll reach this point where, you know, I've got to get into a more consistent routine. But for me, uh, the inspiration was there, um, and a lot of the structure and the model was already there because of the work that I do. So translating that into book form, uh, was actually not as hard as I thought it might be.

No, it actually at least from my experience, it is more rare the way you do it. But there really, there really is only like 2 types and it's your type where you kind of just like bang out huge chunks in a day, right? And maybe it takes you in total like 5 to 10 days to get the rough draft done, but you're working, you know, a solid 6 to 10 hours or more in that one day. And then other people that, you know, they just have a set morning routine every morning, 1 hour, and they do 1,000 words a day and they knock it out that way. That's how I was, because I think, I don't know, just like sitting at a table without anything else for 8 hours straight, I get after about 2 hours, I'm getting antsy. I got to like run around or do something. But whatever works for you.

Yeah, I'm certain I have some kind of undiagnosed ADHD. But one of the things that happens, I would imagine a lot of writers do actually, but But one of the effects of ADHD is a hyperfocus, right? For some people, it just— you get the blinders on and then you're just off to the races. And that's what happens for me. I do my best work, whether it be writing or model creation or work with clients, when I can get in. And it takes me a while to kind of get the flywheel spinning. But once it's going, I'm just in the zone and time disappears. I have no concept of time during the day. I'll forget to eat lunch and other things related to that. And, and so, but, but to go in every day and try and get that flywheel moving again is absolutely exhausting to me. I mean, there's nothing that I do every day other than like breathe, right? It just— I just don't work that way. I don't know why, but no, that's awesome.

Honestly, I feel like I used to be more like that when I was like a little bit younger. I would— I actually remember so many times where when I was really working a lot in my business, I would forget to drink water and I would forget like a lot. And I like, I don't know, I would like, I would get up and I'd almost faint a few times. And like, it was, it was crazy. Like I would forget everything, like just eating, drinking water. There was just, health was not even a thought on the board. Like it was nowhere. It was just like, finish the work.

It's so funny that you say that because I'm so thirsty right now. And right before we were going live on this, I was like back-to-back meetings. I usually have this gigantic water bottle on my desk and it's not here. I have no idea where it is. So I have not drank anything, I think, all day because my big water bottle is not here.

So yeah, dude, yeah, the worst. I drink coffee a lot all day and then no water. So although I'm better now because I take a lot of breaks now, like every 2 hours. But dude, that's a whole other conversation, which maybe on a future podcast. But it is interesting where I don't know how I'm able to do it now, but when I was younger, similar to what you said, I— it used to be very difficult for me to get into flow. And now I don't know why, I just feel like it's so much— I kind of just like know what I, I got it. I don't know how to word this, but I think before, because I felt like I was like pushing against something, like I wasn't sure if things were going to work out, and I was just like banging against the walls, working like always. And now it's more of a harmonic or harmony state that I'm in in my business. So I'm just like, okay, wake up, here's what I know I got to do. I'm going to get a little done in the morning, take it slow, come back, and then I just start, you know, I go a little harder as the day progresses. And then I know every day around 5, 6 is when I start to fizzle. So I don't know, but it's nothing like— I just think because it's very— I only have a few targets each day instead of before it was like Here's 1,000 marketing activities I can do to grow my business today. Let's try to do them all. That's how it was for me at least. So yeah, everybody's different with flow states and stuff like that. So you think you got more book, or let me ask you this first. For the book that you already have out, did you do anything or find anything super effective for marketing the book, going podcasts or anything else?

Yeah, podcasts are my main strategy. I do a lot of speaking around it as well, which has been kind of a fantastic one-two combo. I am— I did not go a traditional publishing route, so self-published and also didn't go print. I did digital only. Part of that was founders are a lot like you and I. We don't sit down and read very long books very often, and I wanted to intentionally keep it short. So it's about half the length of a normal book. And that was a difficult but very intentional choice. I like to write a lot. And so writing a little was a hard thing to do. And having it in a digital format and not having to— not going to print gave me a little bit more flexibility over both the length of it and also my ability to update it and change it as it— as, you know, I get feedback from the real world with it.

It for sure. And you got more in you, so that, dude, that's awesome. Well, every time you have a book coming out, you can definitely hop on the pod, so that'll be cool. You have many invites for as many— that'll be like a—

I mean, there's bigger rewards you'll get than this, but that's the carrot I need.

Yeah, another conversation with Tyler coming every time you get to come on the show. But I guess I want to leave you this. If there's anything we didn't cover that you want to share, please do. And then, you know, tell people where they can stay in contact with you. Loved having you on, man. Definitely down for a part 2 at some point as well.

That's awesome. So, yeah, folks can find out all the stuff about me. I wish it was as easy as saying go look for Scott Ritzheimer, but one, you won't be able to spell Ritzheimer. And if you do, there are 2 of us because I'm a junior. So find the one that looks like he's 14. That's me. And we can chat there. But no, best way is to head on over to scalearchitects.com. If you go to scalearchitects.com/fr, Founders, you can get a free copy of the book there, Founders Evolution: Conquering the Journey Every Founder Must Face. And the one thing— and I talk, I end every chapter in the book with this because to me it's actually the most important thing about this journey. And to tell you what I'm talking about, I want to— I've had 3 kids and 2 of them, they're about to turn 13, 11, and 3. So the first 2 were pretty close together, both the boys, and then our girl came about 10 years later. And with the boys that I had in my mid-20s, I loved them, but I had no idea what to do with them for the first 2 or 3 years of their life. I was just kind of like, here, you take them, Mom, and give them back when they can kick a soccer ball. We'll have fun then. And, and, and again, it wasn't that I didn't like them. It wasn't any of that. I just, I just, I wasn't equipped for that stage. And I let that rob me of the joy that was available in that stage. And so So 10 years go by, a lot of stuff has happened in our family since then. I decided I didn't want to do it that way with my daughter and really made it a focus that I was going to take advantage of every minute that I could get with her in these early years of her life. Still not any more equipped than I was beforehand, right? Like, you know, there's just anatomy here. But can I tell you the amount of joy that I've had, what she has already given to me in her short and wonderful little life? It just— I'm different because of it. And one of the things that founders are particularly guilty of, and I've done this so many times, I'm still tempted by it regularly, is we're waiting like, give me the business back in 3 years, right? When I hit $1 million, I'll be happy. When I hit $10 million, I'll be happy. When I hit something, it doesn't matter what it is, 50 employees, there's some arbitrary number, there's something. Or once you know about the stages, you think, hey, I won't be happy until I'm in stage 5. And the reality of it is, is that you will never find joy in a destination, not lasting joy. The only place to find lasting joy is in the journey. And so, one of the things that I want you to do if you grab the book is pay attention to the end of each chapter because I talk about the specific joy that's available in that stage. What happens is, you know, we look back and I see this now when I work with most of my clients who are in later stages and they're looking back to these earlier days saying, man, I wish it was I wish it was like that again. And then I go and work with, with founders in earlier stages and they're like, man, I wish it was like this later stage. And the reality of it is neither, neither of them are celebrating the joy that's in front of them right now and in this stage. So don't be like me. Don't wait 3 years to enjoy your kids and don't be like me. Don't wait until X number of millions of dollars to enjoy your business and the journey that you're on.

Dude, I absolutely love that. I can't tell you how many, like, billionaires and interviews I've heard heard say that like the happiest they ever were or was, was when their business was at a few million because they had all the money, they could do anything they wanted basically, and they still had some freedom. And then once now that they're a billionaire, they're actually working way more, things are way more stressful. So it's so weird, like no matter where you're at, you always think like the other side, the grass is greener. But like you're saying, dude, it's in the journey, not the destination. So either way, man, that hits home for me. And thank you for coming on again. I really appreciate it, brother.

Tyler Wagner Wagner, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.