107 | From Chaos to Clarity: How to Truly Scale Your Business with Courtney De Ronde

Patrick: [00:00:00] Have you ever felt like your business is growing, but you’re still stuck in the middle of the chaos like it’s running you? Instead of you running it, you’re not alone. So many entrepreneurs reach that point where success starts feeling heavier. Not lighter. The truth is growth and scale aren’t the same thing, and if you don’t make a few key shifts as a leader, your business will begin draining you and start to slow you down.
Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan, and today’s episode is going to be a game changer. If you’re ready to finally scale your business without burning out, I’m joined by Courtney Deron, CEO, for Financial and Management Consulting, and she’s sharing.
Simple scale up system, a proven framework that helps entrepreneurs build structure, clarity, and systems. That support growth instead of suffocating it. In this episode, we’re breaking down exactly what it takes to go from founder to leader, from working in your [00:01:00] business to building something that grows beyond you.
Courtney’s going to walk us through how to build business intelligence, how to create visibility in your numbers. How to align your people systems and strategies so your business finally feels like it’s working for you, not against you. If you’ve ever wondered why you’re working harder than ever, but not seeing the results you expected, you’re going to want to listen to the very end of this episode.
We get into the real shifts that unlock sustainable growth, and I can promise. This conversation will help you rethink how you lead and scale your company. And while you’re taking notes, make sure to visit vital strategies.com/tax. That’s where you can connect with our team to start building out your own strategy, same kind of strategy that helps entrepreneurs keep more of what they earn and scale smarter.
Again, that’s vital strategies.com/tax. And if you enjoy today’s episode, take a second to leave a quick review. It helps us reach more business owners who are ready to build wealth with purpose and strategy. Alright, let’s dive in with Courtney Durand and learn how to move [00:02:00] from growth to true scale. So Courtney, thank you so much for, for joining us here.
Courtney: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Patrick.
Patrick: Yeah, so I, I think about the entrepreneur and, uh, there’s, there’s just so many problems when it, it comes to, to growth. Uh, their business may have grown, but their systems and structure haven’t caught up yet. Decision making feels reactive. Margins are fluctuating.
Growth feels harder than it should. All of the pressure is sort of stacking up on the entrepreneur and it’s like, what am I doing this for? This is, this is really hard. And then they’re also frustrated. They feel like the business is running them. They’re not running the business. They’re smart and capable, but they lack a clear, simple framework to scale with confidence and make data back decisions.
And then finally, I think about, you know, the entrepreneur shouldn’t have to sacrifice their purpose or burn out their people or their piece to grow. And so. I think about true success and it just, it comes with being aligned, uh, both from a business point of view, but just having some life as well. And so, uh, not not having a business that I have [00:03:00] to work for, but having the business work for me, I think that’s, uh, that’s important.
So, uh, I’m really looking forward to getting into how we solve these problems today. Can you give us just a little bit of your, your background?
Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. So I am a CPA, I went to to school to be an accountant and spent the first. Couple decades of my career serving entrepreneurs, business owners, nonprofit leaders, uh, with finance and accounting services.
And along the way, became a partner in my own firm, uh, got appointed to the executive committee, eventually became the managing partner. And so I kinda of have this overlap of helping small businesses and then also finding myself leading and owning. My own small business. And so it just gave me this additional perspective on how the things I understood about finance helped me to make decisions in our business as an owner and a leader, but also how there’s so many [00:04:00] things beyond finance, like productivity and human intelligence and leadership that also went into it.
And so, um, eventually. We launched a management consulting side of our firm to expand beyond finance, and that’s where I get to help other leaders and founders to scale themselves and their organizations across all those areas. So we focus on finance, leadership, productivity, and human intelligence. But it’s all rooted in my own experience, um, of, you know, my career and then eventually leadership and business ownership.
Patrick: Yeah, this is, this is great and I’m really looking forward to, uh, digging into your, call it the, the simple scale up system. I think this is, uh, this is going to be exciting and I think you’ve laid a little bit of that foundation for us, but if, if I’m one of those entrepreneurs, we are identifying at the beginning that’s just feeling overwhelmed the business, um, to this point, I, I’ve been able [00:05:00] to get it here by just working, you know, hard.
I, I’ve. I’ve been out, you know, doing one particular thing. But you know, if it’s dependent on me serving all the clients or finding all the clients or something along those lines, uh, or finding the new customers, uh, there’s going to be a lid there to, to, to growth and scale. So can you, can you help us outline where do we start?
If I’m, if I’m looking to scale my business, where, where, where do I start to look into it and go, man, let’s, let’s identify a point and move from here.
Courtney: So there’s two transformations that really have to happen to go from a startup to a scale up. And what often happens is established businesses. So businesses that have made it well past startup, they’ve found their customers, they’ve found their client base, they’ve found their products, they’ve added employees, they’re established, they’re beyond startup, but they’re thinking and acting.
A startup. So two shifts to truly [00:06:00] go beyond data to scale up. One is in you. So if you’re the founder, you have to shift to being a leader. Then you have to start leading the business that you have grown and created. Oftentimes the business grows at a faster pace than we prepare ourselves to lead it. We end up creating all of this success and all of these people and all of these products and all of these things, and somewhere along the way we didn’t get ourselves scaled to be able to lead it.
So that’s one transformation is instead of just thinking of yourself as the founder, you have to recognize that you’re the leader. Yeah. The second transformation is of the business. You have to go from being at the center of everything and knowing everything that’s going on because you’re somehow connected to each item, to being able to [00:07:00] have systems and processes that allow the business to grow without you being involved in every single step of the way.
Patrick: Yeah, this is, this is great. So I, I love the fact that we, we’ve gotta go through these transformations. I, I can imagine, depending on the business. It’s going to be different for every single organization. Some organizations might have great systems and processes, but there’s a, uh, there’s a leadership ceiling currently.
That founder may be like, okay, I am, I’m just used to holding onto everything and sort of running with it. Can we talk a little bit more about that, that evolution that needs to change or take place in the leadership and how that, that comes to be, because as I know. Oftentimes in my life that can be, uh, if I saw my weak spots, I would go ahead and fix ’em.
Um, and, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna think about the most successful people on the planet. Uh, we think about, uh, it’s, it’s easy to see like athletes. [00:08:00] Um, the best athletes on the planet have coaches. They actually have a number of coaches. You know, they might have a strength and conditioning coach. They might have somebody that, uh, helps ’em with nutrition.
Then they’ve got their coach in their particular field that’s like, can see the way they’re doing things and go, Hey. Whether it’s a, a golf coach that adjusts the swing or a basketball coach that’s, you know, uh, designing a play to take care of their, uh, you know, take advantage of the, all the opportunities.
So, yeah. Can you help me understand how we help a leader transform? ’cause I, I think that can be, can be challenging.
Courtney: Yeah. So there’s a couple things involved here. One, I would say each person, leader or not has unique gifts, strengths and abilities. That’s really the human intelligence component of the simple scale up system.
It’s this understanding that if we know those gifts and strengths and we leverage them, we’ll be more effective. It will be more [00:09:00] fulfilled, none more true and pronounced than the leader. So part of it is increasing your own self-awareness and knowing the things that you’re wired and made to do and the things that you’re not.
And then finding other people to do the things that you are not wired to do. Not because you’re a loser, but because we are any of us made to do everything. Mm-hmm. So you might be a great innovator that’s, maybe that’s what made you a great founder, is you have all these ideas, but building them the repeatable systems that sustain what you created might not be your gift.
That doesn’t mean you have to move on and start over, although you could. That might be part of your journey is just to keep creating, but there is likely a path to scale what you’ve created by bringing in other people who have the gift and systematizing. Mm-hmm. And building processes. So that’s one thing, is [00:10:00] just knowing who you are and what your strengths are and playing to those, and then recognizing the tremendous value of having a diversity of those other strengths and gifts on your team.
To help round everything out.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. I, I love this. I’m, I’m a fan of Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach, and he talks about unique ability and like, once you figure out what that is, the more time you spend there and the more you can build your team around you to help you, uh, run and execute on the business, the, the better.
Uh. The more life satisfaction you’re going to have and the better your business is going to run. ’cause it’s going to get you out of the things that are slowing the whole organization down and you can find somebody that their unique ability is, uh, to do that thing that you’re, you’re not great at.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, I think I’m, I’m somewhat fortunate because I’m so bad at the things that I don’t enjoy that, like, for my business to survive, I had to hire people early to, uh, just get us through the, um. [00:11:00] Sort of beginning phases and it allowed us, I think, to grow a little farther faster, uh, from by me just getting out of the way.
So I think that’s, yeah. Yeah.
Courtney: That’s, getting outta the way is, is a great way to be able to scale because you start to realize, if I’m not involved in every single thing anymore, I’m going to have to create systems and processes that make sure. I have visibility still on what’s going on, even if I’m not central to it, and that things get replicated in a way that still aligns with my vision, my values, and that can be a real challenge to growth.
When you have growth without the structure to support it, you can look up and all of a sudden your business has morphed into something completely different than what you wanted. And that can be really frustrating. And so. Being able to recognize that, that you can’t do it all on your own. Mm-hmm. And even if you are a unique individual who is [00:12:00] very gifted in lots of different ways, your capacity will limit you.
So even if your capabilities there eventually, there are not enough hours in the day, days in the week for you to do all of these things without being the limiting factor on your growth. So either way, you’re going to mean. To recognize what is needed, what you bring to the table, and what is needed, either from capacity or capability, and then build a team of other people around you.
Patrick: Yeah, I think this is, this is great. I, I’m curious, you brought up a couple points on vision and mission and, and I, I think about those things. You know, the, the scriptures tell us without a vision that people perish. And so I, I think about you bringing that up. How important is it for an organization to be very clear on.
I’ll call it mission, vision, core values, have those articulated in a, in a document. And then, uh, you know, I’m also a Patrick Lencioni fan. I think he talks a lot about like, [00:13:00] getting the message out. You know, you, you’ve gotta keep saying these things over and over again to make sure that everybody understand how important are, are is creating that, um, I dunno, mission, vision to.
To to help run the business like we’re talking about?
Courtney: Yeah, I think it’s crucial. So in the simple scale of system, we have 10 principles of leadership, and one of them is know who you are and where you’re going. And that is really about knowing your vision and your purpose and values. So vision is aspirational.
So it may be three years out. Big picture. Who do you want to become as a leader? How do you wanna serve your customers? What results do you wanna get? There’s, we have, we have a tool called a vision, um, snapshot, where you actually cast out in these six different areas where you wanna be into the future, but it’s something that is aspirational long term, and it, [00:14:00] it’s a tool once you have it to let you filter opportunities.
Make decisions, does this get us closer to where we’re going or farther away? And it’s also a magnet for resources. As soon as you know where you’re going and you can articulate that to somebody else, people wanna help you. And they say, oh, I know what you’re doing. I can connect you to this person, or Could you help me with this?
But as long as you are unclear, it’s really hard for other people to resource you. Then in terms of from a communication standpoint, like, um, like Jon’s saying, you have to, in his words, uh, you know, galvanize people around you. It’s really hard to galvanize people around you if you are clear on where you’re going.
So where you’re going, vision and then who you are. Values and purpose. Yeah. Your core values aren’t just, or they shouldn’t be just words on the wall or on the website. They should [00:15:00] actually be. Really guardrails for your team about what we do here, how we behave, how we interact with each other, and with our customers and with our clients.
There should be a way that people can make decisions about how to respond to something within a team or a client without having to ask you because they know the values and, and your purpose why you exist, what you’re here. To do as an organization. Those three things should come together to be a filter and a magnet.
When you’re faced with decisions, does this get us closer to where we’re going? Does it match who we are? And then a magnet for resources. The more clear you are and share those, the more you’ll just, it almost feels magical. It’s un, it’s unreal how somebody, if they can articulate that, it attracts resources to them immediately.
Patrick: This is great. This is great. So I’m [00:16:00] thinking about the leader. Okay. We’ve talked about some, some really important pieces here. Um, what else is, should be taken into consideration when we’re thinking about, okay, the, the leader needs to, to evolve and change and grow. What other aspects should I be considering is the, the entrepreneur that’s really excited about scaling my business before.
Um, yeah. What do we need to consider?
Courtney: Yeah, so on the, on the business side of it, so we talked a little bit already about the, the leader they have to transform. The founder has to transform into a leader. The business has to transform from relying on instincts to insights. So most of us have gotten to where we are through startup and to some level of success by trusting our gut.
We have good instinct. But to scale to the next level, we have to transform our business operationally to a steady stream of information and insights, [00:17:00] what we call business intelligence.
Patrick: Hmm.
Courtney: And so it’s, it doesn’t mean that you, you abandon your gut and you don’t trust your instincts. But I, but, but I want you to think about is that our instinct or our gut is based on our experience and our emotions.
Our experience is limited to what we’ve done before, and our emotions are just generally fickle.
Patrick: Yeah. And so
Courtney: when you’re scaling, you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before. Mm-hmm. So relying on your instincts, which are based on fickle emotions, and your past experience is probably not going to serve you well because you’re doing something you’ve never done.
And so instead, you have to build a system that gives you visibility on information and insight. So intelligence into those four core areas of the business that I mentioned, finance, leadership, [00:18:00] productivity, and human intelligence. That’s the shift on the business side. We have to have systems and processes mm-hmm.
That feed us intel that can support our instincts. And the more we do that. The better our instincts we’ll get, the more we surround ourselves with other leaders, with different experiences than us, the better our instincts we’ll get. And then we can start making decisions with instincts and intelligence, not just feeling like we’re stuck, trusting our gut, which usually means we don’t know what to do and we either worry ourselves to death or try to work our way through it, or we just don’t decide anything.
And so that’s the big shift. From a business side of things.
Patrick: Yeah, this is, this is really good. So I, I wanna talk about that, that visibility for a second, because I think about a business and all of the information that I have access to, and I, there’s almost a problem with really good financial statements.
Like I can [00:19:00] see really good marketing data. I can see so much data, you know, I can see so many things and it’s can be really hard to, to know what. What the most valuable pieces of information are. Are there, I don’t know, say some, uh, some consistent KPIs, key performance indicators in businesses that you think, Hey, if you’re gonna focus on some metrics, here’s some key things to be paying attention to.
Courtney: Yes, we do. We have, so we have, uh, a book on that’s a framework overview of the simple scale up system. In each of the chapters, there’s a page that says Key metrics. For this core area. So there’s key metrics for finance, key metrics for leadership, productivity, and human intelligence. Um, but just so, so that, and that’s available to your readers to download for free.
They’d like to grab that ebook. Yeah. But to give you some examples, so from a productivity standpoint, productivity, this is about how we mobilize plans [00:20:00] and resources, how we make sure that our people are doing the things that they should be doing that align with their roles they’re doing efficiently, effectively.
So, um, measuring a KPI around their utilization would be a great one. Like, especially if you’re a service-based business. You’ve got people that, your biggest expense is your salaries and benefits, your capacity to generate revenue is very connected to how much capacity your people have to serve. Mm-hmm.
And so if your margins are shrinking as a service based business, it mightn’t because you’ve got. Too much capacity and you don’t have the sales to actually utilize these people.
Patrick: Yeah.
Courtney: And so that’s an example. We can go through as many as you’d like, but there are some core metrics that you wanna look out for.
But there’s also, um, tools that we have, we have a whole results map. We have a whole visibility framework. We have lots of tools that help you think [00:21:00] about what are the most crucial drivers in my organization and what metric could I monitor? To get ahead of that to see real time. The financials are typically lagging indicators.
Mm-hmm. Right. This is reporting what’s already happened.
Patrick: Right.
Courtney: And so they’re generally, you’re gonna create a dashboard of key performance indicators that would tell you what’s happening right now. Well, it, there’s still time to change your activities, to change your results before something shows up in the financials next month.
Patrick: Yeah. This is good, and if people wanna check out the ebook, they can go to forge ahead.com/ebook and we’ll have links to that in the show notes. But, uh, I think that’s a, a fantastic tool and I, I love this framework and, uh, I think it’s a, a great place for people to start to just really start to understand, um, really how to go from a, a growing, which is good to, to scaling and, and sort of unlocking this, this new, [00:22:00] uh, potential.
So I think this is, this is great. So. I’m thinking about all of these, these things that are taking place. I’m transforming as a leader. I am creating business intelligence with systems and processes. Now I’m, I’m starting to think about how do I, how do I put all these things into to play? Because I, I think about one of the pieces that came to mind when we were talking about leadership was, you know, I think there’s, I can grow as a leader, but one thing that we see that’s pretty interesting when.
Private equity gets involved in a business is they go bring in great people. You know, oftentimes our team will have a ceiling, you know, they’ll, they’ll know how to get us to a certain point, and then it may be time, not that those are bad people, they can fill a different role, but we might need to bring in somebody that has a higher ceiling.
They’ve taken a business from 5 million in revenue to 35 million in revenue. And it’s like, if you’ve never had anybody on the team that has done that before. It might be challenging [00:23:00] to get there versus somebody that’s like, Hey, I know how this game plays out and I know what we need to do organizationally to get there.
So is there, is there thoughts around, um, we can develop our leaders internally, but sometimes we may have to go bring somebody in externally that, uh, has, has been there and, and been on that track before.
Courtney: Yeah, absolutely. And really what you wanna do is understand the role that you need for where you’re going.
So if you think about your organizational chart or your accountability chart, something that has the structure of the different seeks that are within your organization, the different teams that you have, and the core accountabilities of those roles, you’ve got what it is today. And then if you look at your vision, which we talked about, where you’re going over the next three years, you want another version that says to be that company.
What structure, what roles do I need? And then we even have on our Vision, vision snapshot, [00:24:00] one of the six lanes of the business that you’re looking at, who I am as a leader. So it’s baked right into your vision as far as who do you need to be as a leader. If you craft your organizational chart for state and future state, that also helps you create this bridge between the team you have today and the team you need for where you’re going.
And like you said. Some of those people may be able to grow with you and you might need some of their roles. They might be able to develop into other roles, and other times you might have to bring in additional or different team members because it’s a different game. Like the business that you’re creating is different than the business that you’re leading today.
And so just like you have to grow and evolve as a leader, your team has to grow and evolve. And so we, we, we have some different tools that we use to help people work through this in terms of right fit assessments [00:25:00] or skill gap assessments, professional development plans, um, all these different tools where essentially in, in our system, the simple skill system, almost everything goes through this three step process of diagnose, design, and drive.
So a lot of the assessments. The diagnostic phase, what’s happening here? What do we need? Mm-hmm. The design is creating what we want it to be, and then drive is actually executing and carrying it out. And it’s a, it’s not a line, it’s a circle. Mm-hmm. And you just have to keep going through, over and over and over again, because what you need three years from now, once you get, three years from now, you’re gonna need something different after that.
And so it’s just this continuous cycle. Assessing what you’ve got, designing what you need, implementing it, testing, refining, and you know, continuing as you grow.
Patrick: Yeah. And, and I, I love what you’re saying with your, [00:26:00] um, your, we’ll call it organization chart, you know, and like we often finance or forecast our financials.
We’re forecasting our organizational chart as well. And, uh, I think there’s, I, I love your, your circle of diagnose, design and drive. I think that is. So good because I, I’m just thinking about that team. And as it evolves, especially when your, your key leaders are involved in those conversations, you know, there there’s going to be, uh, a diagnosis for, Hey, this is where our organization needs to go.
This is the role that needs to show up. Uh, this is what that role is going to need to have to be able to accomplish. And then I think it’ll become pretty apparent to some of your leaders, like, Hey, yes, I want to step into that role. I don’t know if I can hit that. You know, I don’t know if I’m capable of doing that.
And, and even if they give it a good shot, you know, we’re, we’re gonna know pretty clearly just from KPIs and all those other things we’ve discussed so far, like, [00:27:00] am I, am I succeeding as I try to move into this role? And if I’m not, you know, we’re gonna have to come up with a, a game plan for, you know, finding somebody that can succeed in that role.
And not that it’s, you know, I. I have a hard time with this because it’s like a, one of our core values is love for our team, uh, clients and community, and it, it’s the first core value and caring for our team. First is like, the most important thing, like I love my people. I also think about it as my role as a, a business leader is to have the best team, right?
The team that wants the state championship might not be the team that wins the college championship, and that team might not be the one that, that won the, you know, NFL championship for, you know, professional championship, whatever we’re thinking about. And so. Um, you know, not that people, you know, need to exit the organization, but it’s like we might have to bring in, you know, a top tier quarterback for us to get to the next level.
And, um, I think that’s, um, I think that’s important for everybody to be aware of. ’cause my, my, my heart wants to hang on to people [00:28:00] and, and that’s, that’s great. Um, but I also wanna run an excellent business and sometimes we have to make changes there. And, uh. I think there’s also, um, it could be really frustrating for somebody to be in a role that they’re just not succeeding in.
Mm-hmm. And it might be best for them to find a new role in the organization or find a new role somewhere else. One of the things we talk about is when we hire people is we wanna put you in a position to thrive. And if we ever get to a point where we’re capping out and we don’t have a position for you, you’re obligated to go.
Uh, do what’s best for you. And that might mean finding a new job in a new organization. And we’ll be excited for you ’cause we’re, we’re sorry we couldn’t create an opportunity for you here. And that may also happen naturally if we are growing and there’s just not a good spot for you and we need to help you to the next spot.
So I don’t know if there’s anything to say about that, but, uh, I think that’s something, you know, for, for those of us that like care so much about their people, like, uh, it’s, it can be hard for me to be like, man, there’s just not a good seat for you here anymore. And we have to find, uh, a plan to. [00:29:00] Find the best role for you, even if it’s not in our organization?
Courtney: Yes, I a hundred percent agree. It is, it is hard, and especially when you have that value and that culture. We, one of our values is people first, and it’s exactly what you’re describing and I think what you hit on the end is the key to what we keep in mind is that, um, if someone no longer fits, we’re actually helping them by getting them onto somewhere where they do fit.
Because as I mentioned earlier, you know, the, the human intelligence part, we all have gifts, strengths and abilities. The drive, the way that we think, the take action, when we leverage them, we are more effective, but we’re also more fulfilled. Mm-hmm. So if someone is continuously working outside of their gifts and strengths in a role that doesn’t fit, they’re not fulfilled, their energy is drained.
They’re frustrated. And so it’s actually really good [00:30:00] leadership and stewardship that if we don’t have a, a role that they can use their gifts and strengths that we need to help them find a place where they can. Um, we, we really look at it through three different lenses when we’re looking at fit. So, so if you’ve got your org chart, these are the roles that we need.
How do I decide if people fit them? So three different criteria. First is values alignment. Do they share our core values? Do they consistently exhibit them in their behavior? If not, it doesn’t matter about the next two. If they don’t fit our values, I promise you it’ll be problems. It’ll change your culture in ways that you do not want a first gate.
Do they fit our values? If not, we’re done. If so, next gate, do they have the capabilities? To do this role? Do they have the expertise, the education, the training, the the capabilities of the core? Responsibility of the role? And then the third [00:31:00] one is their wiring, the way that they think field take action.
We use, uh, Clifton Strengths, Kolby and Enneagram as the assessments that we help for wiring. I love Patrick Loni, working genius. That’s another great one. There’s all kinds of different. Great assessments, but we’ve, we’ve found a lot of success with those three in particular. But that’s the third thing.
Are they wired to do this job the way we need it done? Because the, the capabilities of the role might fit their experience, but if they’re wired to sustain systems. We’re putting them in this role and it’s a, a new product or a new department, and there needs to be a ton of innovation, a ton of adapting.
We’re not ready to systematize yet. They’re going to be very drained and very frustrated. Mm-hmm. Now, if this was an established department in our team that’s already been through innovation and adaptation and [00:32:00] is ready for systematize. Then they would be great wiring for it. Yeah. If they’re high, systematized, low, quick start on the kolby.
Yeah. And so that’s how that other element can really come into play, the way people think, feel, and take action, even if they have the core skills you’s required in the way that they execute it, and the way that they’re motivated, the way they communicate and collaborate. Can then be another area that can really cause the challenge.
And, and so that’s the right bit assessment. That’s how we look at those three. Yeah.
Patrick: I, I love that and I love all of the assessments. I’m a big fan of Kolby. I’m a big fan of the, uh, working genius. Uh, I’ve also done some Enneagram stuff as well. Like I, I think I’ve probably taken all of ’em strengths finders.
It’s like, uh, and that they’re all good. My problem is not problem, I’m a. I’ve taken the kolby a few times. I’ve been a nine and a 10 on quick start, and so it’s like I’ve got ideas for days and I have to bring people [00:33:00] around me. My first hire, um, was a high fact finder. I did, I didn’t understand that, that they needed all of the steps laid out before they could take the first step.
And I’m like, I don’t know, like my brain just works. Like, just give me an idea and I’ll figure out all the steps how to get there. And, uh, so that, that was a challenge, but I understood I pretty quickly that. I needed that person in my life. And we had to coordinate and work together to figure out, okay, what are all the steps?
Great. Please just don’t make me operate in them. You just go run. And, uh, so that was, um, that was good. And I, I love all the assessments and I think they give you insight into exactly what we were talking about earlier in regards to, um, working in your unique ability, working in the things that give you energy and you just love the work you’re doing.
’cause you know, if you love the work you’re doing, it’s fun to show up every day. The clients get to benefit from the good work that you’re doing, and then the organization’s profitable and it just allows that to, uh. Continue. So I think [00:34:00] that’s, that’s exciting.
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The next thing I want to sort of touch base [00:35:00] on is. I’m thinking about planning and I’m, I’m, I love the, the diagnosed design and drive, uh, sort of model is I, what, what rhythm are we doing that on? I, I could see this showing up in, uh, lots of different areas. I could see it obviously in annual planning, but I can also see it maybe more happening more frequently, like maybe quarterly could even be more regular than that.
So do you have thoughts on, uh, how and when we start to implement this, this structure?
Courtney: So within flexible scale up system, we have dozens of tools and they all fall into one of those three categories. So there are tools that you use to diagnose, there’s tools you use to design, and there’s tools you use to drive.
So depending on what problem you’re trying to solve, would drive what tool you’re gonna use and what cadence you’re looking at. But essentially anything within this simple scale of system. You’re building all of these rhythms and [00:36:00] cadences primarily to give you visibility into what’s happening across those four areas.
So in finance, for example, you’ll have a cadence of reviewing financial information, translating it into insights, whether you have that skill, you have a CFO, or you have an outsource CFO. Somebody’s translating those numbers. Into insights for you. And then you have your forecast where you’re projecting what’s going to happen and updating your assumptions, and then you’re using that to make decisions.
And so the historical financials are more of a diagnostic tool. We’re looking to see what’s going on here. The forecasting is really a design tool where we’re designing the future that we want, we’re forecasting the future. Then the drive tool is the meeting cadence where we actually [00:37:00] review these insights and talk as a leadership team about what are we gonna do if the forecast doesn’t pan out the way we want it to.
We need to make different decisions. We thought this would happen. Here’s what’s actually happening now. We need to flex our plans. And so having a leadership meeting. Or having a, a, a weekly dashboard that you review that gives some of these types of, uh, real time things. Those are drive tools. And so we have lots of different rhythms that are built in cadences and meetings.
Um, asynchronous communication where you don’t need to meet, but you need to provide an update and somebody needs to review it. Meetings with leaders, meetings one-on-one. Reporting cadences meetings with your whole team. Um, there’s all kinds of systems that we have built in here, and so it, but what it, what it boils down to Patrick, is the problem that you’re trying to solve.[00:38:00]
Um, and then that’s where you’ve gotta implement the certain phases to get that, those things done.
Patrick: Yeah. This is, this is really, really good. So. I’m thinking about the, uh, intelligence, we’ve been talking about, the business intelligence, sort of the people intelligence. Um, is there anything else we should be talking about on sort of laying this foundation for scaling?
Because I, I think this is, um, this is so important for, for businesses that are trying to grow, that are sort of stuck at a ceiling and they’re, they’re, they keep trying to bust through, but it, you know, they might be at that revenue number and they’re just not, uh. Making progress. So is there anything else we should be, we should be talking about?
Because I, I’ve got a few other questions, but I wanna make sure that we’re, we’re covering all these things first.
Courtney: Yeah. I think, you know, if you had to start somewhere, if you’re saying, man, I, this all sounds really helpful, and I, but where do I even begin? Mm-hmm. I really think strategic planning is a great starting place.[00:39:00]
So our strategic planning process or framework is three parts. Long term where you’re setting that three year vision and broad strategies. Where am I going? Where am I starting from? How am I gonna get there? Directionally? Yeah. The second part of it is annual planning. What are my goals for next year to get another year closer to that vision?
And what projects do me and my team have to execute to achieve those goals? And then the third part is implementation planning. What do we need to do to create visibility and rhythms within our days, weeks, and quarters, actually implement these things mm-hmm. To execute these projects and achieve these goals and get closer to our vision.
Any one of those parts of the process, without all three, you’ll likely not get there. Mm-hmm. There, there’s, we call it the planning gap, the gap between [00:40:00] your intentions and your execution.
Patrick: Yeah,
Courtney: and you might fall into that gap because you don’t have a long-term plan that you’re executing, but it’s not connected to any bigger long-term picture.
So you’re doing stuff, but it’s not getting you anywhere you’re intending to go, you’re essentially drifting. Or you might have the vision for the three year and the broad strategies, but you don’t ever decide how much of that you’re gonna do next year. Even if you share with your team, then all of a sudden your team thinks, oh, this is our plan, and they think we’re gonna do all this next year.
And it’s three here. Long term. It takes a long time and people start to get frustrated. We’re not moving fast enough. Or maybe you have those first two, but you don’t ever change what you and your team do every day, every week, and every quarter. Then you’re most likely going to get sucked back in to whatever’s urgent and important.
Yeah. And get distracted and not get those things implemented. So I really think. That [00:41:00] three part process of getting clear about where you wanna go, how you’re gonna get there, what are we going to do this year. Mm-hmm. And then aligning your people and your rhythms and your budget. Yeah. Um, to, to achieve those.
That is where we have found such great success for ourselves. And then that’s what we teach, um, to our clients have a book coming out later this fall on that whole process as well, because it has been so transformational for the clients that we serve.
Patrick: Yeah, I, I think you touched on an interesting thing, and I’m curious your, your perspective on it.
One of the things was execution and, and I see inertia, you know, we, we show up and we do this work, and this is what our week looks like this week, and it looks like that next week too. And until we change something, until we sort of get out of working in the business and step up and are able to work on it.
And I think sometimes that can be a product of really good growth, right? Like, we’re so busy, you know? And, but it’s messy, busy. You know, we’re not [00:42:00] operating smoothly. We are a little bit of that, that duck on the pond, you know, everything might look okay above the surface, but underneath it’s, it’s, uh, it’s crazy.
And so how, how do we get out of sort of the, I don’t wanna say the rat race, but I don’t know how to slow down because if I slow down I’m, something’s gonna fall through the crack cracks on the execution side for. Customers, clients, whomever, to really build these systems and processes. And I’ve got a few thoughts on that, but I’m curious your, your perspective.
Courtney: Yeah, I, I feel very strongly about this. And so, um, Covey talks about this, I think it’s in seven habits, this quadrants of time. It’s also referred to as the Eisenhower Matrix. Mm-hmm. So it’s this, you know, two by two matrix between urgency and importance. So if you imagine this, you know, kind of four squares, then the top square.
Where everything is both urgent and important, and that’s where most of us live. Most of us leaders, founders, and a lot of our team [00:43:00] members. It’s where everything is urgent and important. So it’s deadlines, it’s client demands, it’s things that have to be done. It’s stressful. It’s fighting fires. Quadrant two, the next one over to the right.
It’s where everything is important, but not urgent. This is planning. Scheduling learning, building relationships, rest and rejuvenation.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Courtney: The only way out of quadrant one is to spend more time in quadrant two. And it feel counterintuitive when, like you said, you’re, you know, you’re just peddling like crazy to keep things going.
It feels weird to stop and plan, stop and rest. Stop and build a relationship. Stop and schedule. Stop and learn. Those feel, those feel like a luxury that we don’t have time for, but I promise [00:44:00] you it is the only way out. Spend more time in quadrant two is the only way to get out of quadrant one.
Patrick: Yeah, and I love all of this and, uh, Cal Newport wrote a great book called Deep Work and he talks about these things and, um.
Just finding the time and, and going back to a covey, you know, the rocks, uh, concept. You know, if you put the big rocks in first and then, you know, put the small rocks and then the gravel and then, you know, the sand or what have you, it all fits. But if you put the sand in the gravel and all the, you put ’em into the wrong order and you try to fit the big rocks in, at the end, there’s no room.
Mm-hmm. And so, uh, I think that’s a, a critical piece of, uh, you know, doing these things. And there’s another book, um, essentialism that I think sort of. Fits right in line with that. Uh, just doing, you know, the, the essential things and so much of what we do is not essential, um, even though we, we think it may be.
And I think that what that does is, it might be a little painful in the short term, [00:45:00] but I, I heard this once and I, I wish I could attribute the, an author, but it was, if something takes you, let’s say 15 minutes and you do it every day, be willing to commit 20 times that time to train somebody to do it.
And you’re like, 20 times. That’s an unbelievable amount of time that I would invest in somebody. But it’s like, no, it’s really 20 days worth of work. And then after that you’re done. You never have to touch it again because now you have somebody that, uh, can take and execute on that piece. And so I, I think about both delegation and working on those, those important pieces.
I generally feel like as owners, we, we like to hang on to too much stuff and we should let more of it go and it’ll allow us to go. Trust your people. They’re, they’re really good. You hired ’em for a reason and I give ’em an opportunity to thrive. So I think Fantastic. Anything else we should talk about on, on those pieces?
’cause I, I think those, um, those were, were great. Yeah. Is there anything else there?
Courtney: Well, just maybe a practical thing on the, you know, when I say you’ve gotta spend more time in [00:46:00] quant two, what does that look like for us? We have a weekly planning guide. So we have, our whole team does this. We train all of our clients on this.
It’s part of an execution system where every individual team member is spending about 30 minutes the end of the week, or sometime between Friday afternoon and Monday morning reflecting on the prior week and planning for the week ahead. Yeah, and so it, it’s a, an opportunity to look back on what happened this week and to recognize what didn’t work and what did, but what made this a great week.
I’m gonna keep doing those things. What made it not so great? I need to stop and do something different. So it might be, if I look back on this last week, I did too many of those 15 minute per day things myself. What am I gonna do next week? I’m gonna pick one of them. I’m going to invest in training somebody else to do them.
So it’s this reflecting and [00:47:00] planning. We’re also looking ahead at what’s on our calendar, looking at what’s on our, um, you know, ever increasingly growing to-do list and we’re deciding what is most important to do next week. Uh, I’m a big fan of the full focus planner, Michael Hyatt’s full focus system. We, we recommend that as a very practical tool.
For doing something like this, there’s pages in there for a, a weekly planning process that’s very similar to this. Yeah. But creating this rhythm where every week you reflect on the prior week and you plan for the week ahead, and you set your priorities for the next week now to make it an execution system with your team.
Then you share those weekly priorities with your leader, and if you’re a leader, you review the priorities. Of your team and that way before they start executing next week, you make sure that things are prioritizing align with your goals and your vision, and it’s the right things. If you’re [00:48:00] looking at people’s time sheets for what they did last week, it is too late.
They already did it. And so you’re shifting to seeing what people are going to do. While there’s still a chance to modify that before they get going, but that requires that your team has actually planned what they’re gonna do next week. Mm-hmm. It’s helpful for them and it’s helpful for you as the leader to make sure that everything lines up.
Patrick: Yeah. There’s so many good things. I do love the full focus plan and I thought I had it on my desk. Uh, but it’s, it’s just a little outta reach. So I, I have one. I love that it’s analog. It’s old school. It’s paper and pen. It’s not a new digital thing, and it makes me like slow down. Thanks. So I, I love the Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt.
You can subscribe to that and they’ll just keep sending them to you and you can just keep filling ’em out. I think it’s wonderful. Um, I also love what you’re talking about here ’cause I think there’s a level that people are like, oh, I hired great people. I don’t need to like, sort of micromanage them. I don’t think this is micromanagement.
I think it goes back to our [00:49:00] conversation around coaching, uh, earlier and like the best in the world have coaches and I think it’s our job to help coach and. Develop and train our people. And an opportunity there is go, Hey, let’s, we’re gonna do this organizationally. We’re gonna review Monday morning the, or Friday afternoon, whatever, you know, rhythm we think makes the most sense on, you know, the direction we think we’re going for next week.
And then, you know, we can make any fine tuning adjustments because again, I know the direction we’re headed as an organization. I’ve outlined the vision. I may not have communicated that as clearly as I, uh, maybe should, and then I can like make sure that. If I haven’t communicated that effectively, I’ve got a new opportunity and I can realign people for, uh, uh, keeping everybody on the right track.
You think about, you know, if we’re all rowing in the same direction, we’re gonna get there so much more efficiently, effectively than if we’re moving in different directions, so that’s wonderful.
Courtney: Yeah. It’s just another way to get visibility mm-hmm. On what people are doing and whether or not [00:50:00] their priorities align with what your expectations are and what is needed.
It’s also a built-in accountability structure. Mm-hmm. Different people have different responses around accountability. Gretchen Rubin has a really, uh, great book called The Four Tendencies that talks about these four different ways that people handle accountability. And most of the population is what she calls an obliger.
So they’re somebody who will be very accountable to someone else, but not as accountable to themselves. Hmm. And so when you require someone. To plan their week and share it with you, they’re much more likely to carry it out because they wanna oblige the accountability to you. If it was just for them just to make their week more effective and productive, they might let something else slip in the way.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Courtney: I fill out my, my leadership team sees my weekly big three and my status of my project and goals every single week.
Patrick: [00:51:00] Yeah.
Courtney: It’s an extra accountability where I can share that I know I’m not gonna be the only one who’s mm-hmm. You know, not putting that out there. And so, um, all of these are just examples of, of tools and processes that you build to have information and insights about what’s happening in the business.
These are examples around productivity. We talked a little bit earlier about examples of finance fgo for people. For leadership and it, and it otherwise, without this kind of thing, most likely leaders and founders are at some point during the week thinking, I wonder what in the world so-and-so’s doing.
Mm-hmm. And then they have to go and ask them. Right. And they disrupt their work and then they, you know, everything gets off. You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to react. You can just build a system. Feeds you this information and then you can act on it if you need to. But most often we will add more people, we add more [00:52:00] leaders.
The biggest challenge is we lose visibility on what’s happening. Yeah. And for some people that that feels like they’ve lost control and they need to, you know, micromanagement. For others, they’re like, yay, somebody else is here to do it. And then they’ve lost really the ability to Im impact the quality.
The values and the way it’s carried out. So it might all be getting done, just no longer aligns with who you are and where you’re going. And so there’s all kinds of benefits to having these systems, but it’s really the, a huge difference between thinking and functioning like a startup and thinking and functioning like a scale up.
Patrick: Yeah. I, I love this, this whole thinking and, and I think there’s a couple resources I wanna point people to because I think. I think having awareness of where we’re at is, is so good. So the first one is the, the assessment that you’ve, you’ve put together. Uh, it’s assessments with an s dot forge ahead.com.[00:53:00]
Uh, and it probably takes 10, 15 minutes to get through that, that assessment, but I think it’s, it’s great. I think everybody should, uh, go check that out. We’ll have links to that in the show notes, but again, assessments dot forge ahead.com. And then also we, we talked about this earlier, earlier, but for ahead.com/ebook to get the book that, um, uh, where we can really get this simple scale up system, uh, in one, uh, condensed package.
So you can look at it and go, yeah, this is, this is great. Uh, I also love your website, forge ahead.com, just to so many resources. And if somebody’s like ready to go right now, you can book a discovery call with, uh, somebody on Courtney’s team that, uh, will allow you to just. Start taking action on these things.
If you’re, you’re ready to, uh, move all this forward. And Courtney, I think we should also maybe get together and like do a biweekly book study. It sounds like we both read enough books. We could, uh, you know, do a review of whatever the, the new cool [00:54:00] business book is on the marketplace. And I was thinking that too.
Are you an energy? So do you
Courtney: know your lifting and strengths? Are you a learner? Is that in your top five? Is that what drives that?
Patrick: I am, and my team makes fun of me. I’ve got an audible account that, uh, I crank through books at like two and a half speed, and they’re like, oh my gosh. You know? So anytime somebody brings up a book, I’m like, uh, if I haven’t listened to it, I’m getting it.
So yes, I, uh, I do love the learning side of things. So,
Courtney: yeah, same here. It’s in my, I think it’s my number three top glitch string. Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: I’ll have to look up where it’s at on, on my list, but, uh, I know it’s in there ’cause it, uh. I just get so much joy out of, you know mm-hmm. Learning a new thing and synthesizing some ideas and mixing ’em together.
And then I go off and quick start a new deal and they’re like, would you please just sit down for a minute? So, um, Courtney, this has been great. Um, we haven’t touched on this, but I think people should also know that, um, forge does many tremendous things. I think about the, the fractional CFO work you do. I [00:55:00] think that just fits so nicely with the, uh, we’ll call it the scaling.
Um. Systems that you’ve got. I, I think you need great financial data and good KPIs to be able to, um, scale your business well. So I, uh, again, one of those things. Go to forge ahead.com, check out, uh, all of the, uh, resources that they’ve got there. And I think, I love the work you’re doing. I think this is great.
Is there anything else we should, we should chat about before we wrap up?
Courtney: I think we, we’ve covered a lot and I, I feel good. I hope that this has been helpful to your listeners. And like you said, we have financial and management consultants on the finance side, virtual CFOs and controllers for that ongoing visibility and predictability in your finances.
We have an audit practice that for those who need external financial reporting assurance on their statements, the tax advisory team. Um, and then I get to do the work in the. Um, group business coaching program called Scaling Leader. That’s really where, maybe that’s what we should mention, I guess, is [00:56:00] that mm-hmm.
Um, all these things that we’ve talked about in the Simple Scale System come to Life in Scaling Leader, which is our group business coaching programs or meeting together every quarter for two or three day events. It’s an annual paths with a three year curriculum. We’ve got virtual events and um, round tables and one-on-one coaching sessions in between.
Essentially in Scaling Leader, we’ve taken certain problems that scaling leaders and organizations face pulled together the different tools and steps and principles from the simple scale of system to solve that problem. And we teach it to clients in those two or three day workshops. So coming up in December, the topic is follow the money and we’re gonna help leaders and executives understand how.
Understanding the story the money tells about your organization and how to translate that can help you to make [00:57:00] decisions. We’ll talk about our system of visibility and how you create meaningful, relevant scorecards and dashboards. And each quarter we do something like that, either around mm-hmm.
Productivity, leadership, finance, or uh, human intelligence. Yeah.
Patrick: This is, this is wonderful. And I think it’s so, I, I think we’re undervaluing getting together in person and being disconnected from the business for three or four days to really focus on, uh, really moving these, these high level concepts forward.
I think it’s, uh, it’s great. Uh, it can’t, I think it’s one of those things that really can’t be done virtually. So, um, Courtney, this has been a fantastic conversation. I appreciate all of this. We’ll have. Notes all of the resources in the show notes. But, uh, thank you so much for joining us here today.
Courtney: Thank you, Patrick.
Thanks for having me.
Patrick: Thanks so much for tuning into this week’s episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I hope you found real value in today’s conversation with Courtney. New Ryan. Annette, it gave you some new ideas on how to. Scale your business with [00:58:00] clarity and confidence. If you did take a moment to share this episode with another entrepreneur who could use it, the more business owners who would learn how to grow strategically, the stronger our community becomes.
And if you haven’t yet, please leave a quick review. It only takes a minute and helps more people discover the show. And if you’re ready to start building out your own strategy, head over to vinyl strategies.com/tap. You’ll find insights and proven framework to help you keep more of what you earn and take your business to the next level.
Again, that’s vital strategies.com/tax. And remember, you’re a vital entrepreneur. You’re vital because you’re the backbone of our economy, creating opportunities, driving growth, and making an impact. You’re vital to your family, creating abundance in every aspect of life, and you’re vital to me because you’re committed to growing your wealth.
Leading with purpose and creating something truly great. Thank you for being a part of this incredible community of Vital Wealth. I appreciate you and I look forward to having you back here next week on the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast, where we help entrepreneurs minimize their taxes, master wealth, and [00:59:00] optimize their lives.