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Glenn Mattson
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Glenn Mattson
Hey everybody, welcome. We're in season five, episode 12 of Building Blocks of Success. Today really is going to be wrapping up what we've been spending some time on, with regard to the five stages of entrepreneurial growth. As we look back, I want you to realize that 75% of all practices and businesses don't make it. 75%! And the majority of those don't make it after two years.
Glenn Mattson
So, after they hit that seven-year marker, a big difference will occur in their practice and success ratio. You're a very successful rainmaker; you started to realize time profitability was really important, making sure that you understand that process runs your machine. You got to that maturity to realize that people really do make a difference, and getting the right people in the right seats of the bus was critical. Then you started to realize the importance of communication and being crystal clear in your communication. That really started to create consistency in your practice, which then ultimately creates predictability, which allows you to scale. You know, as the CEO, you have accomplished some pretty heavy rocks.
Glenn Mattson
I was in a conference the other day. We had 2000 practices that were part of this talk. Of that, it ranged anywhere from about 800 million, all the way up to 22 billion people. I can actually tell you on two hands how many people are what can be considered at the mayor's level. So, when you're looking at the CEO, that CEO spot is very rare, very rare. CEOs have really created the filters necessary to really put all the decision-making onto others on the team. In essence, the team realizes that decision-making filters down, so they don't need to come to the founder to understand what to do in the situation. The CEO has really converted the practice from I to we, and that's pretty massive. Their team understands the difference between investing and spending. They realize that hard decisions and tough decisions don't get easier with time. They've empowered their managers to be good at supervision without feeling uncomfortable, and they have a culture that supports hunting, not just expansion.
Glenn Mattson
So, as we get into this next level of now being a mayor, let's talk about a handful of the things that I find are pretty critical to that stage that you're now entering into. First of all, which is probably the most important thing to get, is that a mayor is about influence, not about control anymore. Yeah, your name is still on the door, probably. Yes, you still have the respect, but the influence you had before is when you spoke, everyone got quiet and listened because you're the one whose name was on the check. Now it's about influence, and you still participate in business at the level you want to. You may not be involved in a daily grind like you used to.
Glenn Mattson
But just imagine, and the best way I explain it to most of my clients is that you're a grandparent. You love hanging out with your grandkids. You love going over and visiting. You love sitting down and having a bite to eat or playing with the kids, but you really don't have to worry about how the kids are going to clean up their clothes after they've been playing in the mud. You don't really have to worry about if they're going to get their homework done before you leave and go home. You're not too concerned about how your son or your daughter is going to deal with the hot water heater that they have issues with. Those are no longer your problems. You've put in the hard work, you've instilled the values, you've set up systems. Now, quite honestly, you're there to watch and have fun. You're there to see the team grow and thrive through independence. Isn't that amazingly rewarding when you can sit down and actually be on the sideline but still be in the game? You don't have to run; you don't have to do all the work. You get to watch your team grow and thrive independently. So, it's a significant mind shift for even you. From going from that rainmaker who bet on yourself and would make hard decisions and would make decisions that the average person could never make, and you would do it with confidence because betting on you has always paid off.
Glenn Mattson
Now you're allowing others to make the decisions. You're allowing others to have the recourse of the impact or the outcome of those decisions. You are no longer the center of attention. And honestly, that is the, probably, if not the one, it is close to being the one biggest roadblock from going from a rainmaker to a CEO and from a CEO to a mayor. In the beginning, everything was around you. You were Superman or Superwoman. You were the center of the universe, and now you're a bystander. You're watching it, exceedingly influential, but you don't have the same power that you used to. You've purposely built a team and a group of individuals that can operate without you hovering over them all the time. In essence, you've actually created a business that doesn't need you.
Glenn Mattson
Pretty powerful. But for many, they self-sabotage it so that they can be part of it. It's called the Daddy Warbuck Syndrome. I see it all the time with people who say they're ready to be a CEO, and they will subconsciously sabotage certain things, especially key decisions. So, at the 11th hour, everyone turns around and says, “We can't figure this out”, and the founder will swoop in at the last moment, figure it all out, and say, see, you need me. They don't even realize they're doing it. But it happens all the time. Daddy Warbucks Syndrome. Think about it like running a city; the mayor sets policies to provide guidance, but they're not running the departments. They're not figuring out who's coming in and who's not coming in. They're not the ones executing against the plan. So, remember, as a rainmaker, you're developing managers. As a CEO, you're developing leaders who are managing the managers. As a mayor, your leaders are running the business now.
Glenn Mattson
So, there's a handful of things I want to share with you that are really important to be at this level and to be at this level successfully. The first is, as a CEO, you remember one of the rules I gave you, which is you only do what only you can do, everything else is delegated; everything else. Now the rule is not that you only do what you can do, that only you can do, but now you have to ask yourself, how can I influence this without getting involved? How do I influence this without necessarily being the one who makes or changes the decision? Some people like you kind of think it’s like herding chickens up a hill. No, when you sit down with somebody instead of telling them what they did right or wrong, being a mayor is about self-discovery. It's about really the decision making and having the ability to ask questions to the individuals to see that what they did didn't fall in line with the values and the beliefs of the company, not they did something wrong or right, it just didn't fall in line.
Glenn Mattson
So, the mayor is more focused, not on tactics and strategies, but what I call guiding principles, rules, subsets, and usually there are only about four or five that really run an entire company. One of my clients who's at this level and one of the mantras he has is called selflessness, which means that everything that you should be doing is not in your best interest necessarily. It's in the best interests of the client. It's not about selling something. It's not selling a product. It's about solving a concern or issue that someone has. It's about finding truth. He'll always say, if you find truth, everything else takes care of itself, but also means you can't wimp out on finding truth. So as a manager and a leader, you do have to hold people accountable. As a manager and a leader, you do have to do supervision, because it's about truth. Truth is more important than anything else, and if it's truthful, it may not be easy, but it’s still truthful. So, as you start to get to the level of mayor, what are the three to five absolute guiding principles that your entire existence of what you built can successfully run on?
Glenn Mattson
Another area that I find mayors have learned to become and fit well within that role is, that they truly understand the shadow of its leader. They don't work on day-to-day tactics. They work on patterns. They have the ability to sit back, be a third person to events, watch meetings that are going on and what people are saying or not saying, or how their eyes move when they talk a certain way. They do not react to something like a golf ball hitting the water, right? They don't react to the rings that it's caused. What they look for is patterns, and look for individuals that either create the patterns, or they look for external sources that create those patterns, and then they try to solve the pattern without getting involved. So, I believe their influence is very different than let me solve this for you. They're exceedingly curious about what caused it to happen, why it happened, and how it happened. But their focus is on identifying patterns and solving the patterns. Because long term, that's much easier and more ROI for time, energy, and effort than trying to fix a tactical problem.
Glenn Mattson
The second thing I think a mayor does exceptionally well is with that shadow of its leader. What I mean by that is that a mayor spends a fair amount of time developing the shadow of its leaders. See, a shadow of its leader means that the team can only be as strong as the shadow of its leader. The team can only be as weak as the shadow of its leader. So, for instance, if a leader makes excuses, I guarantee you that the leader is going to accept excuses. If the leader can't take risks, I guarantee you that the team is poor at taking risks. If the team leader doesn't handle objections, setbacks, and roadblocks, very well, right? They're running around the office like an orangutan, their hands are up, and they are wailing around, doors are slamming shut. If they can't handle it, well, I'm going to guarantee you the team is not handling it well.
Glenn Mattson
So, when we look at the shadow of its leader, it's really taking a look at how we can ebb and flow two or three people that will then have an impact on 30 to 50 people. The shadow of his leader is never telling someone what they did right or wrong. The shadow of his leader is more about asking, have you thought about this? And when you did this, what do you think the teammate thought of? It's about self-reflection, and self-discovery, again, not making someone feel bad. It's about selflessness. If you really cared about someone, wouldn't you do that? If they really care about the business, and this is the business, so they're going to do it. The other thing I want to share with you that the mayor does, besides decision making and the values and the shadow of its leader, because remember, your team has two eyes and only one set of ears, they listen to what you say 7% of the time, yet they watch what you do all the time.
Glenn Mattson
The other thing I've noticed that mayors do helps tremendously when it comes to what I call level-three issues. Level-three issues are things that have to do with leadership, not necessarily management. Are they clear on the vision? Is the vision of where they're going - can everyone get behind it and understand how it impacts me personally? Because honestly, if it doesn't, that's 91% of all the reasons that execution doesn't happen on a company-wide basis. The people downstairs, the people at whatever level you want to call them; the minions, everybody, the employees, they have 0% of understanding how these objectives will impact you personally. So how do you spread the vision so that everybody understands what it means, not just the people making commissions? So that is having the ability to look at and focus in on the key attributes that they believe are going to drive the business to the next level.
Glenn Mattson
I think most mayors will focus in on what I consider the successful mindset. They want to drive responsibility, ownership, and accountability, in the leadership team, which will then drive it to the management team, which will then drive it to the team itself. Remember the shadows of a leader. So, when we look at responsibility, ownership, and accountability, as I mentioned before excuse-making. I mentioned before failure and obstacles. What about risk-taking? What about dealing with okayness? What about criticism? What about looking for feedback? What about dealing with the why me syndrome? So, there are areas of improvement that a mayor looks at and says they can still influence individuals, they just don't have the control like they used to, and by choice.
Glenn Mattson
So again, for many of you listening out there, mayorville is an absolutely wonderful place to be, just like being a grandparent again, you show up, and you listen to the woes. They ask advice when they want it, you give it when you need it. If need be, you're more than welcome to come over and lend a hand in building the deck. You're more than welcome to give advice on how to build it. It's not like the old days. So, as a mayor, embrace the fact that you've worked incredibly hard. Embrace the fact that less than 10% ever get it to rainmaker. Less than 2% ever, ever make it to CEO, and less than 10% of that 2% ever make it to mayorville. It's very difficult to get there solely based on the mindset and the belief system of the founder. So, I hope you've learned some great tips on this last stage of the five stages of entrepreneurial growth as we look through the emerging, then the developing, then the rainmaker, then the CEO, and lastly, the mayor. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Building Blocks of Success.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
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