In this thought-provoking episode, Scott Ritzheimer shares how to thrive in your current stage without forced growth. If you’ve ever struggled with boredom or the pressure to keep advancing, you won’t want to miss it.

You will discover:

– What thriving strategies keep you engaged in any stage

– Why aligning your stage with your vision boosts fulfillment

– How to embrace mystery to sustain joy and success

Episode Transcript

Scott Ritzheimer

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the start, scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder, one of the questions that I get asked a lot when I travel all over the country and teach on these different stages is, do I have to get to the next level? Because once we finally realize what the next level is, many of us realize that’s not actually what we want. That’s not why we started this business. It’s not our dream for our nonprofit. It’s just something that we feel like we have to go up into the right, up into the right, up onto the right. You couldn’t be further from the truth. And so right out of the gate here, I want to just dispel the myth. There’s nothing inherently better about stage seven than stage one. In fact, there’s nothing better about stage five than stage four, not in absolute terms. And so as I’m working with folks, as I’m interacting with founders at various conferences and events that I speak at. What I’ll tell them is, do you only need to get to the biggest stage, the latest stage that your vision demands?

What we’re really looking at is, what is your vision for the organization, what’s your vision for your time leading it, and how big do you have to get to fulfill that vision? It’s not how big you have to get to be a $10 million company or 100 million or a billion dollar company, those are fine. Those are just goals. Those aren’t a vision. It has nothing to do with your success as a founder. Anyone who wants to impose some type of definition of success, it requires you to progress to a stage that later than whatever your vision demands is not doing a service to you. So what does that mean? It means that there’s actually benefit. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is better to stay in a smaller stage than it is to wrongly pursue a later stage. And that’s not necessarily hard to do, but it’s not easy to do either. So there’s this interesting challenge that comes up when we realize, oh, I can actually stay in this stage.

The next question is, how do you do that, especially sustainably? Because, let’s be honest, we’re founders. We like to move and shake and grow and create. And the idea of staying stuck inside of a stage is a really big challenge. Well, the first thing is, you have to learn to thrive in that stage and and in my book, there’s a whole lot of information on exactly how that we’re not really going to talk about that in this conversation. So you have to learn what drives success in the stage that you’re in. You may even need to, if we take a step back, decide if you can go back a stage and still meet your vision. That is surprisingly common in the folks that I work with and teach and and so let’s assume that you’re going to stay in the stage that you’re at. Let’s assume that you are already thriving in that stage, that, yeah, it’s got its challenges, and there are hard days, but by and large, you say, Hey, this is pretty good. I’ve got something really special.

You’ve discovered what the joy is in your stage. And I mean that very specifically there are, there are very specific things that you get to enjoy in each and every stage, and they vary by stage. In fact, the way that I discovered this was, I’m working with these later stage founders, very successful. Stage Five, stage six, stage seven, and again and again and again in our conversations and in these sober moments of reflection, they’ll tell me over and over, I wish I was back in stage two, stage I wish I was there. I wish I was doing it. I wish it was as simple as it used to be, and then the very next session, I’ll be in someone in stage three, and they’re just dying because of the realities of stage three, because it’s hard, like you’re in that reluctant manager mode, and you wondered, what’s wrong with these people, and that that’s just an all consuming question. And you might be thinking, why would you ever want to stay in a stage like this? And the reality of it is that management stage can be a whole lot of fun.

In fact, it actually is the stage that correlates the most with the life cycle stage from last you and business partner of mine, the book critical success here behind me, stage three is where you typically spend the time in the organizational fun stage. So there’s a lot to be said about stage three, even stage four, any of the stages have their and and so you’ve got to understand what the joy is. You have to have the right strategies for what you need to do to thrive. Because it’s not everything. It’s actually very few things. Again, we talked. About that in the book. But from there, there’s another gear, and it’s not another level. It’s not it’s not kind of like the next big thing. It’s more like an overdrive button on your car. Have you ever turned that off accidentally? I’ve got one in my truck, and when you bump it, as soon as you let off the gas, you feel the engine start to hold you back, and it almost feels like you’re touching the brakes when you’re not. And that’s a feeling that folks get whenever they settle on staying in and thriving at a stage.

As soon as you feel like you let off the gas at all, it’s just oh, there’s this lurch, there’s this jerk, and it’s not comfortable. It’s not pleasant. We kind of catch yourself thinking, like, what was that? Is that really what this looks like? And it’s so severe that sometimes it’ll lead people to thinking, No, I can’t stay in this stage. I have to grow. I have to get to the next stage, which just is true. And so what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to push that overdrive button. We’ve got to ease that transition from full on the gas to something other than full on the gas, because you don’t need to be full on the gas forever to stay and thrive in and sustain success in any one of these seven stages. But there is something that you need to do, and it’s going to catch us a little odd, especially type A founders that are driving take the next hill, much like myself. The one thing that I have found separates those from those who can sustain success almost indefinitely. It seems inside of one stage, they don’t have to grow, they’re not shrinking, they’re not bored, they’re not fiddling with stuff and making people angry.

They’re just thriving and thriving and thriving the one thing that separates us from the others who start to drip or start to lose their edge or feel a little arthritic or lose their passion or get frustrated more than they should, or wonder, you know, just perpetually, if the grass is greener, somewhere else, anywhere else, you’d be surprised what that one thing is. And it’s important that we get hold of this one thing, because, again, the consequences are pretty dire. I’ve seen a lot of founders make some of the biggest mistake simply because they were bored. And let’s face it, that’s a real threat. When you’re not striving for that next stage, you’re not learning all these new skills that are necessary to evolve. You’re not taking the next hill, at least not in the way that you would you were trying to grow Stage to Stage. Then boredom is a real threat. It’s a real enemy. And there’s a couple things that confront that contentment is one, and that’s why we talk about joy so much around here, because I think it’s a key to contentment. There’s another that’s actually a lot more interesting, and that is mystery. It’s It’s mystery, and that word probably strikes most of you as at least curious, and that’s kind of the point. What I’m talking about here is you solve your boredom through busyness.

And what I want you to do thinking about, how do you sustain success in this stage that you’re in? How do you keep enjoying it? How do you stay at the top your game, even if you’re trying not get to the next level in the game. The way that you do it is by by baking mystery into your life and into your world. Explore something that you don’t know, try something that you don’t know if it’s going to work. Take on a strategy for next year that’s not going to change the world necessarily, but you have no idea how you’re going to do it, you would be shocked at how profound the impact is of having some mystery in your life, and everything else is conspiring against it, because mystery creates uncertainty. And our brains and our society, they hate uncertainty.

There’s a violence against it. We don’t like feeling like we could screw up. We don’t like feeling like we don’t know the answer, but we’re drawn to it as founders, and so we’ve got to find some way of not only embracing mystery, but actually building it into how we do what we do. And the best way that I can, I can talk about this is one, I think that first and foremost, you need to do it within your organization. You spend too much time there in any stage other than one, six or seven, right? Because those are not organization dependencies. So all you founders in the middle from two to five, which is the vast majority of you. It has to be in your organization, not all the mystery, not even most of it. There has to be something mysterious, something intriguing, something inspiring about your organization. And because we don’t want to overgrow, we don’t want to accidentally grow you. Out of the stage that you’re in. It can’t just be bigger goals. It has to be more interesting goals. It has to be tougher challenges.

And we have to do that intention. So first one is it has to be inside your organization. The next thing about mystery is that it can be outside the organization as well. In fact, many times as much of it is. And so it might be something as simple as rebalancing your life and your success toward your marriage, which I know, for me, was a much harder area for success than was business. I, many of you know, helped start a whole bunch of organizations started, scaled and sold my business, all before I turned five years old and had a ton of success there, and I’m happily able to report that I’ve been married 20 years now, so that’s been awesome, but it’s been hard, and so a big part of sustaining where I am in stage two of the process. Intentionally, I’m staying in stage two. I’ve been all the way to six to my previous business, and two is where I want to be now, because it’s what my vision demands of me.

One of the things that I’ve had to realize is that there’s a mystery in making my marriage better that is inspiring. It’s challenging. It’s stretching me. It’s forcing me to figure out who I am in a new way, and forcing me to go outside of myself in a way that’s really challenging. Now, that might not be it for you. It might be something like learning a new instrument that’s fascinating and and I can get off on a whole soapbox about that, but just getting into a place where you are regularly doing something that you don’t feel like you’re fully equipped to do. That’s how we embrace mystery. It’s it’s looking for something, pursuing something greater, something bigger, something outside of yourself, against which backdrop you look very small. That’s what mystery is.

And so I know this is a little nebulous, mystery is a little nebulous. I know there’s not the most practical episode we’ve ever done, but mystery isn’t practical, right? That’s why it’s so wonderful. If you’re going to stay in a stage who wants more practical advice on how to do what you’re already doing that’s boring, you don’t need more practical advice to stay in your stage. You need more mystery. You don’t need to be better at what you do. You need to do things that you’re worse at doing, so that you can learn those and explore those. And so long as you’re able to embrace mystery, you can sustain your success, your joy, your contentment, your fulfillment in any one of the seven stages for as long as you like. It really does come down to embracing the mystery. So my big question for you today is, for those of you, especially who are trying to stay in the stage, but even beyond that, just for those of you who are feeling a little twinge of boredom more than you’re comfortable with, where’s the mystery in your life? What have you done to foster it? What can you do to develop it? What can you do to put yourself in situations that you don’t know if you’re going to succeed?

That’s what’s going to keep you sharp, that’s what’s going to keep you passionate, that’s what’s going to keep you excited, and that’s what’s going to help for the long run. I hope this was a helpful episode. I don’t get to do a whole lot of these solo episodes, so many great guests who come on the show, but every once in a while, we like to sneak one in. I love spending time with you. I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you want to hear more solo episodes like this. That sounds super narcissistic to say, but it’s another format that we’re trying out for a few episodes based on some feedback we’ve already gotten from some listeners. And if you like it you’d want to hear more. Please let us know in the comments. Shoot us an email. [email protected] We’d love to hear from you if you want help on the journey. I’d highly encourage you visit our site. There are podcast episodes. Lord, for each of the stages, we’ve got close to 30 different scale architects positions all around the country, around the world, actually, who’d love to help you out? And I’d be happy to connect you with any of those as well. Head on over to scale.Architect.com we’d love to see you there.

Until next time you know your time and attention mean the world to me. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as you could, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.

Contact Scott Ritzheimer

Scott helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits and with his business partner started led their multimillion-dollar business through an exceptional and extended growth phase (over 10 years of double-digit growth) all before he turned 35.He founded Scale Architects to help founders and CEOs identify and implement the one essential strategy they need right now to get them on the fast track to Predictable Success.

Want to learn more about Scott Ritzheimer’s work at Scale Architects? Check out his website at https://www.scalearchitects.com/