Hard Truths & Breakthroughs From Founders Who’ve Hit A Growth Ceiling
Patrick Thean, an award-winning entrepreneur, USA Today bestselling author, and one of the world’s leading experts in strategy execution is the guy CEOs call when growth stalls.
Today, Patrick shares why most companies don’t grow:
1) they can’t keep commitments
2) they crave crisis
3) they avoid the boring, necessary work.
He describes a shift from trying to solve every problem on his own to learning how to recognize issues early, trust his team, and truly let go.
My takeaway: real leadership growth begins with openness... a willingness to welcome feedback, even when it’s uncomfortable or challenges the assumptions you’ve held for years.
Read the full transcript
Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly cleaned up. Expect the odd misheard word.
- 0:00 Wes Mathews
Patrick Thean He has helped more CEOs break through their growth ceilings than almost anybody I've ever met. most of the challenges have seen have really been execution challenges. of us had trouble committing what we said we're going to do I think we have the best intention. But again, like juggling 15 things, I always had this vision in my mind of, stick spinning a plate. Right. And I'm trying people will come to me for this problem.
- 0:22 Patrick Thean
sometimes entrepreneurs create excitement for no reason other than to feel fulfilled. So we create crises and we do crazy stuff to make ourselves feel validated.
- 0:32 Wes Mathews
all of a sudden I realized, like, I'm not crazy, a visionary. And there's so many things happening around me that are breaking and cracking. What happens to the next level?
- 0:40 Patrick Thean
The bad guys come at you, but they come at you faster and you get a different set of bad guys as well, then when you win that level, what's your reward?
- 0:50 Wes Mathews
Level three the next level. man. Like I'm the problem solver. Like, give me that big problem and I'm going to solve it. But how do I shift to problem identifier? This is the unfiltered truth about entrepreneurship. Raw. No BS, no sugarcoating. Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel. I'm your host, Wes Mathews. Each episode will learn from experienced founders and uncover the top 5% learnings that led to their success and all things personal, family and business. This show is sponsored by Stealth Consulting, delivering clear marketing strategies, ROI, and no surprises.
All right. I am really excited for today's guest. He has helped more CEOs break through their growth ceilings than almost anybody I've ever met. Patrick Thean is the co-founder of Rhythm Systems, bestselling author of rhythm and the journey to CEO success, and a guy who's not Just talking theory. He's live this. He's built a fast growth company from scratch, hit the big 500 and exited, and then dedicated his career to building a framework that helps leadership teams stop drowning in firefighting and actually scale with intention.
He's a systems guy, a rhythm guy, a stop guessing guy in the actually execute guy. Super excited to dive in this conversation. It's been a long time coming. And actually the we're closing out the year with you Patrick. So got a lot riding on this, but, you're the guy that CEOs call when growth stalls and things start slipping. So what I like about your work is it's not theory. It's actually systems and execution. So diving right in you've coached thousands of leaders. But why do companies hit that hit that ceiling.
- 2:26 Patrick Thean
Well, first, thank you for inviting me on your show. I've been looking forward to talking to you. It's been good. let me ask you a question. It's real simple. It's simple, but it's not the thing I would say most of the challenges have seen have really been execution challenges. Like they hit the growth ceiling because, they failed to achieve the commitments. And so the number one lesson I share of all the people I coach is you will not succeed unless you commit and execute and do that repeatedly.
You know, and it gets boring. But I'm trying to help people build a boring company, if I can say that. In other words, sometimes entrepreneurs create excitement for no reason other than to feel fulfilled. So we create crises and we do crazy stuff to make ourselves feel validated. And oftentimes it ends up in a crisis. That being said, I would say most of us just had trouble committing to what we said we're going to do and then executing on that repeatedly.
- 3:23 Wes Mathews
You got to do that. You could do that over and over again in order to succeed. What's funny is I love the simple questions are always the most, you know, the deepest. But as a pure visionary, I create so much chaos. I don't know why I do it, but you bring up something that I think is really important. You know, looking at through the lens of an entrepreneurial company is I'm a visionary, and I almost feel like when we start to go to execution, I'll go hard for, like, a day.
Yes. Then I'm off to the next thing right. So do you feel it's like when a visionary has that realization that, hey, you got to let go of the vine a little bit, you got to bring somebody in that can execute your vision or like, where do you see that? Or are you like, in like I want to get that visionary to execute. What are your thoughts on that?
- 4:06 Patrick Thean
I believe that I believe you should do what you're best at. So some visionaries can execute and some kid. But every visionary needs to understand what it takes to execute. You know, one of my clients been with me a long, long time, 25 years. He has a lot of he doesn't have a lot of discipline. But what he does do is he said to me that, Patrick, I recognize that discipline is necessary for my company to grow. So he's installed the discipline now. He himself has a bit of trouble with discipline, but he allows the discipline to take hold in his company so that everybody else can execute.
And so what I share with visionaries is you got to do one thing really, really well. You've got to be able to help. You got to be about articulate what you want to achieve. Then you've got to hold people accountable to the outcomes, the outcomes. If you can do that and allow discipline to run its course, putting the right system in the right process and allow your people to execute, you can succeed very well.
- 5:07 Wes Mathews
What was your background? Right. Like, that's a long like a 25 year standing client is phenomenal. But we went back like, what led you down to the path of rhythm. Were you running a company or like you talk a little bit about that.
- 5:21 Patrick Thean
So rhythm is actually my third company that I've run my, my first one was the one where, you know, we were we were number 151 on the Inc 500. We were entrepreneur of the year for North Carolina. We were a rocket ship. Great 100% a year for quite a few years. And after about seven years, you know, we sold the company, had a good exit, and I was very young. I was like, you know, 32, 33 years old. the world thought we were successful and rewarded me with an exit on the inside.
Looking out, though, I was stressed. I was running from crisis to crisis, and I always felt like I was like the dog running behind that car. And one day, one night I woke up at 2 a.m. and 2 a.m., cold sweat. Things were breaking around me, but my stats reports all look pretty good. My consulting managers all said things were pretty good, but my gut told me that things were not pretty good. So that night I kind of woke up, and then I went back to work the next day and started asking different questions.
And without realizing, I built my first early warning system with a number of leading indicators, and I came to this realization. I was asking the wrong questions and looking at the wrong indicators. I was looking at results indicators only because that's what most people teach you is what is to is to make the result indicators. And so I built my first early warning system, got out the crises and survive long enough to be successful. As like I said the world is at it. We were successful and rewarded us with an exit.
So after that, a lot of entrepreneurs this was in the late 90s. A lot of entrepreneurs came out asking me for help, and part of me giving back, I would help them. But then I would realize that, gee, I wasn't as dumb as I thought. It was like these guys were having some of the same challenges that I had and missing on the commitment. So, you know, over the last 25 years, I've been really committed to realize that my, my real calling is to help CEOs not fail, but rather to succeed and then to achieve their dreams and build, build great companies.
And so I would say it's add a lot of joy to my life to realize that. And I didn't really start this realizing that, I mean, entrepreneurs asking me for help and my oldest customer, Michael Prager, I've been coaching for 25 years. He's the coauthor, by the way, of my new book, which is The Journey to SEO success. And Michael, I got set together a few years ago. We said, hey, what do we curated? What are the most important things you should do to succeed? Now, Michael's a really unique guy because he succeeded over, many inflection points of the company, from zero to unicorn to taking the company public in 2021, having almost, you know, 1600 employees now and then recently, taking a couple of big private.
So now he's owned by a private equity firm. And that happened literally a month ago, October 15th. Company went private again, valued at 2.2.. Some billion. And, and he's still the guy. He's still running it. So it's very, very seldom, almost never. Right. You find a founder that can go through that journey through all those different inflection points. And that's why we wrote we wrote this book together. It's really his gift to the world to say, hey, you know, how does one make it this far?
And we've got the benefit of he's not the only, guy that I've had, that I've had a lot of, a long relationship with. So we also have stories from all of my clients. I've coached for 12 years, 15 years or ten years on up. I've been very lucky.
- 8:52 Wes Mathews
What's interesting for me, as I talk to you, like, I go back to, like, my visionary, like, I picked up a book in 2014, traction. Yes, I think I joined the organization EO Entrepreneur Organization, and I saw all these entrepreneurs around me, like talking about where they're traveling and all this fun they're having. And I'm like, I'm getting my head kicked in, like, I don't know what's going on, but like, what's the common denominator amongst all these entrepreneurs and some of these, like, you got to read this book traction.
And I remember reading that and all of a sudden I realized, like, I'm not crazy, I'm a visionary. And I'm like, who's this Gino guy? And why is he in my head? Because he's describing me to the T. But the point I want to bring to that, that you just resurface for me is like, I had that moment when I looked out of my company and I used to point fingers and say, who caused this? What's going on? And then I sat down and realized, and I'm like, I caused all of this chaos myself.
Like it was all created from me. When do you feel like with what you've created, like, what are some of those moments for a CEO or an entrepreneur where they're like, when you meet them like, where were they at mentally?
- 9:59 Patrick Thean
So first, you shouldn't take all the credit for the crisis. You probably create some of it. Yeah, create some of it. I think, you know, for me, we tend to help companies in the mid-market companies that are north of 10 million, south of about 300 billion. And in that space, I would say people first begin to need us when, when they reach what I call the ceiling of complexity. Ceiling of complexity is a different love for every entrepreneur. But here's how you know you're there. That's when you kind of feel like a lot of things around you are breaking.
It's like I'm trying out these new ideas, but somehow these new ideas work for a few weeks and then it seems to break again. And then I'm not quite sure why it's breaking. And there's so many things happening around me that are breaking and cracking. I'm not sure which one to tackle first. So that's what I call the ceiling of complexity. So when you have that feeling, that's when you're hitting that ceiling where things are just not working around you. Correct me. So, what I think happens and it's different for everyone, but I do think happens is that we are used to fixing problems one at a time.
We're not used to fixing ten, 20 problems. When you fix we have ten, 20 problems coming at you. That's when you really need a system. You know, where the, you know, traction. They use us and we of course use rhythm very similar. I think both Gino and I had the same, roots in our methodologies from Vert Harnish at the Rockefeller Habits scaling up. So we have some very similar roots actually. And so we have an execution operating system here that helps you with your people, with your strategy, with your execution, and with your finance.
So I think we have a fuller package that actually also helps you scale beyond the executive team. So are the challenges? That I saw was that a lot of entrepreneurs can get alignment within the first team or within a smaller group of people. But once the company gets expanded beyond 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 people, where, you know, you have to work with the managers, who work for the people who work for you, that's what it's difficult to take this one page plan and cascade it out to everybody else.
- 12:08 Wes Mathews
Yeah. No, I think you're you're spot on. I mean, that's kind of where I fell apart, like, with my company. Like, I just, I felt out of control. And we had all these things written down in these plans, but I just I couldn't get my arms around it. And I think for me, as a visionary, a lot of visionaries, I see your hang with, I don't think we're that great at execution. I think the follow through is really low. I think we have the best intention.
But again, like juggling 15 things, I always had this vision in my mind of, you know, a stick spinning a plate. Right. And I'm trying and like, things pop up. I'm the firefighter, right? Maybe that feeds my ego. And I say I don't have one, but like, people will come to me for this problem. And that's probably where I get a lot of validation. But then I haven't looked at my to do's or like what I should be working on. So how do you find like in your experience and just you have so much experience in the space?
I'm curious that I run into a lot of entrepreneurs, visionaries, that it's really hard to let go of the vine and like, they need to bring in a CEO or somebody to operations or, you know, how can they start to let go of certain things in their business that you know they're good at, but they're not best in the world at? Yeah.
- 13:17 Patrick Thean
So, you know, my new book, The CEOs A junior CEO success seven Key Practices. The first one is about being curious. And I think that what happens is that we believe we know how to solve the problems. And first of all, most successful entrepreneurs are very good problem solvers. So we begin to solve what I call the level one problems. The company gets bigger now, company gets bigger, and we don't have enough time or energy to go solve all the problems. And what happens is this company gets bigger.
We still try and solve the problems, but we our time is getting split now, so we'll jump into a problem, but we don't have full context. So sometimes by trying to solve a problem without full context, you might be actually compounding the problem. Right? So I think that's one of the challenges is that we are used to problem solving. And so we jump in to help our team members solve their problems. Actually we shouldn't be doing that. We should actually get curious and learn more about the problem.
Then the second thing we got to do is we got to level ourselves up. We got to grow. We got to figure out how to move from being a problem solver to being a problem identifier and a problem deployment person. In other words, where someone deploy you to solve this problem, I'm not going to solve it to deploy you to solve this problem. And then I'm going to ask you three questions to make sure that you're solving it. And then I want to coach you and help you.
So these are skills that we typically don't have the skill that we typically have is let me go ask three big questions about this problem. fact, get obsessed with it till I solve it. Okay. Well, the company is small. We can do that. But when a company gets bigger, we can't do that anymore. So this is what I mean by we got to level up. It's almost like playing a video game. And I watch my daughters play this, play the video games, and I notice something.
I notice that they, they play level one and then they, they kill the monsters, right? Or bad guys. Then they go to the next level. What happens to the next level? The bad guys come at you, but they come at you faster and you get a different set of bad guys as well, and we get hurt. Your health points decrease faster. So now you have to deal with the same bad guys, but kill them quicker, and then you have to learn quickly about the new bad guys and your health points get deducted faster.
And then when you win that level, what's your reward? Level three the next level. So running a company is not that different, right? It's like solve these problems and our reward is the next level. And then some of my friends would say to me, oh, they're Patrick, I can't believe I got a higher new project manager. You know, I thought I solved that problem already. yeah, but Jack only knows how to run projects at this size. Now your projects have grown to that size, so it's a slightly different problem.
And then they're like, yeah, I got upscale, Jack, but I thought I did that already. Well, that's the same monster. That's the same monster that you got to deal with. You got to do it quicker. Now. It used to be that maybe you had a month to make the decision about Jack. Well, now you only have two weeks because as your company gets bigger, your opportunity costs also gets bigger. You'll want to call your payroll gets larger. So imagine if you were running an inefficient company for one month with ten human beings that your payroll.
imagine that now you're running the same company. But unfortunately or fortunately, you've got 50 people and your chief operating officer isn't as great as he or she was when you were ten people. And now you're going to take a month to solve that problem while carrying the payroll of 50 people, Your cost gets a lot bigger. That's what I mean by your health points deduction is a lot faster. So no, you don't get a month to solve the problem with Jack. Now you get two weeks and you don't solve that problem in two weeks.
Then you're losing money using opportunity. Your clients are getting pissed off. And now it's not just 1 or 2 customers that's getting pissed off. You've got 10 to 20 customers getting pissed off, so we got to deal with the same issues that people will say, oh God, I just fixed that last year. Yep. Thank you for the growth. Thank you for the same problem at the same time. Thank you for the new problem. But that's our video game, man. That's our climb to the peaks of the mountain.
And when you get to the first peak, your reward is Next peak. That's your reward.
- 17:25 Wes Mathews
So that's how it goes. I, I'm, I'm a big analogy guy. I love that analogy. My kids are going to love that analogy because that's going to support their video gameplay. I love it, but what I hear is get curious. how do you make that shift? Like, I hear you, man. Like I'm the problem solver. Like, give me that big problem and I'm going to solve it. But how do I shift to problem identifier?
- 17:45 Patrick Thean
Yeah, you got to get curious and you've got to find when I'll share with you. You know, I had a coaching session with Michael Prager this week know, he's he's like I said, he just got taken back private. big difference is that when you're a public company, you work for, you know, hundreds of shareholders when you were privately held. So you take a big private, you know, he's got 2 or 3 owners, which are the private equity group in the fund and the investors. So he really has a boss now where in the past he had tons of bosses and it was different.
So I asked him, I said, Michael, here's where most founders quit. And he said to me, he said, yep, they're coming in. They ask me to cut cause they're asking me to do a number of things that sometimes I feel like deconstructing what I've worked so hard to construct, he said, Patrick, I can understand now why a lot of founders quit at this point, because you've got all the money you need, by the way. Yeah. So he doesn't need money now, right? He's got all the money he needs.
He's a successful, financially successful guy. So I said, so Michael, why are you staying in a game? Why do you still want to do this is what he said to me. He said I am really curious. So his investors, TPG, he said TPG has a great track record of increasing a company's value and doing it very well. And he said, I'm really curious to see how they do it. Like, I'm looking for to learn the playbook. So here's the secret behind Michael's ability to keep leveling up.
He recognizes that the problems around him are now different. second thing is he recognizes that his knowledge is at an endpoint. And in order for him to grow, he's got to learn more. He's got to be curious. Now, a lot of people forget whether you're a entrepreneur or not, but a lot of people tap out. We tap out. Well, we believe we're smart enough. So experience is a double edged sword. I do not want to hire folks with a lot of experience who think that they know everything.
And a lot of people are like that. A lot of people would say things like, hey, didn't you hire me to solve that problem? Just get on my way and let me solve that problem. No, bring your experience, but understand the complexity of my company, and understand that my solution might be a little bit different from the one that you have solved before in your experience. So I don't want to hire experienced guy or gal that uses the experience like a hammer. I want them to use the experience but understand and ask themselves, what can I learn about this environment, this situation that is different from the one that I solve at fill in the blanks whatever company I was at before.
that's why a lot of people tap out. They think, oh, I've arrived. Yeah, it's a very subtle thing. They never to themselves of a right, but they act that way. They act like I got it. I know, I know the problem. Before you finish saying the problem. Okay. I'm sorry. This way you're going to make more mistakes. So. So Michael's secret, I think, is that he recognizes his level of knowledge then he says to me, look, I'm really interested to learn how TPG does it, because they got a good track record of continually and systematically increasing a company's enterprise value.
How do they do that? He's truly curious about it. And then he said, know, maybe some of the things that I did were totally necessary. So he's open to the idea that some of the things that he did before maybe are no longer necessary because of where the company is. I think that's really important.
- 21:10 Wes Mathews
what type of realization or what does one CEO have to go through, right, to like because I that that to me that's a that's an amazing like stay curious. But to the other side of the coin that quite haven't learned that or there's ego or something's in the way like how would one begin to start to uncover that. Right. Because I think you've uncovered something really special within him, I would bet you really helped him see that. And he wasn't always like that. If I was a gambling man.
So this is why I think working for coach is really critical.
- 21:44 Patrick Thean
And I think not all coaches are created equal, some are more equal than others. And I think that, you know, Michael's committed to the coaching process. He's committed to reflections. He's committed to ask himself, what did I learn this week that's different from last week? He's committed to saying I need to stay humble. So, for example, when someone gives him feedback, I still remember years ago he came out of a board meeting and it was a tough board meeting. Like I was like, oh my God, you must be like emotionally destroyed.
He was smiling. I said, Michael, you screwed up in so many ways. And they just told you, like all these things that you need to improve on as a CEO. How are you smiling? And he said to me, he said, Patrick, you got to realize this. For those guys who gave me feedback, it was not easy. And that's a true statement. Think about how often you've wanted to give a friend feedback to help them get better. But you struggle, right? You're like, I don't want his feelings.
I don't know, they hurt my relationship. Yeah, it's not easy to give that person feedback. So he said, first, I thank them and acknowledge them for being brave enough to give me the feedback. He's a secondly, what's my role on this team? He's a football guy. So he said, so I'm the quarterback in this example, and my coach just gave me a bunch of feedback on how to make my throw better, how to read the game better. Should I get mad at that, or should I just say thank you and read the game better and make my throw better?
And he said, so I view my I view running the company as playing a game and my role is the quarterback. My coach just gave me feedback on how to throw the ball better and that's I should be excited about it. And so I asked him, I said, Michael, are you like, Teflon? Like there's enough pressure, all right. And he said, he's a lot of things a little bit, but if you want to be, you know, the best quarterback, you've got to take that feedback. You got to get better.
So his perspective is always look I am he's a he's a he played team sports all the way in high school and everything. So he's a big team sports guy. And this is why I also do believe that, you know, having a intelligent guy or gal that's gone through a team sport is a good thing because he said, you know, winning a championship is done. Not in the championship game but in practice, So if you practice that a thousand times, you execute that well on the field during the championship game.
That's how you win championships. Championships are not won on that day. It's won in your practice. And so point is his psyche is one of course it hurts, right? But he has that model of okay, I'm playing a game. You're giving me feedback. I just got to get better. So he has a humility about him. So you want a combination of ambition and humility. So one thing I'll share with you that I've found difficult for a lot of people to do is to hold what I call two competing thoughts in your mind.
So, in other words, most of us are or people it's A or B, just given one example. I can't hold you accountable unless I'm tough and a jerk. Why? Why can't you hold me accountable and be nice about it? Why can't you do that? we are naturally thinking, well, if I held you accountable, it's going to hurt our relationship. Actually, no. You need both result and relationship. You need both. So. So what I try and help my clients do is to learn how to hold two competing thoughts in their head, seemingly competing thoughts in the hit, and get value out of both.
Right? So it's not accountability or relationship, it's accountability and relationship. And the secret to me is to really understand what is the long term benefit. So for example, short term I tell you, hey West, you screwed up over here. You might be mad at me for about five minutes, right? You might say, well, gee, Patrick, I don't agree with you, but after you thought about it, you might come back the next day and say, Patrick, no thank you, I heard you. I changed my game a little bit better.
Now, at 2 or 3 years down the road, we'll be better friends because you look back and you would say, well, Patrick really helped me with that breakthrough. Thank you. Now, if I couldn't do that, I was like, wow, I don't really want to give with a true feedback because it's going to put our relationship. Okay. Well, two years later, my company has grown and now my companies outgrown you. And now I'm sorry I got to fire you. I got to replace you. Well, that hurt my relationship with you two years later.
So my point is, when you do the right thing and accept a little bit of discomfort. Now, I believe that dividends are paid over time, over many years. And that's how I help myself psychologically lean in to help people get stronger. Because iron sharpens iron. I've never seen iron sharpens iron. And sparks didn't fly. Yeah. Didn't happen. Right. I mean, so all those analogies like, what does that mean? Well, that means that if iron is going to shop, an iron that sparks fly and heat happens.
What that means is that for me to help you get better, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt. It's no different from, you know, I had a really strong workout last weekend my personal trainer said, Patrick Hurt was on the second day. He's right. The first day I'm making the. But the second day I'm like, oh my God, what happened? I, you know, and on the third I'm all the now. So on the third day. And what does he tell me? He says, well, don't just don't do anything on the second day.
Go stretch and go do a workout again. Go do it again while it's hurting. Go do it again. Right.
- 27:17 Wes Mathews
No, I love I love the football analogy. So two of my kids I have twins. They actually just won their Super Bowl this past Sunday. Wow. I was talking to the coach after. So these kids are 42 and over the last four years in football, which is pretty crazy. And I asked the coach, I said, how did you feel going into the championship game? And he goes, I knew on the first play we were going to win by like four touchdowns, and it was just the way the kids showed up and how he knew they were going to execute.
All he had to see was that one play. Knowing that. that resonates with me and what I want to ask is there's obviously other football teams that that don't win, right, that there's a lot of factors why they don't win. So believing in coaching like you do and I do, but like how do you know if you have a good one or bad one? Because as a CEO or visionary, as a human right, even if it's a good workout coach. Yeah. You ain't got time to waste.
I don't have time to waste.
- 28:08 Patrick Thean
Like, how do we know we have the right coach I think a good coach is one who has enough empathy and love and care for you. So one rule I have is I don't take on a customer unless I really like the customer. And one of my, one of my customers that I coach personally asked me that. And he said, isn't that a little bit selfish of you? I said, well, yes and no. I said, you know, when I take on a customer, when I coach a customer, I love them and I think about them all the time.
I tell people, look, you're really renting a condo in my brain. I can charge by the hour. My team, that's charge by the hour. You're really getting a condo. My brain was thinking about you, and I personally find it a lot easier to think about you if I like you. So if I don't like you. If we don't have chemistry. We don't get along. Well, that's the first thing. And I can coach you. Right? So I would I would advise all the coaches out there to think of it that way.
If you don't have good chemistry with the person you're trying to coach, you're probably not doing that person any favors by taking their money. So that's the first thing. The second thing that so that's what I look for. and I think the coach you wanted someone that we really listen and think hard about you, not just bring you want that person bring talent, but you want the person to also be able to apply the right patterns to you and to pull back when, when it when it looks like you don't need that particular pattern.
So it's all about you. It's not about the coach. So what do I look for? If somebody asked me also why am I so successful? And I said this because I pick successful customers and they and they say you're just being humble. I said, no, I'm being real. Like I find it a lot easier to coach a person that is coachable. Well, what does coachable mean? Coachable means the person has a strong desire to succeed, is willing to be humble enough, and subject themselves to practices that they're not comfortable with, and then they've got to be able and willing to change.
And then they got to have enough toughness to understand that they're going to rub some people the wrong way. So if you worry too much about rubbing people the wrong way, I'm probably not the coach for you because never going to make everyone like you. What you're going to do is make the people around you successful, By the way, you have kids, like you said. So I always ask parents, like, do you want to be your kid's parent or do you want to be your kid's friend?
mean, sometimes as a parent, you got to tell them to do things that won't help you if you just try to be the friend. Right? You got to you got to provide some discipline. You got to provide some learning and provide some guidance. So I think the, the people I tend to agree to coach are people that want to succeed, are more humble, are willing to have ambition, but subject themselves to learning, and has enough humility. And they want to raise the ceiling and they know it's going to be painful.
So that's why I always say, look, you got to commit and then execute, otherwise you won't succeed. I was in a planning session with a client recently, actually last year. And they missed the deadlines and, and so they're in the planning stage. Okay. We just. Okay. That deadline isn't going to work. Let's reset it. They go mad in the planning session. I said, guys, do you know why you just missed that deadline? I said, because it's a freaking wish line. It's not a deadline. Like no one died.
Nothing happened. You need this meaning to reset in the next damn deadline, which you will freaking miss again because you didn't freaking commit to achieving that deadline. I'm not interested in your wish lines. I'm only interested to help you if you truly, truly understand that these are deadlines. Everyone who was a bit shocked by the way what I got so animated. But I was mad. I was mad that my client was failing and they didn't see it, by the way. They were like, oh, just yeah, yeah, yeah, we missed that goal.
- 32:09 Wes Mathews
Let's just carry forward. Just move the flagpole down the field. Right.
- 32:12 Patrick Thean
Like that's. Yeah, exactly. Just move that. Move the goal further back home, like, hey, hey, hey, it's not a deadline. You guys have wish lines. And so that's a key lesson for them to learn which they learned. And the next session, you know, they made the deadlines and the CEO said, hey, you know we made a deadlines because these are the wish lines anymore. So that's that's the example of a guy who learned, right, who said that he reflected on. And because I tell you, I'm sure it was painful when I said that because I probably embarrassed him a little bit in the meeting, if you think about it.
Right. And so we have enough trust and depth in our relationship that I can do that. Frankly, I also think you need a coach that is willing to be fired. I say things like that to my clients because they need it. Yeah, they fire me. That's okay. Right. If that gentleman comes up to me the next day and says, Patrick, you embarrassed me yesterday in my meeting and, I don't think that's going to work for me. That's that's okay. No, that's that's that's really great.
- 33:14 Wes Mathews
I feel like somebody I was with somebody today and they asked me to like, what do you really like to do? Or some question around that. I said, I feel like I can, you know, I have this vision in my mind of like Las Vegas and like I forget, is a cigaret. And Freud would go into the lion cage. Yes. Like they could tap the lion on the head and they would just like, growl at them. Yes. Like somebody else or like bite their head off.
But like, I love getting with other visionaries and being able to go head to head, you know, just be blunt and direct and not from a bad place. But like, because I feel like it's, you know, some people might be like, oh, poor, poor CEO, right. But nobody really wants to step to the CEO or the visionary. And when it's an employee or leadership team, like their name is typically on the check. So there's a little bit of like reluctance to say, oh, the boss wants to punt the, you know, move the goal down the field.
Sure. Like we're not going to argue with that. Like who's holding them accountable.
- 34:05 Patrick Thean
So you know the CEO needs to needs to be committed, needs to needs a committed execute. And I used to repeatedly, which means they need a system that they can scale with that they can repeat this process with regularly. And that's why we have rhythm. So rhythm helps you with taking your goals and planning what I call a 13 week race. And most people make the mistake of not understand the difference between an execution plan and a strategic plan. Just because you have a strategic plan doesn't mean you have visualized and connecting all the dots for execution.
If you don't connect the dots for execution, you don't get full alignment with your teams down. You know, down the path and so this is why I think our process works is because we don't just help you plan for the executive team, but we help you cascade those goals, plan for the next team and the next team, and then bring it all together in an alignment process so that people get all aligned and then we help hold you accountable in your execution. So most of the companies that we work with have a couple hundred employees, 100 plus employees and therefore they need some software to manage that process so that they can do it consistently and with accountability.
accountability is the other set of commitment, right? I commit to doing this thing for you. So now there needs to be accountability to help me achieve my commitment. And I view accountability not as whacking you on a hit. I view accountability as helping you to achieve that commitment that you made because to me, I define execution really simply. Did you achieve the commitments you made, yes or no? If you did not achieve the commitments you may, then your execution is poor. And I tell you, a lot of companies change the strategies because they think the strategy was poor.
Actually, the strategies in many cases are found, were fine, but their execution was poor, so they couldn't get the same result. They couldn't get the result, the outcomes. And when we don't get the outcomes we want, we typically blame it on strategy. We don't typically blame it on execution where we don't even want to think about blaming it on people. But yes, sometimes execution is bad. That's when the strategy didn't work. And sometimes the execution plan was good, but the people did not execute it, and therefore the people need better skills.
when somebody says to me, how's my execution? I say, just show me your commitment and show me how you achieve them. And they can show me that achieving the commitment, their execution, support.
- 36:43 Wes Mathews
That's really interesting because, you know, one of my core businesses, right? We do some fractional coaching for clients and we talk a lot about strategy and I'm like, you can go to ChatGPT and get probably one of the best marketing strategies, right. Because that's always the pivot point. Well, why can't I just do this through AI and like you can like get the best strategy. That's not the hard part. The hard parts, the execution and dotting the lines and actually do it, you know, doing it properly.
Yeah. Which leads me to like, you know, what's the evolution of you know, execution systems. Well, like, I like, you can't get away from everybody. I see this world and I love to get your perspective on it I feel like this whole thing of AI, everybody's trying to like, how do I do it? How do I pull the levers? And my mind goes to, okay, like they sell drills at Home Depot, right? Yes. And if they come out with a drill that's like a lot better has AI, that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and build my own house.
I might find the right vendor that is implementing AI and maybe ahead of the curve, but I see this big push of entrepreneurs and visionary now all of a sudden, like wanting to DIY everything, especially when it comes to strategy and all these different. Do you see any of that? Does that resonate with you at all? I do, I do.
- 37:56 Patrick Thean
The good news is I don't get high for strategy. I get hyper execution. Yeah, it's hard. So I get hired. I get hired by TBS, hired to help you drill the holes. Yeah, you go by whatever drill you want. Yeah, but you got to drill the holes. So we will help you do the right holes in the right place. Now, what we're doing with AI is, is we are a leader in our space for AI. So what I decide to do with AI is to use AI to solve the most, the most difficult problems or the problems that take a lot of human beings to solve.
But you can solve it quicker. So, for example, with your business plans and just strategies in algorithm software, we have a, we've created and AI to actually look at your past and your strategy. You can even upload your market research and it will create a generate a four quarter plan for you. Now, I don't want people to just press go and say, yay! You know the rhythm I gave us the plan. Rhythm, intelligence. Give us the plan. Just it go. No, I say think of AI as having a seat at your table.
So if you got if you got six executives in your room, think of it as you just added the seventh and the AI is the seventh. And in my case, the AI is the chief execution officer that gave you an execution plan. Hey, here's the plan for the next four quarters, okay? That's a good starting point. Now, you still need to have the discussions. Think through what it takes to execute that plan. Get the feedback from the other six executives in the room, and I should have a seat at your table.
Not the overwhelming seat, but a seat. So this is your chief execution officer give you an execution plan. Now you guys should debate it and figure out what it takes to align with it. So we help you with what we call the plan build. So we build a plan for you. other thing that we do that's really hard to do because common knowledge is not common actions. So smart goals. Everyone knows what the Smart goal is. Most people don't do a Smart goal. So we have AI writes Smart goals for you.
When you say, hey, I want to go to a trade show, well, that's the goal. But I promise you, in marketing, a lot of people write goals like that, right? Attend trade show, what the hell for? So I will take that and make it a Smart goal for you. Attend trade show to meet five executives and generate 15 leads or whatever. It'll help you create a Smart goal and it will help you visualize more what you're trying to achieve. Then the third thing which is difficult to do is on a on our dashboards.
When things go red, people don't always know what to do. So my goal has gone red and people get stuck. So. So what our AI does is it crawls our system every single week, every single day. When your goal is red, status red or yellow, it will prompt you and say, hey, this particular goal is red. And here are three ideas for you to get unstuck. Well, I want the AI to help you think better not replace you. So that's what we've done in our system for AI.
- 40:51 Wes Mathews
Wow. No. That's incredible. That's really good. I see three books behind you. How many people should you read them in chronological order? Where do you start?
- 41:01 Patrick Thean
the first book on the first book, you see the journey of CEOs success. I think all CEOs need to work on themselves. If you don't work on yourself, you have no right to work on under. That's. So if you're trying to be a better CEO, read that book. The rhythm book is my, actually my first book that actually gives you the methodology. So if you read traction and you want to know, well, how is rhythm similar or different from traction with that book, the rhythm book, that's the methodology.
It's really the how to for the philosophies to capture it in the in the first book, the journey book, the Blue Book over there, predictable results are case studies of various companies that use a methodology over the many years, and they have hence the title Predictable Results. And so those are good case studies. And you can see how it's being used in different scenarios.
- 41:50 Wes Mathews
Awesome. Can you find out on Amazon or where do you get the book Amazon. It's on Amazon. Awesome. Now there's going to be somebody listening like I, I'll be honest with you, I normally don't take notes when I'm lead. When I'm hosting a podcast, I took a lot of notes, actually. you hit on a lot of things that really resonate with me. So I appreciate the time spent today, but there's anybody listening that wants to explore a conversation with your company or like, maybe you'll like them, or your company will like them and accept them into your pod.
- 42:19 Patrick Thean
Like, how do people get engaged with you? first off, you want to engage me personally. Just come to LinkedIn, right? Just come to LinkedIn and engage with me. And secondly, come to Patrick. RT.com. That's my website. Patrick.com will give you the freshest stuff and help you engage with me. So those are two ways. Patrick, thank you so much. I learned a ton.
- 42:36 Wes Mathews
It's been a long time coming. I appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you. You're a wealth of knowledge and I appreciate the time. Thank you for inviting me. I really enjoyed talking with you today. Thank you. Thanks, Patrick. This has been another episode of Entrepreneur Intel. Thank you for joining us. For show notes and other episodes, please visit us at entrepreneurintel.com. Until next time.