Hey, everyone, on this episode, we're going to be talking about growth and all the changes and challenges and opportunities that come with them. About six years ago, when we started simple modern, I wore a lot of hats and a lot of tactical responsibilities were on my shoulders. So one of the things that we wanted to do in 2016, was see if we could get licensed by some of the universities to sell collegiate licensed drink, where I had this kind of vision for really premium collegiate licensed drink, wherever that didn't exist in the market. And I couldn't get anybody to call me back, the licensing world can be very difficult to break into, I literally had to kind of stalk the licensing director at OU, I couldn't call out when I called I couldn't get connected. And so I just had to multiple times, like literally go to the office and see if I could bump into her to try and get a meeting to try and pitch simple modern and why we would be a great partner for the University of Oklahoma, with drinkware. So if you zoom forward two or three years, we were in development of a new straw lid. And it had been just an incredibly challenging project, we just couldn't quite get it right. And the problem was that the lid was just too hard to drink out of. And so we had our manufacturer develop several different samples that had a variety of different kind of straws that were more or less difficult to drink out of. And I spent several weeks that summer, manually drinking out of 1000s of different straw lids, I was drinking like two gallons of water a day I lived in the bathroom. And then you fast forward to today. And often. I'm only aware of projects like kind of as they're getting started or on major milestones or when they're being completed. Because our organization is now 80 people and we're at a very different scale. But over our growth trajectory, my role in the organization has changed quite a bit. And that's what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about growth. And when you think about growth, there's a really positive connotation. Like if we just said like, when you hear that word, is that a good word, a bad word? How would you rate it, almost everyone would say growth is good. That's a that's a positive word. And, and I think in a lot of ways, that's true. But it's also true that growth is dangerous. Growth can be scary. Growth is taxing. Growth is challenging. One of the analogies I love to give about this. I am a big landscaper, I do a lot of work in the yard and stuff. And one of the things that you use is Roundup, whenever you do a lot of work outside. And for many years, I had no idea how roundup worked. I just knew you spray it on the plant and the plant dies. But then I learned a few years ago how it actually works. And it's fascinating. The way that roundup works is it actually causes the cells of whatever unfortunate plant that it lands on, it causes the cells in that plant to replicate way faster than the plant can handle. And it kills the plant. It kills the plant through growth. And interestingly, if you look at the top 10 reasons that that businesses fail in the United States, sure enough, growth that is too rapid or mismanaged growth is one of the biggest reasons why organizations businesses fail. We can probably all think of examples in our life, when we've had a period where there was so much growth, that it was a really hard thing, or even maybe a negative thing. And so today, what we're going to talk about is how do you manage growth? How do you manage an organization that's really rapidly growing? If you're listening to today's episode, then there's at least one area of your life where growth is happening. And it's easy to think, well, if I'm not leading a company that's growing really rapidly, or you know, I'm not in an organizational leadership position, overgrowth, then then how would this apply to me but the reality is all of us are dealing with these dynamics. It could be in our personal life with our family. It could have to do with our work or even the responsibilities that we've been entrusted with it. work, or it could be in our community, it could be even the needs of our family are growing and multiplying. So if you're dealing with growth in any area, I think these principles can be really helpful to you. So the first thing we're going to talk about is pretty straightforward. How do you develop yourself and prepare yourself to be someone who's going to thrive when challenged with growth when needing to manage or lead with growth. And I think that the very first thing you can do is that you can learn from the experiences of others. One of the best habits I've developed in the last year as I started to read biographies, and reading biographies for me is just like this amazing kind of cheat code way to learn about the entire story arc of somebody else's lives and the challenges they went through and what they learned from it. And I'm able to, you know, basically for free to take away all of the wisdom and learnings from what somebody else has gone through. The second thing when we're going through a period of growth is that we really have to find a sustainable pace. I made this mistake at numerous junctures of kind of my career, where I get so excited when things grow, it's just like a shot of adrenaline directly in your heart, and you're like, really pumped up about all that, that means, and it's easy to let that cause you to go at a pace that's not sustainable over time, there's definitely periods in my life where I'll have pushes, and I'll know like, hey, this week is a big week, and I've really got to make a push. But if we do that to ourselves repeatedly, over time, we will burn out, we won't take care of ourselves, things will start to break down. So one of the things that we have to identify when we're in a period of growth is I've got to find what a sustainable pace is, even if there's pushes in there, I have to understand what sustainable is for me, and I have to find some kind of boundaries, or accountability to help make sure that happens, or this is gonna go, this is gonna go poorly for me. The third is we need feedback loops in our lives. Because when we're managing growth, the demands on us, then the needs for us, whether it's us as a leader or a teacher, the needs on us are only going to increase, and we can't impart we can't give away to other people, what we don't possess, and really simple principle is, you've got to be growing at the rate of the thing you're trying to manage. So if you're managing, you know, a team, or an organization or a family that's growing rapidly, you're going to have to grow just as rapidly if you want to try and lead that thing. And so the best way that you can foster personal growth is by creating feedback loops. One of the easiest ways friends, family, spouse, people surrounding you, that are willing to be mirrors for you. The reality is when we have other people that reflect back to us what they see, we get more self awareness, we develop more humility, and we also see the ways that we need to grow that we can grow. So do you have feedback loops in your life that are going to help enable your growth so that you can actually lead and manage growth with others. The fourth thing I would emphasize is investing in your own personal development. Even the absolute best professional athletes have coaches, we never grow to the point where we could we won't benefit from the insights and other people speaking into our life, that's going to cost time it's going to cost money, but it's a worthwhile investment. Fifth, I'd say growth is all about focus. That because the demands are going to be so intense, when something's growing quickly, you are going to have to narrow your focus. Great example here, I remember when we had our first kid and our second kid that my focus at work had to narrow. And I could do less at work because I had so much of my focus directed towards being the kind of father and the kind of husband that I wanted to be. And there are going to be seasons of our life where we're managing growth in one area of our life, we're going to have to narrow our focus, and we're going to have to say no, or reduce our responsibilities in other areas. And that's nothing to be ashamed of like that's just wisdom is to be able to make those trade off choices. And then finally, one of the things that I've observed at this point, I've started several companies, it's so easy to spend your time thinking about getting to the next step, especially when you're growing and kind of dreaming about the future when you hit that certain milestone or when, you know, you get that big contract. But what's ironic is that once you get there, you end up spending a lot of your time thinking back about the days when things were crazy, and you're holding it together with duct tape, and you didn't quite know what you're doing and missing those days. And so I've been fortunate enough to be a part of several companies that have grown to pretty big scale, but it's interesting when I spend time with the other founders and the other early employees, a lot of the time our conversation will drift to the early days where things were crazy. And so this is very much a you know, it's it's about the journey, not the destination point that you end up enjoying the process along the way that every stage in a company's life, every stage in your family's development, every stage can be enjoyable and is unique. And don't lose sight of what's going on right now. Because you're helping something grow towards a bigger future. Growing anything requires developing and empowering more leaders, you cannot do it all on your own. And as the organization, the team, the family, whatever it is that you're involved with grows, your focus needs to be first and foremost, how do I grow the number of leaders? How do I make a wider base of people that can lead this thing, and I want to introduce a model that's been very helpful for me, that talks about the progression you will go through as a leader in a growth situation. So think about it, like a sports team, you have players that are on the field, you have a player coach who's on the field, but helping organize players, you have coach who's like on the sideline, organizing players, scouting reports, drawing up the game plan, then you have like a general manager, who is like deciding who's on the team, and managing the coach and making decisions like that, maybe even you have a commissioner level. And if you think about that model, that's what it's like to be a part of an organization that's growing. In the very early days, you are a player, if you're not throwing touchdown passes, they are not happening. If you're not tactically executing, making plays, then no one is, this is a stage about you wearing a lot of different hats. And during that you've got to build a bunch of different specific skill sets and execute on those things. So in the earliest days of the company, like I said, whether it was trying to sell licensing to the University of Oklahoma, or finding out about, you know, Pio financing with Sam's Club, or determining the best way to advertise on Amazon, these were all different hats that I wore. As you grow. For the first time, you have the resources and the ability to add people to your team. And as you add people to your team, you add another hat, which is you're now a coach, in addition to a player. So your organization still needs you on the team, you still have to be making plays, you still have to be, you know, I guess the example here is imagine the middle linebacker on a football team, who not only has responsibilities, but he's also calling out plays to the entire defense and getting his teammates lined up. So you have both, you've got to be developing people that your organization has hired, helping them understand how to do their jobs, leading them, while simultaneously, you've got to be executing as well. So the big tension during the first period, when you're just a player, is that there's just a lot to do, and you just have a ton of executing to do. The tension during the second stage is that you still have all that stuff to do. But you're also trying to find time to lead and to coach and to empower other people. And you're constantly faced with this sense of I can be a so much of a better leader, if I wasn't in the weeds, if I didn't have to be doing all the blocking and tackling that I'm doing. The third step is coach, if you do a good job at the player coach level, you're developing enough people that you can kind of step off the field and you don't have to be executing anymore. In our organization, I'm not having to manually test straw lids anymore, I don't have to do that to make sure that we have a good product that goes out there. When you go to the coach level, the central tension that you feel is because your responsibilities are no longer tactical, it's no longer execution, it's really just coaching and leading, there's a very difficult transition because you feel like you're not actually doing anything. Even though the work that you're doing, which is investing in others, empowering other people developing them is incredibly important to the organization, you feel like you're not accomplishing anything, because you used to be able to sit down at the end of the day and make a list of all the things that you accomplish that day and cross them off. Whereas now your days can be full of conversations a lot of the time. And then finally, there's a transition after that, which is when you know when an organization gets big enough, maybe you transition to kind of the general manager role, where you're managing the coaches. And again, every step of the way, there's tensions, but there's also opportunities. But the point of all of it is that you're developing and empowering more people. If you're growing the base of leaders, then you're growing the number of people that are going to be capable of helping to manage the growth and shoulder the burden of growing organization. Growth is tiring. There's no other way to say it. And because it's tiring, there's more of a need for vision than ever before. You have to be keeping it in front of yourself and the people that you lead. What is the future that you're moving towards the way that I think about vision as if everyone close their eyes and pictures the future that you're in Trying to get to do they see the same thing. And great vision casting helps everybody to have that same picture in their mind. And during periods where you're asking people to work hard, where their sacrifices being made. And this is what high growth feels like. Everyone having a common and exciting vision about the future that they're moving towards becomes more necessary than ever. So turning this into personal application, here's some questions you can ask, what's an area of your life that's experiencing growth? Or could experience some pretty significant growth in the next year or two? What are some ways that you can be developing yourself to be the kind of leader needed? How are you investing in your personal development? What are the sources of feedback that you have? What are the information sources that you're using to learn from the experience wisdom of other people? Finally, which of the roles do you fill right now in the key teams in your life? Are you a player, a player, coach, Coach, general manager? Which of those roles are you filling in each of your major teams? What's the most difficult thing about transitioning to the next step?