Great leaders multiply themselves. They create an environment of generosity where people are entrusted with responsibility, where people are developed. And as a result, there's kind of this culture of constantly growing more leaders and it leads to effective organizations and teams.
From We Are For Good Studios and Simple Modern. Welcome to Scaling for Good with Mike Beckham, a limited podcast series, giving you the playbook to start, build, scale and give generously. In today's episode, Mike shares his wisdom around when to scale, how to scale and how to empower and develop the team around you. We believe this has been the secret sauce behind simple modern success.
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?
Hey, friends, take in a quick break to share a glimpse of generosity on the frontlines of some of simple, moderns, and amazing nonprofit partners. Simple moderns on a mission to give generously, they partner with nonprofit organizations all over the world to help make a positive impact in five core areas, water supply, human trafficking, education, marginalized communities in homelessness. Today, we'd like to introduce you to one of their nonprofit partners, the sparrow project.
Hi, everyone. We're Brad and Kim Bandy, the founders of The Spero Project.
The Spero Project is a local nonprofit that welcomes resettled refugees by connecting our new neighbors to people resources and learning opportunities that make Oklahoma City a place of belonging. In the final months of 2021, OKC became home to over 1000 evacuees from Afghanistan seeking safety in a refugee resettlement effort unprecedented on both sides and speed of arrival. Simple modern partnership truly made oklahoma city a place of belonging for new neighbors arriving through this process by making a network of supportive services, transportation assistance, educational support, and so much more possible.
We couldn't be more grateful for this partnership. We'd love to connect with more of you. You can find us at thesperoproject.com t h e s p e r o project dot com. We're excited to make Oklahoma City a place of belonging with each of you.
Welcome back. I'm Becky Endicott. And I'm joined by Jonathan McCoy. And we're here with Mike Beckham. You've talked a lot about sort of the pitfalls and the advantages of scaling. But I really want to know, how do you think about funding in terms of its role with the scaling process?
Yeah, so growth costs, money, growth is expensive. It's investing money today to be bigger tomorrow and to be able to do more tomorrow. And so there's, there's a number of different ways that you can fund growth. One of the things that I really use is just kind of like a high level principle that's helpful is that there's this isn't like a one size fits all kind of model. Obviously, it depends on are you in the you know, the nonprofit sector, the for profit sector, but like in my context, running a for profit company, I think that the main thing is to answer for what are you trying to build, you know, where are you trying to be five or 10 years from now, because every single different option about how you can fund a business has different trade offs. So every different option has trade offs, you have to make a decision about what are the set of trade offs that make the most sense to me. So for example, one option is you can always raise money with friends and family, people that are close to you. The downside is, if it doesn't go, well, all of your relationships are going down with you. And there's going to be some awkward, you know, maybe Thanksgiving dinners. And there's definitely people who have done it that way. You know, like there's a story about Bezos raising money from his parents for Amazon, which worked out okay for them. But there's also probably countless stories of people raising money from their family when it didn't work out. As a side note, if you can't get friends and family to be interested in investing in what you're building, it's always a good point to pause and ask why is that because if the people who know you the best and have serious concerns about what you're doing, then that might be worth listening to. Another option is to go to a bank for a loan. There's some things through the Small Business Administration where you can get loans. There's some real clear upsides. It's money that you're not having to give up equity or ownership in your company. The downsides are that it's real debt and there's personal recourse. So like if you default on an SBA loan like that, can your personal assets can can be at stake. Also, it can be difficult whenever you don't have a lot of track record to get a loan from a bank. I mean, banks are not in the business of speculating. They like consistency. They like predictability. Ironically, the faster whatever you're building is growing, the less that a bank Probably wants to be involved. Because to them, they see the risk of that not necessarily the potential. So it's great to be able to raise debt if you can do it. But the downsides are, you can't go bankrupt without debt. And with that, you definitely can. You can also sell equity to people, whether that's like a venture capital firm, or investors. And the downsides with that are that when you bring on other investors, like your ability to really set direction at the company make decisions. Now you have some accountability and some other voices in the room that have a really vested interest in how you do what you do. And usually, there's an expectation that within a certain number of years, there's going to be a way for them to get their money out. So there's some kind of an exit opportunity. The upside is there are always investors out there, you don't it's not debt. So if it doesn't go well, then you know, like, it's not like you're losing your car or something. But there's just a different set of stressors, you can, you're expected to produce growth, and there's probably a lot of hours and a lot of stress trying to produce that growth that can come with that when you have outside investors. Finally, there's the option of trying to do Bootstrap, whatever resources the organization is producing to try and fund the growth that way. This is all the businesses, I've been involved with this, how we've done it. And it's, you know, it's not better or worse than the other types, it's just different. And there's different stressors, I probably have more gray hair than I would if I hadn't bootstrapped a couple of companies. And you can certainly sometimes have to grow slower than you'd like to because you're, you're only able to reinvest what you have. But the upside is, from a culture and control perspective, it's by far the best. You know, I tell people all the time that in terms of leading a company or leading an organization, if you can bootstrap an organization to comfortable profitability, and do it without bringing on outside investors, like it might be the single best existence that you can, that one can have. So we're at the point now where we're at scale, and we're profitable. And because we went through the bootstrap process, we're really able to have a lot of agency about what we do with that. So if we want to give 10% of profits, or 20% of profits or whatever, we don't have to clear that with a board, we don't have to convince outside investors that this is the right thing to do. This is something that we can just do.
Well, I mean, so much to think about from your comments earlier. And I love that you took the scaling, conversation, personal. I mean, all these conversations are all about personal growth. But I think that entrepreneur, the journey of being a player, and transitioning into a coach, and kind of all that you walked through, just resonated deeply, because we feel that as starting our own company, talk about why that's so hard. Why is it so hard to move into that next step at each step of your growth?
Well, I think that part of the reason why it's hard is that you you get good at something and we we like doing things that we're good at, it's natural, once we become really good at executing on sales or logistics or, you know, recruitment or whatever, that that we want to do that because number one, we feel like we're skilled. And number two, we're seeing results. And we're getting good feedback, whether that's other people seeing the performance that we're doing. Or being able to at the end of the day, say hey, I you know, I did these five sales calls, and I landed these three deals, and you have kind of concrete and tangible things you can point to like what you accomplished during the day. As you become more and more of a leader in any organization, you get abstracted from the on the field day to day, and it becomes a little bit more difficult to draw straight line between your contribution and winning. And that's unsettling, I think, is part of it. So that's one thing is that the further up the chain you get, the more that you're not actually getting to produce the winning plays. And to some extent that plays on our insecurity. I think it's also hard because like leading people is hard. And it's totally different muscles. You know, like there's the classic, great salesman, terrible manager, there's the Michael Scott syndrome, that just because you can sell doesn't mean that you can manage because you're using completely different abilities and muscles. Now some of that stuff cross applies. But usually when you're an outstanding individual contributor, and you get that leads you getting promoted and getting more opportunity, but what made you an outstanding individual contributor may not make you a great boss, you're going to have to learn and grow into that role. So I think those are probably the two main things is that every time you kind of move up a level, you've got to develop a whole new skill set of things that you're not good at, and you're doing less of what you are good at and that's uncomfortable.
There's so much humility in this and I and I like that you bring back most of your impact stories to the team. And I love that we lifted out empowerment as one of the key themes of entrepreneurship and being generous. And I I really want to know, how do you pour into your team and I really want to get tactical here because as we sort of take a 10,000 foot view of your company you have been mightily generous with your team in very unique ways that I have not seen other companies do the way that you give them philanthropy money to give away you know, in the way that there is such a way that whoever has a unique skill set or talent, they are empowered in that zone of genius to kind of be the leader. And so you see the trainer training the next trainers, talk about some of those ways that you really pass that empowerment torch to your staff and talk to us about some of the outcomes you've seen.
Yep. So fundamentally, what leadership is, is, is multiplication, that I think some people will have the mistaken impression that what it means to be the leader is that you get to make the decisions. But really, your responsibility when you're a leader is to multiply people that are capable of making decisions can people are capable of being entrusted with things. And if you do that, inevitably, what you're going to get his growth, that's the way that I think about our organization is that the more people that are capable of multiplying themselves, then the more the organization is going to grow, the more that the the number of capable, talented, good stewards and the organization is going to grow. And that's going to naturally produce growth. One of the ways that you do that is that you have to empower people, there have to be moments where you push people out of the nest, and you give them the opportunity to, to struggle with things, to fail to do things at a lower standard than you would have done them yourself like this is one of the classic examples is that why people tend to be bad at empowering others is that they'll see a task and say, I can do that in five minutes at an A level in this other person that I'm training, it would take them 50 minutes to do it at a B level. So I'm just going to do it. But if you continue to take that thought process and replicate it over time, what happens is you never develop other people, right? And it starts to be that you have to do that task, because nobody else in the organization can do that task. But when you empower other people, then yes, you do take a temporary step back in efficacy and in quickness, like that is a real thing. But it also produces this larger future, because they will learn they will grow eventually, they'll be able to do it at any level in five minutes than they can teach somebody else. And then you look up and two years from now, your organization has 15 people in the company or in the organization that can do that task at a really high level. But you never get there unless you let go of it. And you're willing to invest in that future. So I think empowerment is a really big thing. I think being willing to invest resources in the development of people like coaching takes time, right? And especially if you're in a context where the company is growing, you can think well, there's so much to do that I don't have time to really like walk through, you know why we did this thing a certain way, or to be making sure that I'm having a one on one with every one of my direct reports or you know, whatever else. But it's actually the most pressing during that period.
I mean, it all points to building a place where a type players are going to thrive. Because if you don't have the empowerment, you don't have this pathway to learning and growing and kind of evolving. It's not going to fulfill those type of people. But let's talk about how do you get those people in the door? How do you find these a type players that are going to thrive in that type of environment.
I think A players are smart, like I'm not going to sugarcoat this like A players, they have a very difficult time going and working for people that they don't feel like they can learn from and that can't help them to be successful and aren't going to provide them a context to be successful. So everybody wants to have A player's, I don't know that everybody's willing to do what it takes to have a player's. And it really starts with if an A player views you as a C player, they're not going to come work for you. They're just not no matter what salary you offer them. And if they do, then they'll leave after a few months, they have a very clear sense of wanting to be on the best teams and wanting to learn from the best. So the easiest way, ironically, to attract great talent is to invest in yourself and your own development. That is certainly part of it. But I think the second part is A players don't want to go into a situation where they feel like they're gonna be micromanage where they feel like their developments not going to be prioritized where they don't, they're going to want clarity of path of like, how do I grow? And what are my opportunities for expansion. And for me to have more entrusted to me, these are going to be the kind of questions that they ask. So one is can you be a person that's worthy of following be a person that an A player says I want to follow that person I want to learn from that person? They have a lot that they could teach me? And then the second part is, how are you creating an environment where they're going to get the kind of investment and opportunity that they're really yearning for in their growth?
I had a really wise mentor once tell me that A coaches hire A players, but B leaders hire C players. And I think about that a lot in my life and how we want to surround ourselves. We all want to be the best and so but I think that your point is really driving that home to me that it really starts with us. And the humility piece is a huge component of it. And I think that's why we're seeing such a vibrant organization and what you've grown here.
So one of the concepts that goes with that is that you know, secure leaders are like calm constantly saying how do I recruit people that are even better than I'm or that can be better than I am. And they're telling the people that they lead, I want to help you be a better leader than I am. I hope that part of the legacy of Simple Modern, the work that I do here is that some of the people that I've invested with in do go on to be better leaders than I am. And I certainly think that's possible, that, that they're going to get there. I think that speaks volumes, when people really get that impression from you that you are wanting to help them succeed, and that you believe in their ability to get there insecure leaders, it's the opposite. Because of their insecurity. They're trying to find ways to prove their existence or their worth. And they are afraid of other strong leaders and they want to keep other strong leaders kind of away because they're afraid that that contrast between them and and others will will make them look weak or not competent at their job. So a lot of it starts with you. Ironically, I mean, all these things, you know, we've talked about throughout the episodes, they start with being able to manage yourself, and being able to manage the insecurities and the emotional reactions that we have the things that cause us to be selfish, that causes us to do things that aren't in the best interest of the team or the group. And once we kind of work our way past those who are or you know, are deliberate about trying to sidestep those were freed up to be better leaders.
Indeed. Okay, Mike, you gotta put a beautiful bow on this conversation. We're going to wrap everything up to the mic drop moment, what are you going to leave everybody with?
Great leaders multiply themselves they create an environment of generosity where people are entrusted with responsibility where people are developed. And as a result, there's kind of this culture of constantly growing more leaders and it leads to effective organizations and teams.
Thanks for tuning in to scaling for good, brought to you by simple modern and We Are For Good studios. If you like what you've heard, leave a review, share with your colleagues or tweet Mike @MikeBeckhamSM, we're your hosts Becky Endicott and Jon McCoy. And this series was edited and produced by Julie confer and a special thanks to Chris Boyle and Erica Randall from the simple modern team who helped bring this series to life.
