Start With A Win - Systems, Habits and Disciplines to Accelerate Growth with Patrick Thean

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Patrick Thean is an international speaker, CEO coach and serial entrepreneur—and a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. With his book Rhythm: How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth, Thean shares a simple system for encouraging teams to execute better and faster.Main TopicsPatrick’s journey as a young entrepreneur, leading his first company to #151 on the Inc. 5000 list and how to avoid failing as a CEO (2:25)Patrick’s system for measuring KPIs and the frameworks to put in place to build your business (5:27)Training the next generation of leaders to not just look for short-term, overnight success and instead committing to consistency and rhythms to build long-term success (11:15) Defining your goals and committing to them (15:25)The importance of employees taking ownership in their own growth (21:08)Patrick’s book Rhythm: How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth (22:30) Episode LinksEpisode 201: Building a Life of Consistency with Mike O’HearnPatrick’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/GazellessystemsHow to Communicate with Extreme Clarity with Debra Jasper The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey Rhythm: How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate GrowthConnect with Patrick:https://www.patrickthean.com/https://twitter.com/ptheanhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickthean/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. Coming to you from Brandviva Media Headquarters in Denver, Colorado, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. Producer Mark, how you doing, buddy? You know, it's always a great day when we're hanging out, recording podcasts, talking to amazing people. I can't complain. I love it. I love it. Our guest today is fantastic. I mean, we always talk about how can you create

business and personal success and how to achieve the greatest things possible for your business, for yourself as a leader. So what do you say we bring on our awesome guest? Yeah. Our awesome guest today is Patrick Tien. He is an international speaker, CEO coach, and serial entrepreneur, and a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. With his new book, Rhythm, How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth, Tien shares a simple system to encouraging teams to execute better and faster. Who doesn't want better and faster? No kidding.

Patrick, welcome to Start With a Win. Welcome, Patrick. Thank you so much, man. I'm so excited to be on here. So excited. By the way, I got to tell you, I know I'm your guest today, but I really enjoy your episode on Michael Hearn. Totally awesome. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. The Titan is an amazing man. That guy, I've been friends with him for several years, and he just never ceases to amaze. And he runs off a lot of the same principles that you do. It's interesting. Success leaves evidence, leaves tracks where you can see it.

And I want to dig into that with you because, I mean, you've done some amazing coaching. I encourage everybody, hop on YouTube and watch some of Patrick's videos, some of the concepts that he has on rhythm, as well as check them out online. This is really good stuff. Coming from a public company CEO, I can tell you, this is what creates success in your life and in your business. But let's dig into your past a little bit here, Patrick. So young entrepreneur, you led your first company to number 151 on the Inc. 5000. Can you tell us a little bit about that, your entrepreneurial adventure that you went on? Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Those are the 90s, I got to tell you. And hey, it used to be Inc. 500. Right. It was shorter, harder to get on the list. Inc. 500, so even the Inc. 500 has an insulation, so now it's Inc. 5000. So when I ran Metasys, you know, we ran a company from zero to about 20 plus million

in about seven years. And really, we had a lot of transformation there. We went from a consulting firm to a software company, and it was an amazing ride. But the amazing part was really the bulk of our growth really came in the last three, four years. So we really built a $20 million business in about three plus years, because the first few years it was a consulting business, and then we kind of transformed ourselves into a software company, and then bang, Zoom, kind of to the moon. But I'll tell you, we almost died a few times as a company.

So people ask me, how did I succeed? I think, unfortunately, I remember more the failures than the successes. I don't know if you relate to that, but sometimes I wake up and people say, well, how did you do this? I'm like, I don't know. Kind of worked my ass off. Did the best I could. But I can tell you 10 ways I almost died, you know? So I kind of remember the 10 ways that we almost died.

And that influenced a lot of what we do today. So what we do today is, as I sold the company, I read this article on Fortune Magazine, 1999, it came out, but why CEOs fail by Ram Charan. It's a landmark article for me. The punchline to that, it's your execution. It's not your strategy. It's your execution, your inability to achieve and make your commitments. That's why CEOs in companies fail. When I read that, I thought, oh my God, that's exactly why we all failed at least a few times. And I was just thankful that I think for me, we had a train wreck.

I reacted quick enough. I did bold things and we survived. We survived the fight another day and then another train wreck. And then we survived and suddenly we were successful. And I don't quite know how it became successful, but I know we survived enough problems to become successful. So today, I believe that the most important thing is CEOs should arm themselves with tools and weapons to

avoid getting blindsided. Nobody wants a train wreck, but we all have them. Wouldn't you like a few less train wrecks? So for me, if I can help the CEO and the companies identify the train wreck before it happens, give them ample time. I shouldn't say ample. Just a little bit more time is probably more right. To avoid that train wreck or prepare for that train wreck. They survive to win another day and they do that enough times and then they win. That's really what happened. Awesome.

This is fascinating because, as you and I both know, being CEOs of companies, companies run through cycles. And it's fascinating. When you take a snapshot of a company, that's what you remember the company as last time. It's like your last impression of a person when you saw them last. If they were a train wreck, to use your words, or a complete mess, that's how you remember them until the next time you see them. And then you kind of have this preconceived notion about them. So we as leaders, you know, we can't live under that shadow of the train wreck though, because that's just going to drag us down

and our employees down, isn't it? I mean, how do you deal with that and pull out of that in order to get them? So the goal is not to have to train with, the goal is to avoid it. So what I talk about is number one, you've got to have some, what I call future vision. You've got to have some leading indicators that tell you how things are happening before they happen. That's what you want to know. So for example, you know, a long time ago, a long time ago, you know, going back to, to medicine, I, I almost hit the wall on payroll. Couldn't make payroll. Well, actually I've made payroll every single time, but let's just say a couple of months before I would have hit the wall. I said, holy mackerel, I'm not going to make payroll. Yeah. Okay. So we avoided that wall.

Whoa, thank God. Okay, we missed it. So after that, I said, okay, now that was unacceptable. How do I have a bit more future vision? So I built myself what we now call a cash flow runway. And that was a long time ago.

So the cash flow runway allows you to see X number of months out. And then I have a red, yellow, green process. If you've got at least six months plus, you're green of running the business without it hitting the wall. If you've got 12 months, you're super green. If you've got three to six months, you're yellow. And anything less than three months, you're red. That dashboard is red.

So when it hits yellow or red, you should take action. You should like start taking action versus going, oh my God, it's two months, I can't make payroll. So I've never had that ceiling ever again because I know six months in advance, I'm not going to make payroll. What am I going to do now?

You know? So that's what I'm talking about. That's awesome. So for our audience, you measure your KPIs, your key performance indicators, and I'm assuming you measure your leading indicators heavily. Yes.

So how we look when we look ahead, and you mentioned red, which obviously is danger zone. Yellow is you're almost in danger zone, or you're approaching quickly. Green is good and then super green? Super green is the stretch goal. Okay, super green is stretch goal. Because your A players want to be super gold. So that's the stretch goal. Okay. So you talk about the cash flow runway here. What are a couple of the other common pitfalls that business leaders get into? Obviously, you run out of cash. That's

doomsday situation there. You're scrambling, you're laying people off, you're cutting expenses, things like that. But what about this creep that comes into business that is this slow cancer in the organization that we don't see until it becomes red. How do we look for that? So, first of all, you know, the reason why I love Michael Hearn and I brought it up is because, you know, he has the best physique in the world, right? Full-time Mr. Universe, awesome. I love that he has a system of discipline and consistency.

So you got to do the same thing for your business. Rhythm gives you a technique of framework to build the physique for your business. Rhythm gives you a technique, a framework to build the physique for your business so that you can be your Mike, your business can be like Mike. I like that. You want your business to be like Mike. And so that's what rhythm does for you. So what does that mean? In simple terms, that means that you got to wake up, you got to know what your plan is. You got to do that every single day. The way you have a successful year is you have a successful quarter and you have that four times in. The way you have a successful year is you have a successful quarter

and you have that four times in a row, you have a successful year. The way you have a successful quarter is you have to have a successful week. Have that 13 times in a row, it's a quarter. A successful week is five to seven great days in a row and that's a successful week. So rhythm is meant to help you think

because sometimes our businesses and CEOs are so busy, we forget to think. So I want to first pull you up to think, and then I want you to plan. Like, what's a simple way of getting this done? Then let's just go, then we can go and execute. Otherwise, you're just going to do, do, do, forget to think, and then you hit the wall. So those are the frameworks that you put in place. So, you know, Mike's muscles weren't built in a day. Likewise, your business framework and physique is not built in a day. In the book, Michael Prager, CEO of Avid Exchange, is a successful company from startup to an IPO last October took 21 years. Right. 21 years. And, you know, all 20-year-old successors

we think are built overnight, right? It's like that overnight success took 20 years. And my Mike, my Mike is kind of like your Mike. My Mike is a business

physique. You know, he's had this quality rhythm every single, he's never missed a quality planning session. He's never missed a quarter to stop, he's never missed a quality planning session. He's never missed a quarter to stop, think, plan, and do. Stop, think, plan, and do.

So that allows you to now solve any problem, right? Because solving a problem to me is the symptom. What you want to do is create the framework. That's the root cause. Right. So let me ask you this, Patrick. By the way, neither of us are named Mike. So I think we have to work a little harder to be like Mike. Be like Mike, buddy. You got to be like Mike.

It's fascinating when you look at, we read all these business articles, we read these studies about people that want short-term bursts of success. You know, I'm going to go do an IPO in two years, or, you know, this SPAC is going to pick up my business, which, you know, I'm going to go do an IPO in two years, or, you know, this SPAC is going to pick up my business, which, you know, we all know SPACs are just about non-existent now. Yes. All the way to just their health, or you see somebody go to the gym for two or three weeks, and then they disappear. They're never there again, or they just want to do the easy way out. How did we come up with, and how do we get out of teaching our next batch of

leaders that there is no easy button, that this is based on that rhythm, this is based on those systems and habits and disciplines? So I think it's, so first we use case studies. Okay. I think the best we do is look at how successful companies have done it. And yes, once in a while, there's a Google. Once in a while, there's an Apple. Once in a while, there is a Tesla. By the way, Elon Musk says, you can't change the world on 50 hours a week. Now, he totally doesn't even care that the typical work week is 40 hours a week.

You can't change the world on less than 50 hours a week. So that's Elon Musk. And so that's what it takes, guys, right? That's what it takes to succeed. Now, our world here would like the easy button. So you're a CEO, you know, there is no easy button. There's the emergency button, eject seat, but there is no easy button.

So let's just, I think we need to train our executives, our young leaders to understand philosophically, there is no easy button. So let's just, I think we need to train our executives, our young leaders to understand philosophically, there is no easy button. And there's examples all over the place that we can see in life as well as in business. Then you have to choose a framework. You have to choose a framework that you will commit to. And I think that is the most important thing. I had a client call me once and say, you know, Patrick, I want to talk about whether

balanced score cuts better or rhythms better. And I said know, Patrick, I want to talk about whether balance score cuts better or rhythm is better. And I said, I don't even want to have that discussion. You go design what you want. If you want balance score cut, use balance score cut. It's cool.

Just commit to it. You know, there's five different ways to build muscles. Actually, probably a hundred different ways to build muscle. And Michael Hearn has committed to his way.

And there's probably other ways to do it, but he's committed to it. And it's not the only way. Just pick something that works and commit to it. So commit is the key word then. I think, you know, I've told my clients, like when they do a workshop with me, they get excited. And you've been to a workshop. I've done this, by the way. I come back to the company. I'm so excited. I'm like, I gotta do that, that, that, that, that. And what does my team think? They think, okay, Patrick's excited. If we can just wait for two weeks, this too shall pass. He'll forget it. I wouldn't do anything. So for two weeks, people will do anything, right? This too shall pass. So instead I say, look, just pick one thing, go home and do that one thing and show that commitment. Do that one say, look, just pick one thing, go home and do that one thing

and show that commitment. Do that one thing, then pull out the second thing. And then your team begins to go, oh my goodness, he's serious about this. Okay, we better pay attention. So that's why your teams

need from CEOs. You know, they need us to show that we are committed to this. You cannot be committed to 10 things. You cannot be committed to a couple of things. So get the right framework, commit to this. You cannot be committed to 10 things. You cannot be committed to a couple of things. So get the right framework. Commit to it.

They all work, by the way. Of course, mine's better, but they all work. So pick one, even if it's not mine, and commit to it. Do the work. Do the work. It's funny. I teach at a local business school, and that's the key aspect that I talk about when I start in the leadership program is if you're going to be a leader, you have to do the work of a leader consistently. You have to focus on doing that and have the willpower to ignore the things that are not part of that specific task.

It's weird, though, because we've introduced so many different ways in society for people to get away from that. They go binge watch something, they get on TikTok or I mean, who knows, they go to, they step away from their desk and go to the water cooler or down the hall and hang out in somebody's office, put their feet up and they think they're working, but they're not, like you said, doing the work. Are there any tips that you can give to our audience to help them focus a little bit more on doing the work? Yeah, so forgive me. I'm just going to promote one of your other podcasts.

All right. But you had this lady on that talked about extreme clarity. Yes. So part of it is you've got to have extreme clarity. I think that Stephen Covey taught us this long time of those seven habits of highly effective people. And one of his habits is begin with the end in mind. Most people just don't know what that means.

So for us, we want extreme clarity. And so what I tell people is, look, when you want to achieve something, red, yellow, green, it's for me. Green is the goal. So you can't say to me, my goal is go to a trade show. That's not the goal. That's an activity. What do you want to achieve at the trade show?

So that's beginning, end, and mind. So this is how it works. Green is I'm going to do a trade show. I'm going to get us 20 leads. That's my goal. That's green. Okay. And red is if I come home only with two leads,

the airline ticket just wasn't worth it. Great. So between two, between three and 19, that's automatically yellow. And by the way, I'm an A player. So my stretch goal to make me feel really good is 30. I come up with 30 leads. You guys all need to buy me ice cream.

So that's how we red, yellow, green it. So now your goal is extremely clear. It's not go to a trade show. It's I'm going to go to a trade show and get us between 20 or more and 30 leads. And by the way, if I come back with only two leads, I have failed. Ooh, that's a tough word. I'm sorry, but you need to know that. If you don't come back with more than three leads, then getting a ticket and I'm not happy. So I think the challenge today is that we're not used to words like that. You know what we're not used to?

If you don't achieve this level of productivity or whatever metric you're looking at, I, your boss, am not happy. Do you know? I want you to know that. So now when you do that, I call this the gift of red because nobody wakes up and says to their significant other, hey, honey, I can't wait to go to work today and screw up. Right? Nobody says, I can't wait to go to work today and have

a bad day. Right. I'm going to go fail as hard as I can today. Yeah, I'm going to fail purposely, you know. So this is what I found. If you define your goal, red, yellow, green, and people know what red is, they all self-manage themselves out of red. They don't want to be red. They want to be green. And if they're yellow, they're sweating a little bit, but they want to be green.

So when you have a goal that is red or yellow, I insist that our clients will write what I call, what is your path to green? What's your PTG? What's your path to green? Because I don't want to wait until, you know,

I'll tell you this other quick story. Sure. My head of sales is back a long time ago. One of my earlier companies, head of sales walks in and I asked him what the number's going to be like.

He says it's going to be good. Okay, great. I have my name, my VC, my venture capitalist. Today, they're all private equity, but in the old days, we called them VCs. I have meaning my VC and I tell him, I commit. I'm like, okay, these are numbers we're going to do it. Week 12, my head of sales walks in and says, Patrick, we're not going to make our numbers. And I'm like, excuse me? We have like a six to nine month sales cycle. How the heck can you come in on week 12 and tell me we're not going to make our numbers?

I just told my DC yesterday that we're making our numbers. That's a horrible place to be. The truth is he knew we were going to make our numbers a few weeks ago. I just didn't know. So our framework is that you would mark

that particular priority or goal or KPI red. Yep. Red means I'm not going to achieve it. Not that I'm very still. It means I am forecasting that I will not get there.

Now we can help. Now we can say, all right, let's talk about it. Spicy conversation. What's going on? What rock do we have to move? That kind of stuff. Okay, let's have the spicy conversation. What's in your way? What else can we do? The enemy is outside. The enemy is not inside the company. Let's figure that out. So we have a spicy conversation. And then now I want you to do what I call your path to green. Now, give me a plan that takes you to green.

If you don't do that, then I get the blind side, the train wreck, the week 12 boss. We're not going to make our numbers. Like, I only have like one week to think. I can't fix this in one week. Right. So I call this the gift of red. It's a gift when somebody walks in and says, hey boss, we're not going to get this done.

But please don't tell me that like the day before. Tell me that, you know, six weeks before. So you need a framework to do that because you can't base it on your gut. My gut says we're good. Your gut says we're not. That's not a system. A system is a methodology with a framework that lets you understand whether you're going to make the goal,

miss the goal by a lot, miss the goal by a little bit, and a process to digest that so you get early one system. I love that. And you talk about people's gut feelings. We all have different tolerances for failure. Exactly. And you can't, in business, you can't base it on your tolerance. You have to base it on the system. I completely agree with you.

I was just thinking to myself, what if we just gave people, like, red shirts, green shirts, yellow shirts, like, you know, super green shirts. And they could wear those around at the office, and they would maybe self-select themselves into another area or something like that. So I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud here. By the way, you said self-select. That's very key. One of the things that teaches, you've got to own it. You've got to own it.

I love that you said self-select. And this might be a meaty tangent, but I think this is powerful for our audience. Oftentimes the manager and an employee, right? Manager really cares to develop the employee. The employee though, didn't have very much juice. Didn't really want to do the employee. The employee though, didn't have very much juice. Didn't really want to do the work. I've seen this happen all the time. The manager's like, oh, you got to meet with me. You got to do this. You got to do this. And the employee's like, yeah, I don't know. So I always tell my clients and friends, the person needs to

own it. He or she needs to want to do it more than the manager does. Right. If you own it more than that person, then you're already off the wrong track. You shouldn't be investing in that growth. That person needs to own it. You need to own your own growth. If you look at all the successful people that you've interviewed, how many of them are victims? None of them. None of them. None of them.

They own it. None of them. They care about their success more than anybody else. Yes. And they hire people who care about their own success more than anybody else. So, I mean, you're right. It's 100% ownership. Yeah.

So leaders out there who are like forcing development and growth on people that work for them, you got to stop that, man. Yeah. You're right. That person's got to own it more than you do. I love that. Hey, Patrick, let's talk real quick. You got a book out, Rhythm. Give me a quick flyover of it and where can we find it?

Sure. Amazon.com. It's all Amazon, right? And so Rhythm gives you a framework to make your business like Mike O'Hearn, right? We all want to be like Mike. Be like Mike. By the way, I love to be like Mike because on my side, I got Mike Prager, CEO of Avid Exchange. And so for my clients, I tell them they want to all be like Mike Prager.

So to be like Mike, you need a framework. And so that's what Rhythm gives you. We'll want to give you a framework to think on a regular basis, to then plan, and then to do the work. And we want you to make sure that you get your strategic plans done. Getting your strategic plans done, it's about execution. So we give you a process that makes sure you've got enough of the right strategies to grow.

And one of the pitfalls people have is they overeat from the buffet of opportunity. As your business begins to grow, you get a lot of opportunities. First, you were starving, and then people get to know you, and suddenly opportunities come pouring in. Entrepreneurs and CEOs are not used to saying no to money. We're just not used to that. We've got to be trained to understand that we now have so many opportunities. We have to choose correctly. So we give you a framework to choose so that you don't overeat from that. And so then we give you, you know, processes to do this red, yellow, green thing,

a stock science dashboard to help you figure out how to avoid that train wreck. And then a process to make sure you have a great day, a great week, a great quarter and a great year. So that's what the books. I love it. Make sure you check out Rhythm on Amazon. Patrick, Tien. Patrick, I have a question I ask all of our amazing leaders on this show, and that's, how do you start your day with a win? Okay, so I start my day with a win the night before. There you go. Seven hours sleep, buddy. Seven hours sleep. And people who

need eight, don't be shy. Just get to sleep. That's how I start the day with a wig. But then when the day actually starts, I do three things. I start my day with God. I start my day

in devotions with God. And then I start second thing is I have gratitude. I thank God for three people. And then I make three commitments. These are three commitments

I'm going to achieve today. Today, three commitments. And once I achieve those, that sets up my whole day. That's beginning of the end in mind. So that when I achieve these three commitments, I can celebrate. I can win every single day. That's how I start my day with a win. I love it. Patrick Tien, author of Rhythm, How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth. Make sure you check him out on Amazon. Patrick, thanks for being on Start With a Win. Thanks for having me, Adam. Thank you so much. Hey, and thank you for listening to Start With a Win. If you'd like to connect, if you'd like to get more resources and great content, head over to adamcontos.com. We got a

lot of great stuff over there, as well as a downloadable PDF that will help you develop as a leader. So until next time, remember, start with a win.