The Hidden Success Traps That Stop Businesses From Reaching Mastery

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And we are into the third... episode in our four-part series on the path to mastery. We've done startup, we've done stability. If you have not yet listened to those episodes, please do circle back to those first before you listen to this. Today, we are unpacking the success level. And this is really a big one because... Very few business owners ever make it to success. Most get stuck in stability and very few ever make it to success. And just the same way we kind of saw some real big landmines and traps and stability, there are many in success as well.

1:28 We actually see people get into success very often and then slide right back out of it because they start to lose some self-awareness. There's a real opportunity to pat yourself on the back at this level and also to really want to hold on to what you've built. But have no fear, my friend. We have got you covered in this episode because we've got some powerful, powerful examples of how to do this right, including some really incredible practitioners and companies that we've worked with. We're going to share all of that with you as we dive in. to the success episode of the Coaching Equation podcast.

2:10 Welcome back to the Coaching Equation podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. We're at it again, my friend. Let's go. uh it game on for the success level the path to mastery as a reminder this is the third in four episodes that we are doing breaking down each stage of the path to mastery first two episodes were startup and then stability today we are hitting on the success level and And this is an interesting one because it's one that most don't ever reach. As we were kind of, you know, talking about the last episode, Brooke, most businesses get stuck in stability and either quit or just kind of stay mired in mediocrity for forever.

3:01 And getting into the success level... It's really kind of an interesting shift. And I think that it's one that becomes palpable. Like, you know, that when you're coming out of startup and you get into stability, we were kind of talking about that, like, oh... You know, like there's a little bit of a sigh of relief, like, oh my gosh, I'm not going to die. And I've at least figured something out. And I think that, uh, I think that coming from stability into success, you know, we were kind of talking a little bit about the traps in the last episode. And I think that while comfort can be the trap in stability, I think that, uh, uh, I think that we can get a little too big for our britches sometimes when we get into the success level and start thinking like, Oh, now I've arrived.

4:01 I've made it. And there's almost even a little bit of a sense of entitlement that can start to creep in at this level. What do you see in terms of some of the traps that we want to avoid at this stage of the path to mastery? Yeah, there's a couple pieces. One is... it's a different type of comfort. So there's definitely, we've seen people who will rest on their laurels, right? So they work their tail off, they get to the certain place and they have certain, whether it's lead gen strategies that have worked for a longer window of time. And so they go, oh, they make that mistake of, it's always gonna work. And so they let go of being in the business in that sense.

4:45 There's the other part where they also get, they might get really comfortable with their team. And they'll let go of the standards and the expectations of playing bigger. A lot of times we'll see too, if, if significance or ego creeps in, we'll see people that let go of the mission. We see this happen quite a bit, honestly, is that there's like a certain level of revenue that's been hit and it's like, oh, I'm the head honcho now. And so there's this piece of like, I'm, I'm better than my, my, uh, my competitors. Therefore I know more than they do. And there's this piece of like, I'm on the top of the mountain. So they've let go of the next mountain. And so the mission gets pushed by the wayside.

5:25 So yeah, there's, there's a lot of things that can come into play. One big one, which would be an interesting thing to unpack, could be its own entire episode, but really the life cycle of the business, like we've talked about before, like it trails the life cycle of the business owner. Unpack that a little bit for, for people just in case they don't remember. Yeah. So if we look at somebody who's brand new in business, they're in startup, they're like a toddler, maybe they're a teenager. And so they're making toddler teenager mistakes in their business, right? Because they don't know better. So they're driving 120 miles per hour down the freeway and they hit a puddle and they hydroplane and they're like, oh, who knew that was going to happen? I've never done that before.

6:08 So we go further down the road when people usually get into the level of success. It's usually because we've had a lot of experience, which means we had a lot of trial and tribulation. And because of that, we've become wiser and we have more knowledge. But we get to this other end of the scope, which is now we start to get a little bit older. Well, what comes with that is we become very set in our ways. So we can become rigid, right? In our belief set. Yeah. Or we might even be at a point in our business where we're way further down the road where we're aging out, where we're not willing to make the investments in our technology. You know, you've talked bazillions of times about sunk cost, right? Yep. This is where a lot of times that shows itself huge.

6:50 We actually were chatting with a company, one of the companies we work with about two weeks ago. Back in 2015, they made a significant investment in their accounting software. Okay. We're now in 2025, almost in 2026. Their software is so outdated and the reporting that they're getting is so like bad, but because they spent money back on that a decade, more than a decade ago, they don't want to reinvest in it. Now this is a $50 million business. It's like, how important is that accounting reports kind of important. But guess what? The business owner, he's aging out.

7:30 He's actually, the person who actually runs the company is like in his late seventies, early eighties, he's got a whole team of people running, but they don't want to make that reinvestment on such a critical piece because, oh yeah, 10 years ago we made a significant investment. And that's where you see it at the other end, where because they're older and they're like, well, I don't want to drop the money on it because I'm already thinking retirement. The business is now getting hurt because of the business owner's Yeah. Yep. It's interesting that you bring up sunk cost fallacy too. And by the way, just in case you don't, you're listening to this and you're like, what the hell is sunk cost fallacy? So sunk cost fallacy is, is, is essentially the, the, the idea of I spent money on something or I've spent time on something.

8:16 And so because of that, instead of pivoting, when I see that it's no longer working or it's no longer serving me, I just kind of get stubborn and double down on the thing. Um, Which is, you know, we've all done it. But it's a silly, silly thing to do. And in your business, it's a killer. And especially at this stage, just a really good example, though. I think that even when you haven't been doing it for 15 years... Even if you've been doing it... I mean, we see people, Brooke, all the time. We work with people that have been running their businesses for between 3 and 5 years. And they've had a system that was working and they just won't do anything other than the system. They've... And sometimes that comes along with a small amount of brainwashing.

9:05 Maybe, allegedly. But... But they just get so stuck on it. And one of the things that's tough is that, man, I mean, if we've seen anything over the last couple of years, holy shit, like business changes rapidly. Marketing changes rapidly. Sales changes rapidly. Fulfillment. I mean, like even if we look at like, 2022 or the beginning of 2023. I mean, the landscape is totally different now. And I think this is one of the key things. That's such a, such a great point.

9:46 I love too, that you touched on the team because I think this is an interesting thing. I think that sometimes people, we can get very lax in the success phase with standards and things of that nature. We're not quite as stringent. Or we've also seen business owners go completely the opposite direction. Now, all of a sudden, I'm the one who got myself here. And we're not appreciating and loving on people the way that we were before, which is an absolute killer at this stage of the game. Is this something that I'm curious if you've seen this, because I know I have, and I feel like it's one that can be really, really dangerous because we have a tendency to start taking ourselves maybe a little more seriously than we should and misremembering the help that we got from team members, from other people on our network that helped us to get where we are.

10:49 Yeah, dude, you're hitting on a very... You're hitting on a very sensitive nerve. But yes, no, this absolutely does come up. And there's, I want to hit kind of the positive side of the coin before kind of unpacking where this does play. Yeah. Because the reality is that one of my mentors, one of the things he shared with me was you have to become obsessed with two things, especially when you get to this phase of business. One is innovation. Yeah. And the second is optimization. Okay. So I'm going to say those again. You have to become obsessed with innovation and optimization. What's the difference between the two? Innovation is we have to stay ahead of the curve of where are things going?

11:32 How are people behaving? How does the market trending? How are people making moves? What is the technology doing? What is our team doing? What's the culture doing? We have to always be innovating, which is a fancy way of saying we've got to stay in the game. Yep. And we have to be observant. We have to be honest about what's happening, right? For another way of looking at this, if you're in the game right now and you're like, I don't like AI, I can't touch it. I agree. I agree. You know, Terminator is probably going to take over at some point, but if you're ignoring it. John Connor. Do you know this boy? But if you're ignoring it, it's like you're putting your head in the sand as an ostrich, just going, I'm good enough to weather this new storm that's come.

12:15 It's like, no, you're probably not. Yeah. Right? It's like Blockbuster and Netflix. That same kind of piece. Blockbuster thought they were so big. This is a great example of it. So big, they own the market share, but they refuse to innovate. Netflix comes along. Poof. Blockbuster is gone. Yeah. And they had a chance to buy them, which is even a whole nother crazy story. Okay, so innovation is the one piece. Optimization is the other side of that coin, which is you need to know what the hell you're doing and what's working and always be looking at making it incrementally better. Yeah. The reason for that is that principle of we're either growing or we're dying. And so if you're not optimizing what's working and you take your hand off the spinning plate for too long, it's going to crash because it will leave you behind.

13:04 We're seeing that a lot with people who are using paid ads for specific approaches online. You know, you could do paid ads in specific ways, whether it was a long form webinar, whether it was an evergreen funnel, whether it was these different things. And you couldn't back in the day, you could somewhat set it and forget it. And it might've worked for a window of time. And then you come back to it. We're seeing people right now. They're like, well, this worked six months ago. And they're angry that it's not working right now. Well, yeah. Are you innovating? Are you optimizing? Are you just hoping that you can set it and forget it? Cause you're being a lazy business owner. Yeah. This is, I love that you brought that up because of the fact that I think, you know, last, last episode, when we talked about stability, uh, we talked about the, you know, getting, you know, really starting to build systems and SOPs and documenting your process and things like that.

13:56 And at the success level, one of the things that's, that, that, uh, you know, that can really hamstring you at the success level is likely by now you've got some reporting going on. Lord have mercy. I hope so. Better. But, but it oftentimes what we find is that people either... have a tendency to shine the spotlight only. They do one of two things usually. I either only want to look at the thing that I like or the thing that I know we're really good at.

14:36 And they look at that one and they don't look at the thing where they're sucking and the area that they know they need to improve. Or it's literally the opposite way around. It's like the thing that they're good at, they set it on cruise control. And then they're hyper-focused on this area of their business where they feel like they need to make progress. And one of the things that's so interesting, this reminds me of that work that we do. with Funnel XP, which is a calculator where we literally look at different areas of the business and we look to see how, you know, small improvements in multiple areas of the business can actually create a massive exponential result.

15:26 And I think this is one of the reasons that I'm such a fan of that tool is that especially at this level, it's remarkable to find out if you just pay attention to each area. And instead of saying, oh, how can I 10x this area? And I'm huge. big on 10x, but how can I 10x this area, but then I'm not going to touch the other one? What if you just tweaked it 2%, 3%, 4%? It's magical what ends up happening when you start to think that way. But in order to think that way, you have to be willing to pay attention to all of the different things that you should be tracking. And I think that that's something at the success level that we start to find is a little bit of a make or break for folks.

16:14 Now you're, you're, yep. Yes, yes, yes, yes. If I had a bell, I'd be ringing it right now. I don't, do I have a bell? Um, there's this piece too, that comes up. It's, and you and I've both probably heard this. It's that concept of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Right. Or, uh, oh, there was another one that was just sitting in my head. Where'd it go? I lost it. I've lost my But there's this dynamic of we get comfortable at each one of these levels in the path to mastery, right? And there's this piece at success. We rest on our laurels of thinking it's good enough. It's good enough. And then the other part is we have a team.

16:55 So the danger zone is our team oftentimes will listen to them and take things as gospel. What do you mean by that? So... I'll put it this way and tell me if you've ever worked in these types of companies. You'll see business owners that start to hire people and they'll start to surround themselves with a lot of people that think and see the world through a very similar lens. And they think that, oh, my gosh, this is the most incredible employee I have because I get along with them so well. Right. Or because they put fires out that I no longer have to put out the fires on. So we go, oh, they're a great employee. Well, the reality is a great employee is going to, since you mentioned 10X, they will 10X whatever it is that they're being compensated.

17:42 That's what a great employee does. Now, that doesn't mean that they've reduced friction. It doesn't mean that you love what they tell you, but they help grow the business 10X. Yeah. And so we see at times is in the world of success, people have stacked their team with a lot of people who tell them what they want to hear. And to like you just pointed out, they'll put a bright light on those areas of the business that look amazing. And they'll put a lot of shadow on the things that don't look so sexy and they bury it. And we've seen this happen at numerous organizations where you think this person is like an incredible person on your team. But in reality, they're telling you what you want to hear. They're highlighting the stuff that looks amazing. They're not growing the business 10x, but they've reduced friction enough that we go, oh, I like working with them.

18:27 Yeah. Yeah, this this this spotlight's something that I that that becomes the linchpin for this phase, which is going making the identity shift from operator to owner. And I think part of making that identity shift, you know, when you're in operator mode, oftentimes you're just trying to you're trying to cobble together whatever extra support you possibly can. We talked about that that usually looks at first like a VA or an executive assistant. But then you likely at that stage, you oftentimes don't have the money to hire the best of the best. And one of the big shifts I actually see with regard, I agree with you, by the way.

19:09 And one of the shifts that I see being necessary at the success level is starting to hire people for more specialized roles. So, you know, it would be the difference, for example, of saying, okay, you know, I might have hired out to a more of a one size fits all marketing company, you know, that I'm paying monthly to help me with some of my marketing things and the stability level. Yeah. At the success level, you might start wanting to look at a fractional CMO, for example, to come in who knows your business specifically and is working on your stuff.

19:55 And I think that one of the things that I've actually seen really grow companies at this level, Brooke, is... They're, to your point, they're not looking for just the next yes man or yes woman. They're not looking to be placated. They're going, okay, the best of the best that I know are saying, all right, hold on. You know what? I actually want someone who is better and smarter than me in this area. That's what I'm looking for. And that, by the way, that is a shift to have to make that because like, it's kind of uncomfortable. It can sometimes be a little bit intimidating. But the reality is, if you do that, now all of a sudden, you're starting to get into... You're starting to get closer and closer to mastery.

20:44 Because imagine for a moment that in each area of your business that you were not elite at. You had a true elite expert owning that piece of the business. Imagine what becomes possible at that point. I think that, I don't know about you, but I actually believe that a lot of people hold themselves back. They'll stop short of that because there's still a little piece of them that's stuck in this thing about like, ooh, I don't want to hire that big person. It's either A, I don't want to spend the money, which is going to stagnate your growth, or B, I don't want to spend the money.

21:28 I'm intimidated by bringing some badass in here, you know, to help with this part of my business. What do you see there? I see a few different. So, first off, I agree with you 100%. The tricky piece is... It's more of the undercurrent of the why that I think sits underneath it. Because why do they not want to make the investment? I don't even know if it's always that they don't want to spend the money because at this stage, they likely have the revenue they can throw at it. I think a lot of times it comes down to one of two things. One, they don't want to do the work required. Right. So I bring these experts in. I can't tell you how many times I mean, literally, there was a company where we wanted to run a survey to their employees to get their feedback.

22:13 And the person who was running the HR department said, I don't want the answers because then I have to do something with it. Right? Like, think about that. Like their job is to create a winning culture and they didn't even wanna know what the thing, they didn't wanna know the truth about it because they didn't wanna have to do the work required to fix it or make it better. And so I think that that's one part of it. I think the other piece of the puzzle is when people hit success, It's a little bit different. It's like when, imagine, imagine we put $10 million in your bank account. Yeah. Would you fight harder to go generate the 10 million? Are you going to fight harder to hang on to it?

22:54 Yeah. And so if we look at success, a lot of times people will hold so tight to their baby. They're afraid of falling back into stability or falling all the way back to startup because they worked so hard to get there that they're holding on more to what they have versus holding on to the vision and mission of where they want to go. And so there's a fear of if I make changes, it might send me the wrong direction. And so I think it's one of the two things. I don't want to work more or I'm afraid. What if it doesn't work and it, it hurts us. Yeah, I agree with that. I think the other thing too, when you think about like, oh, you know, if it doesn't work and maybe it's going to hurt us and that kind of thing.

23:35 I think that is part of a function of sort of the who not how conversation. I think actually at this stage of business, there's still oftentimes a lot of how going on. And when people go... We talk to people all the time. We've worked with several, several business owners and companies that are stuck between five and 10 million and cannot move off of that no matter what they try. And they just keep running around thinking that it's purely a strategic problem. Yeah. Whereas if you go back, they haven't hired the elite experts in some of the areas that could truly go out and create impact in their business.

24:17 Instead, they're so fixated on how are we going to grow there instead of who's going to help me do it. And I think one of the other things, too, at the success level, Brooke, that we've seen a lot in our work with people... When we think about the good case studies versus the bad ones, one of the biggest distinctions that I would make is that the best of the best in success, the people and the companies that are truly trending towards mastery are the ones that hire the experts and then actually allow them to do what they've been hired to do and do whatever work is necessary to carry that agenda forward.

25:04 The others, again, it's the craziest fucking thing. They make the hire, and then they want to have a... Yeah, they want to handcuff them. And or the minute that, you know, the expert or experts that you've hired start to really lean into what they're there to do, then it's like, oh, wait a minute. This person can't be seen as, you know, in charge of anything. You know, I've got to, like, take back my power here. You know, it's like we're back on the fucking Jolly Roger or something, you know, and...

25:45 Somebody just, you know, Captain Barbosa just took the wheel. It's the craziest thing. Well, that that's a, I think that's a different element though. Cause they're, they're, you have to trust. And I think that that's a huge piece and you've got to trust the right people. Cause I think there's companies too, that will hire people over, uh, their perspective of trust versus hiring people with a skillset. And this happens, honestly, this happens a lot at this phase because in stability, that's where people go higher, like crazy when they start to scale. Yeah. Yeah. And they, like we've talked about in previous episodes, they'll hire like family and friends and perhaps people that are, they trust, but perhaps don't have the skillset.

26:28 And you'll see what happens at the success level in order to grow. A lot of times you have to fire the people you brought in that got you there. Oh, yeah. And you've got to go hire the two. You can't have one without the other. You can't have somebody who just has massive skillset, but isn't trustworthy. And you can't go hire somebody that's incredibly trustworthy that has zero skillset. You've got to have that balance. And I think to your part, you know, if we use the Jolly Rogers, our example here, if you're the captain at the helm and you've got somebody who's up, you know, they're up in the crow's nest and they're like, Hey, I see land a hoe. You're like, Nope. Nope. I want to keep going this way at full steam ahead. And they're like, land a hoe. And you're like, screw you. I don't trust you. And then you crash.

27:09 Whose fault is it? Yeah. We usually blame the person in the crow's nest for not yelling louder or something. You know? So true. And it happens a lot. It does. It does. You know, we've hit a lot. Success is an interesting space and there's so much that goes into operations at success. And a lot of the reason that we spent more time on some of the operations and team and systems and stuff like that. is that at this level, you can start to afford to do more there. And if you're doing it right, you're starting to take your eye off of, oh my God, I just got to grind 24 hours a day. And you're really leaning into those systems and the structures and the people. But I want to hit on a couple of things.

27:51 First of all, I would simply say, moving out of operations for a minute, talk about sales. What are some of the things in the success level that we want to be doing with our sales team? How do we do that at this level successfully? Success, successfully. Successfully successful. Yeah. So it's, it might sound boring, but what we're doing in stability, but more of it and better and more consistent. There's two pieces that come into the fold and they've got to be equally consistent.

28:32 two equal parts that go into the recipe. So one part metrics, metrics become more important because we need more of them because now you're scaling, you have more teams. So you need to have better reporting because you have more, more people that you're managing. And the only way you can scale at that is you've got to have reporting. Otherwise you're going to be managing so many people that you're just going to burn out. And so that's where reporting comes into the fold. The second part of that equation is mission. Okay. If we let go of the mission and we go all in on metrics, I mean, you and I've seen this where people just met, they go so deep into the weeds of metrics that all they're looking at is what is, and they're not looking at where they're going. And so for most metrics is a lagging indicator and they let go of leading indicators.

29:16 And that's a big, big challenge that comes into the fold. So they're always looking at where were we yesterday? Well, how many sales did we get? How many leads do we get? What was happening in the rear view mirror? Yeah. And they so obsess on that, they're not looking up going, where the hell are we going? And one company, so actually, are you cool if I unpack one of the good uses of it? Yeah, go for it. Is that cool? Yeah, yep, I'm good. So working with Tony Robbins, one of the things that was fascinating working with him, he was very big on something called Skunk Works. So I don't know, have we ever talked about Skunk Works? I don't think so. It doesn't ring a bell for me. Okay, so skunkworks is actually where you have your business that is, and then you have the business that's becoming. The business that we're becoming is where you skunkwork.

29:57 So it's where you go and you do not let go of the business that's currently running, but you allocate money and resources and people. And you make a hypothesis and you do skunkworks on a new thing that you can bring into your business. But a key distinction here, we don't let go of the business that is. Now, when I got promoted with Tony, I didn't know that my world that I got handed was a skunk works. So there was an executive meeting and somebody had a brainiac idea of like, Hey, what if we go put all kinds of resources into this other offering? If it works, this would be amazing. And if it doesn't, it doesn't take away from the rest of our business.

30:38 So that's when I got promoted. Now, I didn't realize that I had a six month runway to prove out. that the hypothesis would actually work. Thank God it did. We took that and we went, great, let's take these principles. Let's take a division. Let's take an offering that I think the year before only made around a hundred, 180,000 in revenue and it wasn't working. And Tony said, Hey, Brooke, you helped do these things over in our coaching division. If we put this into the business mastery division, This could change the game for us as a company, but no one's been able to do it so far. So we're going to plug you in. We want dedicated focus and we want you to go prove this out.

31:19 And we took those same principles and we applied them and we locked and loaded. And it was crazy because we took $180,000 division and we blew it up to 3 million in that first 12 months. Well, then the next year we did five and the next year we did 15. The next year we did 25. So... This concept of if you have the right metrics and you have the mission and you have the right team, you can skunk work new ideas without cannibalizing the things that made you successful in the first place. That's actually a great story because that almost ties... It ties the operational mindset in with sales and marketing.

32:04 And I would say also, like at that level, that's such a great example. I would say also at that level that just to kind of put the cherry on top of the sundae with regard to sales, because I think people will... would want to know this at the success level. I think that by now you've got a couple of people likely on your sales team. We have seen people get all the way into success purely on their own with sales, which by the way, is not a terrible way to do it because you're maintaining, you know, a grip on revenue generating activity. But likely, you've probably brought a couple of people on your team. And I think that one of the things at the success level is that leadership and sales has to level up at success.

32:54 It gets even more important at the mastery level. But when you've got even one person on your sales team... Now all of a sudden, leadership has to level up and you either have to get really good at leading your salesperson or salespeople or you're going... Circling back to my previous comment, you're going to want to hire an expert or a couple of experts like the two good looking guys on this YouTube video. Yeah. To coach up your team. Because really, if you want to level up, that's absolutely key. It's so interesting because I find that at this level, people make the mistake of thinking, well, in my sales, if I just leverage my time and I just have more salespeople, that's going to scale my business.

33:43 Wrong. Wrong. Unpack that because I know there's a company that we worked with that you were, you were deep in the trenches in terms of helping them quantum leap. And I mean, I don't want to take away the thunder of the impact, but share a little bit more about that because that they, they genuinely were at that success level and there was no way to get, by the way, I'll say this much. You, I don't even know if you can get to mastery without a sales team. So yeah. I'd love to hear your inputs and take on what happened with. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this is actually, it's a good, there's good story with regard to the work that we did with brand builders group and, and my, my friends, Rory and AJ Vaden. First of all, I would just say a couple of things that I got to reflect about why this was successful is, So those two, Rory and AJ Vaden, I want to give a huge shout out.

34:33 They are great stewards of their business. And that is rare. And one of the things that I appreciate the most is that... You know, when I came on to do work as a fractional VP of sales for them, they had systems galore. They had reporting and metrics. They had a very, very clear meeting cadence. outcomes for, for, for those meetings. Um, there was not confusion about the way that you needed to show up and what was expected.

35:14 Um, you know, they, they understood very clearly what was moving the needle in their business and what needed attention. Uh, and there was a very systematic way of, uh, deciding to approach those things. Um, And so when I started working with their sales team, they were already pretty good by all standards. You know, their sales team, when we started working with them, was at 18% as a team. And within... We started working with them in October. And by the end of the year, we were at 36% conversion rate.

35:54 So we doubled the conversion rate of the team. Before, you're like, holy shit, that's amazing. Well, yeah, it is. But... In the absence of all of that foundation, and again, like you just said, Brooke, remembering the things that you did that are still working that you're not going to let go of, end. And by the way, this was an interesting thing. One of the other reasons that I really want to honor Rory and AJ in this conversation is that they did something circling back to my comments before on hiring experts. Look, These are two humans who ran an incredibly successful sales training company before they ever started Brand Builders.

36:40 An eight-figure company. Like... They're the last people you would think would be willing to hire someone in sales leadership because it would be so easy for them to just go, well, I got this. I don't need that help. And in that moment, it was extraordinary that they made the decision because most don't. But then what they also did, circling back to my previous comments... is they trusted. They trusted me, they trusted us, they trusted the system that we had, they trusted that we would treat their sales team and their business with care, which we did. And within, you know, in one year of working together, you know, as a company, BBG exceeded their, you know, they broke their record for revenue three times in one year.

37:35 We doubled the conversion rate of the sales team. And across the 12 months, we never dipped below 30% in a month. That's wild. Which is ridiculous. But again, none of that is possible if not for the things that true leadership provides at the success level. I want to take a minute to shift. I know... We've got also a couple of somewhat cautionary tales. You just shared one a minute ago, but I want to kind of touch on some of the cautionary tales of people that we've seen go sideways here because it is, again, it's a crossroads, but there's also a reason.

38:29 Very few people, very few companies get put into the rare air of the mastery category. There's a reason for that. It's because it's fucking hard. Uh, and because, uh, there, there are a lot of landmines and traps. And, um, so anyway, uh, give us a little bit on some of the things that we've seen personally that, that, you know, you want to stay away from. It comes back to, I hate to say it comes back to mission because it's going to sound so overly simplistic. Like we have in our course, you know, we have help people figure out like, what's your mission, your vision, your core values and all those pieces. Why that's such a critical piece to the puzzle is because most people don't pay attention to it because they don't think it's that important.

39:14 Yeah. And the reality is that drives the behavior. And that's the thing that anyone who comes into your orbit, they are going to follow you based on the values that you uphold. And so what we see that happens in this, in this level for people who really just want to make money and they want, they want more free time. They got into this business because they want freedom. This gets magnified at this level. Hmm. And so, you know, we see with, and actually it was Brian Buffini, he talked about this. He said, you know, money magnifies our values. Sure. Yep. And he's like, you know, before, if I behaved a certain way, people thought I was crazy. Well, now I've got a ton of money. And if I behave a certain way, they just think I'm eccentric.

39:56 Right. Yeah, exactly. And so when we get to success and this happened actually with a coaching company that I had the opportunity to work with early in my career and my uncle and I, we went into this, this organization and we actually created his coaching department and we did 3 million in revenue that first year. Well, what ended up happening, because we didn't know that the person's values were in one particular category, we went and blew up this person's business. And immediately, because his driving force was finances and time and significance, those were his three drivers.

40:37 Well, we checked all the boxes for him. And guess what happened? He chose not to pay us. So we were, we were owed a third of that revenue. So we'll just say a million dollars was owed to us. And he went, yeah, I'm not going to pay you guys. I'm going to shut down this, this side of the business. And, And in reality, he went belly up a year later because he lost us because we want you owe us a million dollars. You're not going to pay us because your own greed and your own drivers, the values you have basically said, screw you, even though you're the ones who got us there. So we flipped him the bird and we left and we went to other companies and we helped grow those double, triple, quadruple, 400 percent that next year.

41:19 But what ended up happening to him was he shot himself in the foot. And he went straight, he went below startup and he had to literally go start over because he didn't want to take care of the people who helped him get to that level of success. Hmm. And we've seen this happen in numerous companies, another company, and this is, I won't drop his name because he's very big in the personal development space. It's almost a running joke that anyone who's worked there, they know he's a conveyor belt. And every six months, he'll bring on a whole new team. He won't trust them. He won't give them the reins, but he wants the significance of having the CMO and having the CRO and the COO and having all the salespeople.

42:01 He wants the significance and he wants the numbers so he can point to his buddies and go, I run a 15 or $20 million coaching business, but he doesn't let go of those things. And guess what? Every six months, mass exodus of the entire team. And then he restaffs again. Tanks it. And it's always the same drivers because they hit that level. They're no longer mission driven. Those other values and the things that they wanted, their own significance and their own notches on the belt and being able to say that they've hit a certain threshold. That's more important than it is to actually help the masses, which they publicly tout is the mission. It's not. And this is where it bites them in the ass. This is fascinating because I think that if we're doing this right, this should be the level where we lean even further into the why, into the mission.

42:52 I think that oftentimes, you've said it a couple of times in this episode, which is essentially that there's almost a little bit of a fear of loss. what is fear really is us thinking of self When we are in fear, we are thinking of self. And I was reminded of that this week. Just listening to a couple of podcast episodes where that kind of came out.

43:33 And I think that at this stage, that's the dangerous game, right? If you're not really self-aware and you go internal and you go, I'm afraid of losing what I have or... I want to have the significance here. You know, now all of a sudden you are separated from the mission. You are separated from the why. You are separated from the people that need you in whatever capacity they need you. And I think the best of the best, the reason they get to mastery is because they're truly able to continue to hang on to that. That's one of the reasons that the word legacy gets thrown around. But in truth, very people. very few people, very few companies truly build a legacy, leave a legacy.

44:18 It's rare error. And, and there's a reason for that. Um, I want to touch on one other thing too. I'm going a little squirrel here, but I don't want to leave this episode without touching on it because I can see somebody maybe thinking or being a little bit confused. They haven't really talked about marketing a whole lot in this episode. And we've only got a couple of minutes left before we got to wind it down. But I would simply say that in the success phase, One of the things that you really want to make sure that you're doing is you're utilizing the foundation that you've built to fund your marketing. I'll actually circle back to BBG for a minute because one of the things they did brilliantly is they found one method of getting leads and man, they banged that drum like...

45:05 crazy. And they were wicked good at it. But what they did is they'd utilize what they made from that foundational marketing tactic and strategy that got them leads consistently. And they'd throw that at other things. Now we're experimenting a little bit. Now we're, you know, we're branching out a little bit. And the desire was to say, hey, if we're going to go from success to mastery, we know that we've got to start having a bit of a, you know, diversified lead getting portfolio, if you will, as opposed to, you know, just having that one thing be the only thing all the time.

45:47 I'm glad you brought that back to center because, you know, if we're going to let's let's close two different loops. I think there's actually a cool way to wrap this episode. I like it. We have to become obsessed with innovating and optimizing a couple core areas. Marketing, number one. I don't even, I would even change the language. I wouldn't even call it marketing. You have to become obsessed with innovating and optimizing lead generation. Because I think that that opens up Pandora's box around this, but you also have to become obsessed with innovating and optimizing sales. You have to also, cause this is the, this is the area too, that where you can get bit in the ass is of let, you can run startup on big promises and not delivering great results.

46:28 That's right. That's right. At this level, if you're not delivering great results in whatever industry or business you're in, bad news is going to travel faster. And at this stage, you have a lot more to lose. So you do have to put a lot more emphasis on innovating and optimizing on whatever your offering is and whatever you deliver. But if you're not consistently growing your leads by 20% per year, you're going to get your ass caught. And that's a huge piece of the puzzle. But you've got to couple it with you've got to deliver better at this level, too. 100%. And you've got to really start showing up as a big time leader at this stage. This is where, like to your point, startup, stability, you can have some holes in there.

47:12 You can still be patch, duct tape and shit together and all of the things. But when you get to this level, you really do have to be optimizing all core four areas of your business, sales, And that's exactly what we're going to get into in this next episode is understanding that shift that you now have to make from becoming an owner, working less in the business and more on the business and going from that to transformational leader. That is next in the mastery episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. Until next time, go be legendary.

47:54 Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we'd be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go. I can't believe it.