IAM1381 – Founder and Coach Helps Business Owners Suffering from Chaos
Special Throwback: Podcast Interview with Scott Beebe
Scott Beebe is the Founder and Head Coach of MyBusinessOnPurpose.com and the host of the Business On Purpose podcast. Scott and the BOP team liberate Small Business owners from the chaos of working in their business and help them get their lives back by articulating and implementing intentional Vision/Mission/Values, Systems, and Processes.
- CEO Story: In 2015, Scott lost his job and so he became the CEO of his own company largely by being pushed into the necessity of needing to build something that would serve other people.
- Business Service: Deliberate small business owners from the chaos of working in their business.
- Secret Sauce: Help people see what they can’t see themselves.
- CEO Hack: Google Drive (including Google Docs and Google Draw).
- CEO Nugget: Write your vision down so that those who read it might run.
- CEO Defined: Hovering 5 or 10 feet above the business. Needing to be able to extract yourself from the business.
Website: mybusinessonpurpose.com
Free Offer: mybusinessonpurpose.com/vision
Other Website: fourstepstobusinessfreedom.com
Initial Episode: https://iamceo.co/2018/09/10/064-founder-coach-helps-business-owners-suffering-from-chaos
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Transcription
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00:02 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkins values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:27 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gretch from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Scott BB of my business on purpose.com and the Business on Purpose podcast. Scott, it is awesome to have you on the show.
00:40 – Scott Beebe
Gresh, my excited man, I've been amped up since you and I had a phone call. I'm ready to go.
00:44 – Gresham Harkless
Let's do it, let's do it. So first thing that I wanted to do is just introduce Scott so you can learn a little bit more about him and his background and all the awesome things that he's doing. So Scott BB is the founder and head coach of My Business on purpose.com and the host of the Business on Purpose podcast. Scott and the BOP team liberate small business owners from the chaos of working in their business and help them get their lives back by articulating and implementing intentional vision, mission, values, systems, and processes. Scott, Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:16 – Scott Beebe
Ready. Let's roll, man.
01:17 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome, Awesome. Well, the first question I have was just kind to build a little bit more upon your story, and your bio to hear a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to get started in your business.
01:26 – Scott Beebe
Yeah, mine was a little kind of hysterical and accidental, honestly. So I had the privilege of being an international director for a small faith-based nongovernmental organization working in Nigeria. We've been volunteering there for some years. And then the organization asked if I would come and read that. So I actually left the Pfizer company we've been with for a while, Loved it, my goodness. Learned so much from that experience and went into that role. And a couple of years in man, I got a baptism by fire into the world, into the inner workings of a board. And now I wasn't a member of a board, but my role was specifically responsible to the board.
And as the board kind of melted, I realized that there was nowhere to run when you're in a role that's directly answerable to the board. And so on February 27th, 2015, my role was gone. It just fitted within literally a three-hour period from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. On Friday, February 27th, it just went away. And so at noon on that day, I had no role. I had no job, which meant I had no income. I was 39 years old. Ashley and I were staring down the barrel of 40 years old. We have 3 kids, and so I got on a plane back to Savannah, and that next Monday I called a couple of buddies of mine, both were business owners, still are, and said, hey guys, I want to, I want to start a business and I want to do some work for you.
And they were like, great, what, what do you want to do? I said I don't, I don't know. What do you need? And so we kind of hammered out a proposal really geared around vision, mission values, which have been a lot of my background and helping them develop this great clarity around where the business is going. Because the problem is really true. If you don't have vision, then you're scattered where there's no vision. People scattered, they ran away.
And they were kind of feeling that way in their business and they knew growth was on the horizon, but they also knew it could have been very dangerous that growth. And so we sat down, and we went through a day-long scenario of vision, mission, and values. And then one of them looked up at me when we had a follow-up meeting and said so what's next?
And. I think we meet every week and he's like, OK, that sounds good. So we started meeting every week. And those guys, I'm still coaching them 3 1 / 2 years later, still have the privilege of being able to coach those small business heroes. And man, it's so much fun. So I became the CEO of my own company, largely by being pushed into the necessity of building something that would serve other people.
03:52 – Gresham Harkless
What I wanted to do is hear a little bit more about what you're doing with VOP Business on Purpose and tell us a little bit more about how you serve the clients that you work with.
03:59 – Scott Beebe
We do one thing every day. That's why I tell people Mondays are my favorite day of the week. It's the first day of the week we get to wake up and go liberate small business owners from the chaos of working in their businesses. And we've landed on that point because we realized that chaos is all around us. You know, cue the kids screaming behind me while I'm sitting in a conference room in a hotel. Ironically enough, literally, as I'm talking about this, this has been the quietest place in the hotel, and why I'm talking about chaos. You're hearing all of these sounds behind me. Listen, Chaos, we're never going to be able to quell it.
We're never going to be able to make it go away. It's always going to be around it. The book that we're we've got in within an editor's hand right now, the first line of the book is Chaos hates you and is looking to destroy you. So we've literally personified chaos and we realized that most heroic small business owners are swimming in it and don't have any idea how to be liberated from it. You're not going to kill it. It's always going to be around, but you can be liberated from it.
And so that's what we get to wake up and do every single day, every podcast we do, every piece of the curriculum we write, every daily huddle we have as a team, every team meeting we have as a team once a week. Everything we do is driven towards that one in the game and that's to liberate the small business owner from the chaos. Think about this, look around, and go, OK, there's fires burning. So how do I take the unique, what we call narrow brilliance that's inside of you, that unique skill set that God has deposited inside out of you? And how do you live that out within the boundaries of chaos? And so that's what we're trying to help people do.
05:27 – Gresham Harkless
Nice, And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce or what you said like their narrow brilliance. What would you say your narrow brilliance is for yourself and for your organization?
05:37 – Scott Beebe
You're going to get, man, you're going to hang up on me when I say this. Our narrow brilliance is liberating small business owners from chaos. Now there's a, there's a uniqueness to that. And so I'll give you kind of a deeper understanding of that. I was sitting down with a buddy of mine. He's a civil engineer and we used to meet weekly, and just kind of hang out, just chat.
And as we were talking one time, I'll never forget this, he said, Scott, you help people see what they can't see themselves. You help people see what they can't see themselves. And for me, that's where I kind of looked at this situation and went, OK, that's what I do. And I've got a passion for small business because the heroic small business owners are the ones that create all these new jobs.
They create these innovative ideas. They are also having to figure out how to have a family and, and figuring out accounting and all of these different elements all at the same time. So we just had a real deep, even hesitate to use the word passion. It's a it's a move. We're like we're moved when we get to spend time with small business owners. And so in that and the reality that I can see things maybe that you can't see. And so for you know, I listened recently to a podcast with coach Dabo Sweeney, which is crazy because I'm a Carolina guy. So he's the arch-nemesis, but he's successful.
And I listened recently to him and he was talking about all of the different elements that go into a successful football team. But when Dabo Sweeney looks at a football field, he can see things that you and I can't see because that's his narrow brilliance. Well, in a small business, for whatever reason, now, there are a lot of things I can't do in this world. In fact, the majority of things I cannot do in this world. But man, when I see a small business, I can see it. It's like it unfolds in slow motion for me. And so I can start to see things. So that, I mean, that's really how we try to live that out.
07:29 – Gresham Harkless
What I wanted to do with switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app or a book, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.
07:38 – Scott Beebe
Yeah, this is going to be pretty. There are probably a lot of listeners who are using something like this, but I'll flesh it out. So Google Drive is a hack for us. I hate to say it because I know they're probably ripping off my personal information in exchange for me being able to use it, but I would say probably 90 % of our business is run on Google Drive. Here's what I like about Google Drive, and I put it metaphorically this way. A lot of people would say, well, we use Dropbox.
That's great. Dropbox is a really fancy file encampment, but it doesn't have an art studio with it. Google Drive is a fancy filing cabinet with an art studio all kind of embedded in one. And so we can literally take a small business, we can map it out on a Google Draw, which is just a little simple draw sheet with blocks and shapes and stuff like that. And we can map it out on a draw and then we can link each one of those blocks back to a Google Doc.
And so everything's linked. And then you and I can get on a Google Doc, you'll be on your machine, and I'll be on my machine. As I'm typing, you can see me type real-time and I can see you type real-time. So we can literally work. So we've got a partner that we run an architect's group with. And that's how he and I do our planning we simply open a Google Doc and we start planning. Nothing fancy, nothing, you know, it's just simple. It's really simple. So I wish I had something more complex for you, but we're into simplicity and we're not into rocket science, and Google Drive allows us to be overly simplistic.
09:03 – Gresham Harkless
No, I mean, I think that's a perfect CEO hack. And I think a lot of times people are looking for more simplicity. And so I think that's a phenomenal CEO hack. And now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.
09:17 – Scott Beebe
Write the vision down South. Those who read it may run. Now you can put that little kind of quote on a poster or something like that. Sounds really cool, but I really want you to kind of take it and think through it reasonably. Write it down. Michael Gerber, the guy who wrote E myth, which if you're a small business owner, haven't read E myth, then go get E meth. You have to read it. So he writes in there. If you don't write it down, you don't own it.
If you don't write it down, you don't own it. And that's a modern prophet, Michael Gerber, not necessarily a religious prophet, but a modern prophet who's saying if you don't write it down, you don't own it. Well, he's harkening back to, I guess thousands of years ago in this recording conversation. Write the vision down so that those who read it may run So one hack you've got to write. Write either a document digitally or handwritten. You have to write your vision down.
10:06 – Gresham Harkless
And now I wanted to ask you which is my favorite question, the definition of what it means for you to be a CEO.
10:12 – Scott Beebe
There are three elements. Let me put this in the context of three elements and I'll contrast the CEO with the role of the owner, which is a role, it's defined role and role of it's called a systems manager, somebody who leads a particular system within the business, admin, sales, marketing, whatever. If you look at the role of an owner, the owner should be flying60, 000 feet above the business. So you, you, you can't smell the grass, you can't even see the trees moving. All you see are these macro-level trends.
You can see the entire river from, you know, mouth to delta. You can see the entire mountain range. The systems manager is walking on the ground, literally feet, you know, Step one, step two, step three, step four. In the grass, in the weeds. Weeds can feel that the wind can see the trees blowing, all that. The CEO is hovering, not flying, hovering 5 feet above the business or 10 feet above the business. So they're not necessarily able to see macro trends right away.
They've got to go to the owner for that, but the CEO also periodically gets in the plane and flies up to 60,000 people, the owner, and then comes right back down to hover 5 to 10 feet above the business. So they can see the grass blades, they can feel the breeze, can see, the trees moving, and periodically can catch a glimpse of the forest all at the same time. That's in my mind, what it takes to be a CEO is to have that mindset perspective.
Now, of course, there are a gazillion things outside of that that the CEO has to be responsible for, but having this mindset of I'm in the day-to-day, I need to extract myself for a minute to go look at the 60,000-foot. Now I'm back in the day-to-day. And when I say in the day-to-day, I'm not saying you're walking on the grass and cutting the grass. I'm saying you're hovering and everybody that's walking on the grass, you're asking constantly, how can I support you? How can I support you? This is where we're going. This is where we're going. How can I support you over and over and over again?
12:02 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Yeah, I'd love that perspective and the visual as well to kind of get an idea of like what exactly a CEO is what role they play, and how they're able to kind of switch and go lower to see a little bit more. But at the same time, they have an overarching view of not just where everybody is and how everything interchanges and connects with one another, but also how the future is going to pan out as well too. So I love that definition, Scott, about what I wanted to do was kind of pass you the mic, so to speak. See if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and also how best people can get in touch with you.
12:31 – Scott Beebe
Gresham, thank you. I told you offline, that it's a lot of work to start a podcast and I'm overly humbled that you would share your platform with us at this stage. So I'll be very brief. We talked about vision. We push it. It's the number one thing that we have our small business owners do when we have the privilege of being able to coach them. We will not move to delegation, to team meetings, to weekly schedules, to 12-week goals. We won't move to any of that until the vision is written down. And the reason is that when you've got all these great processes that are functioning with no vision, then your processes are scattered.
It's no different getting in a Ferrari and having no destination, just driving around. Eventually, you're going to run out of gas. And I'm sure Gresham, with everything you see from a CEO perspective, we try to put our money where our mouth is. And for any of your listeners who are thinking through, OK, I do have some systems, I do have some process, but I really don't have a vision story. When I say that, Gresham, I mean like 3 to 6 pages in detail. I'm not talking about a paragraph. And so having that written down in physical form for other people to be able to read and embrace and see.
We took our entire vision tutorial about a 20-minute video tutorial with our full vision template. We've held nothing back. We haven't given you half and then you can buy the other half. Nothing. It's, it's there the exact same thing that our heroic clients go through step # 1 we've put it up online. And if you're willing to commit two to three hours to it, then we are willing to kind of give that as an investment into your business. And so if they just my business on purpose.com/vision, my business on purpose.com/vision, go there. We don't make you run through a bunch of e-mail hoops where you get 16 emails.
It just put your mail address in and as soon as you hit submit, it'll pop right up. You'll see the video, you'll see the template, it's there. And you begin to invest that time. And that's 100 % of the time. That's the first step. Even if you've got it written, I want you to go back and review it because we say that your vision is never more than 90 to 95 %. And so Gresham, I'm curious about you because you kind of hear from CEOs all the time. From your perspective, is it, is it kind of obvious to know when a CEO has a vision well thought through, written out, and shareable versus a CEO who doesn't? Are you able to see that just and kind of feel that when you have these conversations?
14:47 – Gresham Harkless
Well, I'll tell you, because I do a lot of digital marketing, I usually try to drill down. That's one of the first questions I have when I sit down with somebody. So, and I guess innately I'm always asking about that, like where are you trying to go? You're trying to do, what are you trying to accomplish? And then you kind of like quote quote reverse engineer and figure out how to get there. But a lot of times a lot of business owners do not. I, I constantly have the conversation where you know, I'm having to have those kind of, I should say more maybe strategic business analyst, business solution type conversations because a lot of that's not in place.
15:21 – Scott Beebe
Yeah, well, there you go. You can take that template and tutorial and you can make that step number one for the people you work with and just tell them to go there and they can have that. Because once you've got that, especially dressed for a guy like you, you'll be able to take. Once they fill this out, you're going to know where they're going with their family, where they're going with their own personal free time, where they're going with their money, where they're going with their product, with their team, with their clients, and with their culture.
All seven of those categories. You'll know that when you write out the vision story according to this template that we've laid out. So it's step by step. There are no strings, 0 strings attached at all. It's just something that we've decided as a business. We are so laser-focused on liberating small business owners from the chaos. We just decided to make it available.
16:05 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that Scott, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:12 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
00:02 - Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkins values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:27 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gretch from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Scott BB of my business on purpose.com and the Business on Purpose podcast. Scott, it is awesome to have you on the show.
00:40 - Scott Beebe
Gresh, my excited man, I've been amped up since you and I had a phone call. I'm ready to go.
00:44 - Gresham Harkless
Let's do it, let's do it. So first thing that I wanted to do is just introduce Scott so you can learn a little bit more about him and his background and all the awesome things that he's doing. So Scott BB is the founder and head coach of My Business on purpose.com and the host of the Business on Purpose podcast. Scott and the BOP team liberate small business owners from the chaos of working in their business and help them get their lives back by articulating and implementing intentional vision, mission, values, systems, and processes. Scott, Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
01:16 - Scott Beebe
Ready. Let's roll, man.
01:17 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome, Awesome. Well, the first question I have was just kind to build a little bit more upon your story, and your bio to hear a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to get started in your business.
01:26 - Scott Beebe
Yeah, mine was a little kind of hysterical and accidental, honestly. So I had the privilege of being an international director for a small faith-based nongovernmental organization working in Nigeria. We've been volunteering there for some years. And then the organization asked if I would come and read that. So I actually left the Pfizer company we've been with for a while, Loved it, my goodness. Learned so much from that experience and went into that role. And a couple of years in man, I got a baptism by fire into the world, into the inner workings of a board. And now I wasn't a member of a board, but my role was specifically responsible to the board.
And as the board kind of melted, I realized that there was nowhere to run when you're in a role that's directly answerable to the board. And so on February 27th, 2015, my role was gone. It just fitted within literally a three-hour period from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. On Friday, February 27th, it just went away. And so at noon on that day, I had no role. I had no job, which meant I had no income. I was 39 years old. Ashley and I were staring down the barrel of 40 years old. We have 3 kids, and so I got on a plane back to Savannah, and that next Monday I called a couple of buddies of mine, both were business owners, still are, and said, hey guys, I want to, I want to start a business and I want to do some work for you.
And they were like, great, what, what do you want to do? I said I don't, I don't know. What do you need? And so we kind of hammered out a proposal really geared around vision, mission values, which have been a lot of my background and helping them develop this great clarity around where the business is going. Because the problem is really true. If you don't have vision, then you're scattered where there's no vision. People scattered, they ran away.
And they were kind of feeling that way in their business and they knew growth was on the horizon, but they also knew it could have been very dangerous that growth. And so we sat down, and we went through a day-long scenario of vision, mission, and values. And then one of them looked up at me when we had a follow-up meeting and said so what's next?
And. I think we meet every week and he's like, OK, that sounds good. So we started meeting every week. And those guys, I'm still coaching them 3 1 / 2 years later, still have the privilege of being able to coach those small business heroes. And man, it's so much fun. So I became the CEO of my own company, largely by being pushed into the necessity of building something that would serve other people.
03:52 - Gresham Harkless
What I wanted to do is hear a little bit more about what you're doing with VOP Business on Purpose and tell us a little bit more about how you serve the clients that you work with.
03:59 - Scott Beebe
We do one thing every day. That's why I tell people Mondays are my favorite day of the week. It's the first day of the week we get to wake up and go liberate small business owners from the chaos of working in their businesses. And we've landed on that point because we realized that chaos is all around us. You know, cue the kids screaming behind me while I'm sitting in a conference room in a hotel. Ironically enough, literally, as I'm talking about this, this has been the quietest place in the hotel, and why I'm talking about chaos. You're hearing all of these sounds behind me. Listen, Chaos, we're never going to be able to quell it.
We're never going to be able to make it go away. It's always going to be around it. The book that we're we've got in within an editor's hand right now, the first line of the book is Chaos hates you and is looking to destroy you. So we've literally personified chaos and we realized that most heroic small business owners are swimming in it and don't have any idea how to be liberated from it. You're not going to kill it. It's always going to be around, but you can be liberated from it.
And so that's what we get to wake up and do every single day, every podcast we do, every piece of the curriculum we write, every daily huddle we have as a team, every team meeting we have as a team once a week. Everything we do is driven towards that one in the game and that's to liberate the small business owner from the chaos. Think about this, look around, and go, OK, there's fires burning. So how do I take the unique, what we call narrow brilliance that's inside of you, that unique skill set that God has deposited inside out of you? And how do you live that out within the boundaries of chaos? And so that's what we're trying to help people do.
05:27 - Gresham Harkless
Nice, And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce or what you said like their narrow brilliance. What would you say your narrow brilliance is for yourself and for your organization?
05:37 - Scott Beebe
You're going to get, man, you're going to hang up on me when I say this. Our narrow brilliance is liberating small business owners from chaos. Now there's a, there's a uniqueness to that. And so I'll give you kind of a deeper understanding of that. I was sitting down with a buddy of mine. He's a civil engineer and we used to meet weekly, and just kind of hang out, just chat.
And as we were talking one time, I'll never forget this, he said, Scott, you help people see what they can't see themselves. You help people see what they can't see themselves. And for me, that's where I kind of looked at this situation and went, OK, that's what I do. And I've got a passion for small business because the heroic small business owners are the ones that create all these new jobs.
They create these innovative ideas. They are also having to figure out how to have a family and, and figuring out accounting and all of these different elements all at the same time. So we just had a real deep, even hesitate to use the word passion. It's a it's a move. We're like we're moved when we get to spend time with small business owners. And so in that and the reality that I can see things maybe that you can't see. And so for you know, I listened recently to a podcast with coach Dabo Sweeney, which is crazy because I'm a Carolina guy. So he's the arch-nemesis, but he's successful.
And I listened recently to him and he was talking about all of the different elements that go into a successful football team. But when Dabo Sweeney looks at a football field, he can see things that you and I can't see because that's his narrow brilliance. Well, in a small business, for whatever reason, now, there are a lot of things I can't do in this world. In fact, the majority of things I cannot do in this world. But man, when I see a small business, I can see it. It's like it unfolds in slow motion for me. And so I can start to see things. So that, I mean, that's really how we try to live that out.
07:29 - Gresham Harkless
What I wanted to do with switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app or a book, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.
07:38 - Scott Beebe
Yeah, this is going to be pretty. There are probably a lot of listeners who are using something like this, but I'll flesh it out. So Google Drive is a hack for us. I hate to say it because I know they're probably ripping off my personal information in exchange for me being able to use it, but I would say probably 90 % of our business is run on Google Drive. Here's what I like about Google Drive, and I put it metaphorically this way. A lot of people would say, well, we use Dropbox.
That's great. Dropbox is a really fancy file encampment, but it doesn't have an art studio with it. Google Drive is a fancy filing cabinet with an art studio all kind of embedded in one. And so we can literally take a small business, we can map it out on a Google Draw, which is just a little simple draw sheet with blocks and shapes and stuff like that. And we can map it out on a draw and then we can link each one of those blocks back to a Google Doc.
And so everything's linked. And then you and I can get on a Google Doc, you'll be on your machine, and I'll be on my machine. As I'm typing, you can see me type real-time and I can see you type real-time. So we can literally work. So we've got a partner that we run an architect's group with. And that's how he and I do our planning we simply open a Google Doc and we start planning. Nothing fancy, nothing, you know, it's just simple. It's really simple. So I wish I had something more complex for you, but we're into simplicity and we're not into rocket science, and Google Drive allows us to be overly simplistic.
09:03 - Gresham Harkless
No, I mean, I think that's a perfect CEO hack. And I think a lot of times people are looking for more simplicity. And so I think that's a phenomenal CEO hack. And now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.
09:17 - Scott Beebe
Write the vision down South. Those who read it may run. Now you can put that little kind of quote on a poster or something like that. Sounds really cool, but I really want you to kind of take it and think through it reasonably. Write it down. Michael Gerber, the guy who wrote E myth, which if you're a small business owner, haven't read E myth, then go get E meth. You have to read it. So he writes in there. If you don't write it down, you don't own it.
If you don't write it down, you don't own it. And that's a modern prophet, Michael Gerber, not necessarily a religious prophet, but a modern prophet who's saying if you don't write it down, you don't own it. Well, he's harkening back to, I guess thousands of years ago in this recording conversation. Write the vision down so that those who read it may run So one hack you've got to write. Write either a document digitally or handwritten. You have to write your vision down.
10:06 - Gresham Harkless
And now I wanted to ask you which is my favorite question, the definition of what it means for you to be a CEO.
10:12 - Scott Beebe
There are three elements. Let me put this in the context of three elements and I'll contrast the CEO with the role of the owner, which is a role, it's defined role and role of it's called a systems manager, somebody who leads a particular system within the business, admin, sales, marketing, whatever. If you look at the role of an owner, the owner should be flying60, 000 feet above the business. So you, you, you can't smell the grass, you can't even see the trees moving. All you see are these macro-level trends.
You can see the entire river from, you know, mouth to delta. You can see the entire mountain range. The systems manager is walking on the ground, literally feet, you know, step one, step two, step three- step four. In the grass, in the weeds. Weeds can feel that the wind can see the trees blowing, all that. The CEO is hovering, not flying, hovering 5 feet above the business or 10 feet above the business. So they're not necessarily able to see macro trends right away.
They've got to go to the owner for that, but the CEO also periodically gets in the plane and flies up to 60,000 people, the owner, and then comes right back down to hover 5 to 10 feet above the business. So they can see the grass blades, they can feel the breeze, can see, the trees moving, and periodically can catch a glimpse of the forest all at the same time. That's in my mind, what it takes to be a CEO is to have that mindset perspective.
Now, of course, there are a gazillion things outside of that that the CEO has to be responsible for, but having this mindset of I'm in the day-to-day, I need to extract myself for a minute to go look at the 60,000-foot. Now I'm back in the day-to-day. And when I say in the day-to-day, I'm not saying you're walking on the grass and cutting the grass. I'm saying you're hovering and everybody that's walking on the grass, you're asking constantly, how can I support you? How can I support you? This is where we're going. This is where we're going. How can I support you over and over and over again?
12:02 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Yeah, I'd love that perspective and the visual as well to kind of get an idea of like what exactly a CEO is what role they play, and how they're able to kind of switch and go lower to see a little bit more. But at the same time, they have an overarching view of not just where everybody is and how everything interchanges and connects with one another, but also how the future is going to pan out as well too. So I love that definition, Scott, about what I wanted to do was kind of pass you the mic, so to speak. See if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and also how best people can get in touch with you.
12:31 - Scott Beebe
Gresham, thank you. I told you offline, that it's a lot of work to start a podcast and I'm overly humbled that you would share your platform with us at this stage. So I'll be very brief. We talked about vision. We push it. It's the number one thing that we have our small business owners do when we have the privilege of being able to coach them. We will not move to delegation, to team meetings, to weekly schedules, to 12-week goals. We won't move to any of that until the vision is written down. And the reason is that when you've got all these great processes that are functioning with no vision, then your processes are scattered.
It's no different getting in a Ferrari and having no destination, just driving around. Eventually, you're going to run out of gas. And I'm sure Gresham, with everything you see from a CEO perspective, we try to put our money where our mouth is. And for any of your listeners who are thinking through, OK, I do have some systems, I do have some process, but I really don't have a vision story. When I say that, Gresham, I mean like 3 to 6 pages in detail. I'm not talking about a paragraph. And so having that written down in physical form for other people to be able to read and embrace and see.
We took our entire vision tutorial about a 20-minute video tutorial with our full vision template. We've held nothing back. We haven't given you half and then you can buy the other half. Nothing. It's, it's there the exact same thing that our heroic clients go through step # 1 we've put it up online. And if you're willing to commit two to three hours to it, then we are willing to kind of give that as an investment into your business. And so if they just my business on purpose.com/vision, my business on purpose.com/vision, go there. We don't make you run through a bunch of e-mail hoops where you get 16 emails.
It just put your mail address in and as soon as you hit submit, it'll pop right up. You'll see the video, you'll see the template, it's there. And you begin to invest that time. And that's 100 % of the time. That's the first step. Even if you've got it written, I want you to go back and review it because we say that your vision is never more than 90 to 95 %. And so Gresham, I'm curious about you because you kind of hear from CEOs all the time. From your perspective, is it, is it kind of obvious to know when a CEO has a vision well thought through, written out, and shareable versus a CEO who doesn't? Are you able to see that just and kind of feel that when you have these conversations?
14:47 - Gresham Harkless
Well, I'll tell you, because I do a lot of digital marketing, I usually try to drill down. That's one of the first questions I have when I sit down with somebody. So, and I guess innately I'm always asking about that, like where are you trying to go? You're trying to do, what are you trying to accomplish. And then you kind of like quote quote reverse engineer and figure out how to get there. But a lot of times a lot of business owners do not. I, I constantly have the conversation where you know, I'm having to have those kind of, I should say more maybe strategic business analyst, business solution type conversations because a lot of that's not in place.
15:21 - Scott Beebe
Yeah, well, there you go. You can take that template and tutorial and you can make that step number one for the people you work with and just tell them to go there and they can have that. Because once you've got that, especially dressed for a guy like you, you'll be able to take. Once they fill this out, you're going to know where they're going with their family, where they're going with their own personal free time, where they're going with their money, where they're going with their product, with their team, with their clients, and with their culture.
All seven of those categories. You'll know that when you write out the vision story according to this template that we've laid out. So it's step by step. There are no strings, 0 strings attached at all. It's just something that we've decided as a business. We are so laser-focused on liberating small business owners from the chaos. We just decided to make it available.
16:05 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that Scott, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:12 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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