IAM591- Coach Mentors Founders to Scale Their Businesses

As a coach and partner at The Kedar Group Adam works with individuals, teams, and organizations to break through the barriers that slow them down and develop strategies, tactics, and practices to scale themselves as they scale their businesses.

• CEO Hack: Reading
• CEO Nugget: (1) Cultivate relationships (2) Develop awareness for yourself and challenge yourself to make a choice
• CEO Defined: Chief culture and accountability officer

Website: https://www.kedargroup.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/adammutschler
Instagram: http://instagram.com/thefoundersmind/

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

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 Harkless 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.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on my show today. I have Adam Mutschler of The Kedar Group.

Adam, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Adam Mutschler 0:39

Thanks for having me. I'm psyched to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:41 

Yeah, super psyched to have you on, and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Adam so you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

As a coach and partner at The Kedar Group Adam works with individuals, teams, and organizations to break through the barriers that slow them down and develop strategies, tactics, and practices to scale themselves as they scale their businesses.

Adam, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Adam Mutschler 1:01

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 1:03

Let's make it happen. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story in your background and what led you to get started with your current position.

Adam Mutschler 1:12

I love that. Well, again, thanks for having me on the show, and thanks for reading my bio. I like that. It was nice to hear back from someone besides myself.

Gresham Harkless 1:21

Those are always fun.

Adam Mutschler 1:22

Yeah. It sounds pretty good. How did I get to do what I'm doing and what am I doing, I mean, I'm a partner at the Kedar group. So at an executive level, but not a CEO, oh, if you wanted to give me a title. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. So my mom has her business, I'm actually in a business with her. My dad has an acupuncture business, my brother has a bacon business and a catering business, my grandparents have had businesses and my aunts. I mean, that's like my DNA. So when people think about the career they want to have, or how they want to live their life, they typically see a blueprint of getting a job, holding the job, moving up to the job, find a better job and mine was building a business, grow a business, develop a business that sustains your life.

So that was my blueprint and how did I get into business with the Kedar group probably partially inception because the business I've lived my whole life. But the other part is, I love working with people. It's the thing that lights me up. Being a coach and a facilitator and helping people manifest sort of more from themselves and their team is the ultimate way, in my opinion, to work with people. So that's kind of the rough answer probably a little too much. But that's my response.

Gresham Harkless 2:50

No, I think it was just the right answer. What is that, not too hot, not too cold just right. There's a perfect answer. I truly appreciate that and it kind of sounds like you have had a lot of different exposure, as you say, to senior DNA to a lot of different types of businesses. I imagine what the Kedar group, you guys probably work with a myriad of different businesses and to help out these entrepreneurs and business owners. I'm sure that probably served you well.

Adam Mutschler 3:15

Yeah, I say, selfishly, I feel like I learned more from my clients than I helped them. But I think that one of the things, the week that people talk about societies if you really want to get to understand something, teach it. As a coach, I'm not necessarily a teacher, but being with clients and with executives, and working with them through whatever challenge they're working on.

I get to relive something from so many different angles, that I develop it. I feel that I have developed an immense perspective on some of the key things that we talk about in business impostor syndrome, burnouts, communication, and how we collaborate. Seeing it through the lens of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 100 people over the conversations over the years developed quite a perspective.

Gresham Harkless 4:09

Yeah, no, I definitely think that it can't help but do that. I often say I don't know if you've heard the phrase iron sharpens iron. So a lot of times when you have that knowledge, and you get the opportunity to have maybe not the exact same knowledge, but that different perspective, you just get stronger both as I'm sure your client and also you as a person, it sounds like.

Adam Mutschler 4:26

Yeah. I would agree with that. It's something that I appreciate a lot for the work that I get to do.

Gresham Harkless 4:33

Yeah, and I know you kind of mentioned that teaching aspect. As a coach, it is not necessarily teaching, and definitely correct me if I'm wrong. I always tell coaching as sometimes you have the answers within you, but I think as business owners, and entrepreneurs, juggling so many things, it's sometimes hard to kind of make those decisions, sometimes hard to kind of even see the right answer, even though it might be within this. So having the opportunity to talk with a coach to work with a coach in a lot of different ways helps to bring that about and also have the expertise to lean on.

Adam Mutschler 5:03

Yeah, 100%? I mean, I would say, you're making this easy for me, which I appreciate. But I would say I just had a conversation with a founder who was raising money, and their business needs new things from them. There was a question about, do I develop my personal brands, and develop the brand of the business. Some people say you should some people who say you shouldn't and what we talked about over lunch was this idea that you have to, and this is hard. But you have to really listen to what resonates for you.

Do you have the energy and do you have the interest in developing your personal brand, in addition to being the executive at your company? Or do you have the interest and energy to just focus on building what's going on at your company, with no need to develop the personal brand and the example I used if you I say it on the show and if you're listening, think about this, can you tell me who the founding CEO of Lyft was? Most people are blank. Can you tell me who the founding CEO of Uber was? If you're just an entrepreneur, you're gonna say, Travis, right? Two different CEOs, two different companies, two totally different approaches to their visibility. Right, and that visibility worked for Travis.

I don't even know the name of the CEO of Lyft. But it feels abilities clearly working for them, they raised tonnes of money, they have global brands and I think that to the point of a coach, it's helping whoever you're talking to, and working with, really stay aligned with what's at their center, and not try and get to the off center, and do things that people say they should do? Or do things they think they should do, but don't resonate for them.

Gresham Harkless 6:50

Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. I think that because there's so much noise, as you shouldn't be doing this, you should be doing that, there's sometimes we can get off center and start to go down a path. I love how you talk about bringing it back to like, those intrinsic values, I guess, I would say, of what you're trying to do, what you're trying to accomplish, what's your mission, your vision, and what's the organization's mission and vision.

Adam Mutschler 7:12

It gets harder, like, as an executive or a founder of a company. If your team achieves your goals, what your team and company need from you will evolve and you have to evolve. Otherwise, like, Travis, you won't be there. I mean, he's still made out no doubt, but like, you have to be able to challenge yourself to continue developing and keeping up if your business achieves what you hope it will.

Gresham Harkless 7:40

Yeah, absolutely. No, that makes so much sense. So I know you've touched a little bit on what you guys are doing, and how you're serving clients, is there anything else you can kind of touch on? Then I don't know if you can touch on this too. But I like to ask for something I call your secret sauce, which is like your unique selling proposition, you're different? What do you feel kind of sets you guys apart as well, too?

Adam Mutschler 8:02

Think there are a couple of things that set us apart that are kind of interesting. One is, it's a family business, which is interesting and coaching is very much a practice, in my opinion, that sort of lives in the world of wisdom. I'm not saying that I'm wise, but because I've been able to partner with Laya, the founder of the Kedar group and my mother, our work and our perspective spans a very large timeframe. So we have an intergenerational team and we have very different backgrounds. Because of that, what we bring to our clients, and we have many coaches and facilitators that we work with what we bring to sourcing coaches and to matching coaches with clients, it goes deeper than a personality assessment, or, Hey, this person is available and you're able to just work together.

I think so much of coaching and facilitation and when you work with people relies on chemistry, and relies on a lot of intangibles that we don't, algorithms don't have the ability to match yet and maybe ever. I think that that's a really big value add is that we really span generations of experience. We live in a world where intergenerational work is getting more and more important. People are staying in the workforce longer. Younger generations are disrupting the current workforces like the dominant generations and workforces faster. I mean, we talked about millennials at work and what Millennials need and we've got Gen Z and I don't even know the other letters now. But I think that that's a big one.

The other one is that this has been my last focus for 30 plus years, and working with people has been my focus for 30 years since 2007 when I started working at Apple, and I was doing training in insurance. So this is not a new concept for either of us, we have been committed to working with people and supporting people for literally decades, individually and collectively. I think that there's something to that also, people talk about the 10,000 hour rule, talking 20,000 30,000 40,000 applicants, so turn of experience towards people, because it's not a surprise. There are definitely people who say it's a science, and there are assessments that will say they're steeped in science. But human nature is a lot more of an art than we give it credit for.

Gresham Harkless 10:37

Yeah, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So that could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Adam Mutschler 10:49

I think reading is really crucial and I think one of the reasons why is on our shoulders, we have the ultimate machine learning device, which is our brain.

Gresham Harkless 11:02

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can hop into a time machine what would you tell your younger business self?

Adam Mutschler 11:12

One and this is crazy, because I'm a super extrovert, I love connecting with people. I went to five schools part-time over eight years to get one degree. It wasn't a fancy one, it was an undergraduate degree. I wish I had spent more time cultivating and maintaining relationships with people that I've met over the years. I do a really good job now. But I feel like I probably put five to seven years of really, they're great people that I was connected to, that I just didn't maintain and start reaching out now it'd be opportunistic. Every now that I reach out to catch up, I think the sooner you take that seriously, the more powerful your network and more meaningful your network will be if you really nurture those relationships.

The other one of this goes back to the book question awareness creates choice, and continuing to develop new awareness for yourself, and then understand what choices you're presenting yourself with challenging yourself to make the choice that is right for you and for your team and for your business.

Gresham Harkless 12:14

Yeah, absolutely. No, I love both of those, and especially the relationships are literally everything. We don't realize sometimes that we can be building we are building and cultivating those relationships, whether we are taking action or not taking action a lot of times. So we kind of have to be aware of that throughout where we are now and of course our lives. Then you're absolutely right, that we have a choice to kind of especially as leaders to be able to make certain choices to affect us today, but also affect us 10 years or so down the line.

So a lot of the decisions that we make kind of reverberate into that. So appreciate both of those nuggets. Now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. As you mentioned, I know if you said you had a title, it'd be CEO. So I wanted to get your perspective on what being a CEO actually means.

Adam Mutschler 13:02

I think it means different things to different people. I think being a CEO, being at the top of an organization, does mean the buck stops with you. So you need to take responsibility for the actions of the teams from you all the way to the very frontline employees that you have. However big your organization is, which means that you have to create a culture and set a tone and an organization where people are representing the mission and the values of the company. So one way you're the chief culture officer, in my opinion, and you're also the chief accountability officer when something goes wrong it's something that you are responsible for. I think those are the big things.

Functionally, CEOs also hold different roles. Steve Jobs is an innovator and a visionary and that was his role as the CEO of Apple. Tim Cook, the same company is an operational mastermind and that's his superpower. As an executive, he's still the chief accountability officer, and he still sets the tone of culture, but they have different functional strengths. I think as a CEO, understand that it's okay to have a different strength than a peer who's a CEO. But know that you're responsible for your team and for your company.

Gresham Harkless 14:27

Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate you for bringing that down. I think so many times people look at or try to emulate certain people but not realizing that you can be yourself and be successful and lean into your strengths or whatever they are. There are different ways to kind of sharpen the saw, just as we kind of have talked about different ways to define what it means to be a CEO. So definitely appreciate that.

Adam, I appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Adam Mutschler 14:59

For sure. I mean I think the big thing is listening to shows like this and opening yourself up to new ideas is the best thing you can do. I give some book titles. But I think one of the things that happens is we put blinders on. Or we let the world put blinders on us and we accept them and broaden our perspective, talk to people that are different than us listen to ideas that are different than yours, and just see what resonates. That's the big thing. You can, the best way to get a hold of me, is whatever platform you enjoy, so LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram at adammutschler, A d a m, that's easy, Mutschler it's a mouthful. On a partner that could our group. I am a host of the founder's mind. You can find all of this if you find me and maybe it'll be in show notes or somewhere.

Gresham Harkless 15:58

Absolutely.

Adam Mutschler 15:59

I just love to talk to people so hit me up, let's have a conversation, seriously, I'm here to learn.

Gresham Harkless 16:04

Awesome. I definitely appreciate that Adam for all the awesome things you're doing the time that you had today. We definitely will be in the show notes. So just to make it a little bit easier, you can click through and find out about all the awesome things that Adam is working on, him in the team.

So thank you again, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 16:21

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.

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Thank you for listening.

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