IAM2868 – Mindset, Strategy, and Action꞉ Why Strategy Still Needs a Builder Who Will Move

The Illusion of the Flawless Strategy

A persistent trap for many builders is believing that business stagnation can be solved exclusively by hunting for a new corporate blueprint. You can possess an incredible, world-class strategy and still remain completely stuck if the individual executing that plan is quietly battling fear, self-doubt, or inconsistent daily action. In this episode, drawing high-level insights from purpose-driven business strategist Ruth on episode 68 of the I AM CEO podcast, we break down why a corporate roadmap is entirely useless without the internal capacity and baseline execution required to move it forward.

The Sustainable Enterprise Framework: Mindset, Strategy, and Action

True business growth operates like a three-legged stool, requiring absolute alignment across three core components: mindset, strategy, and action. Many founders accidentally introduce extreme operational drag into their ventures by over-indexing on just one element while neglecting the others.

Some leaders endlessly optimize webinars, landing pages, and memberships without addressing internal psychological barriers, while others obsess over mindset work but fail to take concrete action. When any of these three pillars are missing or weak, daily operations become significantly harder than they need to be, and your physical execution becomes dangerously scattered.

The Executive Inquiry: Building Internal Capacity

The core takeaway for any CEO sits squarely within the “Strategy Pillar,” proving that a real strategic model must encompass both the external mechanics of a business and the internal discipline of the leader. Pulling from fundamental concepts found in frameworks like The Big Leap, executives must protect their zone of genius, recognizing that spending excessive time outside of your core strengths rapidly drains your operational momentum and professional confidence.

Instead of constantly asking what the next tactical strategy should be, a premier leader must look in the mirror and ask the ultimate question: “Am I actively becoming the person who can actually execute this strategy?”. Identifying which leg of your execution stool is currently the weakest is the definitive lever required to bridge your structural gaps and unlock sustainable momentum.

Previous episode: https://iamceo.co/iam2867-doordash-and-uber-eats%ea%9e%89-5-tips-to-earn-more/

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Transcription:

Gresham Harkless 00:00
You can have a great strategy and still stay stuck if the person executing is battling fear, self doubt or inconsistent action. That's one of the powerful points that really came up during episode number 68 of the I Am CEO podcast with Ruth. Ruth works with female entrepreneurs to help them start scale purpose driven businesses and she believes success comes down to mindset, strategy and action.

If you're building something meaningful, you're in the right place. This is the I Am CEO Podcast. I'm gresh and for over a decade I've had the honor and the privilege of Learning directly from CEOs, entrepreneurs and business owners just like you on how to build after recording more than 1600 episodes, one thing has become clear. Success isn't about following someone else's blueprint. And as I like to say on the show, if you run your own race, you can't lose even when you feel the journey should be a straight and linear path. What I've come to find out is success is a lot more like a plate of spaghetti. So in this special segment and episode I'm starting to curate and share some CEO hacks and CEO nuggets that I've been dying to share. Drawn from thousands of episodes with phenomenal guests that have provided awesome value on the show, but also my 10 years of business experience as well too. These lessons are designed to strengthen the foundational principles that every business is built on and guided by a simple equation that we always go back to with our content. Visibility plus resources times connections equals success. This is practical wisdom you can apply almost immediately, so be sure to check out the show notes for more resources and next steps on how to level up. And of course enjoy this special episode of the I Am CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 01:44
You can have a great strategy and still stay stuck at the person executing is battling fear, self doubt or inconsistent action. That's where one of the powerful points that really came up during episode number 68 of the I Am CEO podcast with Ruth. Ruth works with female entrepreneurs to help them start scale purpose driven businesses and she believes success comes down to mindset, strategy and action. And that's the nugget I'm going to run with now. As builders, we try to solve everything with only one of those pieces. Some of us keep looking for another strategy. Some of us keep working on mindset but never move. Some take action but the action is scattered because the strategy is unclear. It's not one of those things that ends up creating the growth and the success that we want. It's like three legs of a stool. We have to make sure that we have all of those things so that we can get to ultimately where we want to be. The business starts to feel harder than it needs to be because the strategy and the triangle as a whole, honestly is incomplete. What I really loved and appreciated about Ruth's perspective is that she brings together the mindset side with the practical business side. She talks about helping people understand goals, webinars, landing pages, podcasts, memberships, and the fundamentals of building. But she also says something that's really important that you should just definitely check out in the episode that you can have all the strategy in the world, but if your mindset is wrong, you're not going to do anything. And that right there is the builder lesson. One of the things that I heard when I first started my business was how important mindset is. It definitely is something that we often gloss over and jump into all the other aspects of the business and we forget about that mindset piece. But that mindset, mindset piece is just as important and maybe even more important, especially in the beginning. If you don't have the environment to be able to reach that altitude and reach the success that you want, a lot of times you have to work on and even to some degree protect or create the environment that you need to be able to reach that goal that you have. This comes up perfectly in the strategy pillar, because strategy only works when it's paired with internal capacity to execute it and and discipline to take the next step. She also shares some other CEO hacks, including the big Leap and operating your zone genius, which ties right into the same idea. If you're spending too much time outside of your zone, you lose momentum, time and confidence. And here's the ultimate nugget I would carry and take care of and pay attention to during this conversation is that don't ask, what's the strategy? Ask, am I becoming the person who actually can execute this strategy? Huge question. And here's something we're thinking about a little bit more. Which piece is weakest right now? Mindset, strategy, or action? Because if one of those three parts is missing, you don't need to beat yourself up. You need to identify the gap and build from there. If you've been feeling stuck, even though you're learning a lot, this conversation with Ruth is going to be definitely going to be one worth revisiting.