In this lazy episode, Jim Schleckser, CEO of The CEO Project, shares how he and his team have helped thousands of CEOs create exponentially more success by doing less. If you are CEO of a business or nonprofit with more than 50 employees, this episode is a must-watch/listen.
You will discover:
– How to put on your Architect Hat to build a world-class business (model)
– The #1 job every CEO must do
– Why “peanut buttering” is nothing more than a strategy for exhaustion and mediocrity
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast, and here with us today is what I would say is the definition of a high demand coach with us today is the one and only Jim Schleckser, who is founder and CEO of the CEO project, a renowned executive coaching company specializing in high revenue entrepreneurs, Jim offers a distinctive CEO coaching program that that combines peer group discussions with personalized one on one coaching sessions led by former CEOs. He advocates for the lazy CEO, emphasizing efficient delegation and time management as essential traits for successful leadership. Jim also hosts the lazy CEO podcast, a successful podcast focusing on entrepreneurship and CEO leadership, providing valuable insights to a broad audience. Is here with us today, Jim, so most, most CEOs that I know are they’re very, very busy, very industrious. People go so far as to say they pride themselves on that, right? You know, so busy is like some kind of badge of honor, yet you think CEOs should be lazy. Why is that?
Jim Schleckser
Well, you know, there’s this myth that busy equals good, right? And I think we all got trained this our whole life, like, who was the last car to lead the parking lot? And I was that guy, trust me. I mean, I took pride in the fact that I was the last car out of the parking lot when I was trying to grow my career. We carry that into being a CEO. And you know, the confusion is that activity and progress are not connected, and so lots of activity doesn’t mean progress, and as a CEO, responsible for the progress of our company. So the idea is, how do we spend times on the few things that actually drive progress? And we actually don’t have to be as busy as everybody thinks what we do. In fact, I would interview CEOs and one question, how many hours a week do you work? They said, 80. They go, we got a little problem on our hands. So yeah, activity and progress are not related, and I’m trying to help people understand that.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good. So what would you say if, if it’s not just about being busy, then what we have do is we have to be really clear on what we need to do. So what would you say is the most important job of a CEO? What’s that one thing they all need to do?
Jim Schleckser
Yeah, well, if they’re two, unfortunately, sorry, but you know, one of the things we talked about in the in in my book, great CEOs are lazy, is this idea of a point of constraint, a kink in the hose. And you can imagine a garden hose you’re trying to get water out. You could do work anywhere on that hose, but the only productive work is to find the kink and open it up. Well, same thing’s true in your business. Somewhere there’s a kink in your business, something that’s stopping you from getting you where you’d like to get revenue, profits, whatever your job as a CEO is, find the kink and open it up. And really, you do that consistently, you’ll get amazing results. And the good ones do it even though they don’t say it the way on saying it to you. That’s what the good CEOs are actually doing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And your book, you have this really fun phrase. You call it Peanut buttering. What? What is peanut buttering? And why do so many CEOs do it?
Jim Schleckser
You know, I I blame the MBA programs, and I have one so I can say this, right? We get taught about this idea of stakeholders when we’re running companies. You know, the employees are stakeholders, and the customers and the community. The community and the environment and my supply chain, and all stakeholders in my business at some level. So I got this 10% to employees, 10% to shareholders, 10% and I just evenly spread my time across the business. We call that peanut buttering, or spreading like peanut butter on a piece of bread. Your time. The problem is that that is essentially a formula to never do anything interesting. The way to get something interesting done is to maldistribute your time. Pile it all up, you know, sort of 18 red pile it all up on one and go for it hard and make sure you win. There’s a saying that goes, um, people talk about putting your eggs in many baskets. This is a strategy of put your eggs in one basket, but then really take care of the basket.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yes, I love that, particularly for founder entrepreneurs, because a lot of them, especially if they’re influenced by that kind of MBA type approach. It’s just, like, just kind of, bottles them up, bottles them up, bottles like, make them small, make them average, and and that they die slowly or quickly. You know, in that right? They just, and they think, so. The real tragedy of that is they think, Well, if that’s what being a CEO is, I guess I’m not CEO material, when, in fact, I’ve found that some of them are the very best at doing what you’ve described right there, doing interesting things, right things that actually move the needle and change it. So there, there’s a there’s a con, I guess, a set of concepts, a framework that you lay out in the book of these different hats, five hats that lazy CEOs wear. Yep. Now, being that, i. Am the head of a company called scale architects. I just could not let the architect you like one of the hats better than the others. Yeah, there’s a slight bias, but hey, I run the show, so I get to do that. We’ll kind of introduce the other hat so we don’t leave everyone hanging. We’ll show you how you can get more about that. But I want to know what is the architect hat and why? Or maybe even better yet, when should CEOs wear it?
Jim Schleckser
Yeah, so the concepts are there multiple hats the CEO wears, and all of the ones in the book are high value use of your time. One of those hats is the architect hat. And the architect hat is when you’re dealing with your business model. And I have to say it is impossible, almost impossible, to overcome a bad business model. So the more time you spend designing a really elegant, refined business model, meaning, who? What would you do for whom? What my target market is, what my price, my margin, my level of recurring revenue, how much assets I need to run this business? If you do all that really well, you actually don’t need to be the brightest CEO in the world, because you’ve got such wind at your back, because your business model is so strong. You know, I can give the example. You know, Netflix, when they first came out and they were offering CDs, when they were competing against blockbuster. I’m like, I didn’t have to be the brightest CEO in the world. Once I came up with that business model, I just had to go, go, go, go, go, right. Compare that to trying to run a coal mine. Like, oh boy. You know, environmental issues and safety issues and price fluctuations and no recurring revenue. And like, I’m not smart enough to run a coal mine. So imagine, like, good business model, bad business model. It just, it just makes your life easier. So if what you’re doing is not, let’s say doesn’t, that flow isn’t easy, isn’t delivering the results. Time at the business model with the architect hat on, designing your business is really high value and really useful work.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So I’ve got a couple questions around this idea of a business model. The first one is, what would you say are some of the attributes of a great business model you’ve kind of compared and contrasted them a little bit? What? What are the great ones tend to have in common?
Jim Schleckser
Yeah? So, and I did touch on them, but number one with a bullet, all time, winner, retired trophy, recurring revenue. Yeah, high degrees of recurring revenue. It’s just a better business. And imagine you have two businesses, one with essentially no recurring revenue and one with on January 1, I wake up in my no recurring revenue business, and I’m at zero. So let’s say last year I did 10 million I got to go find ten million of new business and deliver it, just to stay even with last year. Yes, compare that to a business I did 10 million last year, and I have 90% recurrence in my business, which is not atypical. All I need to do is go find $1 million of new business and I begin to grow. At that point, it’s easier to budget, it’s easier to grow, it’s easier to forecast, and frankly, when it comes time to sell the business, businesses with high degrees of recurring revenue are worth far more money than businesses without high degrees of recurring revenue. So that’s number one. Number two would be margin. High margin is better than low margin. I know that’s kind of obvious, but we see a lot of people struggling with, you know, 1015, 20% gross margins, and you just you have no freedom of action when you need that much, you have that little profit in the business, 4050, 60% now we’re really 90. Now we’re talking and then maybe the third would be low degree of capital intensity, meaning it doesn’t take a lot of capital to run your business. The negative example is we worked with a CEO that had a steel distribution business, very sophisticated steel. So when somebody wanted to order $20 million of steel, he had to go place an order for and he had low margin to $15 million of steel, which he had to front the money. Well, right, guess what? He was constantly at the bank borrowing money to fund inventory. It was just a horrible business model. And compare that to software, you know, digital download kind of stuff, 90% margin, no assets involved or limited. Way better business. Way better business, easier to grow, easier to scale.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Some really, really compelling reasons around why business models are so important. What I have found this kind of goes back to your kink in the hose analogy. But a lot of entrepreneurs think about building a business, but they don’t really take that next step and think about building a business model. Why do you think that is?
Jim Schleckser
Um, you know, or I think it’s a natural evolution. If a company is going to grow in the beginning, we throw talent at the problem, ours or other people will just hire somebody, right? And what you find is you have to hire superhuman individuals with incredible commitment, and they’re gonna and you expect heroic efforts, yes, to be successful. Well, that works up to a certain level, and at some point you go, geez, I can’t. And, you know. You’re there when, would like, when you or I are talking to a CEO, and they go, I just can’t find somebody who has a level of commitment and understanding. And I’m like, when they write the job spec, I’m like, my god, do they have a cape? And do they fly around, right?
Scott Ritzheimer
A single horn coming out of that? Yeah?
Jim Schleckser
Yeah, purple unicorns. And go, at that point you go, you have to build a system that allows normal humans, human beings, to do the job and do it reasonably well. Look at like the ultimate example is McDonald’s. I talked about it in the book, but they hire, you know, 15, 1617, year old kids who couldn’t, don’t have a lot of commitment to the program, and yet, you they deliver those hamburgers, and no surprise, exactly the same everywhere you go around the planet, because it is a massively perfected system. The great book here is emit by Michael Gerber. Myth revisited. It talks about working in the business or building a system that can actually scale. And you must run into this all the time, Scott, because without a system, without a systematized approach, you will stop scaling at some point you just can’t get there with talent.
Scott Ritzheimer
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s one of the big things that scalability hinges on, at least in my experience, Jim, there are, there are four other hats. I’m wondering if you could just introduce them for us, so that folks can get an idea of what these high value activities are for CEOs.
Jim Schleckser
Okay, so this is a bonus material. It’s not in the book, but when you’re trying to find the kink, you either go into learner or analyst hat, where you’re trying to analyze data and so forth, or player app, where you actually go in and do the process like go make sales calls, you will figure out where your point of constraint is really quickly. Once you know where it is, there’s three hats to fix. The kink architect, which we talked about, change your business model, Coach talent, either coach up your talent, replace your talent, recruit neat new talent, all in that category. Or engineer, which is what we just talked about, is build processes and systems that can deliver quality all the time and delight customers. So those are the those are the five hats. Two for finding the kink or the point of constraint, and three for fixing it.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Where can folks get a copy of the book? Give us the title one more time where we can get a copy of it?
Jim Schleckser
It’s called Great CEOs are Lazy, and you can find it on Amazon. It’s available digital or hard copy, or you can listen to my dulcet tones if you want to. And I do do the audiobook as well.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. It is a very, very good book. Had a chance to read it here, getting ready for this episode. And it’s top shelf. It really, genuinely is anyone who’s in that CEO role getting ready for that CEO role. I highly, highly recommend it before I let you go, Jim, I’ve got one more question for you, and that is one that I ask all my guests. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Jim Schleckser
Well, I’m going to give you two unfortunately. One was this concept that busyness does not equal activity, and we are that myth. So many people believe it, and it’s just not true. But the other one is correlation and causation. I see people make this mistake all the time. They go, Well, this happened and that happened. They’re correlated, therefore one caused the other. And I go, No, they’re they happen in the same time, sort of correlated. But one didn’t cause the other example is, did you realize that 95% of people that have car accidents drink water within the prior 24 hours? And you go, well, and we do that all the time in business, we that kind of statistic. We go, I guess we shouldn’t drink water anymore. And it’s just not true. It’s not causal. So causal, causation and correlation are different, and you need to be really clear, because people make that mistake all the time.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yes, Jim, you’ve got a number of CEOs that you guys help out in peer groups and other platforms. Someone’s out there listening today. They want help. They don’t want to do the CEO thing alone. How can they reach out find more about the work that you guys do at CEO project?
Jim Schleckser
Yeah, we work with both CEOs and some succession candidates, actually, who are sort of just about ready for that job. You can find out more at theCEOproject.com and you can find everything you want. If you want to talk to us, just fill out the form or also on all the social media you could care to mention. So we’re out there pretty strongly.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, Jim, thanks so much for being on the show. Really a privilege and honor having you here again. Fantastic book. I love it. Can’t recommend it highly enough. So thanks for putting that together. For those of you watching listening today, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation, as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Jim Schleckser
Jim Schleckser is the Founder & CEO of The CEO Project, a renowned executive coaching company specializing in high-revenue entrepreneurs. Jim offers a distinctive CEO coaching program that combines peer group discussions with personalized one-on-one coaching sessions led by former CEOs. He advocates for the “Lazy CEO,” emphasizing efficient delegation and time management as essential traits for successful leadership. Jim hosts The Lazy CEO Podcast, a successful podcast focusing on entrepreneurship and CEO leadership, providing valuable insights to a broad audience.
Want to learn more about Jim Schleckser’s work at The CEO Project? Get a copy of his book on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3AmUJxH and check out his website at https://theceoproject.com/
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