Special Guest Expert - Scott Ritzheimer: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - Scott Ritzheimer: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
How many times have you said to yourself, I'm going to succeed? And yet you keep coming up short. You probably notice that high achievers with heart do things differently, but you just can't put your finger on it. You're curious about why high achievers accomplish more and have more satisfying relationships. It's because success is the result of your mindset and the consistent actions you take. This show is designed with your success in mind by revealing these powerful patterns of our dynamic individuals and guest experts. You can model what they do and apply to your future success. Now let's roll up our sleeves and get started. My name is Brigitta Hoeferle and this is the The Success Patterns Show. And that is right. Welcome, everyone. Here is the Golden nugget. Success patterns are more valuable than ideas. Let me explain. Ideas, while powerful, require trial and error and a lot of time that put the thing into action. Just think about manufacturing first. You have an idea, then you have a proof of concept, then working with a prototype, then small production badges. And finally you have a full scale production that takes months, maybe even years. You may have met some people who are collectors of ideas. May they be great, but they do little else. Forget everything. What you heard about ideas. You are not looking for ideas. You are looking for success patterns. Success patterns are different. Success patterns are better. Why? Well, so success patterns are proven. Have a logical sequence of steps to follow, have an action imperative and deliver consistent results in our content rich program. The Success pattern show you'll learn valuable success patterns and we have a special guest today. Today is all about scaling. Today is about talking to one business leader who has been there, done that and didn't really struggle. I love his story. You'll hear it in a in a minute. But he started scaling. And he started implementing what he has learned at a very young age on. He's helped nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits and led his multimillion dollar business through an exceptional and extended growth phase growth phase. He shared with me that he tripled his profit within one year. Well, actually was 13 months. He founded Scale Architects to help businesses across the country identify the right growth strategies and find the right guides to get them to the fast track to predictable success and stay there as long as possible. And he started doing that at a very young age, and I couldn't be more excited to have him here. On the Success Pattern show today. Scott Simon.

Scott Ritzheimer:
Fun to have a couple of Atlantans on on the show here.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Atlanta in the House, and we talked about this earlier. We never know whether we're going to get.

Scott Ritzheimer:
This is true, riding a roller coaster of January and February.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
That's right. Riding the roller. I'm just I'm just literally hanging in here because I see the signs of spring when I look out my window. But we're not here to talk about fauna and flora. We're here to talk about predictable success model. Now, you started. You kind of slipped into the business world as you shared with me. And you have an interesting position where you started out, where you were not just familiar with the nonprofit world, but also with a for profit world. And how how has that led to predictable success models?

Scott Ritzheimer:
Yeah. It's funny you mention that. So I like to kind of consider myself an accidental entrepreneur. One of those people that didn't really mean to get into the world of entrepreneurial work. I was just looking for a job, found a part time job in a small business, and absolutely fell in love with business through a series of very unfortunate events. I watched the sale of that business with owner financing fall to pieces, and over about 18 months, a million and a half dollar business shrunk to three part time employees working from home with basically zero sales. And it was, you know, fortunate for me, it was one of the least painful learning experiences that you can get now. It was painful, right. And and just watching all of it, knowing that it could be better. You know, my heart broke so many times throughout that process, but it forever shaped the way that I look at business after that, you know, just watching how it fell apart and and seeing how it was woefully dependent on one person as opposed to building a system that could repeat itself. It was, you know, it's kind of in and out and just make it up as we go. And what we had no real good for. And what I love about even the name of the show is this idea of patterns that happen. Right? We had we had ideas in your intro. We had all kinds of ideas on what would work, but we were just making it up as we go. We had no idea whether or not those ideas would actually work. So, you know, all of that happens around when I'm 20, 21 years old, which is very, very early. And it was just a phenomenal learning experience. As as the company is on the verge of bankruptcy, the buyers call the owner and say, hey, we're going to declare bankruptcy on this. If you want the company back, you can have it. You got 24 hours. So he jumps in a U-Haul, drives up to Nashville, Tennessee, to to get a couple of computers and kind of a thumbs up, you know, back from them to say, hey, you can go ahead and run with it. And on the road he calls me. I was one of the again, one of the three people left at the time and said, hey, will you come back and help me relaunch this thing? There's nothing left of it, but I think we can make a go of it. This is September 2008. I'll just let that sink in for a second. So the first six months.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Of this in 2008. Let's let's just think really back real quick. 2008 was not the best time. No relaunch, something that was already kind of dead.

Scott Ritzheimer:
Yes, it was. It was dead on arrival. And then the stock market dropped. So in the first six months of us being there, stocks dropped about 40% on the whole. And I mean, it was a fight. It was it was it's funny to think of my story as not having one of struggle because, you know, some of the stuff that's out there is like the success of our story. But I mean, I can't tell you the number of times I was basically in the fetal position over is this thing going to make it right? Are we going to ever get paid? What happened? Once we took the company over, we found out there were about 250 clients as a full service organization that had paid and not received their services. And so we had to facilitate and that was about six months of work with zero income from it. We had we had several local vendors. We owed them over $100,000 and didn't realize it. Now the other company owed them, but it was the company, you know, in their mind and we wanted to make it right and they had destroyed the website and it makes them sound like really bad people. They were not bad people at all are wonderful people who stay in touch with them today, but they just systematically and unintentionally destroyed the company. And and so for lots of different reasons. Fast forward, we just fight and scrap and hustle and do whatever we can to get this thing off the ground. We make a website in a couple of days, you know what I mean? We we laugh because we created our own CRM because we couldn't find one in two weeks. You know, we coded our own just funny, like we had no business doing any of the things that we were doing. But somehow it worked. You know, the phone starts ringing, sales start coming in and and the two of us together start building a team. We rehired a couple of people. We found some new people. And it was just this wonderful period of like, Hey, this is now working, right? So this is this is actually a lot of fun.

Scott Ritzheimer:
You know, this whole business thing is pretty cool. And that lasted for several years. We're doing somewhere between 35 and 75% growth a year at this stage. So up five, six, 7 million. And then things start to get hard again. It was never easy, but now there's like another level of hard. Like we used to hire a sales rep, trained them well, and then we'd, we'd, we'd grow. We used to we kind of had the formula figured out. We knew what to do. And now we're hiring salespeople. We're running more events, We're doing all the things that we're helping us grow, and they're not working. In fact, our expenses are skyrocketing, but our income is just kind of it's working, you know? But it wasn't growing at anywhere near the rate of our expenses and, and like. So we start looking around like, okay, who can we find? Someone else has dealt with this, right? And we use you know, we read a bunch of books. We do a lot of what the big names say, and it was all helpful and it helped clear some stuff for us, but it never changed the fundamental direction that we were heading. And and that was so frustrating. And I've found this now working on the other side of it as a coach, as a consultant, that so many people have had this experience of just kind of being let down by great advice, you know, and and you're left kind of holding the bag, wondering, like, did it not work? Because I didn't implement it. Right. Did it? You know, it feels like I'm implementing it. Right. But it's not doing what's going on here. And so we're just you know, we're fighting and fighting and fighting externally while you fight that long and now you start fighting internally. So like me and my partner just we're butting heads, you know, when you're winning everyone's high fives, you know, But when when like it's not working the way that it's supposed to, the high fives disappear pretty quickly. And so, again, just tremendous, tremendous man, someone I deeply respect and look up to. But, you know, we we felt like for a while that we couldn't see eye to eye on anything and just could not figure out why is this so difficult.

Scott Ritzheimer:
Like it's been working so well for so long, why is it such a big problem? And it was at that point that I was actually listening to a podcast. That's why I love doing these podcasts, because it changed my life. But I'm listening to a podcast and I hear this gentleman, Come on. His name's Les McEwan is from Ireland. So it takes a minute to kind of understand anything that comes out of his mouth. But once you kind of get the cadence of it, you know, you get it. But no, I can say that because he's now a dear friend. But so he's on this podcast and he starts talking about this idea that not an idea, it's actually a set of patterns. You perfectly describe why this is so important, but there's a pattern that every single organization goes through for profit, like my business, non profit, like the thousands that we served. Any group of two remarks, I did a podcast where I did this for a marriage. It's the seven stages that we all go through. And as he's going through these early stages, early struggles. All right. Can we get this thing off the ground? Fun. We got it off the ground, and we can do no wrong. We're stealing victory from the jaws of defeat or beating the big guys. It's awesome to this stage called Whitewater. And I'm literally sitting there in my car to pull over. And I was just like, How does he know this? Does he have a camera in my office? Like, has he been reading our emails? Like, what is going on here? How could he possibly know this much about our organization having never spoken to us? And and it's at that moment that I realize the challenges that we are facing as an organization were we're just the challenges that are natural to any growing organization. Every single growing organization hits this stage called Whitewater. And the way that I would describe it, if I can pause the story for a second and go back to when I was around eight or nine years old, I was at a mall. You probably remember those things, right?

Scott Ritzheimer:
I was at a mall and I got separated from my mom and I think she was like, Meet me at JCPenney's or something like that. And so I'm trying to find my way to JC Penney. I can't find my way around and I'm kind of getting worked up. A little kid feel like I'm lost. And I came across and you remember these the at the mall, kind of near some of the entrances, not all of them, but most of them. There's those big kind of triangle pylons. And on one side it's got a map. And on that map there's a little sticker that says You are here. And the sense of relief that I got as an eight year old kid was the same thing that I felt as a 26, 27 year old business owner when I heard about this Whitewater stage, because it was the very first time that I ever felt like our business was on a map. Since since we started, we felt like we were pioneers. You know, we're walking off the face of the map. We're making a map as we go. And what we realized, especially what I realized for the very first time, is that there actually is a map, that there are these stages that we all go through, and this is just a normal part of the process. Even more than that, it is the result and proof that you did the right things and fun because you grew so much that you outgrew what how you can lead in fun. And and so there was a leadership change and a mindset shift that needed to happen. And I never would have understood that. I never would have had the confidence to execute on it if I didn't have a pattern to point to. Right. If this was just an idea that you had, hey, I wonder if there's this point where organizations just bump into challenges. That's what it felt like for us, right? And when he came on and said, no, there's actually a pattern, right? He started 42 companies. By the time he was 35, he worked with an incubator that launched thousands across six continents. Like he just had this opportunity to see businesses at such a high level that he could see the patterns repeating again and again.

Scott Ritzheimer:
And when he laid it out and articulated it in such a clear and simple way and said, Hey, the next stage is not the end, right? Because that's how it felt. It's like this is as good as it gets, right? The next stage is not the end. In fact, it's this stage that we call predictable success. It is the peak stage for you as an organization, for you as a leader. And and but to get there, there's a lot of changes that need to happen and the right changes in the right order. And so that you mentioned at the beginning of the show, we tripled our bottom line in a year. Well, we did the poor man's implementation. You ever read the book and do it yourself? That kind of a thing, right? We read the book and and actually, before that, I have to admit what I did, which is what most of us do when we read a book, is I promptly took it and put it on a shelf. And I was like, That's interesting. But I didn't change anything. And it wasn't for, you know, embarrassed to admit this. It was about two years later before I, I really went back and said, Hey, hold on, I'm done being in this this Whitewater state that he talked about. I've got to find a way out. So I went to the book in the back of the book. It's just these simple steps. And and you do the steps, You do them in the right order. And the the change inside the organization was just phenomenal. And yeah, forever, forever since. So, you know, to kind of put a nice bookend on the story and show you a little bit of what a glutton for punishment I am, I lead our organization through this really challenging Whitewater stage. I get us through to predictable success. We're back to feeling like the sky's the limit. And I realize I'm actually kind of bored. Like, I don't know that I'm really cut out for this whole predictable success thing, like, and I actually realized at that point that I was made for Whitewater. I was like, the way that I'm designed, the my way of seeing problems, of understanding challenges, of bringing visionaries and processors and, you know, these different types of leadership together at the same table as.

Scott Ritzheimer:
Where I actually found out. No, I'm not. I'm not the one to take this company to the next level. Right? That's a hard thing to realize, but it's because I know there's something better for me. I know there's a better fit for me. And ultimately, what ended up happening was sold. My stake in the company transitioned a new generation of leaders in. They went on to double the company in the next couple of years. Just did a fantastic job just building on the framework and foundation that we had and just it was just excellent all around. And so now what I do again, kind of round out the story, I wanted to go out and help people avoid the pain and suffering that I did and do it through a set of patterns that we have codified in this model that made such a huge impact in my life.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
And and there's so there's so many questions. Where to begin? So you talked about systematically or realizing that you have a system, but you don't know what the system is. And if you don't know what the system is, how you're supposed to multiply it. You found them. You found a system, you found a process, You found a pattern that you can teach to others. And that's, I guess, where skill architects come in. Is that is that correct?

Scott Ritzheimer:
Yeah. Yeah, We had a system. It was figure it out. You know, that was our system. You know, hire great people and let them figure it out. And and there's an element of that. That's true, right? But when you reach a certain size and you say, just figure it out, there's 15 ways to figure it out. And so you get 15 people figuring out 15 different ways. And it's chaos. Right? Wonderful.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
And it takes time and resources and.

Scott Ritzheimer:
It's an exhausting. Yes. And and you're running in 15 different directions and you fall down 15 times all at once. And so, yes, it was. And, and yeah, that's what we do now. So I've got this beautiful, beautiful group of people who we've trained in the motto. We've taught them the different techniques and ideas, but more than anything, we've just taught them how these patterns show up so that we can walk in. And it's funny, I mean, that same experience I had of like, where's the camera in here? You know, I just see it happen time and time again and again. Going back to this idea of success patterns, which is just so brilliant, is that we can be that accurate because it's the same pattern repeating again and again and again.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
And thinking back to when you were 20, why you there's something there. And I don't know if you probably asked yourself many times, why me? What did you have that then? You know, the former business owner came back to you and asked you to come back on what did Scott always already as the little eight year old or even before that age, what did you have? There's something that you have.

Scott Ritzheimer:
I don't know that I can answer that question in any type of a satisfactory way. What I can tell you, though, is that the most trouble I get into and the most value I bring both come from the same thing. And I think it's probably got to do with the answer to your question, but that is asking questions and and that's just something. So where it started, our relationship myself with the original founder was we would actually go we'd go on runs together. There was a park is about three miles and I was just getting into running it at the time. He had been running for a while and he would take me along with him and I would just ask questions and ask questions and ask questions. And I think that's the thing that really sparked something for him. I think that's been the the resource that led me to finally finding the answers that I was looking for. And like I said, it's gotten me in a lot of trouble. We don't necessarily need to share those stories, but but from that standpoint, I think that's it. And the other part of it is like, you know, entrepreneurs which kind of runs in my blood. My, my, my grandpa had started a business, my father had started a business. And it just kind of when you come out of that environment, it just sticks to you a little bit. And so I think that had to do with it as well.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
So there's there's the curiosity piece that continues to stick around and and guide you along with the success patterns and the predictable success patterns. And also there's a there's a piece of certainty, like when you share the story of, you know, there's the little, there's the little flag, you are here, there's a piece of certainty. And when you are working with entrepreneurs, when you're working with business people, they often I'm not going to say all of them, but a lot of them are visionaries and they're cool with being, you know, uncertain with, oh, let's just build the plane on the way down. Who cares, right? Chaos. But there's something within that certainty. What is it?

Scott Ritzheimer:
Yeah, So I would actually use a different word for it. I would use the word clarity. And I think that's a little easier for visionaries to embrace, even though it doesn't always come naturally to them inside of their organization. So and what I mean by clarity was when you know where you are on the map, it doesn't give you any certainty about where you're trying to get to, Right. All you know is where you are. And but if you try and get wherever you're going without ever having the clarity about where you are right now, I mean, good luck. It's it's it's throwing darts, you know, into the dark. And so for me, I think it's that clarity piece. And I can't give anybody certainty. I have no idea what the future holds. I started my second company just to put this to bed. I started my second company and the stock market results weren't any better than the first time around. I started it in the beginning of 2020, and we know how that turned out. So I can't say that I've achieved anything by way of certainty. But what I have achieved through these patterns is a sense of clarity. And I found that for four visionary leaders and their teams who are wired very differently from each other, it's clarity that bridges that gap, right? Visionaries have no need for certainty. In fact, they have a just and sometimes reckless belief in the certainty of their ideas. But and others have like processors. Right. Which I actually have both of those tendencies in me, which is kind of weird. I have that visionary like, let's go for this, We'll figure it out. And this processor, like, let's figure everything out before we move. I wrestle with both of those every single day. So again, going back to like anyway, but again, what ties those two together? Because you'll never have both the certainty of the processor type leader and the the flexibility of a visionary type leader. But what you can have to bridge the gap is clarity.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
I love that. I love how you how you define that. And I can so relate to you because I have these two parts within me that are driving Brigitta, if you will, on a regular basis. Before we come to an end today, I want to quickly talk about you. You have gotten really good at not just building businesses through through a time of adversity, but scaling them and helping others to scale. What do you what can you tell people? You know, we still have folks coming out of the pandemic or the mindset of the pandemic, and my business is still hurting. What what would you tell them?

Scott Ritzheimer:
Yeah, I think you've got to find where you are on the map. You've got to have your you are here moment. And that's the thing that's been so helpful. It was so helpful for me as a business owner, it's been so helpful for my clients is when you recognize what stage your business is, is not not where are you, but when are you? It helps you to say, Hey, these are all things that would be wonderful to solve, but they're not actually going to move us forward. What are the two or three things that, if we solve them now, will give us the most success for our stage? And so when it comes to kind of growing scaling, I mean, something I can teach for days, but to boil it down, I would say the very first thing is find out what stage you're in. Right? We've got the book. It's free on our website if you want it. We've got a course on how to scale. We've got so many free resources. But the very, very first thing I would do is just recognize that there's a pattern, right? And it's the seven stages and every single organization goes through them. And what happens when you go out and try and find like that one thing that's going to work every single time, that one thing may work every single time. If you're in the right stage, right, pick your book. It's written for an audience in a certain stage. And if you're not in that stage, you can do it until you're blue in the face. But it's not going to create the results that you're expecting. But if you can identify what stage you're in, what things will help you in that stage, that's where your ability to grow and then ultimately scale will come from.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
That is beautifully stated. And that leads me to something that you brought that will help the listeners to actually identify and take you to that next, whatever that next level is. And there's no there's no judgment here. There's only what is where are you starting and where can you go? What are the what is the clarity, What are the possibilities? So you came bearing gifts. What is the gift? Share it.

Scott Ritzheimer:
With us. Yeah. So for those of you listening, you're like, oh, my goodness, this Whitewater stage that he's talking about, right? We've got a we've got a business. It's working. Well, you've had some success, but you find yourself in a hole you can't sell yourself out of, right? You feel like your problems are scaling faster than your profits. That's not the way to scale a business. And so what we've done, we've taken the same curriculum that I take my clients through when I do private coaching and consulting. We've taken that. We've boiled it down to six weeks of just 5 minutes a day and it walks you through not only what you need to do to scale, but what order you need to do those things to scale. And you'll find it's actually very counterintuitive. It's not the things you think, and it's definitely not the things in the order that you think they need to be done, but not unlike a set of dominoes. What happens when you do the right things in the right order? It's like tapping the first domino and then watching them all go. You'll just see just this tremendous sense of momentum. So anyway, there's a free six week course. You can get it on our web. Site scale architects all one word scale architects dot com slash six weeks.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
So scale architects dot com slash 66-we case and I would encourage each and every one of you go there now scale architects dot com slash six weeks start now start today there's no waiting there's this is it sounds like Scott this is for anyone this is for any business for anyone that is in business definitely go there. Now I have a comment here from Brian who says he absolutely loves this and loves this conversation. Thank you, Brian, for tuning in and sharing your thoughts with us. How do people get in touch with you?

Scott Ritzheimer:
Scott Yeah, so on the website there's just an enormous amount of resource there. There's there's actually a quiz to find out what stage you're in. So if you're wondering what stage, you don't have to wonder anymore, you can just take the assessment. But so that's scale architects dot com and just help. There's I think there's somewhere around 600 videos there, like there's just an enormous amount of free content waiting for you. So any stage any business nonprofits as well, same stages, same challenges, different language, but same same deal. So I'll do that if you want to reach out to me directly. Linkedin is a great place to do it. You can find my LinkedIn profile there and just shoot me a quick message. I'd love to chat with you and see what we can do to help you scale.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah, I love it. So LinkedIn dot com slash i n scott red timer c0tri. T h e. I am the time out that just like you said, connect with connect with Scott. Make sure that you are going let me find this banner one more time the scale architects dot com slash six weeks. Scott thank you for being here. Thank you for bringing your incredible systematically systematic approach and this is a beautiful conversation. Little did I know when I was on your show what I would get for our listeners and our followers. Truly a win win win. Any last words you want to share with us?

Scott Ritzheimer:
Yeah, you should. If you thought this was great, you should check out Birgitta show on on, on the secrets of the high demand coach. That's where we met and just did a fantastic job there. So it's just been an absolute pleasure getting to know you, and it's just an honor to be here with your audience. I appreciate each and every one of you.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah, And I hope that I can see you in person, actually, since we both live in Atlanta. That's right. Awesome. Thank you, Scott, for being here. Guys. Tune in again next week, same time, same place for The Success Patterns Show at on Tuesday at 430 Eastern time. Thank you for tuning in and you will notice opportunities to apply success patterns daily while eagerly anticipating next week's content rich success patterns.

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