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Scaling Without Burnout: The STAR Scalability Method

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Growth creates chaos by straining outdated systems, causing bottlenecks, miscommunication, and resource overload as demand surges. This chaos slows efficiency, increases errors, and risks losing customers, ultimately stalling further business growth if unmanaged

In this episode, I had a discussion with Joe Patneaude, an executive coach, author, and creator of the STAR Scalability℠ Method—a practical, people-first framework for sustainable business growth. With over 25 years in financial services, advancing from the mailroom to the C-suite, Joe helps founders and leaders simplify complexity, strengthen teams, and scale without burnout. He shares proven strategies to grow smarter, not harder.

https://jpcoachingnow.com/

Chapters

00:00 Intro
02:05 Introduction to Leadership Challenges
05:14 Understanding Misalignment in Business
07:55 Navigating Complexity in Leadership
11:09 Identifying and Addressing Inflection Points
14:08 The Importance of Mindset in Business Growth
17:01 The STAR Scalability Method Explained
20:10 Self-Assessment and Personal Values in Leadership
23:02 Joe's Journey and Insights on Business Leadership
27:40 The Core Components of Business Challenges
29:01 The Importance of Team Culture
29:53 Diagnosing Cultural Challenges
32:46 Building Culture in Decentralized Teams
35:27 Scaling Communication in Larger Teams
37:22 Recruiting for Cultural Fit
39:58 The Value of Soft Skills in Leadership
42:41 Avoiding Common Promotion Pitfalls
43:46 Coaching and Consulting Approaches
45:50 Reevaluating Goal Setting Strategies

Intro

SPEAKER_01

Some of the uh most common challenges are the differences in perception versus reality within their teams. Um call it the leadership perception gap. But the re the challenge there is that their teams are experiencing things different than they are. And what that's causing is it's causing the growth to lead to a break in the business due to the misalignment. You have to have somebody come in sometimes and just say, hey, let's look at everything together. Because sometimes when you're involved in it, it's the analogy of you can't see the forest for the trees, right? And sometimes you need that higher level, you need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. You can't stay stagnant, but you don't want to just grow for the sake of growth state and end up in a bad spot, right? Or with all the gaps and the friction. You can boil every problem that we ran into, whether it was in the tech side, you know, of the finance world or the customer service side or the operations, the compliance, you name it. Um even in educating and sales, because I'm a sales trainer, all that stuff. The reality is it all comes down to these same four components, and that's why those are the four components.

SPEAKER_00

Hi there, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Joe Petinade. Joe is the executive coach, author, and creator of a Star Scalability Method, a practical people first framework for sustainable business growth. With over 25 years in financial services, advancing from a mailroom to a C-suite, Joe helps founders and leaders simplify complexity, strengthen teams, and scale without a burnout. He shares proven strategies to grow smarter, not harder. I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I did. And if you find a value out of this discussion, don't forget to send us your feedback, like, subscribe to this channel. Your feedback is very important to us. It allow us to focus on our right discussions to help you grow and scale your company. Until next time, thank you for your time. Please welcome Joe Petnade.

Introduction to Leadership Challenges

SPEAKER_00

Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is uh uh Joe Patnade. How do you pronounce the last name, Joe? Petnode, right?

SPEAKER_01

Patnode.

SPEAKER_00

Petnode, perfect, we got it. Okay, thank you so much for time, Joe. Um, researching your profile, I know you've been on a you know a lot of media as you've been helping a lot of business leaders to to get to whatever they need to get to. I'm looking forward to your discussion, looking forward to learning from you. Thank you so much for time today.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thanks for letting me be here.

SPEAKER_00

Good stuff. So you work with a lot of business leaders, Joe. So, what do you think say, you know, if we can pinpoint one of some of the common challenges most business leaders are up against when you when you're trying to help Mug?

SPEAKER_01

You know, I think some of the uh most common challenges are the differences in perception versus reality within their teams. Yeah, we call it the leadership perception gap. But the re the challenge there is that their teams are experiencing the difference than they are. And what that's causing is it's causing the growth to lead to a break in the business due to the misalignment.

SPEAKER_00

Got it, got it. So, misalignment, you mean it's a misalignment with the word business trying to do and what's a team's trying to do, or what's a business leader's uh misalign, or some object objectives are misaligned. So, where where do you see the misalignments is?

SPEAKER_01

So the misalignment can show its itself in many different ways, right? It can show itself in the culture, it can show itself in the processes, that that perception gap. But misalignment really just comes down to what are we thinking is happening versus what's really happening? And then is it aligned with what we're trying to shoot for from a strategy?

SPEAKER_00

Got it. So is that lack of something business leaders missed out in the strategy portion, or they can't just execute it properly where the misalignments happen? What's causing this misalignments or what the gaps are?

SPEAKER_01

So, you know, there's this perception that a lot of people think that if my business is growing, everything's going well. And businesses don't necessarily just get better because they're growing, they get more complex. But that complexity is what exposes those gaps in the clarity, the structure, the communication, the reward systems, and so on. And that really just kind of brings everything to a head. But a lot of business owners don't see it until it's too late because they attribute it to, oh, I'm just busier because the firm is growing.

SPEAKER_00

Got it. Did that complexity change, or was it always there with the what we've gone through with the COVID and not now we're you know what's going on in the world financially and economically? Did that complexity change recently or was it always there the same way?

SPEAKER_01

You know what? Complexity has always been there. And and the the growth causing complexity and causing friction and the misleading to misalignment, I would argue has been there since we started doing businesses hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, right? But we can look back at even the industrial revolution here in the US and see examples of it. So I think COVID changed it a little bit, but I think every technological advancement has also changed it, you know, not just health pandemics and things like that. So it just continues to get more, more and more complex as we move on, right? Like there's more layers that we have to consider.

SPEAKER_00

And it's probably hard for business leaders

Understanding Misalignment in Business

SPEAKER_00

who've been around for a while, you know, they have a good business acumen, but what's changing in the world, it's probably hard for them to digest and keep it, you know, uh track of all the skills that they need to sort out the complexity and then make sure that there's no other gaps left.

SPEAKER_01

That's very true. You know, it's it's we're operating in a completely different world, right? You know, if you were leading a business in 1985, it's completely different than leading one in 2026, you know, 41 years later. And I don't mean just from a technology standpoint, that's obvious, but just the rules and how we interact with staff, what what different generations of staff expect from leaders, and of course, the entire business environment, as well as, you know, in addition to, I should say, the things that we've just talked about with, you know, pandemics and technology and things like that.

SPEAKER_00

So, what can business leaders do? They definitely gotta be very good at master of the trade, whatever the business are pushing. At the same time, they got to keep a track of all that stuff. And uh, you know, what can they do to stay on top of these things? And do they have to pick up different skill set or or they just sharpen their whatever the skills that, you know, how do they handle these these challenges?

SPEAKER_01

So, you know, this is gonna sound a little bit uh, you know, like it's been done before, I guess is the word I'm looking for. But the the reality is being empathetic, okay? Understanding that what you are expecting your staff to feel versus what they're feeling is one component of it, right? The second thing is leaders really just need to sit down and self-evaluate and and really diagnose what's going on in their business because you can't treat a problem if you don't know what's causing it, right? You're just treating a symptom. You know, we use that in the medical field all the time, right? We talk about the analogy of treating the symptom but not the cause. It's the same thing in business, you know, and having that time set aside to sit down periodically and really dive into your business and your own leadership style and say, hey, am I doing something that is rooted in how I did it 20 years ago when I was doing it myself versus how my staff does it today? Those are really important questions to ask yourself on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I know. You know, I talked to a lot of business leaders, and what I'm finding is that that mindset and perspective that can, you know, contain and in a narrow-minded that that business that seems to be the bottleneck for a lot of business owners that they need new perspective, they need to have a new way of looking at you know a lot of things, whether it's AI or technology, or simply what we've just gone through with the COVID, because it's a decentralized environment. Now, some people are working for mom, some in the office. So you you know, you still got to balance all that stuff. So it's it's just so important to get that better perspective and just different way of looking at things.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, building a team, you know, even if you're very skilled at building

Navigating Complexity in Leadership

SPEAKER_01

a team and leading a team and building a good culture in the office, as you just said, so many folks now are working in hybrid environments or remote environments and so on, that it's a it's a whole different skill set that leaders need to think about having when they're trying to build a culture with someone that's sitting in a computer 500 miles away or a thousand miles away.

SPEAKER_00

So, how do you work with a business leader? Like, which area do you do you do they know what do they know before they even talk to you that what problem they're up against, or do you have to learn and discover with them, you know, figure out what the problem is most of the time?

SPEAKER_01

So it's a little bit of both, but that's a very interesting question because a lot of times what I find is that leaders know exactly what the problems are that are truly symptoms. They don't usually have a good handle on what the cause is. And they they usually have an idea of what the cause is, but it's usually a surface level thing. They think that you know, if they get rid of one person, or if they hire for this new role, or if they change this one tech that everything's gonna be better, and they find out that that's not the case. Well, because they're not really getting down to the root cause of it. So they're not getting back to why is that person unhappy? Why is the staff not able to manage the workflow? Why is the tech we have not sufficient? You know, they're not asking those questions to figure out are they truly addressing what's wrong, or are they just taking the easy, low-hanging fruit and the short term solution?

SPEAKER_00

Got it. So, but also, as you know, business also have an inflection point. You know, the solutions that you need on a five million may not need for for, you know, when you get to 10 million or 20 million or 50 million, 100 million, every you know, when you add about five, 10 million, you're gonna have a different problem, set of problems to deal with. So, what problem worked in a earlier not gonna work? So, how how do you help those business leaders run? And most business leaders don't ever know it's a flection point, they're stuck with something. It's simply that just the growth just tails, you know, it it they whether it's they just can't scale it or they're stuck in one place, unless somebody like you comes in and like, let me show you there's a different way of looking at things, right? So, how do you help out those people? You know, what they probably solved those problems in the past, but the old solution's not gonna work for the new problems.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you know, it's funny, you actually just sort of hit the nail right on the head when you said that, because you have to have somebody come in sometimes and just say, Hey, let's look at everything together. Because sometimes when you're involved in it, it's the analogy of you can't see the forest for the trees, right? Yeah, and sometimes you need that higher level, you need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. And if you don't know where that inflection point is, where you do have to start changing the tools, the processes, and so on and so forth, that's where that assessment comes in. And going back and really diagnosing where you're truly at, not where you think you are, but really truly where you're at and saying, okay, where are the gaps? What are the things that we're struggling with? What are the things that are bogging us down? What are the things that are causing us duplicative work? And can we solve it with what we have? Or is this an inflection point where we do need to make a change? That's how you know where that inflection point is. Because to your point,

Identifying and Addressing Inflection Points

SPEAKER_01

in some industries, it's maybe you know a certain revenue point, right? But for most businesses in reality, you can't just throw a number at the wall and say, okay, when I hit this many staff or this many clients or this much money and revenue, I'm going to have to make changes. There's usually some wiggle room on either side of it, and it depends greatly on how you're managing your particular workflow and your yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm guilty of that happened to me, you know, early on. I'm thinking I have a in you know, a sales problem. I need to increase revenue, I keep adding more salespeople and keep increasing a sales. But I find out I was adding enough sales, but I just couldn't retain the client. You know, we our service is not to the level where we could have a better retention time. So then somebody like you came around, hey, listen, you don't have a sales problem, you gotta fix this retention problem. As soon as we fix that, even the sales were a little bit slower, but our growth was much faster because now we are retaining a client and also we're managing a sales a little better. So the growth, you know, it they growth just went up in a two-quarter. So sometimes we just look in a different way, you know. As a business owners, we are so busy with trying to scale a business. So there's so many things to tackle, whether it's financially, whether it's a people side, culture side, but then there's so many blind spots that somebody can uncover.

SPEAKER_01

And you just made a great point, actually, because there's a big difference between scaling your business, getting that exponential return on the investment and the effort versus just inflating the business, which is throwing more and more and more at it, but not getting any more out of it. And yeah, it sounds exactly like what you just described, right? If you just keep throwing more salespeople at the problem, but you aren't retaining them, you have an inflation problem, not scaling.

SPEAKER_00

What are you trusting? When I was searching your profile, I saw you talking about star scalability. What is that if you walk as a radio institute? What is that about?

SPEAKER_01

Well, the star scalability method is really about getting your business ready for scaling and getting that foundation done. So it's it's a little different than most coaching programs. It's not something that's going to come in and say, follow these 10 steps or do this every week for 52 weeks, and you're going to be a success. Because again, that's usually treating the symptom. And that's unfortunately what a lot of coaching programs do is they treat a symptom. They don't actually look at the root cause. Star scalability goes in and diagnoses where those gaps are. And it sort of puts it right in the leadership's face and the owner's face and says, Hey, this may not be what you want to hear, but it's what you need to hear. Like this is where you have gaps in your business and where things aren't running well. And this is then how we realign your strategy, your team, your assets, and your reward systems to be able to get your business to scale exponentially the way you want instead of inflating.

SPEAKER_00

And very often the leadership team or the the person who owns a business, that's the bottleneck, right? So whether whatever is doing. So we, you know, with if you want to

The Importance of Mindset in Business Growth

SPEAKER_00

grow a team, I you know, uh I was interviewing a Robert White a couple of days ago. He's you know made a very good comment. He said, if you know, you can never business can never outgrow business owners' mindset. So, you know, if you if you want to grow a business, first thing you gotta do is get grow your mindset, you know, get a bigger mindset. So if you grow that, the company will grow automatically, but a company could never outgrow owner's mindset. So it, you know, that is usually a challenge. I don't know if I if you agree with that, but I thought it was a very interesting way of looking at it.

SPEAKER_01

I do, and I often think it's actually rooted in nostalgia, and and we've all heard the expression, you know, looking at the past with rose-colored glasses and all that thing. And I say that a lot. And a quick example, uh, because I actually just had this happen about a year ago. I was working with an owner of an investment advisory firm, and you know, we were we were tackling some process issues in the in the firm, and I was helping him find some gaps in the processes and saying, hey, can we realign this? And his answer to me was it shouldn't take more than five minutes to do a new account application. I used to do these myself. And I was like, okay, well, when were you doing these yourself? Like, how long have you had somebody else in your business doing it for you? And I already knew the answer. And he's like, Oh, it was well, late 1990s. I said, Okay, well, I've been in the industry 26 years, and here's the thing prior to 2001, your new account process was one page front and back, a one-page application. The average application in that industry now is over 72 pages long. I said, Do you not think that has changed the workflow for the staff that you're hiring? And he just sat there and he looked at me dumbfounded, and he goes, You know, I never have thought of that in the last 20 years. And I went, that's why we're here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's uh it just so much changes, you know, bit in a business. And when you're so narrowly, you know, for trying to focus on in a we all have uh, you know, our goals, like at this quarter, I'm gonna do this, next quarter, I'm gonna do this. But you so deep dive into that, you don't see any any other way. It could be obvious that you know somebody like you come in and show us, but business owners, when you are so engravened, what are you trying to do, uh, you're deep into it, you're not gonna see anything outside of that. And some of the stuff is very, very simple, but it's very hard to see that.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And again, you know, I think nostalgia just you know, it works against us too, right? Because we think about how we did it, how we built the businesses that we run, and then we sit there and say, well, that has to be the best way to do it because look how far it got me. Don't necessarily think about the fact that a lot has changed, you know. And again, if you're looking at the investment industry back in the late 90s, early 2000s to 2025, 2026. You really got to consider that there's not only been a lot of changes in the rules and regulations, but you've got to look at the technology too. I mean, yeah. When I started in the industry, we used to still type out stock certificates on a typewriter.

SPEAKER_00

I mean,

The STAR Scalability Method Explained

SPEAKER_00

and look at now where we are. So, yeah, that changes very fast. Just the technology itself. I mean, how do you keep a track of all that stuff? You know, let alone the learning of the skill set, but just keeping a track of it. And that, you know, one of the things with the technology is it's not a technology that's that's moving so fast, it's it's providing option to run a business differently. That that's what's changing so fast, right? Expectation from technology, your customer expects differently, and then it's opening up so many options that you could do better with the business, or you could be more productive or or you know, find a better way of doing that in a business. And if your competition's doing it and a you not doing it, then then you're up against the wall.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, and and that's a double-edged sword, right? Like you can't you can't stay stagnant, but you don't want to just grow for the sake of growth state and and end up in a bad spot, right? Or with all the the gaps and and the friction. But the flip side of that too is as you said, there's so many different ways to run almost every business that's out there now, right? I can't think of an industry that you couldn't pick several different paths to go down. And the challenge there is that people also don't necessarily put in the time and effort to figure out what really aligns with it. They, with their own values and their own vision for the business, they sit there and they say, Okay, well, you know, I I I partnered with this major firm to do my services. They give me all this educational content. And the speaker that was at that last conference said, This is the tool I need and this is the way I need to do it because everybody else is successful. That's great. If it aligns with your own vision for the business and your own value system, like how you want to work with your community and how you want your clients to perceive you. But if it doesn't, that's gonna just be one of those misalignments that's gonna cause friction. It's gonna cause you to have the bottlenecks, and it's just gonna cause business owners to sit there and say, Why did I do this? And then when you forget why you did it, that's a problem because that's when you start to resent your own business.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that is such a great, great insight you just shared, Joe. You know, the way you explain it, and I've started thinking, you know, there's, you know, if you look at 10 years ago, uh, the challenge was you don't have the right information, you don't you don't have the right uh knowledge to to uh achieve something, right? That's not a challenge today. Uh, the challenge today is we have too much information. You know, nobody says, you know, we have too much information, too many different ways of doing that. If you have too many different ways of doing that, every speaker is gonna tell you too many different ways of doing it. You know, there every AI you open up, there's gonna they're gonna tell you 10 different ways of doing it, right? So it's uh too much information, too much knowledge. But it's when you have that kind of clutter of information, clutter of ways of doing it, staying focused and not getting into this misalignment, that's going to be the challenge. And and and I don't know how business leaders stay on focus on that and stay on the part because very easy to distract and get off your uh get into this misalignment route, which you just call it.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's very true. And you know, it's it's there's no easy answer to it. I mean, the easiest thing I have found is just being that self-awareness. Like you, as a leader, as an owner of a business, you have to sit down periodically.

Self-Assessment and Personal Values in Leadership

SPEAKER_01

And I I have it on the on the calendar, it pops up on my calendar on the schedule that I do it for my own businesses, where it says, you know, sit down and do the your personal value assessment and say, why did I start this business? What do I want out of it besides money? Because money's a result, it's not it's not a reason. And that's what I tell everybody. But what do I want out of it? Do I want freedom? Do I want to be able to do things for people I love? Do I, you know, what what are your what are your whys? And then what am I doing in my business that's currently getting me towards that? What am I doing in my business that's getting me away from that? Now, I tell people to do that at least quarterly, and to be perfectly frank with you, I do it monthly. Hmm.

SPEAKER_00

Because it's so you just write a list of items? Yeah, yeah. So you just write a list of items, what you know, just writing at goals and just writing a list of items that what do you want to focus on and and which direction you want to move on?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so that's basically what it comes down to. It's it's a personal value assessment. It asks a few key core questions, but really they all drive into what's your why? You know, why are you doing this? Why did you want to do this and why are you doing it now? And then the what's come in with what are you doing in your business over the last, whether it's month or quarter, however often you're doing it, that is getting you closer to that and what is pulling you away from it. Now, let's be honest, right? Depending on the industry you're in and rules and laws and things like that, there's gonna be some what's that you have no control over. They're gonna be pulling you away from your values, but they're necessary to just run the business. But if you catch something that you can control and that you can align to your value system, you're gonna feel better about what you're doing, better about why you're doing it. You're gonna feel more rewarded. And that's gonna translate into. How empathetic you are with your team, how you build that culture, how you're leveraging your assets, and how you're moving the entire business forward from there.

SPEAKER_00

And more importantly, it takes you out of the ground and a grind and puts you on a different perspective. You know, it's like a you know, sitting on much higher and looking at the road ahead of you instead of just uh, you know, sitting very low and just driving on a road, right? So it g puts you in a different, you know, thought process, uh, you know, that lets you see the road, you know, mile ahead of you instead of just just driving and seeing only 10 feet ahead of you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you said it yourself, the grind is you know, the grind is admirable in some roles and some jobs and and whatnot, you know, and believe me, in sales, I know you gotta have the 200 phone call because the 10 people they're gonna answer. I get it. Yeah, but the grind as a business owner that tells me that if you feel like you're a business owner and you're grinding all the time, you've got so much wasted effort and you could get so much more for your effort. Because the grind is not always

Joe's Journey and Insights on Business Leadership

SPEAKER_01

admirable when you're in a leadership role, you have to be strategic.

SPEAKER_00

And you can probably do more being strategic than just simply just you know going at it all day, right? So, you know, if you pick and choose, you could be more productive and probably do a better job instead of just going, you know, hour after hour just trying to uh get through it.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, it's you know, you had asked earlier about the star, you know, scalability method. And again, that's more of a diagnostic tool. But the reason that exists is because it all starts with the strategy and being aligned with your value system, because that strategy is what's gonna direct your energy, which then allows you to delegate effectively, and the team then distributes that energy. Your assets, you know, your tech and your IP and all that stuff, that's that's just gonna multiply it, right? Like assets are multipliers, they're gonna multiply that energy, and the reward system that you put in place is what's gonna sustain it. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and one exponentially increases the other.

SPEAKER_00

Does that change as you grow your business, uh Joe? Does that change those uh those that approach changes as you doesn't matter how big you get in a business?

SPEAKER_01

The core is always gonna be the same. So no matter how no matter how tall, how many stories you build the house, it's always gonna have the same size foundation, even if you put another story on it, right? And this is all about that. This is about getting your business on the right foundation so that it can grow from there. And so those components are going to obviously have some change over time. You know, as teams grow, you're gonna have changes in how things are delegated and whatnot. Yes. But the general core components, no, they don't change, in my opinion. And from what I have seen, if you've got your strategic vision aligned and everybody's on board with it, your staff is what's gonna distribute that for you. Your team is the one that's gonna take your leadership and push it down further for you and and make more of you because you can't duplicate yourself.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You can't clone yourself enough to we don't know with technology, but right now it's not there.

SPEAKER_00

We're learning every day.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_00

So let's talk about your story. Joe, how did you go so good at this? And you know, if you talk about your background, how did you uh get involved in helping business leaders and achieving these results?

SPEAKER_01

Well, so my story is a kind of a unique one. I I actually, you know, grew up as a blue-collar kid. First business that I built from the ground up was a landscaping business, and then ended up selling it to one of my competitors and then worked in factories and things like that until I got lucky enough to land a job in the mailroom of a financial services company about 26 years ago. And from there, I just asked a lot of questions, and people said, Well, hey, do you want to try this new role? You know, you you've been learning a lot. You could talk about it because you asked so many questions. And I'd say, sure, with a little bit of fear in my voice, because hey, take the job that scares you, right? And so I went from the mail room and within 10 years had gone up the chain enough to have my first senior management role as director of IT at a broker dealer here in Tampa. And then I spent the from 2010 until about a year ago in all C-suite roles, whether that be chief operating officer, chief executive officer, or chief compliance officer. And I along the way have built and sold two financial practices in an insurance company and a real estate firm. So, you know, I I've done it, is what I should say. And over the last 15 of the last 25 years, I have been having people come to me and say, hey, you know, I've seen what you do, I know what you do. Can you help me? And I thought, well, going doing this full time, writing the book about how to do it yourself, all of that really just lets me be more impactful to more business owners. And the reality is I just want more people to be happy and successful. So this was the best way I could do it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you can make a much bigger impact this way than then simply serving one company.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

So you work in a variety of different industries. So I'm definitely gonna know about more about the IT side of things. But did you find any challenges? Was mindset one of the challenges in that area, or is it a is it the same problem all the businesses?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah, no, it's it's it's the same thing across the board as what I found is that you can boil every problem that we ran into, whether it was in the tech side, uh, you know, of the finance world or the customer service side or the operations, the compliance, you name it, even in educating and sales,

The Core Components of Business Challenges

SPEAKER_01

because I'm a sales trainer, all that stuff. The reality is it all comes down to these same four components. And that's why those are the four components that make up the star method.

SPEAKER_00

Very interesting. So, end of the days, people probably, it doesn't really matter what the technology, you know, what business we are in, are we dealing with the people challenges, no matter which way you look at it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You gotta you gotta have that alignment across those components first. Now, the details are gonna change, obviously. You know, growing a pool cleaning company versus an IT company versus a financial firm, they're all gonna have very unique challenges and different techniques and and technologies that they need to use, but it's still gonna come down to those say core components that have to be aligned first. Or, you know, you're trying to build on a trying to build your house on sand and it's just gonna fall over some.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So was that one other component in a star scalability was culture as well? Did you mention the culture was one of the items?

SPEAKER_01

That's where the team really comes in, is is the team culture, delegation, all those things sort of fall under team.

SPEAKER_00

So let's talk about the culture component. In you know, I was just talking to uh George Basalow in my podcast. You know, he has over a thousand employees. We were talking about it. He spent probably 95% of his time on a people, you know, training people, mentoring people. I thought it was very interesting that you know, in a business he spent probably five, four or five percent of

The Importance of Team Culture

SPEAKER_00

the time, but the most of his time goes into just helping people, whether it's mentoring, whether it's you know, coaching, training, whatever he does. So for him, the culture and the team was the most important in a business. And I think that's with the for a lot of businesses, that is a hard-to-solve problem because it's it's a complex problem, especially you know, with the immigration cultures coming over overseas, and we a lot of people managing teams over size as well. Sometimes maintaining the building the culture could be challenged. How do you see that challenge around the culture? Is it in and how what do you see the complexities around? How do you handle some of that stuff?

SPEAKER_01

So the big challenges around culture are first of all, that I think a lot of people try to, again, slap on a solution without figuring out what the core is. So, you know, you gotta really diagnose where the gaps are from a team culture standpoint. You know, why are people aren't happy, what the leadership gap is. You've got to figure

Diagnosing Cultural Challenges

SPEAKER_01

that out first. But as leaders, one of the best and easiest things you can do is just stop by and talk to the people. Like, as not as employees, but as human beings. You know, I've I've managed anywhere teams from five people to teams of 400. And what I will tell you is that there's not a single one of them that I didn't know their kids' names or their spouse's name or their dog's name. I I knew something personal about them where I when I talked to them, I could say, Hey, how is Mary or you know, how's how's Fido doing? You know, you know, you said he was you know at the vets last week. It's it's not that complicated, and it doesn't have to be super in-depth. You don't have to cross the line of making it a personal relationship, but there has to be a personal touch to it. It humanizes you as a leader and it also humanizes those people in your mind because now they're no longer numbers and employees that are on a spreadsheet, and then you speak to them differently. That's the thing that's very interesting, is the minute you start learning about people, you start speaking to them differently, and they start redressing you differently. But again, I want to jump back a little bit because if we go back to the alignment thing, you got to know what your values are. Okay. Now, we all know that society has an idea of what ideal business ethics and morals are, but you have to ask yourself what you really stand for. And then you have to get people that are on board with that or get them on board. But the only way to do that is to communicate, show them why that is a value system for the company. That helps address a lot of the cross-cultural issues as well. Because if you state clearly what the business's culture is, then your staff can accommodate to the business culture. That doesn't solve every problem, obviously. We have communication style differences and things, but it does help tremendously. And then it becomes more of a tweak than a complete revamp.

SPEAKER_00

But how do you deal with the same component? You know, trying to get to, you know, building that little rapport with the people and get to know them. How do you deal with that in a decentralized environment? People, you know, a lot of the this teams overseas as you know, we talk on a camera. We you and I talk in on a camera. I'm sure a lot of teams they communicate on a camera only, they you know, they're not in a driving distance or they don't work together, they're simply just in a different time zone, different. So, how do you maintain the same level of some sort of uh you know connection with people when they're in a different uh decentralized centralized environment?

SPEAKER_01

So, you know, I'll give you a great example of that, right? The last firm where I actually had a C-suite role and was an employee, okay? I was the chief compliance officer for investment advisory firm. And we were spread out all across the country. I was actually the only employee in Florida, and I was managing people in California, Nevada, Colorado,

Building Culture in Decentralized Teams

SPEAKER_01

you name it, Washington, all over the country, right? Okay. And when it came to building culture, it had to be intentional. And the CEO was very adamant about this. It's one thing that he and I both were very, very adamant about. And we really just connected with people. Every single person that was in that firm got a phone call from me on a regular schedule just to say, Hey, how's it going? Checking in on you and have a personal conversation. It was never long, five minutes, maybe. And it wasn't like it did it every week. It was usually about once every four to six weeks, depending on the schedule. But everybody just got a personal touch. And we built the culture with intention as far as the team meetings and the way they were run. And we had like virtual happy hours and things on Zoom. There's a lot of stuff you can do with people all around the world and all around the country, depending on your business model, to make that connection and keep everybody humanized. And what's interesting is I was with that firm for three years. And when I left, I had never met a single one of them in person, a single person from that firm in person. Since then, since leaving, I have had I have met over 40% of the company in person because people have said, Hey, I miss you, we're coming to Florida, or hey, you know, I'm in Atlanta this week. Can you drive up to Atlanta? And it's it's amazing to me how many true friendships have come from that. And again, I was not an equal to these folks. I was I was the C CO of the firm. I was second only to the CEO. We were, you know, we were the leadership team here. And so when I hear people say, Oh, you can't do it in a virtual environment, it feels dismissive to me. And it's one that I challenge. I'm like, no, some of the best relationships I have with former colleagues are from virtual relationships.

SPEAKER_00

So in a larger team, a little bit, you know, if you if you you scale that to a lot of bigger teams, there's a layers of as well. There's a managers, there's directors, and those layers. In those layers, like a larger team, would you train managers to do the same thing, or would you still do one-on-one with the people, or would you delegate that to the team level? So listen, you gotta do this and train those people.

SPEAKER_01

Well, at a certain point, yes, it does become almost impossible, right? If you're managing you know a major multinational company with 300,000 employees, it's kind of hard to for the CEO to know everybody. I I would agree with you. So yes, it does have to start sort of cascading down, right? But if you build the business, this is what's I have found is very interesting. If you build

Scaling Communication in Larger Teams

SPEAKER_01

the business foundation intentionally with that type of expectation of communication between leadership, management, middle management, whatever, all the way down to the person in the mail room. Okay. If you build intentionally that that's what the expectation is for the firm, that's what the firm's culture is, it will it will happen naturally. Yes, it will segregate a little bit. You know, the the manager that's managing 50 people is gonna be responsible for those 50 people, and you know, the CEO that's got 300,000 under him is gonna have, you know, layers all the way down through there. Yeah. But it those layers develop as the business grows. So when you have the need to start putting in management layers, that expectation's already there of how things are going to be done. And again, notice I'm saying are, not should be, because if it's built into the culture and it's built into the value systems of the company, it will happen. If it doesn't happen, it was never truly built in to start with.

SPEAKER_00

So you'd keep them keep that in a mind and a recruiting as well, Joe. So if you're building a team that you know this is how you're going to manage, this is the expectation that you're gonna touch touch base with these people. And some people may not like that kind of stuff, you know, that there's different style. Would you would you be mindful of that when you're recruiting the people as well and staying saying, find something? How do you test that? How do you verify that that you this is what you're gonna do and and they're gonna be receptive to that?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, absolutely. So I am a big believer in getting the expectations of what you want from a cultural standpoint set up first. In fact, anybody that's listening to this, if you're a solopreneur and you think you're going to be growing your business, set the expectation now before you ever hire the first person of what you want from a cultural standpoint. Figure out the things that you can train versus

Recruiting for Cultural Fit

SPEAKER_01

the values and ethical boundaries and and styles that you can't train, the stuff that people just they are who they are. And then you have to ask for that. And I think that with hiring, you have to get creative. Okay. My favorite example is if you ask somebody, well, what do you want, where do you want to be in five years? Yeah, everybody's everybody's prepared for that in an interview, right? Um, everybody has that expectation. You know, what's the biggest, what's the best way to eat an elephant? Oh, one bite at a time. We've all heard it a hundred times, right? Like, you're not gonna get creative answers if you get standard questions. But ask people to tell you things that have nothing to do with work, for example. Because of course you can't ask certain things from an HR standpoint, but if you say to somebody, you know, what do you want your life to look like in five years? And I'll see if they talk about work first or if they talk about family first, or if they talk about where they want to live, all of those things give you insight into what their core value system is. That's how you know whether or not it aligns with yours. And there's yeah, I have dozens of examples of that that we have, but all the time, but I don't want to bog down the conversation with all those. But the questions really have to say is this person gonna share my values? And do I think they're smart enough to do the job? Yeah, yeah. It's gotta be a blow of both.

SPEAKER_00

Technical skills are easy to teach, right? So we all learn from jobs as well. You know, when somebody graduated computer science or becomes, they're you know, they they have a basics of it, you know? But on top of that, how business are run, we all learn from jobs. It's a value side of things or or or somebody's uh soft skills or how they communicate. That is very hard. That's a big investment for business to train on. Absolutely. So if that is the case, why wouldn't you spend more time on a soft skills and a value side of things than then simply hard skills testing and verifying hard skills, which is easy to train later on anyway. So so why not spend for uh to your point, spend more time understanding that and aligning that uh that piece well, because that's the biggest investment later on.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And there's so many of the hard skills that you know you you have to test and get certified for and everything else, and then every every firm has their own process, so you got to relearn it anyway, you know? Yeah, um I I argue all the time in financial services that just because you have a certain license doesn't mean you have any idea how to do the job because I've had to relearn everything in every firm for the same reason, right? And yeah, I mean, you know, I'll use my own career as an example.

The Value of Soft Skills in Leadership

SPEAKER_01

Nobody in their right mind should have ever given me director of IT. I had no technical skills, I had no technical background, but I had the drive and the ambition to do it, and I did it. I loved it, and I did it for two years until I got promoted.

SPEAKER_00

So well, and in that level, you're not solving technical problems, you're solving people problems, right? So, and that role is is a most people problem are more critical, right? So that's what I think it doesn't even make sense. And I've seen so many times people promote technical people into these roles. You know, the very it's very common in my industry. Somebody was a systems analyst or network analyst, we promote them into team lead, then the same person we promote into manager, same person we promote to director role. So the the role changed, responsibility changed, but the mindset is still the same. It's still the technical mindset because he was the person was or he or she was very good at the technical job, we promoted that, but it's the same skill set they're bringing to the leadership role, which is which is a challenge. You know, solving technical problems, and now you're trying to solve people problems.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's an entirely different skill set. And that's why you know there's there's some danger in just promoting people who were really good at doing the tasks of the job. Yeah. Because even though they may have been doing the job for 10 years and they're really skilled at it and they they know everything inside and out, that doesn't mean they can manage people. And putting them in charge of people, that can be very damaging. So again, goes back to making sure you're hiring and promoting the right people for the right reasons. There's a lot of ways to reward people that aren't cut out for leadership without putting them into a job they're not qualified for.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, if you hired technical people, you lost the best tech you had, and you hire the very mediocre IT director now, right? So kind of a double name, isn't it? You didn't get much either way, right, by doing that, right? So he's not gonna stay on that directory. You don't have a tech anymore, and and uh IT director job is that the person is not gonna stay for longer because you're putting a pressure on a person, and that's not what he's designed for, the skill sets not there, right? So so he I think it's a common mistake to see in my industry, but I'm sure every industry they go, you know, we go through similar kind of challenges they have, and we make so many same mistakes over and over.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I've I've seen it really everywhere. Um, you know, obviously I talk a lot about financial services, I spend so much time much time there, but I've seen it with my fintech clients, I've seen it with my retail distribution clients, I've seen it with my real estate clients. And if I think back to what you know life was like working in manufacturing and in a factory, there were good managers and supervisors, and there were some that were terrible, but they were promoted because they'd been there long enough

Avoiding Common Promotion Pitfalls

SPEAKER_01

and knew the job. And it's the it's a great example of the exact problem we were just discussing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's it's a lazy way out. You know, I don't want to give them a lot of salary, but I'm gonna give them fancy titles so the person stays with the company, right?

SPEAKER_01

So it's just uh compensate with cash, they want to compensate with a title. The title. And then tell them they gotta wear a tie to work in a factory.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. What interesting, Joe. So, how do you help out with the business leaders? What level of uh you know management do you work with, Joe? And uh, you know, walk us through what what's the uh you know, do you do speaking public speaking as well? Is it coaching and training? You know, what what area you come in?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So when I when it comes to working one-on-one with folks, I am typically working directly with either the owner. Most of my businesses that are that I'm clients, that are that are my clients, are you know owner-founded client businesses. So they're filling the role of both the owner and founder as well as CEO. But I work with leadership teams as well for some of the bigger firms that are owned by you know other entities or or even publicly owned. So I do work with leadership teams

Coaching and Consulting Approaches

SPEAKER_01

again, typically in that C suite level.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Now, as far as what I do, I have a couple different methodologies. I do have you know the the predefined program. If you want to walk through it on your own and and go in, you know, basically. What's in the book, but in a little more depth and walk through it on your own? Great. We have that option for everybody. But most of the time, I'm coming in more as a blend between a coach and a consultant. So I'm going to ask you the tough questions. I'm going to make you do the work, but I'm also going to be there to help you with it. I'm not going to just leave you on your own. Whereas traditional coaching asks you the questions and then kind of leaves you the hanging. But I don't come in as a full-blown consultant either. So I tend to follow follow in that in-between phase for most clients. Now, yeah, you can catch me on podcasts, obviously. I do a lot of public speaking. I do a lot of goal setting seminars because if you're not setting goals for the right reasons, it's just as bad as implementing tools and processes in your businesses that don't align, right? You get that friction for misalignment. So if you're setting up goals for the wrong reasons, we have an entire discussion about how to set goals that are more effective than smart goals. We'll just put it that way. If anybody wants to hear my thoughts on that, let me know. It's smart goals are dumb, and I'll explain it later.

SPEAKER_00

So so in a goal setting, because I'm a big proponent of that, you know. So do you set a bigger goal? So some people tell listen, you set a smaller goal, so you can achieve it. And other side of, you know, that the coin is, you know, you need to set a bigger goal. So you know, you're chasing a much bigger is going to make a difference in life. Well, do you prefer any of the okay right?

SPEAKER_01

But my whole thing is that smart goals uh I I see people set smart goals every year, and smart goals, in my opinion, is an antiquated concept. It came out in 1981. Okay. How much of how much business has changed in the last 45 years, right? It's it's you're you're applying 1980s rules to 2026, it doesn't work. So smart goals I see fail all the time, and it's because people can be setting goals that are specific, they're measurable, attainable,

Reevaluating Goal Setting Strategies

SPEAKER_01

all those things, and yet don't motivate them enough to move forward. And the motivation is where the the real power is, right? So if you set your goals a little differently, focusing again on that value system first, and then make sure your goals are gonna get you closer to that value. Okay. So it's it's a long-winded explanation. I'll keep it as short as I can, but we really need to look at what is gonna make you slog through the tough stuff to achieve the goal. Because most smart goals fail the minute things get tough.

SPEAKER_00

Got it. What interesting. Yeah, it has to it has to align to the as a great point. He has to align to the values, you know, what are you trying to create, right? Because that will keep you going. The days when the days are tough that you can't keep up with the small one, the bigger goals moving forward to the values. I think that will keep you going.

SPEAKER_01

Well, exactly. You know, and I'll I'll give a quick example of one woman that I worked with. She owned a retail distribution company, and you know, it was it was a very interesting perspective. I, you know, I asked her, I said, why did you start the company? And because her goal was to open a second territory, but she was already very stretched out. She was working like 65, 70 hours a week. And I'm like, Why are you gonna open a second territory? And she goes, Well, I need more money so I can hire more people so I can work less. And I thought, okay, that's traditional thinking, but I'm not sure it's the right thinking. So I said, Well, why did you start the business in the first place? She said, Oh, you know, my daughter was really young. I was a single parent. I wanted to spend more time with her. I thought this would give me more time, and it did back then. I had her at the office with me, things like that. She goes, now I never see my kid because I work so much. And I'm like, setting up a second territory is not gonna necessarily get you there. So we refocused her goals. And instead of her goal being set up a second territory this year, all of her goals really became focused around how do we get you out of the office more? How do we delegate? How do we improve efficiency? How do we streamline? And and when we did all that, 18 months later, she had a second location, and she to this day only works about 30 to 32 hours a week. Wow. And she's got a location, she's got great people in place, and they're running the business for her, and she's making more money than she ever has. So, again, it was about getting back to the value. Why did you set it up? You set it up to have more time with your family. So stop worrying about some dollar number that somebody's telling you you need to make. Worry about getting back to the time with the family. And what happens is you immediately start building in the processes and procedures and using the tools and the delegation that is gonna actually get you there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, she probably thinking having a second location will give her more time, but indirectly not going straight to it, you know, what was she trying to achieve instead of uh going around it and trying to achieve that, you know, you just went there straight. Okay, this is this is what it should be. Got it.

SPEAKER_01

She was following what I would call a very traditional path. She was gonna hire, she was gonna set up the second location, hire somebody to run it, and that was gonna magically solve all her problems. And you and I have both seen enough businesses grow and fail to know that it doesn't usually work that way. It sounds great in theory, but it doesn't usually work out that way.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Those are the inflection points earlier. We started, you know, we were talking about that. Listen, every every step in a you know, in a path, you can have a different problem to solve.

SPEAKER_01

It's very true.

SPEAKER_00

Very interesting. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you, Joe?

SPEAKER_01

So the easiest way to find me is just to go out to the website, and the website is jpcoachingnow.com. And from there, you can find all the social media stuff, emails, phones, all that stuff. You can even set up time to talk to me directly. If anybody has questions about, you know, hey, how do I do a personal value assessment? Just set up some time right there on my website. I'll be more than happy to walk through that, whatever.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna include a link to your website to a LinkedIn page below the video, whereas all people can click a button, they can reach out to you. You know, you and I can talk, you know, that for a long time. You know, I can there's so much to learn from you, but definitely, you know, with the time limited, there is so much to learn from you. The business owner we're watching, business leaders who are listening to us on a podcast. I will strongly recommend that click the link below, reach out to Joe, have a conversation. I gain new perspective on many different things, including the goal settings. And definitely everybody's you know, connect with you, they're gonna gain a new perspective, or they're gonna learn something from you. So who knows where the conversations uh conversation is gonna take you, but uh you know, reach out to you and and uh you know have a chat with you and see what happens from there on. Yeah, I I would love that.

SPEAKER_01

If anybody has any questions, I'm an open look. If you can't tell already, so feel free to just reach out and uh you know if I can offer any insight that can help you, I'll be more than happy to.

SPEAKER_00

There's so much to learn from me, Joe. Uh, thank you so much for time. It was a great discussion. I enjoyed it. Hopefully we'll talk talk soon in the future.

SPEAKER_01

Me too. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

Uh thanks, Joe. If you enjoyed this discussion, I'm I recommend to check one of these discussions on the top. Um, also don't forget to go back to that channel homepage. There's a playlist created just for you, whether you're looking for business discussion, technology discussion, or process discussion for business growth, all those categories are there, and I'm sure you will find something that you enjoy from those categories as well. So don't forget to send us your feedback, subscribe to this channel for any upcoming videos. Your feedback is very important to us, allow us to focus on the right discussion to deliver value for you on a weekly basis. So enjoy until next time. Thank you for your time.