Scale Your Business Like A Pro: Growth Lessons From A 9-Figure Exit | Andreas Pettersson

What separates truly successful business owners from those who stay stuck?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, host Michael Morrison sits down with Andreas Pettersson, Founder of Leaders Adapt, to explore the real reasons why some entrepreneurs scale to success—while others spin their wheels. After helping grow a tech company to a nine-figure valuation, Andreas reveals that strategy and funding weren’t the magic ingredients. It was emotional intelligence, curiosity, and brutal self-honesty that made the difference.

"Curiosity is king," says Andreas, as he breaks down how fear-driven decisions can cost entrepreneurs time, money, and energy. Instead, he encourages business owners to ask themselves: “What if the opposite is true?”—a powerful mindset shift that prevents costly mistakes and uncovers hidden opportunities.

We also unpack the growth stages every business faces:
• From $0–$2M: founders must lead sales—no exceptions.
• From $2M–$10M: the right processes (not too many) are key.
• Beyond $10M: leadership development and culture define your ceiling.

Andreas shares three transformative exercises that helped him lead with clarity:
✅ Breaking negative thought spirals with the 5-second rule
✅ Recording positive feedback to fight negative bias
✅ Starting each day with visualization instead of screen-scrolling

Whether you're growing a business from scratch or scaling past $10 million, this episode will challenge how you think, lead, and make decisions.

🎙️ Listen now to hear Andreas Pettersson on Small Business Pivots with Michael Morrison—and discover how honest self-reflection can reignite your business growth.

Andreas Pettersson:  Leaders Adapt, CEO & Co-Founder

Website: https://www.leadersadapt.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreastheceo/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@andreastheceo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555794758899

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreastheceo

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreastheceo/

 #SmallBusinessPivots #MichaelDMorrison #AndreasPettersson #LeadersAdapt #BusinessPodcast #BusinessCoach #SmallBusinessGrowth #EntrepreneurMindset #LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #ScaleYourBusiness #BusinessStrategy #GrowYourBusiness #FounderJourney #OklahomaCity #BOSS #MindsetMatters #FromStartupToSuccess #EntrepreneurLife #SmallBusinessSuccess

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
• 9:02 The Value of Curiosity in Business Decisions
• 17:05 Patterns of Business Growth and Leadership
• 27:46 The Critical Role of Founder Selling
• 34:19 Systems and Processes: When and How Much
• 42:39 Mindset Transformation for Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots.

Speaker 2: 0:02

We have another special guest from around the world, and I know that business owners are the best ones to introduce themselves and their companies, so I'm going to let you go ahead and introduce yourself, my friend moved to us about 11 years ago and I've been a tech ceo, tech founder, um, and I've been an executive for 10 years and I made a lot of mistakes uh, as someone who started from scratch and grew the company to a nine-figure valuation before it was merged, and I decided to leave that space behind and go help others fantastic.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Well, how do you think we're going to help our listeners today?

Speaker 2: 0:48

Hopefully I will be able to show people the value of being honest with yourself, the value of being vulnerable, and then develop a deep emotional intelligence when it comes to leadership and how you do business decisions, Because if you truly understand yourself, you don't make as many emotional-driven decisions and more logical-driven decisions that lead you to take action and get results way quicker.

Speaker 1: 1:16

That's a good one, because I know a lot of business owners who make what we call knee-jerk reactions and they usually have to pay for it later. So let's introduce the show real quick and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, founder and CEO of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. You were fixing to say something before we briefed for the intro. What was that? I saw you were eager to get on it.

Speaker 2: 2:10

I would say that the word curiosity is the biggest miss people do within businesses in general. They stop being curious and they start letting fear creep in. You said something that just made me like realize that when people do the knee jerk reactions um, it's good that they're curious and I I emphasize like curiosity is king, but you have to think what if the opposite is true? So as soon as you get that feeling as a small, medium-sized business owner and you just like, oh, I'm going to put all the like we're going after this. This is the best thing ever, stop and ask yourself what if the opposite is true? And try to get curious and get as many people's opinions in as possible, because otherwise you're just going to do, like you said, a knee-jerk reaction that you're going to suffer on later on.

Speaker 2: 3:02

And many founders are, we all know it, visionaries, and the visionaries they can come up with any solution for any problem, and the problem is some things should not be solved or you can't make money on solving some problems. So, being truly open, honest and yeah, we all read the book, but there's an amazing book called the Mom Test and it basically gives you a way of how to stay curious and how to truly understand the best logical approach to any situation to avoid doing impulsive decision-making.

Speaker 1: 3:38

I don't know that. I've heard of that book, so it's a recommendation.

Speaker 2: 3:42

It's a recommendation. It's tiny, you can read it within an hour. The concept is if you ask your mom or your friends, is this a good business idea? They will all lie to you because they feel good. Never ask your close circle if something is a good business idea, or you should pivot your company in one direction. Ask strangers, ask people who are not afraid to hurt your feelings, ask a mentor or coach and advisor, whoever you ask. But ask and run small experiments, but never ask your mother, and that's sort of the why the book is called the mom test.

Speaker 1: 4:18

That is funny, because on Shark Tank, mr Wonderful always asks who bought this from you? Take it outside and shoot it. And they'll say well, my friends. And he asks who bought this from you?

Speaker 2: 4:28

Take it outside and shoot it, and they'll say well, my friends, and he said they're lying to you. It's that concept. What the book teaches you, though, is how to run experiments and how to ask in a non-emotional, non-subjective way, in order for you to truly get the answers you want to have before you run down a path.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Well, let's jump back just a little bit in history, because most of our listeners are stuck in their business. They've read all the popular books, watched a lot of YouTubes, probably invested in a lot of courses. Nothing's changed for their business. Something you said earlier that caught my attention was nine figures. I can't for most of our listeners. Speaking for them, I bet they can't even fathom what that's like. So take us back prior to that, because obviously you have something that helped you create that. How did you get into that space?

Speaker 2: 5:20

So we started. I used to work for a company called Milestone Systems. This is the company I moved to US with. I was running an incubation and ventures team in the Bay Area and or group and we were basically looking at either acquiring or partnering with certain people in the Bay Area remember TechSpace or we were handed the crazy ideas that no one else wanted to touch in the organization. That wasn't the bread and butter business and we had to start from scratch, hire in a few people, do scrappy, scrunk work things, get the business going and then hand it off to the main company or kill it. And that taught me a very valuable lesson, which is scrappy, ready, fire, aim, not aim, aim, aim, aim, aim. Everyone who keeps reading books and joining masterminds or whatever they're aiming Stop aiming. You are ready because you already made up your mind, you have the information you need. Just fire, run experiments and quickly take action and try to learn from them. But anyway, that's what I learned there.

Speaker 2: 6:31

And then one of these ideas became so big that we realized we got to go raise capital for this and we got to make it a bigger initiative. So we actually spun out a separate company. I started out as the CTO Chief Product Officer. Due to certain events, I became CEO pretty quickly and then it was literally me at a WeWork with the goal of hiring 30 people within three months and delivering a product within 12 months, and it was, let's just say, it was a little crazy times in the beginning. Now, the good part is we had, uh, an ownership structure. We were owned by, you know, canon, a camera oh yeah, camera manufacturer, um, and at this time, and they owned us and we, we raised the capital through them and a little and through another company. But, uh, long story short, it was crazy times. Um, if I were to summarize the journey then we grew and when we merged we were 150 people. We merged in with an, like I said, with a ninth. I don't know if it's public actually I shouldn't maybe have said that but let's just say, put a good valuation into another company that was also owned by Canon, and I decided to not stay and I decided to leave.

Speaker 2: 7:52

But I'll tell you about the patterns For people who are feeling stuck. I've seen so clear patterns. You can grind yourself to the first $1 million in revenue, maybe $2 million, and it's all about sales. You need to be selling, selling, selling. I've seen so many founders who hire a sales team too early because they're afraid to doing founder selling. No, they need to be on the phone, constantly selling. Even if I had all that backing, I still were on the phone. I landed our first multimillion dollar deals. I was flying out around like one year I don't know how many laps I did around the world.

Speaker 2: 8:28

The point is, if you are hiring someone before you have marketing fit, messaging fit, you can't scale it with a sales organization and people will pick up the phone from the founder and I see so many founders who just run away from that too quickly. So then you can get to a couple of million in revenue After that. You need processes, you need systems, you need procedures and you mentioned before we started scaling up. We can have traction EOS. There are many others out there you can use.

Speaker 2: 8:58

The point is do not put in process and procedures if you don't need them, like it's only when you need them, not always, not never. And, by the way, don't hire someone from a large company who looks great on the resume that have done all the great work in a company where they had hundreds or 200 people reporting to them, or thousands and assume that they can come in and get you the revenue. It will never work. They're worthless. They're even going to make it worse for you, so don't hire them. But then process procedures, some delegation work two to 10 million, 11 million, and then post that.

Speaker 2: 9:37

It's all about leadership, growing a proper leadership team, getting people to. It's like growing people, create, growing organizations and you need to spend all your efforts in proper leadership culture, building the right culture, grooming the right people. And, honestly, you probably have to fire a lot of the people that were there from the two to the 10 million as well, because they're not going to get you further. Yeah, yeah. So those are the patterns I have seen, and then I'm saying a lot here.

Speaker 2: 10:11

I could not have done it without mentors, coaches, advisors, peer groups yeah, everyone else who made all the mistakes ahead of me. Don't go it alone. You will mess it up up At least. I used to have one business coach. I had one mindset psychologist that I worked with and I had one leadership psychologist, slash advisor, and I needed these people for different reasons. You can't do it. If you don't, why reinvent the wheel? And you can have 10 years experience or you can be working 10 years and get one year experience, or you can have 10 years experience in one year, but you have to be able to get other people's superpower to be able to move faster. That's a good info. Sorry, no One question. Take us back to where it started.

Speaker 2: 11:01

But it was the pattern has been so clear and I've sat in so many CEO peer groups, so many other entrepreneurs around me like that first mistake people make my like the skipping founder, selling or trying to establish a channel when you don't have product and messaging fit crazy and like it's waste of time. Like you should be selling until you have product and messaging fit. You should be selling along with whoever you hired in sales and marketing.

Speaker 1: 11:30

I say because that's everything I coach and preach to small business owners the same thing if you're doing things that you're not an expert at or skilled at and you don't have the sales to hire someone to do that, 80% of your time should be selling until you can pay for those services. And then I also say, secondly, coming from a business coach, if you haven't crafted the message that sells, how do you think anyone else is going to do that? So until you figured out, you're wasting your time hiring someone that doesn't know your true mission, your product fit those kind of things. So it's almost like we rehearsed this. This is perfect.

Speaker 2: 12:19

We did not. And then, because if you hire someone else, they don't have skin in the game the way you do as a founder and they won't get curious. They will be like, no, it's good enough, no, but yeah, good enough, like you're holding yourself back. It's not. Fit is not a destination. Fit is an iteration. You get messaging fit, you get product fit, but then you got to iterate and you got to figure out how to do it better and better and better fit. You get product fit, but then you gotta iterate and you gotta figure out how to do it better and better and better. And now that now you're in a level where you can start building partnership channels or, if you're selling direct, you can scale it up through marketing, through other things.

Speaker 2: 12:54

But hiring mark like, yes, you can hire a marketer to help you with marketing strategy, but you have to and this was a term in tech years ago and it's still used today. It's like a growth hacker, like, yeah, you can hire a growth hacker. But what is a growth hacker? It's someone who constantly experiments a b test, messaging, a b test, small product tweaks until they figure out what actually resonates with the customer, not what makes you you sale. But truly the Likmas test is. You say Likmas test in English. Yes, yes, the test is really go interview 10 people and then say we actually been thinking about scrapping this product or changing it.

Speaker 2: 13:38

If you have four out of 10 people saying no, don't do that, like I love your product. Okay, now you're getting product fit. Saying no, don't do that Like I love your product. Okay, now you're getting product fit. If you say, is this message resonating with you? Or what did you feel? If they can't express the feelings with the messaging it's not market fit, it's not messaging fit, no-transcript. In the end of the day, sales is psychology right and it's understanding the other party. And, yes, you love your baby, you have your company, you believe in it, you put blood, sweat and tears into it. Assume your baby is ugly and then get curious on the other party what it will make it not ugly instead and stop selling, start listening. Powerful stuff, but you get my point Like curiosity.

Speaker 1: 14:27

Yeah, that's powerful. And so listeners. Boss stands for business ownership simplified. There's nothing more simpler than what you just said. It's that simple and yet for many business owners, the reason they're stuck are the ones that come to us for coaching. It's because they're making it harder than it really is. I'm not saying it's easy right, it's. No, it's not easy owning a business, but it is simpler than what we're trying to make it. We keep trying to reach for the next new book or the next idea, or no, go back to the bait, like what you're talking about. Go sell first, you know, and stop messing with that other stuff.

Speaker 2: 15:02

And when people come to me. So I exited out of the tech space. I decided and I wouldn't say we do something similar, but I help founders that are 3 to 10, 15 million and they are more coming into that growing people create growing organizations. You need to grow people stage and I help them more with the mindset and the leadership rather than the all the other things that I assume you help businesses with as well. But and then the other thing I do today is I help VPs, because there is a lot of in larger companies. There is a lot of vice presidents out there that are that needs to be groomed to be able to get land a C-suite position and they are just acting way too tactical knee-jerk reaction there as well, and these are for larger companies. So those are the sort of the two people I'm helping and I actually decided to stop.

Speaker 2: 15:55

I'm so passionate about helping people that I decided not to take on another CEO role for another tech company, for now at least. I get the question a lot, but no, I want to help others and especially and it's not a political viewpoint, but I was brought up by a very strong mother, single mom, and I got a shock when I moved to US 10 years ago and I saw how few women are in higher positions in different companies. So I have been helping primarily women, actually, and I've been helping them when I was a CEO for a long time, but more pro bono, and now I'm doing it as my main company. Well, let's talk about that, real estate and a couple of other things, but that's always as an entrepreneur you always have three businesses going right. Yep, yep, you got to be diversified.

Speaker 2: 16:46

Yeah, but focus is king. So 80, 90% of the effort should be on one business.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Yes, Well, let's talk about what you do, because there's a process to that and how it helps people. And even if we're supposed to be doing sales, we still need to be grooming ourselves to be the leader, to get to that next level. So how does working with you help them? What processes do you use? And share a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: 17:12

Yeah. So I'm a very action, action, action person, right. So people come to me and typically it will be someone who runs either a service company, brick and mortar company it's actually more not tech. Interestingly enough, tech people they have all the solutions to all their own problems. But no, I get a lot of that type of industry manufacturing companies and it's typically a founder who goes and says I have a problem with x, y or c. It's always the same it's either people process or money and or, yeah, sometimes it's money as well. Can you help me raise capital? And just to put it out there, no, I don't help people raise capital. Okay, you have to be really good. People invest in people and you need to be exceptionally good for me to help you raise capital. But so I say no to that most of the time. But they come and they say I have this problem and then, as I'm talking with them, that's never the problem, like it's never. It is related to it, but it's also most founders or entrepreneurs I talk to.

Speaker 2: 18:23

They're not in love with their company anymore. It's become a burden for them. They plateaued, they made the wrong hires, they didn't fire people quick enough, they grew and then all of a sudden, something happened in the market and now they can't figure out what happened and and they basically are applying the same patterns of that they got success with in the past. Instead of adapting which is why I call my leadership advisory leaders adapt. You have to adapt, inspect and adapt all the time, and they just are stuck. So now they're not in love with the company anymore. They've fallen into this chief problem solver mode where they solve everyone's else problems, and they typically have. They're running what I call an adult daycare. It's a company where people show up and they take 45 to one hour meetings with them explaining their issues with their husbands, their spouses whatever it is their wives and their kids and whatnot. And it's an adult daycarecare, it's a social club and they're not getting shit done anymore.

Speaker 2: 19:27

Um and so then I'm like, okay, what happened? And almost every single time we have this conversation they don't recognize that they have changed. They think everything else is the problem, and often the first four to eight weeks it's all about like true deep emotional intelligence on what do they actually want? What type of role do they want? Who? Who are they interacting with? What type of lives do they want to live running these companies and often people have like massive oh shit moments, if I can say the s word, but it's like oh, not. They have an oh, this is not good moment or they realize that something else is bothering them.

Speaker 2: 20:10

We address that first so we get deep understanding. Then we usually lay out the plan and when I work with people, my business model is I work with them four to six months and then I don't want to see them anymore and I know that sounds weird normally business coaches I don't want to see them anymore and I know that sounds weird. Normally business coaches, leadership advisors they want to work for years with people. I don't believe in that model. I believe I can go in, I can be the SWAT team. I can get you to take action and often the actions we have to take.

Speaker 2: 20:39

After you have truly understood who you are, which direction you want to go and you're taking action, you're starting to see the change. Often it involves hiring or firing someone else. The people you started the business with are typically not the people you want to have around anymore or they're self-sabotaging. Whatever is going on, you have stopped. Leading is another thing I often tell people they just let others lead because they're tired and they changed, the founder changed and they never recognized it and now they're not in love anymore and I make them either fall in love or I make them realize they got to go and then they got to hire someone else to take their role and move on. So those are usually the process and then, after we've been, we outlined the business strategy, we outlined the changes needs to be made.

Speaker 2: 21:32

I help people through the process. I push, push, push. I meet them every week. It's go, go, go constantly. We check in multiple times in the week and then, once we are, once they start getting a massive transformation and the revenue starts going up, again people are we got rid of the bad apples, all of that.

Speaker 2: 21:54

What ends up happening? Nine out of 10 times they fall in love in their business again. They've just been procrastinating on doing what they needed to do a long time ago. They need to understand who they are and they need to iron fire and then they need to put. Often it's also a focus problem. They are doing way too many initiatives and I often help them narrow down the laundry list of 20 different products they didn't want to do to one or two and they scream and kick all the way. But once we get there, then they start seeing results, then the business is growing again and then they also like they're afraid, Like a lot of people are afraid. Fear is a weird, weird emotion or friction Uh, it's not a way of saying it Um, and people just have to recalibrate that to unfamiliar and just take action. So that's have to recalibrate that to unfamiliar and just take action. So that's my model, that's what I do, highly intense. Others out there are I call them. They're amazing, organic diesel fuel, if you want true rocket fuel on a fire.

Speaker 1: 23:01

Let's go. That's when people call me. I love it. Well, you mentioned earlier systems and processes. You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is produced by my company, boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well.

Speaker 1: 23:31

Now let's get back to our special guest. Well, you mentioned earlier systems and processes and I know, for almost all the businesses that come to us, they have zero and they just think that's another first of all. And they just think that's another first of all. They think that's just another task I don't have time for. And the other thing is they might have some. They just don't hold people accountable. So kind of walk us through that process of why they need them, how to implement them, how to hold people accountable, because, again, to most business owners they say that just sounds like another job that I don't have time for yeah, and you have to do it.

Speaker 2: 24:11

so you have to put the you cannot delegate, because people won't figure this thing out themselves bare minimum process to be able to delegate so you can do the 10. Think of this like if you're going to do something you can do 100% and you're probably used to doing it yourself 100%, Then why do processes? They don't matter, they do matter. So you do the first 10%, then you delegate the last 80, and then you trust but verify throughout the process and then the last 10%. You get it across the finish line. But I would argue most times when you build a process and you do something, you have to run through it yourself the first time. It's the same with founder selling. You can do it in parallel with someone else, but don't delegate the first time because the other person won't be interested to improve the process and it will be a one and done that will be forget and collect dust later on. But it's what I'm pushing for. Hard is like bare minimum and some people do process. Once they get into, oh, let's do a process, they overkill it and it's never used.

Speaker 2: 25:13

I think the balance is key, right, and if you start getting people who are complaining about the process. Kill some of it, like remove it, and there is a super good. I mean again not a political viewpoint on Elon Musk, but he says he has a pretty good track record of building companies. There is an interview with him where he's standing in front of he's at SpaceX and he's standing in front of a rocket on YouTube and he's outlining when to do processes and how to approach process building. That model is exceptionally good. Don't just go out there and buy a framework and say we have to do everything that this process dictate or this framework dictate. Instead, think, do we even need this at all? And if you then build the processes in that mindset, you end up with the value, creating processes, not just process for process sake. Like I said, not never, not always.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Wow, we keep going on that. But I know another thing that business owners are probably cringing about is sales. Most business owners love when people call them, they love getting a lead gen form, but to reach out to other people. Do you have any tips and tricks on that? Because you've done capital raising, which is selling, and you've done some other founders selling, so any tips and tricks to help these people get out of their shell and go do it other than just you got to do it?

Speaker 2: 26:48

than just you got to do it. This thing, it's called a cell phone, solves 99 of your problems. What I mean with that is get on the phone, go through your connections, just start talking to them. Don't text them, don't email them, don't wait for the leads to come in. Just pick up the phone and start calling people no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 27:10

And he's like oh, I can buy lists and I can work with this third party and they will generate the leads for me. And blah, blah, blah. And I'm like no, you don't want them represented. Like how many people do you have in your phone book? And she's like over 2,000,. Because she worked in a job where she had a lot of connections. I was like okay, what do you think? How many of them would buy your product? I'm trying not to. By the way, you don't have to sell them. Let's just assume that you had the best salesperson in the world and they got your phone connections. How many people would buy it? And she goes like, yeah, maybe a hundred.

Speaker 2: 27:46

I'm like okay, how many do you call a day? How many do you text a day? How many do you follow up and just ask them what's happening in their lives? Well, I do maybe one a week. I'm like, yeah, that's your problem. You have 2000 connections. You can call five people every single day. After two weeks you would have learned more than sitting on your ass in front of your inbox waiting for them to call you for the next three to six months. In a week you can learn more. You just got to get over that fear. It's like it's the friction. And there is a great book, it's called the war of art, that talks about friction. Every entrepreneur should read it and I recommend book. I don't like recommending, I recommend action. But that one talk about why you're stopping yourself from doing it. And it was the same.

Speaker 2: 28:31

We just finished cap racing for a small deal. I raised 1.7 million here in the last three weeks. And how did I do that? Well, I got out on social and I said, hey, I'm doing, we're raising capital for this deal. We got overfunded even so. It's a luxury.

Speaker 2: 28:48

But in the first week, not much happened. So what did I do? I picked up my phone, I started calling people and I'm like, hey. So what did I do? I picked up my phone, I started calling people and I'm like, hey, I got this amazing deal. I really think it would be good for you. And because I'm not selling like, yes, I am selling cap racing, but I'm helping them. I'm helping them to get more value. And that's the mind screw up a lot of people think. They think it's salesperson who's calling to sell you a vacuum cleaner, like, or solar panels. Is the modern version Like? No, like. That's not what you're doing. You're helping create more value for them. If they were not, because they won't be able to know about it unless you call them. It's the classical.

Speaker 2: 29:26

You were at the bar and someone had been drinking too much. You take away their keys. It's the same here in the sales. How you should look at it is you're taking away their keys. It's the same here in the sales. How you should look at it is you're taking away their keys to make an informed or uninformed decision by themselves and you're just informing them. You're driving them to the destination and showing them why they get more value out of it. Don't talk about you. Talk about the value you create for them. And all of a sudden you'll have a bunch of people who want to buy your product and be interested in it, but pick up the phone Like. That's simple. Is this in your wheelhouse. By the way, it looks like you're sitting and nodding.

Speaker 1: 30:01

Yeah, I love it. It's again business ownership simplified. You're making it very simple. I say many times because I'm also hired from time to time to be a fractional kind of sales director, because they're not quite big enough to have someone leading their team. And I say that all the time Did you call them? And I go well, I emailed them. Did you call them? Well, no, I sent them a text. Did you call them? I just keep repeating Did you call them? No, I'll call them next week.

Speaker 2: 30:33

No, you call them now. Like I have had salespeople do that when I ran the company and they're like I'll get into contact with them after a weekend. I'm like, no, we're ending this meeting now. You have 10 minutes. You call them now If they don't pick up. I want to hear that they didn't pick up, but we can use this because we're like, and then you come back to me and you tell me how it went and then they come creeping back, tail between their legs and it kind of like a little pop in, like yeah, they could meet us next week. I'm like, thank you, like, yes, pick up the phone.

Speaker 2: 31:02

And, by the way, you said another thing that I think is crucial fractional people. Do not go out and hire full-time people. Hire fractional people all the time. Sure, the hour rate is a little higher, but I guarantee, guarantee you, you get expertise.

Speaker 2: 31:15

You can hire a fractional person one, two days a week, and I don't do this myself, but I know a lot of people who do fractional work. It is so, so, so, so much better than spending three months trying to find the right person and then, when you find them, your company changed anyway, something else happened and now you're in trouble. No, hire a fractional person for three months. Learn, iterate again, ready, fire, aim, great, another great book, but don't go read it. You can just go look, but the concept is the same. It's like just take action, hire a fractional person Three months. You will learn more than hiring the right candidate within the next 12 months and now you know what you truly want.

Speaker 2: 31:57

So I would even argue don't hire the first sales leader, first marketing leader. Don't hire a full-time. Hire a fractional that comes in with expertise. I've done this hundreds of times and learned from them. And then you go hire the right person. And, by the way, if you hire a fractional and this is going to some people are now be mad at me. But okay, do not hire fractionals, don't hire them full-time. They will fall in love with your company, but they will get lazy, so they will work. They will bust their ass as a fractional. I have really bad experience hiring that person afterwards because now they feel like they deserve a vacation and it just happened to be at your company.

Speaker 1: 32:45

I love it. Yeah, so as a business coach, what typically business owners discover is I know their business better than they do. And so I had a business owner years ago saying, would you just lead my sales team? And that's how my fractional side came into play. And I agree with you. The spark, the momentum, the inspiration comes from I get to do, I get to make an impact on your company in the shortest amount of time. I'm getting in one week to meet with your team and I'm out of there. Now go perform. Versus someone that's on their full staff, it's just like it's a job.

Speaker 2: 33:16

Yeah. But the other thing you will do as fractional. You will come in and you will say that person doesn't cut it, that we need to change this process now. No discussion, you won't get results unless we do it. You come in with a transformational mindset because you know you don't have to live with the grumpy people who felt like, why did you fire that person? Why did you put in this? Why did I not get the promotion? Why did you give that commission to him? Like, why did you give that territory to that person? All that fud you deal with. And now you're the bad guy. But you set it straight and now you put in the person who is there building something and nurturing something are two different people and I think fractional are exceptionally good to come in and do a transformation, build it up and then hire the right captain to run the ship after that?

Speaker 1: 34:05

How is the best place? I know there's. A lot of people probably want to learn a lot more about you and your insights.

Speaker 2: 34:16

Where's the best places to go do that? I have a website called leadersadaptcom. Every time I help a client, I try to or it's a repeatable problem I try to write a blog post about it. It's short and precise. The other thing is go follow me either on LinkedIn or on Instagram. I put up a little different content. Instagram is more business, or sorry, instagram is more life and everything else mindset, while LinkedIn is a little bit more professional. But I'm Andreas the CEO on both of them and I just started a YouTube channel and the reason it's early days and I do have one leaders adapter, andreas the CEO, you can find me there as well. I also been building so much course content about leadership fundamentals that a lot of people are missing and I'm going to start putting that out for free on YouTube here in Q2.

Speaker 1: 35:13

Very cool. Well, we talked about sales, we talked about processes. We talked about a lot of things. You just mentioned mindset. You just opened up another Pandora box, so can you help us with mindset? I know that's a very large topic and a lot of people have self-doubts and whatever else, but what are some high level? Here's two or three things that can get you over the hump.

Speaker 2: 35:39

I think the number one thing is stop looping. So I meet a lot of entrepreneurs and help a lot of entrepreneurs and VPs and executives in general that are they're spending more time on what can go wrong rather than like 95% of their time is worrying sometimes I feel like, or doubting their own abilities or their self-worth. I have three exercises that have been super powerful for me. One of them is Mel Robbins' three second rule can be applied in any situations. Or five second rule, which is count out loud, five, four, three, two, one, stop and you stop the negative thoughts, you stop the overanalyzing analysis, paralysis, the looping, and you just take action, move to a different room, like if you've been procrastinating going to the gym or you've been procrastinating going to the gym or you've been procrastinating on making a business decision, like no, count backwards, and every time you find your brain drifting because a lot of people also that are entrepreneurs have adhd or add they just need to stop themselves sometimes on all the other things and just what really matters. So counting outwards makes your brain stop feeling and you have to do something logical. And now you sort of reset your brain and you go do it Like just start again, start again, start again, start again. The second thing I highly recommend is start listening for the positives.

Speaker 2: 37:09

A lot of people that have self-worth or confidence problem. They have negative cognitive bias to looking for the negatives. I often ask people that I work with write down on a post-it note or go write it on your bathroom mirror with a sharpie. Every time someone says something positive or any time something good happens in your life, you have to write it down. And every time something negative happens literally and I have these tools on my desk, or reason because I do them set a timer. You have 10 minutes to feel sorry about yourself. Then we're moving on, and I think doing that allows people to focus on the positive, because now you're doing that constantly and you're searching for the positives in every interaction instead of the negatives. And then I think in the morning, every morning, I have stopped keeping my cell phone in my bedroom and the reason is I grab it the first thing in the morning, otherwise keep it in another room. You can buy it. These analog clocks have been around for a long time. They work. Keep pen and paper by your bed, but start every morning with visualizing, remembering why you started your business, it's your goals, it's your affirmations, depending on if you're into philosophy or religion.

Speaker 2: 38:29

Do your thing that works for you in the morning and then read all the positive things you have heard and said about yourself for the last 30 days every morning, why You're priming your brain to look for the positives in life in any situation, and now you use the timer to stop yourself on the negative and the looping. Just that exercise is massive. And then, end of each day, reflect how many things did I really hear that was positive? Did I really take them down? Do I have them for tomorrow morning? Did I live and lead my company purposefully today? Did I get stuck with distractions, or did I have my ADHD moments and I ran off? Or did I actually take the decisions that truly mattered, or did I just distract myself with other things, and what can I do to do it a little bit better tomorrow? You write that down before you go to bed and read that the first thing in the morning and also write down how you felt in that moment, when you felt, when, before going to bed, when you were you realizing that, oh, I should have done this and you were kind of procrastinating or whatever it was. Capture the emotion and then tell yourself we're not going there in the morning Doing those small, it's small things. It takes a few seconds.

Speaker 2: 39:47

I've seen people turn around from self-worth issues, confidence issues, doing it in three months of doing these exercises, going around saying I'm a badass, like I got this, I love it, and growing their businesses Like it's all. Because here's the thing in the end of the day, if you, as a leader, are not in control of your emotions, everyone will pick up on it instantly. And I'm not saying you're not supposed to feel. I'm saying the opposite feel, but choose what you choose to express to others in emotional way, because you're distracting people, as if you're distracted, you're distracting everyone else. Everyone will notice this instantly.

Speaker 2: 40:26

Um, I'm a big philosophy person. Uh, this book I'm about to show is really hard. Uh, and you're going to spend a lot of time reflecting. And if you read this without taking action, never contact me. I don't want to talk to you. Um, but it's called how to think like a roman emperor. It's the biggest mindset shift that I did and I I it's been used a lot, so it's a a little bit worn, but just the chapters here. I think any entrepreneur should read this. How to speak wisely, how to follow your values, how to conquer desire, how to tolerate pain, how to relinquish fear, how to conquer anger Follow the things that are in this book. Massive change, massive mindset change.

Speaker 1: 41:14

Well, we're on the same page of that, because and we can't let me finish with a quote it has to be you, but I do have to share this because it's so appropriate. I say all the time to my business owners one of the first things we do is I make them agree and commit until you change, nothing around you will change, and that's what you're talking about. Work on yourself, and then everything else happens. So with that, what's your last words of wisdom here? You've had so many.

Speaker 2: 41:44

This is my life quote. This is what I live by. The brain dies twice. First time happens when you say I am who I am it. Nothing will change anyway. And the second time is when your heart stopped beating. My goal in life is to time them the same second, and that means I have to stay curious, I have to learn, I have to adapt, inspect and adapt for the rest of my life, and as soon as I have a preconceived notion, jump to conclusions my brain is dying and I'm going to time them in the same second. My last words won't be thank you, it will be how does that work? Tell me. And then I'm gone.

Speaker 1: 42:30

Wow, that's powerful. That's powerful. You've been a blessing to many. I so appreciate your time. Thank you for having me my pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, boss. Our business is growing. Yours, boss, offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Flexible business loans with business coaching support Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.