How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

I mean, I have clients that do a billion dollars a year in annual revenue

using these tools. I mean, these are business agnostic tools. There it

doesn't matter how big, small, wide, fat, short. It doesn't matter how

many people. These are five foundational tools

that any company can use to really start

getting clarity and then control and then

breakthrough. You

it. Welcome to the

How Leaders Think podcast, the show that transforms you by renewing your

mind and giving you new ways to think. I'm your host, Kenny

Lang, and with me today is Chris White. He is the

founder of the Business Academy and co founder of the

System and Soul Framework. He has successfully built six

companies and had three exits and is now passionately

pursuing radically candid conversations.

Sounds a little dangerous. Maybe we'll get into it with a relentless drive

to mastery. And he's having plenty of fun along the way. He coach

clients using the system and Soul framework. But outside of his

practice, he founded the Micro Business Academy, or MBA.

Cofounded. S two with Benj Miller. He co hosts a System

and Soul podcast with Benj, and he also co founded the EOS

software 90 IO. He also co

authored the Clarity Field Guide. I highly recommend you pick it up, and there will

be a link in the show notes for it. So if you want to get

some clarity, go pick that up and do yourself a favor. But now he

lives in Orlando, Florida, with his incredible wife Darlene

and their lovable lab buddy. Welcome to the how. Chris

White. Wow, Kenny, what an intro. Thank you.

There's a lot, man. Like, your career is just awesome. I'm

shooting to. Maybe if I can get, like, half of that, I'll

make my parents proud. Careful what you're looking for.

Maybe not grow my resume, but maybe I could get some height and I could

be a little taller like you. Well, Chris, tell me

what has been on your mind lately?

Wow. It's a big question,

right? With everything that's going on politically, economically,

around the world. But for me,

I live in the entrepreneurial space

with stage one and stage two companies.

They're small businesses from a million to, say, 50

million, I suppose, at the high end and ten or more

employees. That's where my heart and soul

is. It's after I left

career with Motorola where I really

discovered that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and

be my own boss. You read

that whole litany of things, and here I am at 58 years

old. I care

deeply about the small business owners. They create two thirds of the jobs in

this country, and the problem is, they're really

underserved. And so that's why people like you and

I are out there

trying to help them beat the odds

and succeed. And that doesn't always have to be tied to money,

although we're capitalists and we got to make a profit, but it's so

much more than that, right? And so where my

head is at right now is all around

helping my clients become better leaders

and really looking inward

because at the early stage, they wear so many hats

and there's a lot of distractions and you

know the drill, you've lived it and so have your

listeners. And so just

giving them an opportunity to take a breath and slow down,

to look inward and ask themselves,

are they feeding and nurturing their professional

side because they're so busy taking care of everybody else? And

then we all know, especially early stage

burnout, passion carries you so

long and you start getting burned out. And so

I talk a lot about being in warrior shape as an

entrepreneur, living, eating and

breathing a mindset

of self care so that you can be the

worry your family needs you to be, the worrier your company and

employees need you to be. And it's hard to do when you're a

small business again because you're wearing so many hats. But that's where

my heart and soul is and it's where it's been

for about the last 20 years if I. Stop and think about

it, right, I think that's really interesting.

Being in warrior shape, of course, I know with the

system and soul I've had the organizational habit

of following your battle rhythm. And that's something you've talked a

lot to the group and to me about and shared some of those

practices. And I think you're spot on with

the passion only takes you so far, right? Like

your passion, your gut, those sorts of things. So

in your years of experience and then now currently where

the marketplace is, which is obviously it's evolved a

lot and even more rapidly since COVID

hit, that changed the marketplace, accelerated a lot of things,

decelerated others. What have you seen

that's been sort of a prevailing wisdom

around, say, just being passionate, maybe not

having that warrior mindset?

Where is that thinking coming from? Why is it still around? Even

though we have a litany of materials that

say, be disciplined, do this, do that, where is

that coming from? And have you pinpointed that? Yeah,

I thought a lot about that and there's a lot of what you're talking

about behind my inspiration for the Micro Business

Academy because you hear MBA and

immediately you think of school, right?

It's a great plan, words. But for me, MBA is

about mindset. You got to have a

healthy mindset and then you got to

believe in that mindset.

We can all suffer from impostor

syndrome and all those kind of things creep in. But if you have

the right mindset and if you believe in it even when

people are telling you're crazy, you have those two

things, all you got to do is take action. So it's a

mindset, it's a belief, and then it's put it

into action and that's where the rubber hits the road, right? And

so with the Microbusiness Academy, there

is a gap from stage one, like maybe

from startup to five years. Right. We all know the

stats of failures on 90% given

factors. Certainly for some

companies, the pandemic to your point has been extremely tough. For others,

it's been a boom. So

I am looking at now I've dedicated myself to

stage two entrepreneurial businesses, a little more mature, a little

more advanced. They have a mentor leadership team, and I've been doing

that for 13 or 14 years. How? And I've loved

every minute of it, truly have loved every

minute of it. And with all of that time, energy

and experience and being in an operating system,

wanting to evolve the operating system to meet my clients

needs. So that kind of led into the birth of System and

Soul. But then I realized I have an opportunity

at this stage of my journey, my

entrepreneurial journey, that I want to go back

down and serve the underserved. I want to go to those

stage one small stage two companies and give them

access to a framework like System and

Soul, a coach like you or I

who's walked in their shoes, right? And then a

cohort of ten or twelve other

small business owners that they can all share

their collective knowledge to grow and scale.

So when you break those three pieces out, these small

companies are lucky to even be able to afford one of those

three because when you put them all together,

that's a six figure investment. So I

was like, Wait a minute, it's okay that they

can't afford it right now, but in my mind and

heart, it's not okay that we can't get them

what they need in a way that's affordable.

So that's when I just said, you know what, I'm going to start the

MBA and I'm going to serve those smaller companies.

And we've given them all three of

the framework, the coach and the

cohort, for $500 a month.

Wow. And we meet for 4 hours a month

like a peer group. But this is all

geared towards getting the five foundational

tools as their

foundation for whatever the year that they're in, they're

starting, or maybe they're two years in and struggling. But this

lays the groundwork over the course of a year because again, you have to remember,

they're wearing a lot of hats. So time is like

their number one. Yeah, they can't do a full day

session or two, back to back full. Day sessions, like a

larger company budget to support it. So I'm just like, you know what

I mean? God bless all the coaches out there that are

successful in talking about making their six.

That's fantastic. Okay. But

I had a post this morning in my battle rhythm, which I'm happy

to talk about. I read a

quote from Mother Teresa. The finish line is for your

ego, the journey is for your soul.

Awards, accomplishments,

and that's all great and I've certainly been a part of all of

that, but that's really not what

motivates me. It's getting the dirt under your

fingernails. I come from farm stock, and, you

know, I want to get I want to get my hands dirty. And and so

anyway, they they're just it's it's it's an

area that is underserved, and, you know, I'm hoping

to be able to build a network of coaches around the country

who are as passionate about helping

stage one and stage two entrepreneurial companies as I

and making the journey their focus.

Yeah, that's really good. Just to clear up,

just so people can understand or who aren't already familiar with

the system and soul framework. When you

talk about teaching these stage one companies

in the MBA, the five foundational tools, can you briefly just

go over those and tell the listener what that is?

I don't know what it was like for you when you started your for

business. I think it's safe to assume we all share

a lot of the same issues.

But for me, it's like

I'm across between a visionary and what we

call an operator or co. Same in our s two

language. So I'm across between the two.

So what does that mean? Well, it means I can get fired up and

passionate, lots of ideas,

and then I go execute and it's like, wait, White,

I don't even have a plan. I got to get this out of my head

and get it out. Right. So our

first foundational tool at the NBA helps

that owner visionary capture their

vision and put it in our roadmap. It's a one

page business plan called the S Two Roadmap.

We start with that tool and then we build

an organizational chart. Now you may think, well, gosh, there's only

five people in the company. We understand

that organizations that small have a

simple chart, but there's power

a couple areas in the chart. One is where you get to

define each seat with clarity, right?

Because read Daniel Coil culture code.

Employees want to know specifics in

order to get that psychological safety. What is

my role, how can I scale in your company? Right? And I know

you're an expert in psychological safety as well, so

you can go way deeper than I can. But the idea

is we get their vision down in the

roadmap. We build their chart. But for the

future, for the six to twelve months

out, hey, where are we going to be at? What do we think we're going

to need? So we're always strategizing, right? So

we get their chart done. And what does that do? Well, one, it

provides a structure, right? Just like S Two is a

framework.org, cohort is a structure and its purpose is to

provide clarity in every role so that

everybody understands, right? Okay. Once we do that, then

we build a scorecard, right? We

build a simple scorecard of 15 KPIs. Key

Performance Indicators we have two or three from each department

so that we have a good cross section of the major KPIs in the

business. And what that does, it keeps your finger on the pulse of

what's happening. And we teach our clients to look at that weekly.

We also have monthly, we also have quarterly,

so roadmap or chart

scorecard one, two, three. Then we

teach them what we call quarterly objectives. Those are your highest

priorities, three to six every quarter on average.

And that is what you focus on and execute just

those three to six high level priorities we call quarterly

objectives. And then finally we teach them how to

communicate effectively and productively. When we

surveyed businesses on

the productivity of their meetings

on a scale of one to ten, the average score was a four.

We have a tool called the weekly Sync

that is structured in a way so that

everybody on the team, whether it's two or twelve or anything in

between, on the senior leadership team this gives

them a tool to communicate once a

week effectively productively capturing

decisions and setting actions. Right? So

again, the idea is one of the major

problems in most companies is communication. Well, let's start young.

Learn how to have an excellent meeting that actually

starts on time, ends on time, right? Right.

Those five tools any business can

get started with and as a matter of fact we offer the S two

roadmap free so you can go to

Microbusinessacademy IO, download our

roadmap and take a stab at it and you

can even call us and we won't charge you. We'll give you some

advice or direction. We'll link that

up so that we click straight on it.

Yeah, we're here to help. Again,

if we can get those smaller companies I mean think about it Kenny,

if we could help these smaller companies just move the

needle a little bit then that

means we're putting them in a position to beat the

odds at the early stage. Right?

I have clients that do a billion dollars a year in annual revenue

using these tools. I mean these are business agnostic tools. It

doesn't matter how big, small, wide, fat, short, it doesn't matter how

many people. These are five foundational tools

that any company can use to really

start getting clarity and then

control and then breakthrough.

Yeah, which is excellent.

I attempted a different system

with my first company and tried to do it all on my

own, just gathering what I could, trying to

fit all the pieces together because I saw the benefit.

But it is so hard to do when like

you said, you're wearing all the different hats. You're,

chief everything. Officer. Essentially your

name is probably going to be on 90% of the seats in that chart to

start with and that makes it difficult. But

having someone guide you through it can feel like such

a breath of fresh air. And not only that, the one thing I do

love in the model is the cohort piece. And I'm

wondering if you can talk a little bit about why that was

important, because obviously with your reputation in

the marketplace and expertise, you could have

figured out some sort of one on one low cost way to

like, here, I'm going to teach you the tool. I'll walk you through like you

and maybe if you have one other employee or something just to bounce ideas off

of and we could take it through. But you chose to build this into

a cohort model. Can you talk us through why

that's valuable or why that was so important to you?

Me? Coming up, I did not belong to

a peer. I didn't have a mentor. My dad was a very

successful entrepreneur building two companies,

but I lost them at 32. And that

was just when I was starting to take my sort of

entrepreneurial leap of faith. So I didn't

have my dad, I didn't have

a mentor or a coach.

And I feel that

that hurt me and caught up with me

later in my life as a business

owner because there were things that I

was naive about still. How about the stuff that's

in your blind spot? There's nobody to tell you what's

in your blind spot. And I got a lot. Right. So

the cohort, for me, number one,

I want to help as many small businesses as I can

with the time that I have left on the planet.

I serve God, I serve my family, and I

serve my clients. And I

think that when we can pull. Our cohorts

are generally maxed out at twelve.

So anywhere up to twelve business owners in a single cohort.

And I don't have all the

answers. I don't look at

this as a consultancy where I'm a

SME on a bunch of different things, right? I mean, I'm good

at some things, I'm great at some things, and others

I should be delegating and not have anything to do with. Right.

And so I wanted the MBA

to have again when I broke it

down. The MBA is an operating

framework. It's a coach and a cohort. And if you break those

out individually, a

peer group start at maybe ten or eleven

grand. A good business coach

is going to be 40 plus.

A full implementation of a

framework, that's 50 plus. So

we're getting up there where they're just completely

priced out of those. So if I can give them

the framework and I can give them a coach, then let's give them

a cohort so that we can leverage the

collective knowledge in the room, not just One Person

1012. It's a conversation like,

hey, if you have real world experience, we don't speak from

theory ever, right? That there's no room for

theory. This is about real world experiences, things

they're living and dealing with in the moment. And then

these companies could be at different stages. Nine out of ten

times, there's another person in the room where Debbie over

here can actually help Peter because she's two

years ahead of him and she already dealt with that.

Right. That's powerful. Instead of

just hearing it from the coach, they're hearing it from their peers.

And the other thing is, you know this as well, and your

listeners that are on the smaller side where it's just them and one or two

other folks, it's lonely, brother.

It's lonely. You are on an island because you wake

up thinking about work, right?

When you jump out of bed and your feet hit the ground, the

devil should say, oh, shit, he's up.

Right? Amen. We have a fire lid under our ass.

We got to get out there. I got to take care of my

family, I got to take care of my employee. We got to build it.

So the Cohort, I think,

just is so powerful. Everybody

can share their real world experiences. We're all going to learn there's more than

one way to skin a cat. And generally in that

dialogue, we will be able to help peer

white his issues. If

nobody in the room has experience, I

generally do. I don't always on everything, but if

I do, then I just share my real world experience

and we just have dialogue about it and they try to find

the win. We're looking for the win so

that this person can leave that discussion with an action

item, then go try. Right.

That's really good. I think more and more

somebody used this and it resonated with me recently

was you need people for the journey,

like fellow travelers. Yeah. And that

can make all the difference because you're spot on. It is lonely, and you can't

put all of that weight on. You have a few employees, and so

you end up feeling like family,

and it can be an easy temptation to

overshare and overburden somebody who's not meant to carry that weight.

Same thing with your family. They may not understand what you

do, they may not care what you do, not

in a rude way, but that's not

their passion. They're passionate about you and that

you're happy and you're pursuing what you love and that it puts food

on the table and helps everybody have the life they want. Everybody's contributing

in a different way. But that was one of

the most shocking things to me with my first business with

my marketing agency is just how

isolated I was. And then you only got these sort of

unless you're intentional about joining a peer group, which they

are, you're going to easily find 10, 11,

12,000 on the low side for peer

groups, and there's obviously ones that are much more expensive.

But every now and then you get to be around another owner and you finally

it's like you've been in battle. You just look at each other and you go,

yeah, man, that's tough. The

most devastating statistic, which I don't

have a stat, I hear different ones thrown around.

But the the rate of entrepreneurial suicide

of just and

entrepreneurialism or ness, whatever word you

choose to use is hard. If it was easy, everybody

would do it and have 100 million dollar business. But

it's not. But the part that gets to

people is the loneliness. It's the isolation.

And having some travelers for the journey, even if it's just for a

year, even if it's just for a few months, can make

all of the difference. So in some cases, not just like

business saving, not to oversell it,

but in some cases having a cohort and just some trusted people that

understand what you're going through and can listen and speak into it,

may actually be life saving in some instances.

And we may never know it. Yeah, I

was on a coaching call this morning and

the owner,

70% of their ecommerce

vanished

over a year and a half COVID

they were successful. They've been in business for a number of years

and like a lot of other business,

they didn't see it coming or whatever. And then all of a sudden,

bang. And he's a small

business. To your point, he can't

talk to his wife because he doesn't want to get

her upset or not that he's withholding information.

But nonetheless, it's not someone they can talk

to. They can't talk to another SLT

member or someone on the inside. And so the peer group gives

them the opportunity. Hey, call Coach

Chris. Call Coach Kenny. In our

ecosystem, call coach. And the

coach might know another business owner with direct

experience and then you can hook them up in the system. Right.

Like that's what it's about. Help first

and then let's go put a dent in the world,

in this entrepreneurial world and let's change those. I

know the suicide rates in our

servicemen and women transitioning is at an all time

high. It's around purpose, lack

of right. You have a purpose when you're career military, then you

you come out, what's your purpose? And the the small business

owners, you know, they number one financial

pinch, right? Yeah. Weight

is on their shoulders. The finance, that's the

one that can get you. Yeah,

that's a struggle too. Because also, especially if you're a

business person here in the US, so much

of success culturally is measured

through finances, which is just

stupid. So for everybody listening, if you're measuring all your success

by finances, that's stupid. Find something better, find purpose.

Feel free to email me, I'll debate you. But

yeah, you're absolutely right. That weight can be

crushing to perform in there,

unless you really get attached to your why,

unless your reason for being in business

connected to the people you feel led and called and

purposed to help. Which is one reason why I so

love the Roadmap, is

not that it creates the work I used to do in marketing

where I'd create a persona and we'd figure out who this person is

and we sell the small business

bob or something. But you really can

clearly see all that jumbled mess in your heart and your

head and get it down on paper. The thing I've

said, and it's resonated with my

clients, especially before they were my clients,

is I talk about building a business and being an

entrepreneur. You're doing it in large part because there's

a sense of purpose. There's a desire for freedom. You thought

being an entrepreneur was a path to freedom, and a lot of times it feels

like it was a path into a prison of your own making,

and all you want to do is get out. And because you can't blame anybody

else, right? You can't blame them. Just the man, the boss

is working me too hard and doing that. You are the man. You are the

boss. Or the woman? Like, who the hell do you have to complain

to except yourself, right? Employees

don't quit companies. They quit bosses. So now what are you going to

do? Yeah, you can't say I'm not being

paid enough. Well, who are you going to talk to? I'm working too many hours.

Who are you going to tell that to? I feel like I'm

working stuff I'm not good at. Welcome to being an entrepreneur.

But I think what's so powerful about what you've set out

is because at the scale that these

companies are, at these stage one companies you're talking about, they need

it as much as the big players.

Right. The problem becomes they don't

have the 40, 50,000 to just throw

at expense at work in

every penny. Feels precious when you're at that size.

Right. And if we can help

those companies go from, hey, they're shooting up, and they're

promising to, hey, I'm healthy, is what I hear you saying. It's

like, I have peace, I have a platform.

I have a chance to make it into that stage,

too, with a few things around me that

maybe later on, I can just be one of Coach

Chris's clients instead of in this cohort. But I got some

work to do to get there, but maybe I just need some help connecting the

dots along the way. Yeah, I tell you, the

cohort staying on that, it's powerful

in that when we're doing the roadmap right

now in the cohort, it's generally the owner,

founder. They can bring their number two if

they want, and that person can come at a discounted rate.

Again, we want to make it fun and easy to get in there and learn

these tools. But that

roadmap when we're in session, and

let's say we're working on

Sandra's onlyness statement,

right. She's entered a market that

is thriving and competition, and she's trying to

carve out what makes her the only in

what she does. And so the cool thing is

she's a team of two so she gets one other

opinion. So she's got two opinions. But coming into the

cohort, everybody helps each other

craft that.

And we're big proponents of AI, so

we love AI to help us become

deeper thinkers and better

writers, if you will, really capturing

because, look, when we get in these sessions,

chris, I'm not an English major,

I'm not a marketing, not a novelist,

I'm afraid. And I'm like, no, we're going to use

AI to help take what all your words are,

and we're going to assemble and build a really good

definition that conveys exactly what is in your

heart. Right. Because we're talking about when we build an

onlyness statement or when we discover our core values,

right? These are all things that are

pieces of your culture that is going to attract the

right kind of people so that we can put right people,

right seat, right. Build that culture. So, you know, you know

the old saying, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want

to go far, go together. That you made me think of that,

because even if you're three people on

a team, it's a grind. Right. And that's nice to have two other

people, but, man, going it

alone. Yeah. You might think you're moving faster,

but you're just digging a hole. Don't

mistake activity for progress. Exactly.

Yeah. So I hear

that we can give people a framework. So there's some

structure in the MBA, in the business academy.

They're going to get a framework, the S, two framework in particular, to give

them some structure to help get their thinking down

so other people can participate and carry the torch and work

with them. They're going to get a cohort. They're going to get

travelers for the journey, people with real world experience that are

roughly the same place as them, that can weigh in and help

shoulder some of that weight. They're going to get executive

coaching from an experienced coach, somebody that can

be that trusted advisor, that can ask them the hard questions

that maybe other people won't their

employees surely won't ask them, but

they can ask those tough things. And it's not going

to take them totally out of the business for a full day and all that,

so that it's going to be a good use of their

time. And I think people who don't

pursue that are going to move more slowly or spin their wheels more

than somebody who has all those. So if that's how people should be

thinking about a group, a framework and a coach,

what is the first step? Somebody and let's just say in the next 24 hours,

obviously we're going to link up to the business academy website. We want them to

go check it out and even consider

joining one of your cohorts. But what's the first

step? An owner is listening, saying, you know what? I

feel the pain of what Chris has just said. I. Do need to take

a step. Maybe I'm not ready for the MBA or to commit to something like

that, but I want to take a step. What would you tell that

listener, that owner, that founder, that they could do in the next 24

hours? I think if someone

is out there in their small business and

their owner founder number two, and

they're open, they're doing business,

but they're just struggling and their

frustrations are high. Right. So

the first step is asking yourself, are

we in enough pain? Where we should go? Start

looking at these resources out there that can help. Okay,

they have to kind of measure their pain. Now we have a

diagnostic that they can take and

it sets a baseline of the health of

their business in its current state. So we use that as a

baseline. So maybe that's a good first

step because it will ask you a bunch of questions that

maybe you have all in your head and you thought

about them or maybe the question scared you too

much. I think the first step

is if any of this message is resonating

with you, we have a free asset called

the S Two diagnostic. It's going to take you less than

two minutes, I think three minutes to answer 20 ish questions.

And that's going to give you some context of where

your company's health is, current state, through the

lens of the business academy, the system and sole

framework. That's what I would recommend. And we can give you the link

to that too, in the show notes. Yeah, we'll definitely link that

up. And one thing I do want to tell because I think that's a

fantastic place to start, it's free, so

it's not going to cost you anything, is

for that founder, that owner. If you're going through it, don't just

answer the questions and get your results. I mean, those are important.

They're really helpful. Pay attention to what the questions are asking

because those things can clue you in if you're like, yeah,

I almost never do it. And that's your answer. But look at what it says.

Like that may clue you into, well, maybe that's something I should be

investigating. Like, are you having a weekly

meeting with the other leaders or some

leaders even in a cohort to discuss

your business? Well, if you're almost never

on that, want to jot that question down

as something you should start considering. So I think that you

could get sort of two things, the scoring, but let those questions inform you

about. Maybe those are some areas, like Chris said,

MBA stands for Micro Business Academy, but it also stands for

Mindset Believe and Take Action. Right?

There's some things to take action and that can start to lead you in the

right direction. If you're out there and

you're a business owner and you have a couple of people, like

if you have a small senior leadership team,

maybe you're not so formalized, but you have some people that are

your trusted advisors. Have them take the S two

diagnostics so you can get their

interpretation. Now you'll have two or three scores to

take a look at, so I think that's a good first step.

That's excellent. And, Chris, if anybody wants

to connect with you and ask you questions

or learn more about the work that you're doing, where would you send them?

Sure. Microbusinessacademy. IO

my email is real simple, chris at

coachcris. IO all right. We'll link

both of those up, and we'll also be linking to Chris's LinkedIn.

It is a great follow. It's a whole mix

of different things, thoughts. And

he's also pretty generous to share about the practices that

when you heard him talk about battle rhythm and some of those things that have

just helped him achieve all the things you heard at the beginning of the

call, those are all things that he does as a regular

discipline. So he's pretty generous with that. We'll chris, thanks so much for

coming on the show. I'm sure we'll have other topics and would love to have

you back in the future. So thank you so much. And

until next time, remember Lange, how you think you'll change, how you lead.

We'll see you next time.

Our.