Episode 108 - Bill Prater - Leaders on Leadership
Choosing to become a leader is like choosing to go out into the open seas. You will definitely have to face the tides and weather some storms. One to prepare leaders for some of the inevitable tougher stuff that is going to come their way is Bill Prater, the founder of Business Mastery and Scaleology. In this episode, he joins Dr. Tracey Jones to talk about how he is helping business owners and entrepreneurs accelerate into the future they dream of. He reveals some of his wisdom with us by way of speaking about the price to pay for leadership—how to handle loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. Bill then takes us deep into Scaleology, discussing the things that signify growth and profitability and how they are leading people who are tired of the status quo to change their business from ordinary to extraordinary.
—-
Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
Bill Prater - Leaders on Leadership
Our guest is Bill Prater. Bill is the Founder of Business Mastery and Scaleology. Bill works with entrepreneurs at all stages of the game on how they can scale their business and they want to break through to what they know they are capable of doing. You're going to love knowing his perspective on the price of leadership. Bill earned his reputation as America's Business Alchemist by helping business owners and entrepreneurs break free of inertia and accelerate into the future they dream of. He loves nothing better than sharing what he has learned by working with those who are dissatisfied with the status quo and eager to transform themselves and their businesses. Bill, I am looking forward to this. You have said the words that every entrepreneur loves to hear. The status quo has got to go, “How do I break free?” Thank you for blessing us with your presence.
You are welcome. I am super pumped to be here with you, Tracey.
Thanks. Let's get right down into it. Bill, my father loved leadership and he was pragmatic. He's like, “You're going to have to fight the fight. It's worth it but a lot of times, it's tough.” He wanted leaders to be prepared for some of the inevitable tougher stuff that is going to come their way. I love that. It was almost like he let you know, “Don't fold. This is par for the course.” One of his most well-known speeches was called The Price of Leadership. He unpacks four prices that the leader has to pay if they were truly engaging in leadership.
Every leader has their own experience. You know as well as I do because you work with a lot of different business owners that leadership, entrepreneurship, and business is contextualized. The first one he brings out is loneliness. We've all heard, “It's lonely at the top,” or “I don't want to be the boss because they're my drinking buddies.” You've heard it all before. Can you unpack for me, Bill, even what you've seen with some of the entrepreneurs you'd help? As you become an expert in your field, what did loneliness as a leader look like for you? Maybe some experience. What would you do to encourage other leaders that may be in that season of loneliness right now?
I like the way you framed it. It is correct that I do live a little bit vicariously through my clients. I've got my own experiences and then I've gotten theirs. I pile them on. For me, a lot of thinking about my growth through the business community, I went like most people from being an employee, then a couple of promotions in a corporate environment. Finally, I own my own business, so that was fantastic. I went from all kinds of buddies to all alone. I remember that being quite a shock. Probably in looking back, the feeling that I had early on was my first business was an investment banking business.
Prior to that, I had seven other partners and another financial-oriented company, but I went to my own investment bank. All of a sudden, I was without any peers. The most interesting thing is that when I was partnered with other people, it was a private company, but I had people that were my peers. I would like to talk to them about whatever the world was going on in my mind. When I had my company and I immediately had employees, I had quite a few things I didn't want to talk to them about and didn't feel comfortable talking to them about. That was what I'll call I didn't have any peers anymore.
I've never heard it said like that but that is a difficult transition. I'm sure most of us reading have gone from being in bureaucracies. What bureaucracies had where they may have fallen down in other areas was a lot of camaraderie and a lot of nonsense but it was always a lot of fun. When I reflect back on the military, my war stories are when I was in Fortune 100 companies. That's what you remember, the people.
I love that you said that with no peers. What do you do then? I love how you said that. Somebody to unpack what's going on inside your head. What would you recommend to solopreneurs? Without a peer, you may have other people, but you hit it. You don't want to burden your employees. It's like telling your kids everything going on in your marriage. That's not right to do. What would you recommend for them?
What I would recommend is to take off your cape, remember that we're not superheroes, and we don't have to do it all. Step one, Tracey, is being able and willing, and more than that, understanding that you've absolutely got to surround yourself with people that are better than you are at a variety of things. If you're going to be super successful, people that are better than you are about everything. I was fortunate that I quickly understood the value of having what I'll call A-players, so that they were able to fundamentally relieve me of, “I will need to do it all.” That was part one. Part two is because you're not going to find them within your own organization, you need to find someplace else, if you will, people you can talk to. Where are those peers? They're in a variety of places, but the key is to make sure that they are peers.
Many of us have paid a lot of money for peer groups to grow our businesses that have only been in for years. I'm not putting that on them but I'm just saying. Can you unpack them when you say, “Make sure they are your peers?”
I know you're going to ask me about visioning. My concept of having a vision is to project yourself forward in time and space during a different place and a better place, a place that's grander if you will. What I meant by making sure that you find the right set of peers is I'm a big believer in pretending that you belong in the group before you do. By that, I mean given that you want to be a billionaire, that was part of your vision and you're not there yet.
The peers you want to be with are other people that are billionaires. They don’t want you around because you're pipsqueak if you will. You've got to come and inch your way there. The key is to always be in a peer group, either one that you put together or somebody else puts together on your behalf or on other people's behalf. To the extent that you possibly can, if you're in kindergarten, probably get into 2nd or 3rd grade.
I joined one and these people are way above me. It is intimidating. I remember sitting there thinking, “What have I done?” They did the same thing. They looked up or tagged along or made the call and said, “Show me. Teach me. I’ll absorb it.” You talked a little bit about that when you were covering loneliness to do it on and take off your cape. Bill, that goes into the next point my dad talked about, which was weariness. It's tiring. There are days where I go to bed. I sleep well, but I'm still tired. Like my voice, my vocal cords are tired. I know that means I'm speaking wrong, but how do you stay replenished? How do you stay at the top of your game as a leader?
That's two questions at once. I'll give you a case study. I talked to a client of mine and he was saying that one of his senior managers was defending herself. Her team wasn't performing high. She was defending herself by saying, “Kevin, I worked hard. I worked my tail off. I have to stay late and I have to work on weekends.” I said, “Kevin, what did you say?” He said, “I said, Bill, what you told me to say.” That is a red light. Whenever you find that you're working long, working hard, and getting tired, those are signals that you're not doing what you should be doing, which is to divest yourself of everything and certainly, the things that you're not good at. If you're able to spend your time doing things that you love to do, in my case, mentoring business owners and their senior teams on rapidly scaling their business. I love to do that. Is it hard work? Maybe, but it gives me energy as opposed to taking it. If you're in an environment where you're not doing something that you love and that you're good at, it will drain your energy. When that happens, you're in the wrong spot.
Scaleology: Having a vision is about projecting yourself forward in time and space into a better place, a grander place if you will.
Like dad would say, “There's miserable miserable and happy miserable.” I’m going to be where I want to be but I still get up at 7:00 and I dream about getting orders out because I'm like, “This is where it's supposed to be happening.” If you are feeling that other drain where you're exhausted, that’s great, that is a red flag. Not all work is always the greatest thing in the world but it should give you a purpose and you should feel like, “I'm making a difference,” or you may need to look elsewhere.
Summarizing what we talked about. All of us will get weary, worn out, and tired. That's going to happen and it's a good thing because it does then give you a signal back that says, “This is the wrong space for me. I'm doing something I'm not that good at. I'm doing something I don't love.” What's great about human beings is what you may hate, somebody else loves. You’ve just got to find those folks.
You do you and play to your strengths. Sometimes, if you get completely in the wrong career field, everybody else will be digging it but you're maybe coded for something different. Bill, that's gold. Loneliness, weariness, and now my dad talked about abandonment. It wasn't the negative abandonment like walking out on something. He said, “When you dial into leadership, you're going to have to stop thinking about what you like and want to focus on in favor of what you need and ought to focus on.” It’s more of this limited hyperfocus.
You can keep people moving into that preferred vision and not pulled off by us. Entrepreneurs love looking at every bright shiny object that comes across our way. Corporate America does too. Every time somebody would come back from a meeting, “Now we're going to do this.” Even in the military, we’re rolling out this initiative and it's like, “Always something new.” We knew six months from now, it wouldn't be doing it anymore. How do you stay focused and abandoned so you can stay on what you're supposed to be doing?
We talked a little bit about finding the right peer group that would be 2 or 3-grade levels above you. When you move to that group, the people that you leave behind will feel abandoned by you. They'll do their best to tell you not to go. They'll say, “Tracey, you shouldn't go join that group. That group is way over your head.” They're trying to keep you back because they love you the way you are. The flip side of that is that you're going to feel as you move towards your vision that you're being abandoned by your old peer group, which could include.
In my case, it did, my family. Not my children, but my siblings and so forth because they felt that I shouldn't be the way I was. They didn't see I work for a fantastic company and they thought that was the end-all. In your case, “You're with the military? How could you ever leave? What a great place to be.” In my case, it happened to be a company called IBM. “How could you leave IBM? It’s the greatest place to be.” Your dad was a genius about naming these four things because I'm a big believer in emotional signals.
If you're feeling this abandonment emotion, that's a good thing normally because that means that you're moving from comfortable to uncomfortable. We need to be aware of where people want you to go, but if you're going to follow your dream, you best keep going forward, and then you yourself will feel the same. You'll feel like you've been abandoned. You've been accepted by this next group, the third graders if you will.
We had this one book, Journal of a Climber, which talks about you having to leave Mount Majority. Few people do and they're going to be like, “Don't go. It's fun here.” You're going to have to walk away from them, leave a lot of stuff before, and get ready to start climbing. That visual always stuck with me that they love you but the true people will love you no matter what you morph into. You’ve got your third graders up here that are waiting for you to move forward. That's important for leaders to understand that point you brought up. How did you handle that with family? That’s tough. Being in a family that runs a second-generation business, that's different. I never minded, if you weren't family, what you said to me. Everybody's entitled to their opinion but when it's family, that's a whole different dynamic. How do you deal with that?
It's a bit of segmentation. By that, I mean your move to this new space is, at least in what we're talking about, is business-oriented. You're moving from a job to a different job or from your current town to a different town with a different job, etc. I believe in segmentation. Meaning that you're not leaving your family from the love and the family relationships, and all that thing. You've just simply changed your uniform.
Out of the first three that we talked about, as you're working with companies and leaders that want to scale, what seems to be the one that people have the most struggle with? Before we get to vision. These are all things that take you out of your comfort zone. You've got this case study because you talk to all these different people. Is there one that sticks out or do people land on, “I don't like being alone,” or “I don't want to abandon. It's too uncomfortable?” I know you get into their breakthrough, but where do the people struggle the most in getting to their breakthrough?
Generally speaking, different people, of course, have different struggles. Most of the time, what I see people doing is there's a lot of pressure. By people, I mean business owners and entrepreneurs. There are many leaders that are not business owners and entrepreneurs, but that's where I focus. For example, if you own a retail store and you're selling some service. There's the industry standard or the way it's done. If you're going to become the finest, elite, or market leader, you can't get there by doing what the rest of the industry does.
The rest of the industry is ordinary and average. That's what industry standards mean. The hardest thing for people to do is to understand and believe in their heart that they’ve got to leave their industry behind if you're going to be the best in the city. If you have the number one salon in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, you're going to be different by definition than everybody else in this part of the crowd. The hardest transition to make is to understand that you cannot just keep doing the same thing everybody else does harder because that'll get you weary. You can't do that thing.
You've got to say, “I know I've got to do it differently.” If you go back to some of the super successful people like Oprah, for example, she didn't do it all like everybody else in any industry at first. She did entirely differently. She had huge criticism at the beginning of her career and she still does. The same thing happened to Richard Branson. What a kook. How could he possibly believe he can be profitable in airlines? That’s amazing. Nobody's profitable on airlines but he had to do it differently. The biggest anchor is believing in the crowd. You called it mount majority.
What you're saying goes on the last point, which is vision. I'll let you define vision in your own terms. Is that what you're talking about? Do you help them hone their vision, and then they get tightly focused, they can see where they need to go, and the rest they don't have to deal with? Is that where vision plays into it?
Scaleology: We need to be aware of where people want you to go, but if you're going to follow your dream, you best keep going forward, and then you yourself will feel the same
Yes. First off, vision could be somebody that's smoking some funny weed. They have a vision. What we're talking about is projecting into the future. For example, the industry norm would say you need something like a vision statement. A statement is a sentence. That's not a vision in the way you and I are talking about it. A vision is a destination. A lot of people think that they can't do that because they will look around their circumstances.
What I call it is one of the foundational principles of Scaleology, the model that I have. People are taught to play with the hand they get dealt with. I'm thinking about cards here but think, “I've been dealt this hand and therefore I'm in this box that I have.” For example, somebody dealt me with this pandemic crisis. Now that we've seen corporations earning reports come out, industry to industry. They're not all in trouble. Many are thriving enormously.
I have a client who happens to be my son. His business is that he deals in the hospitality industry. People might say, “That industry is hurting,” but the way my son positioned his business is he's of strategic value to his client. They increased this contract and raised these rates, so he wouldn't go someplace else, etc. All of that's part of having a vision of the future. A lot of people say, “I can't do that.” One is, they feel constrained by their environment and they've got to get that out of the way.
Instead, a vision needs to be constraint-free. Don’t worry about what city you're in, how much capital you have, and what your current personal skills are. Don't worry about the employees that you have. Don't worry about any of that thing. Just have this dream and a vision of the future. People say to me, “How do you do that?” I say, “You have to think like a kindergartener because they have no restrictions and no barriers. There are no lack of resources. They just dream big.”
Step one is to dream big and the result of doing that will be that a lot of people think you're a cookie, strange, and so forth. What will they do? They'll stay away. Exactly what you want. You don’t want people that don't believe in you. That’s the truth. The more powerful your vision is, the more likely you'll attract the people that want to play that game and they'll self reject. They'll stay away from you because they don't believe in it. That's the way I believe in vision. Forget about the industry standards. Instead, invent your own future. All of the super successful people have had outrageous visions.
I get pitchbooks in some of these VC emails and stuff and see what's going on in the financial industry. Trust me. There's so much money going on out there in being built, bought, and traded. That was good for me to see during the whole shutdown because everybody's like, “That’s it. It's over. Everybody's dead.” “No, somebody’s buying somebody else for $44 billion. Don't tell me it's dead. There's tons of stuff.” These people don't let something like this shut them down. They're like, “No, the future is.”
Leadership is easy if everything goes right. You don't need a leader because everybody does what they were supposed to do. As you get good at handling these crises, you realize they're clarifying on calls and they prune off what you don't need to be focused on anymore. That's what I think when you get the right advocates, but I love that you said that the right people will be attracted to your vision, who you need and the rest, stay away. Bill, we covered the four prices of leadership. Is there anything else that you want to leave our readers with? What would you like to share with them that you've heard a lot about? As far as I know, you've got the Scaleology thing and that's what every entrepreneur wants to know. I'd love to scale. That signifies growth and profitability.
A lot of people think somehow or another, they get in their mind that leadership is something that you're born with. Leadership is a skill that you can learn. That's true. Some people are better at the skill than other people. Some people are better at swimming, a skill, than other people. Some people are better at running a business, a skill, than other people. Leadership is a learned skill, number one. Number two is that I think of leadership in three categories, Tracey.
One is what is called situational. Meaning that leaders can demonstrate their capabilities because of a situation. For example, I spent most of my life in Seattle and we had earthquakes. An earthquake is a situation and out of that situation emerge leaders who can figure out how to deal with that problem. They don't have to be the owner or the entrepreneur. They can be anybody in the business. As you're recruiting your team, recruit people who've got this skill called leadership.
That doesn't mean they have to run the business but it does mean that if somebody backs their car through your front door, you'd like to have somebody take care of that as opposed to come to you and say, “Tracey, somebody's back their car in the front door.” Number two is what I'll call organizational leadership, and those are people that are put in leadership positions because of their organization. They've been promoted to be a sales manager or promoted to be head of SEO or promoted to figure out how to run a new sales funnel. Those are organizational leaders. They've been put in these spots. If they've got this skill or they can learn the skill, they'll do well. If they can't, they're going to leave room for somebody else.
The third one is what I call elective leadership, and that is, you Tracey, me, and most people that are reading this. Those are people who have decided to own their own business, be an entrepreneur, buy a business and run the business, and be willing to say, “Mom, I'm willing to take over the family business.” Those are people that have elected to get into a position where leadership is a requirement. Number one, I think of leadership in those three buckets from a business standpoint. If we're going to play Little League Baseball, we need leaders too. From our purposes, we're talking about business leadership. The three categories are emergent, organizational, and collective.
Bill, where can people reach out and contact you?
First, we talked a bit about Scaleology. Scaleology is designed to help the people that are tired of the status quo and they want to change their organization or their business from ordinary to extraordinary. If they're there already, they want to become preeminent. If they’re a preeminent company, they want to be the master of the market. That's what Scaleology is all about. The best way to get that book, because it's not yet published so you can get a PDF for free, is by going to GetBillsNewBook.com. That'll get the Scaleology book to them, and then they'll know a lot about vision, not dealing with the hand that you get, and using a system of management.
Scaleology: The hardest thing for people to do is to understand and believe in their heart that they’ve got to leave their industry behind if you're going to be the best.
The last thing I'd like to say is that a lot of people somehow or another believe that they should run their business with a whack-a-mole technique. If something shows up like a prospect, a problem, and an opportunity, they deal with that. That's a whack-a-mole system or methodology. Instead, let's use a management system. Let’s have a system of converting leads to prospects, like a system of invoicing, and managing our business. That'll reduce a lot of the need for the kinds of leadership we talked about.
I love it when people give me a frame or something to work off of. In leadership, people are like, “That's more art than science.” Maybe but it's a lot of science too. The systems can help people rather than, “We don't know. It’s the first business I've run.” When does the book formally come out? I know we get the PDF. Do you have a release date for that yet?
It's not exactly a rough draft, but it needs some editing somehow. I've got a friend, Tracey, who's sold over 500 million books. He’s the editor helping me. I'm not sure if he's helping me or hurting me. One more thing, once a month, I do a live demonstration of this whole Scaleology leadership model and people want to go there. It’s just a demonstration. There's nothing for sale at all. It's simply WebinarWithBill.com and they'll be able to jump on 1 of those 2 live demonstrations. It happens to be the first Wednesday of every month.
Bill, if somebody wanted to work with, do you work with senior teams, individuals, one-on-one, or all of the above? I always get this, “I wonder if Bill would work with me.”
The answer is all of the above. A lot of people, Tracey, will look at me and they'll say, “Some of those companies that you work with have international brands.” That's true, but they are one, private companies, and two, I've worked with some of these people for a long time. It ranges from solopreneurs with under $100,000 of revenue up to people that have over $1 billion in revenue. What we're talking about here is nothing at all to do with industries or niches. It doesn't have anything to do with size. It doesn't have anything to do with any of those kinds of things. It's universally applicable. That's what's nice about it. Once you've got these concepts internalized personally and in your team, you’re good to go.
I love knowing that, Bill, because the best truths are timeless and they work for everybody. I don't care if you were the first person on earth or you're going to be the last person on earth. There are certain timeless truths, systems, and laws of the universe on how stuff works. Thank you, Bill, for your insights and for being a part of our interview. It's been a pleasure knowing your insights. I want to check out your first webinar because Lord willing, someday, I'll get big enough to scale. I look forward to learning from you because I know I can learn a lot from you.
Thank you, Tracey. I've enjoyed being here with you.
Thanks, Bill. To our tremendous team out there, thanks. If you like what you read, be sure and hit the subscribe button. Also, do us the honor of a rating and leave us a comment. We answer all our comments that you see wherever you're on Anchor, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and iTunes. Thanks for reading. Have a tremendous rest of the week.
Important Links:
The Price of Leadership – YouTube
Anchor – Tremendous Leadership Podcast
Spotify – Tremendous Leadership Podcast
Stitcher – Tremendous Leadership Podcast
YouTube – Tremendous Leadership Podcast
iTunes – Tremendous Leadership Podcast
About Bill Prater
WHAT I DO: Since 1999 I’ve helped Business Owners and Entrepreneurs in more than 50 different industries achieve real, measurable results using my unique approaches to grow revenue, increase cash flow and magnify business value. HOW I DO IT. I do this by incorporating several proprietary tools and techniques into the culture of the company and by empowering the team to manage the business. This consistently means the business owner’s personal efforts decline dramatically. WHY IT WORKS: I do this by coaching the owner and senior leadership team create a killer strategy, identify the vital drivers of the business, and execute goals on a consistent and sustainable basis. WHAT OTHERS SAY: “Bill combines leadership, business acumen, insights and diplomacy; and has been instrumental in our 300% revenue growth,” Barry Baker, President and CEO, Baker Construction. “Bill can assist any level of entrepreneur to establish goals and obtain them. His tactics and dashboard approach help owners understand what is vital today and tomorrow.” Marti Hoffer, Founder, Lumenomics. “Bill has been a great help to our companies through the years. He gave the companies a better structured system to achieve our business goals. Doing business with Bill was a great experience.” Ken Cornett, President and Owner, Estate Homes. FREE BOOK: Get your copy of my best selling book: https://businessmasterysecrets.com/dym-free-pdf-request/
FREE ONLINE MANAGEMENT COURSE: https://businessmasterysecrets.com/seven-steps-dgf-offer/ READY TO TALK? Reach out to me directly here on LinkedIn, email me at Bill@BusinessMasteryLLC.com, visit me online at https://billpraterjr.com/ or call me direct at 425.835.3187. EXPERTISE: Marketing / Sales / Business Transformation / Change Management / Leadership Coaching / Business Coaching / Strategic Planning / Team Building / Goal Setting / Finance / Operational Planning