Predictable Success: An Interview with Les McKeown

Being a small business owner comes with all kinds of unique challenges. There are financial hurdles, trying to make sense of marketing, managing a team of employees with different skills and personalities, etc. On top of all of this, you’re often learning as you go. But one of the most challenging aspects is the unpredictability of it all. You can plan (and you should) but inevitably, there are going to be problems along the way. However, success can be just as surprising at times. But what if there were a way to make success in your business predictable? It turns out, there is. I recently interviewed renowned author, Les McKeown to talk about predictable success.

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TIME INDEX:

• 00:42 – Predictable Success with Les McKeown
• 01:19 – Backstory
• 07:41 – The Umbrella Path
• 16:07 – Should We Strive for Predictable Success?
• 26:13 – Investigation, Interpretation, Implementation
• 32:50 – Scale
• 40:57 – Recommended Reading
• 43:25 – A Piece of Wisdom
• 44:44 – Wrap Up

Getting to Know Les McKeown

If you’ve never heard of Les McKeown, he has a brilliant mind for business and his books have helped shape my own approach to business. One of the first things you notice when speaking with Les is his endearing sense of humor. There’s no pretense with him. He’s just a down-to-earth guy with a ton of entrepreneurial experience that decided to put the things he’s learned along the way into a series of books. So, how did he gain all of that experience?

Les grew up in Belfast, Ireland. It was there that he first discovered his love of business. One of his mentors told him that if he was truly interested in business, he should become an attorney or a CPA, as those career paths would give him the broadest scope of what business was really about. Therefore, Les became a CPA. However, he says he wasn’t interested in preparing people’s taxes. Instead, he wanted to help them launch and grow their businesses.

During the 70s and 80s, the United Kingdom incentivized entrepreneurship, opening the door for Les to truly pursue his passion for helping business owners. He became the go-to guy for new business owners who needed help with their business plans, launch, or even just an idea for their business. Many of these entrepreneurs began asking Les to serve as an interim CEO or even a founding partner. As a result, Les was part of helping launch 42 different businesses by the time he was 35 years old. Folks, that’s a lot of entrepreneurial experience!

Predictable Success: The Patterns of Growth

With all of the experience gained from launching 42 small businesses, Les began noticing several recurring patterns. These were things that seemed to affect each business regardless of its industry. However, these patterns didn’t simply exist across all business types. Les began to realize that each of the patterns was interlinked in each business. Realizing this, Les began to codify and document each of these occurrences.

Later, Les and a business partner started an incubation unit. They would bring potential entrepreneurs in for a two-night stay where they would teach them all of the principles of launching a business. At the end of each two-night session, they had presentations with bankers and lenders, where the entrepreneur could pitch their business to investors. After about a year of doing this, economic development agencies from around the globe began to take notice. Although they had been helping new businesses to launch, these agencies wanted Les and his partner to begin helping existing businesses accelerate to second or third stage growth.

With these new opportunities, Les began to see that the patterns he noticed, in the beginning, were playing out in a predictable fashion. However, he hadn’t been able to closely examine the growth patterns of large corporations just yet. That changed when an opportunity to work in San Francisco presented itself. Suddenly, Les was able to work with companies like Microsoft, T-Mobile, American Express, etc. During that time, he was able to see his predictable success model play out from cradle to grave even in large, global organizations.

The Predictable Success Model

The patterns documented by McKeown play out in seven stages throughout the life of a business. With that in mind, I asked Les to outline the seven stages of the predictable success model. What I’m including in this blog is a basic summary. For Les’s full description, I encourage you to listen to the embedded podcast, above. While you’re listening, I’ve included a brief overview of each of the seven stages of McKeown’s predictable success model.

The Seven Stages

Les explained that these seven stages actually apply to any group of two or more people trying to achieve common goals. But what are these seven stages?

• Stage 1: Early Struggle. If you’ve ever started a business, you know exactly what this means. It’s a struggle to find a sustainable and profitable market. In fact, only around 25% of small businesses make it to the ten-year mark.
• Stage 2: Fun. If you can survive the early struggle, you’ll reach the first growth stage. Les calls it fun because, well… it’s fun. However, many business owners believe this is an indication that they’ve made it. But, this is really just the beginning.
• Stage 3: Whitewater. As your business becomes more complex during the first growth stage, you move into stage three. It’s called whitewater because that’s what it feels like. It’s scary and tumultuous and you’re probably not having fun. Unfortunately, many business owners mistake this for the death of the business.
• Stage 4: Predictable Success. Whitewater shows business owners the need for corporate-wide systems and processes. Once in place, you can move out of whitewater and into predictable success, where you have the ability to scale. The beauty of this stage is that you can stay here indefinitely, as long as you continue to do the right thing.
• Stage 5: Treadmill. This is the first of the decline stages and it occurs when you have too many systems and processes in place. It’s basically the mirror opposite of whitewater.
• Stage 6: The Big Rut. If you’re not careful to make the appropriate adjustments that will take you from the treadmill back to predictable success, you will find yourself in “the big rut.” Here, things are very similar to the treadmill stage but you’ve lost the ability to self-diagnose your issues.
• Stage 7: The Death Rattle. Finally, you’ve reached the end of the line. You may see a little momentum take place here, but, ultimately, your business is being put to bed at this level.

Move Forward or Fall Back?

When looking at the whitewater growth stage, I had to ask if it’s ever appropriate for a business owner to go back to the fun stage. According to Les, the choice to move forward or fall back is appropriate regardless of what you choose. Ultimately, the choice is yours to make and will be determined by what you truly want for your business.

To illustrate, McKeown told the story of an old friend who owned a coffee shop. The owner found great success with their first shop. That success continued with their second and third. They were truly having fun. However, when they opened their fourth shop, they found themselves right in the middle of whitewater. The owner was faced with a choice. They could go back to two shops and have fun (and create a comfortable living) without having to implement the systems or processes that would make them scalable. Or, they could choose to become a regional, national, or even global coffee company.

Ultimately, they had to decide how big or small they wanted to go. The same is true for you and your business. Perhaps you’re feeling the pain of the whitewater stage. Are you going to grow by implementing the processes necessary to have predictable success? You’ll need to learn to purchase in bulk and hire managers to run each store. Would you prefer to stay small but have fun? It’s all up to you.

Synergy Through People

The predictable success model is the path of your business’s growth. On the other hand, it’s people that make the business move along that path. For example, every business needs a visionary. Without having that individual with the big picture, the business will likely become one of the many casualties of the early struggle. However, the Visionary is easily tangled in the details. Their gift is coming up with ideas and then starting them.

Because of this, according to McKeown, the Visionary must connect with an Operator early in the process. The Operator is the symbiotic twin of the visionary and they are ruthless finishers. The perfect setup is having a visionary conducting a group of operators like a symphony orchestra. This combination takes the business from early struggle to the fun stage. But as we’ve already determined, whitewater is the next step. So, what happens when the orchestra is moving from the fun stage to the whitewater stage?

Just like in the predictable success model, things get a bit uncomfortable for the Visionary and the Operators. They must now include a third leadership style. This person is known as the Processor. This takes the organization from a mindset of “do the right thing,” to “do the thing right.” Additionally, in the fun stage of growth, there’s really no such thing as a leadership team.  So, the other thing that must happen for the group to move beyond whitewater is a change to the way leadership decisions are made. This is because the complexity of the whitewater stage is beyond the scope of any one individual.

Wrapping Up…

Folks, if you’re interested in learning more about the predictable success model, check out Les McKeown’s Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track and Keeping it There. Likewise, you can reach out to our team. We help business owners move their organizations through the growth process every day.

Look, I know life is hard, but life is so good! Navigating your business from launch to predictable success while avoiding the decline can be frustrating. But it doesn’t need to be. Understanding the many stages of the business’s life cycle and which people should be in what seats can help make it at least financially simple.

Regardless of where you find yourself in this cycle, let’s get started on driving your business to its desired location. Reach out to us! The Financially Simple team is ready to help you from launch to predictable success and everywhere in between.

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