Ari Meisel

The Four Mindsets Every Founder Needs to Build a Better Business

We’re all familiar with KPI (Key Performance Indicator) a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company achieves its objectives. I couldn’t find one that made intuitive sense to me, so I developed the Ultimate KPI™, a behavioral framework for tracking and encouraging constant improvement.

The Ultimate KPI l™ is a concrete way to practice making replaceability part of your job. Remember that being replaceable does not mean being replaced. You’re not trying to make yourself or those around you obsolete. You’re not trying to put people out of a job. 

In fact, irreplaceability is the enemy. Really. It renders you stuck. It means if there’s no one else who can do what you do, you are a liability. If what you know only lives in your head, there’s no transparency, no transfer of knowledge, and most importantly, no growth for you or the business. 

Replaceability means practicing detachment, relinquishing the notion that you and you alone can “do that thing” or “solve that problem.” Replaceability removes bottlenecks. It means you and your team can work on more substantive projects.

It allows growth. 

The process of making yourself more replaceable involves first analyzing how you do what you do.  

• How do you go through various processes?  
• Where do you allocate your resources? 
• How do you spend your time?  
• What requires your attention but not your expertise? 

We can answer those questions using The Ultimate KPI™. 

Think about the 20 things you do regularly, activities, tasks, projects, reconciling bank statements, leading the team, brainstorming, podcasting. 

Did you know that every one of those tasks fits under one of four mindsets? 

Cog, Engine, Engineer, and Inventor.

The cog focuses on the minutiae, the boring, the prescriptive. They’re doing the requisite tasks necessary to get the company through the day. In terms of flexibility, they’re in a cage. They can’t go anywhere because if they do, the business will grind to a halt. And forget the notion of freedom. Cogs are barely able to keep their head above water.

Many founders recoil at the notion of being a cog. I get that. It sounds neither glamorous nor impactful. So the way to cast off the mantle of cog-ness is to acknowledge that you may very well be suffering from terminal uniqueness. 

Granted, you might’ve been unrivaled when you started the business, but at some point, you stopped being as singular as you imagine. No disrespect. I’ve been there. You started doing the work of cogs because it had to be done. There are other people and tons of automations that can do cog work. So maybe ask yourself, why are you doing it? Because anyone, even you, can jump that line and become the engine. 

Now you’re the driving force in the business. You are not a part of the engine. You are the engine. You still have to be there, wherever there is, so freedom at this point is elusive. You can’t go very far without the business halting, and your focus is firmly on the organization’s work. But, you’ve got enough headspace now to get interested in other work, ideas, projects, pursuits. But you can’t because you are otherwise occupied. 

But possibilities are the fuel that propels you to go from engine to engineer. Here is where you’ll discover the difference between working in the business and working on the business. Your hands-on engagement gives way to the cultivation of ideas. It’s more about using your voice instead of your hands. Maybe you go back and forth. Perhaps you spend more time brainstorming, but projects get done whether you are physically there or not.

Engineers focus on challenging scenarios and accelerate meaningful growth. You see some real possibilities in terms of freedom and flexibility. You can self-identify as free-range. Mostly. There are still limits. But many people happily roost here. They hit what I call the “good enough” line. There’s freedom, check. Focus? Check and some flexibility, and it’s good enough. But the problem is that good enough is a trap. 

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some Gordon Gecko, hungry hungry hippo baloney. It’s about your mental enrichment, which, come on, will slowly atrophy if left alone. And good enough is probably not good enough for your competitors. When you accept that reality, it’s simple to jump the line to inventor. 

The inventor gets to focus on their genius, the things that bring them the greatest joy and have the most impact. They have the flexibility to work anywhere, anyhow, anytime.

A good way to think about the difference between Cog and Engine, then Engineer and Inventor is the difference between using your hands or your mouth. If you are engaged in Engineer and Inventor work, you’re talking. You’re brainstorming, you’re interacting with other people. You’re going back and forth. Then somebody else runs with it and makes it happen. 

The Cog and Engine are literally hands-on contributions. When your hands are involved, you have to be physically situated someplace; in an office, in front of a laptop, behind a cash register. 

It’s important to note that the goal is not necessarily to eradicate cog activities. There are certain businesses where the cog work is the thing you do; carpentry, landscaping, bread baking, rock climbing instructor. 

The business cannot operate without the Cog, because it’s not just essential to the business, it is the business. So there is a place for Cog work. We just don’t need to get bogged down in it.

Also, it’s always going to be one task, one mindset. There is no grey area.  

For example, you may enjoy doing something and feel like it’s clearly Inventor work, but if it requires you to be someplace, it’s going to be the work of an Engineer. And it has to be identified as such.

Remember, each mindset contributes equally to the smooth operation of any business. But who is engaged in these activities can be the difference between a scalable business and a stalled one. 

If the founder is doing Cog work, there is no leadership. 

If the Engine holds on too tightly to any system or process, there is no transparency. 

If the Engineer is working in the business, instead of on the business, there is no forward motion. 

And if the Inventor is doing anything other than contributing a vision, the business will not grow. 

Putting it Into Practice 

I created an actual “pen to paper” planner to help you organize your productivity journey It’s called The Ultimate KPI Planner, which is so not clever but entirely accurate. 

Here’s how to use it:

1. Write down 20 tasks, activities, projects you perform regularly.
2. Identify each activity as either cog, engine, engineer, or inventor. 
   1. Cog – Is it manual and repetitive?
   2. Engine – Are the tasks essential but frustrating?
   3. Engineer – Are you working IN the business or ON the business?
   4. Inventor –  Does a project require your unique focus? Is there flexibility to work on it anywhere?  Does it allow the freedom to explore outside the business? 
3. Pick 16 things you will no longer do at year’s end. 
   1. Use the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent must be offboarded in order to grow.
   2. Is the activity excessive, unneeded, unnecessary, inefficient, irrelevant? 
4. Determine the Replacement Plan
   1. Optimize – offload or eliminate
   2. Automate – software system or process optimization
   3. Outsource – delegate internally or externally
5. Monitor Continuous Change (Kaizen) 
   1. Monthly check-ins – with yourself and your team 
      1. How many tasks are gone, reassigned, outsourced? 
      2. Set a goal and if you do not reach it, go back and reimagine The Replacement Plan. 

The Replacement Plan is the holy grail of this practice. It makes zero sense to commit to a thorough house cleaning, and inventory the work you are doing, only to replace tasks with equally inefficient systems and processes. Or worse, get frustrated and fall back to your old ways; which would constitute a productivity relapse and those are simply awful.  

If you employ my OAO (Optimize, Automate, Outsource) Methodology, you will see forward momentum almost immediately.  The early successes you’ll feel will be the necessary fuel to keep you going on this road to focus, freedom, and flexibility. 

Caught in a Rip Tide?

My very first memory Is not a good one. 

I was five years old. I was in Puerto Rico, vacationing with my parents. My father and I went swimming in the ocean and got caught in a riptide. It felt like hours. It probably wasn’t, but as a five-year-old boy, I was sure death was upon me.

If you don’t know what this oceanic nightmare is, you should. 

First, we may call them riptides, but technically it’s not a tide controlled by the waxing and waning of the moon. Rather, it’s a rip current, a powerful, narrow channel of fast-moving water prevalent along the East, Gulf, and West coasts of the U.S. and even along the Great Lakes’ shores.

“Moving at speeds of up to eight feet per second, rip currents can move faster than an Olympic swimmer. Panicked swimmers often try to counter a rip current by swimming straight back to shore—putting themselves at risk of drowning because of fatigue.

Lifeguards rescue tens of thousands of people from rip currents in the U.S. every year, but it is estimated that 100 people are killed by rip currents annually. If caught in a rip current, don’t fight it! Swim parallel to the shore and swim back to land at an angle.”

Source: NOAA. What is eutrophication? National Ocean Service website, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/eutrophication.html, 10/05/17.

So if you get caught in that rip, it’s pretty much impossible to get to shore swimming against it. The frustrating thing if you have been stuck in one and then find out later is that the solution to surviving is to stop struggling, float, then effortlessly swim left or right about 30 feet. 

Now my experience was probably way more traumatic than I even recognize now. My throat seems a little tight, and my breathing is elevated whilst writing would indicate that the experience has not left my consciousness. 

But the thing about the memory that eats at me the most was that we could have gotten out of it so easily if we had just known what to do. 

Now, if you haven’t figured it out already, rip currents are the perfect metaphor for an entrepreneur struggling to scale, pivot, succeed, win or survive. 

Far too often, I see business owners swimming against the current like the last line in The Great Gatsby, 

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Oftentimes it’s of their own making. They’re doing things that feel hard, but they keep doing it because they think they’re supposed to or don’t know that there’s a better way. And that better way might be right next to them.

The strongest part of a rip current is the direct line between the water’s edge and the sandbar opening. It’s a naturally forming myopia. The direct line. But it’s also the most dangerous. Business owners who struggle in this space inevitably fail. The force is too great. The goal feels like it has to be the shore. All they care about is getting out of the water, getting back to the shore, and getting their feet on dry land. 

If they shifted that focus to something smaller and more productive, like, “How do I get unstuck?” Suddenly, the receding wave makes its way through the sandbar opening and meets up with water at its own level. Its pressure immediately drops. It simply requires patience and an understanding that thrashing around only makes the situation even direr. 

People drown when they needlessly struggle in the water or expend all of their energy swimming. To survive a rip current or any crisis in the water, you have to keep calm, and you have to conserve your energy.

And we see this in business too. Some people are so focused on the goal, make a million dollars, open 50 locations, expand to seven different countries that they lose sight of the solution right in front of them. That is stopping them from taking the first step that they need to make to get to that eventual goal. 

The most effective way to fight rip currents in your business is to follow basic swimming safety rules: 

1. Never go into the ocean or try to solve a problem alone. 
2. If you aren’t a strong swimmer or number one in a Google search, stick to shallow waters until you’re more fit. 
3. Ideally, it would be best if you only swam in areas where a lifeguard can keep an eye on you. Accountability can save your life and your business. 

Not me.

Do you know what you miss out on when the singular focus of your company is scaling?

Life. You miss out on life.

So I’m getting out of the scaling business. It’s time.

My expertise helped many people and grew my business fast and well. I’m damn good at solving problems, and when my clients presented my team and me with complicated, intriguing dilemmas, we solved them. It felt terrific.

Did I help everyone who joined my group coaching program?

Absolutely not, and BTW don’t ever let anyone tell you that they are 100 percent successful either. In fact, don’t let the “purveyors of scale” trick you into thinking that:

Scaling is something other than making more money. It’s not. It’s making more money. We can create a taxonomy around the notion of growth that hits on deep, meaningful ideologies, but scaling intends to create more wealth in the end. Let’s all stop pretending it’s something grander. And instead of asking yourself if your idea will scale, ask yourself, “Will it be meaningful?”. Then proceed accordingly.

You’re doing “it” wrong No one has, sells, or promotes a universal approach that works seamlessly. We humans are unique and flawed. Our businesses are borne out of that individuality. The shit that works will speak clearly to us, not be prescribed by someone with a sexy pitch deck.

Instagram is Real Life. We live in a society that is enamored of illusion. And that sense of make-believe comes at us 24 hours a day. No one’s intermittent fasting regime is that successful. No one’s Lamborghini is without engine trouble. No one’s kids are that well behaved. When we compare someone’s virtual outside to our very real insides, it diminishes our self worth and establishes bizarre, unattainable points of reference.

The hustle is not time-consuming. Yes, it is. And I’m arguably the world’s most productive man. The hustle, which produces scale, comes with a hefty price that may be impossible to recoup — teaching your kid how to ride a bike — watching your Mom show your daughter how to crochet. Registering first-time voters or harvesting your first (and only) cucumber.

Authenticity is a marketable commodity. When anyone tries to tell you how real or humble or grateful they are, run. Actions are more valuable than intentions, so watch how thought leaders behave. Don’t just listen to what they say. No one should have to sell how real they are to you. Gross.

The most important metric of success is your bank balance. Again, I call bullshit. Did you teach someone on your team to do things they never thought possible? Was it possible to help a client unravel an entrenched idea and change course? How many people thanked you for your insights? Were your employees able to construct a life that included, rather than excluded, their families? These are all the hazy accomplishments that genuinely define success for me.

Now, I’m not here to crush sour grapes or castigate the “coaching space.” There are talented coaches out there who legitimately believe in what they are doing, have methods that work, and who can create community even during these maddening times. A hearty Mazel Tov to each of them. You know who you are.

But I am The Replaceable Founder, someone who has put into place systems and processes that have allowed my own company (and maybe yours as well) to grow quantitatively. The experiment worked. It is possible for the founder to step away from a business’s day-to-day operations and still scale. But the machine needs to be fed, and that requires too much tending.

I could have been on a plane every week (when we went places). I could have worked on all kinds of marketing strategies to get more followers. I could have hired more people. I could have sent out more email sequences. But you know what, I didn’t want to. Chasing the scaling dragon was just not that important to me.

So, I said, enough.

It’s the self-aware founder who realizes when an idea, albeit a terrific one, has run its course. It’s not a failure. It’s not quitting. It’s a eureka moment of grace that illuminates a core truth.

I want to be more human. Yes, me, the guy who has built a few hugely successful businesses around the notion of harnessing technology.

I don’t want to manage from afar. I can, but I’d rather have intimate relationships with fewer people.

I want to invest my energy into scenarios that are meaty and complex. When I’m deeply interested in the problems I’m trying to solve, I’m on fire, in a good way.

I want to be there for people in a substantive, committed way. I’ve been volunteering as an EMT up in the Hudson Valley. As a country EMT, I’m with the patients longer than a city EMT where hospitals are not so far away. It’s kind of remarkable the connection you can build with someone who is hurt on a thirty-minute ride to the nearest hospital. I can’t solve all their problems, clearly, but I can be there, and simply being there for someone is a woefully underrated pursuit. I want to change that. I want to get better at that.

I want to be more me.