#184: Scaling Coach Brendan McGurgan on The Principles of Simple Scaling, The Four Freedoms of Entrepreneurship and Filtering Opportunities & Staying Focused!

they're caught, they're imprisoned in the business that they've created for themselves, they've maybe left previous employment, they've got into taking work that's not ideal and all of a sudden two, three years in they're still serving those clients who are not they're not their ideal clients in any way but they're they're trapped. So freedom of relationship to serve the people that you want to serve. That was global business leader and scaling coach Brendan McGurgin talking about all the traps that we can fall into as business owners. I'm Brian Keane, online Irish fitness entrepreneur and business coach here to help you with all things online health or fitness business. A fantastic podcast today. This is actually one of the rare instances where I just completely sat back and listened for 90% of this episode because I get so much from Brendan on a personal level. And if you are somebody that is looking to scale your business all the way down from you're still a one to one PT or online coach looking to build out systems all the way up to going from six to seven figures, the principles of simple scaling remain the same. It's just about which area you need to focus on the most. And in today's show, this is what I'm going to be going back over myself for the notepad and pen, because I got so much the first time around, I know I'm probably going to get even more the second time around when I'm not at interview mode. So I'm not going to do any more introduction, an amazing podcast about scaling your business. I think everyone subscribed and following is going to get benefit and some shape or form from this because of the spectrum at which we struggle from all the way down in the beginning, early stages to going from six to seven figures and seven to eight and beyond. So without further ado, here's today's podcast with scaling coach Brendan McGurgan on the principles of simple scaling, the four freedoms of entrepreneurship and filtering opportunities and staying focused. Enjoy. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Fitness Business Podcast with Brian Keane. I'm delighted to be joined today with my guest, a very long overdue podcast because I've appeared on his show a couple of times and for whatever reason, the universe just didn't align and we have it set up now and I'm very, very excited. Brendan McGurgan, Brendan is a global business leader, a coach and investor passionate about building profitable, purposeful and scalable businesses. He has co-founded, built and led over 10, seven, eight and nine figure revenue businesses across six continents. He believes that if you have a remarkable product or service, you have an obligation to scale it to bring it to the world with intention and impact. As CEO of CDE Group for 12 years, Brendan led the company through a remarkable scaling journey, achieving 25x revenue growth under his leadership. His business became a global leader in its category expanded from 15 to nearly 700 employees across six continents and exported to over 100 countries. In 2020, Brendan co-founded Simple Scaling, an integrated ecosystem that inspires, connects and enables ambitious SME leaders to scale with purpose. The platform includes executive coaching, growth capital investment and specialist recruitment solutions. He is the co-author of the Amazon bestseller Simple Scaling, 10 proven principles to 10x your business described by Kirk's Reviews as a comprehensive concrete council for business leaders. Brendan has also hosted the acclaimed Scale X Insider podcast ranked in the top 2% of podcast globally. Through candid conversations with thought leaders and high growth entrepreneurs, he explores the mindsets and mechanics of scaling with purpose. I am looking forward to talking all things scaling in this long overdue podcast. Brendan, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me on, Brian. Delighted to be here. Delighted to be here. So long overdue because Brendan, I consume your stuff online. I've gone through the podcast. I'm now following the Instagram page, which I didn't realize I'm following obviously the personal page, but I'm also now following the Simple Scaling page on Instagram, which will all be linked in the show notes for you below. And I want to make that the focus of today's conversation. The book particularly has got the 10 proven principles to 10x your business. A lot of people listening here will struggle with scale. A lot of personal trainers, a lot of coaches working one to one with people and scaling is such a pain point for so many of us. And again, I remember back in 2016 when I started to kind of go from scale from one to one to courses to programs to group training to a whole host of different revenue streams. This was really difficult. Your first three principles in the book talk about psyche, purpose and vision and people and merging those three things together. And then we'll move on to the next few because it's all integrated into a framework. Talked was a little bit about the principles and the framework for Simple Scaling because this applies to not only health and fitness businesses, but also people outside of that. Yeah, completely. Look, it's industry agnostic. And we've now been hosting our program. It's a 12 month immersive program. We call it the Scalex Accelerator. And we've hosted people from retail, from fitness, from hospitality, manufacturing, technology and the principles. What are principles are fundamental truths that actually help inform behavior. And in this context, the fundamental truths that inform behavior to support you in scaling. So the rationale for the book, Brian, I have been involved in scale ups. And of course, scale up wasn't a thing. Whenever I was involved in scale ups, it's only entered the business. Lexicon has become sexy. Everybody's scaling. It wasn't a thing. It actually didn't exist. So for three decades, I've been involved in business. And it's only in the last decade that really scaling has become a thing. People talked about growing their business, but scaling wasn't associated with business. Whenever I was scaling, which it became known as, there was no scaling school that you went to. There was no even CEO school. So you became a leader of a business, which I was very fortunate after leaving the technology world. You're too young to remember after the dot com boom and subsequent bust and moved out of technology into engineering, joined a small business. And we grew that it was turning over about three million in revenues at that stage, predominantly focused on the Irish market. And we had 15 people working out of a small industrial estate here in Northern Ireland. And I had the privilege to lead that we became number one in the world in our category. We exported to more than 100 countries, set up offices in six continents, tend to spend a lot of time in airplanes, built the team from 15 people to 700 and scale from 70 at nine figure revenues. So when I retired from that business, what I came to understand is that scaling hasn't been codified. I was passionate as a kid about Lego. I loved look getting a Lego sets for a Christmas or a birthday, looking at the front cover and going, yes, that's what we're building, open it out, put all the bits in little piles and start to go through the instructions. And in my head, I would love to have an instruction manual for scaling. So that was the context for actually writing the book to codify what it is to scale. And I spent a couple of years, Brian, speaking with leaders across the world who had successfully scaled their businesses. I had my experience, I had a view on what scaling was, but I didn't want kind of end being one in the context of, well, you know, I'm going to pose my view of scaling on the rest of the world. Let's get a consensus here. And spent, as I say, a couple of years, I spoke with leaders in Gymshark, for example, which your listenership will be very familiar with. Guy Scanner, the travel app, more locally here, Kenos, who Brendan Mooney has scaled a multi-billion dollar company, a little tax bin out from Queens, and discerned, distinguished, identified 10 fundamental truths that undergird every successful scaling business. Hence now, what we call our Scalex 10 principle framework, which has been enshrined in our book, Simple Scaling. You mentioned the very first three principles, and they're all P's, by the way. I tend to think, try to structure things in a simple way as possible. And in this context, the first three P's, Psyche, Purpose Envision, and People you mentioned. So it begins with Psyche, your Psyche, the leader's Psyche, the leader's mindset. You speak about mindset a lot on the show. The mental lens by which we see the world, by which we interact with the world, by which we interpret the world. And this either will empower your scaling trajectory or disempower. It's as simple as that. You can only ever exist in one of two states, either an empowered state or disempowered state. In order to scale a business, you've got to be aware of your state, your psyche, and seek to exist as far as is possible in that empowered state. That acts as a multiplier for all of the other nine principles. It's back to that old cliched saying, attributed to Henry Ford, whether you believe you can or you can't, either way, you'll prove yourself right. So we can dive deep into Psyche if you wish, but ultimately this starts with a level of awareness about the story you're telling yourself, first and foremost. I'm not really an entrepreneur. I've been lucky to arrive at this point. Nobody can do this, only me. You know, if I don't do it, who else will do it? They'll not, if I delegate this, they'll not do it right. I'll lose clients if it's not me delivering the service. You've heard all of this before, and this is the story that that founders tend to tell themselves, which becomes an impediment for scaling. So in order to really unlock a scaling psyche, you've got to be aware of that story, that anything that is limiting your belief in the context of scaling. So once you become aware of the story you're telling yourself, then it's about seeding belief. It's about, well, hold on, why not me? Why not me? Why not me right now? Why not me? Why not now? And if it's not me, who else is going to do this? Why is Brian Keane scaling this wonderful fitness business and I'm telling myself that I can't? So we've got to seed belief, then it becomes, I talk about the A to E of a scaling psyche. So when you kind of think of the A of being awareness, B being belief, see then taking control and understanding it's about controlling the controllables. Too often we're waking up, we open up our phones and now we're in reactionary mode. Our day is going to be dictated to us by what we see on the phone, by a negative comment, maybe on Instagram, by a shitty email and now we're derailed. So it's about controlling the controllables and we've come to that when I get into purpose and vision and then it's about discipline in your decision making, you know, making the decision to scale. Something that comes from the fitness industry is everyone wants a six pack and I wanted one before I was 50. I was 50 this year, Brian, I remember sending my PT, I sent him a photograph with three months before I was 50. I said, Amir, I want these abs, you know, let's go. I want to wake up on my 50th birthday feeling as fit and looking as fit as I've ever been and I've always worked out. He said, well, you don't have to do much more in the gym but we need to dial in your nutrition. I said, okay, we can do that. Send me through what's required. So he sent me it through and I reflected on it and I sent him a message by, I said, Amir, I've just realized I'm interested in a six pack but I'm not committed. So let's not kid ourselves. So from a scaling perspective, just you've got to make the decision to commit to scale, to bringing your wonderful product or service to a wider audience. When you lean into that, then ultimately, it's not about going back. It's not about dipping your toe and the E of the A to E of a scaling psyche is really creating an environment which is conducive to supporting you and your aspiration to scale because the stats tell us that less than 1% of small to medium sized enterprises ever achieve scale. You take 100 SMEs, picked it random, brought it into the room. If you have decided to scale, you're the only one based on the current stats that is thinking or deciding that you're going to scale. So you've got to make sure you get into a room where there's other like-minded people who have aspirations to scale and that's why we created not only your ScaleX Accelerator program but you graduate from that and go into what we call our ScaleX Club. This is a club of scaling leaders, people who are like-minded, who have aspirations to bring their wonderful product or service to a wider audience. I'll give you an opportunity. So that's psyche. We can get into purpose and vision, but I'll pause there for a moment and give you an opportunity to come in, Brian. There's so much there, Brendan, and I want to unpack some of it. It's so valuable for people and you know from my content, people listening to this podcast and anything that I create, the mindset's foundation, psyche's foundation of everything because your belief systems and your commitment to it, your discipline to it, hence I haven't said motivation to it because it's your discipline, it's your underlying principles that dictate what you do to me, what you do every day, I'll tell you where you'll be in a year. And I want to ask specifically about scaling because this is something, I think we might have talked about it on your podcast, if not, I definitely reflected on it after I was on about what scaling means to me because in 2016, scaling for me was more revenue. It was more time back, but it was very much a revenue focus. In 2023, 2024, 2025, revenue thankfully has been consistent in an upward trajectory, but not really something I have to think about too much. But I'm very focused on scaling freedom, scaling time, giving myself the opportunity to breathe and allow the opportunities to present themselves to be taken because I haven't over committed to things that I should have possibly been saying no to. Have you found with the people in the ScaleX Accelerator, the people that follow you online, the people who listen to the podcast, that their definitions of scale either is different or evolves over time, or is it nearly always consistent of I want to get my product or service out to the masses and then we course correct from there? What does that generally look like? There are four freedoms that any entrepreneur or founder is after. It's freedom of time you've mentioned, freedom of money. So to get to a point where money is not making the decisions that they can psychologically operate from a place of abundance as opposed to a place from scarcity. Freedom of relationships, a lot of the time people are actually serving clients that they don't really want to serve, but they're caught, they're imprisoned in the business that they've created for themselves. They've maybe left previous employment, they've got into taking work that's not ideal and all of a sudden two, three years in, they're still serving those clients who are not, they're not their ideal clients in any way, but they're trapped. So freedom of relationship to serve the people that you want to serve and to serve them with a team of people that you want to surround yourself with. So at 50 years of age, I have become ruthless about who I spend my time with. I have an OQP rule, only quality people, and that goes for the people within my team and ultimately the people that we invite into our community because these people become and have become incredible friends and I always, I always think about the kind of the windshield test. If I was traveling from Arma to Cork and I was going to spend five or six hours in the car with this person, would we still be friends by the end of it? Would the journey have flown? Would we arrive kind of in great spirits feeling energized or would I be absolutely ripping the handle off the door to get out by the time we land in Cork? So and then it's freedom of purpose. It's making sure that actually you're doing something that's meaningful, again comes back to the kind of freedom of money that you're not having to do something just to pay the bills. So those are ultimately the four freedoms. You've talked about scaling revenue. I just want to circle back to that. Ultimately your revenue is an echo of value. So the more people that you can reach with your wonderful product or service, the greater the problem that you can solve or the need that you service by virtue of someone's goals, then ultimately the more revenue you will realize. If you focus, if you overly focus on the revenues and profits, then ultimately you will find that you lose sight of actually the problem that you're solving or the customer that you're trying to service in the first instance. So understand that that and this is coming from a finance guy. My background's in finance. I lived in paying house for years. So when you understand that ultimately that your sales, your profitability, cash in the bank is an echo of the value that you bring, then you can start to really focus on, okay, how do I serve more people with the wonderful product or service I have? And ultimately that is that scaling. Yeah, look, there's a technical definition and it's average annualized growth of 20% year on year for a three-year period as measured in either revenue growth or employee growth. It's essentially just less than a doubling of your revenue in a three-year period. That's the technical definition. But ultimately, what does it mean? It means accessing those four freedoms but actually serving more people as a result. I love that, Brendan. There's a few things there I want to pull out for people just to double back on what connected with me in real time. I always think of process over outcome. It's very specific with fitness. Like you've got a great fitness background between the half marathon, the third degree black belt and Taekwondo, etc. So you know what this process is like. But with fitness, I always tell people the way you look is a byproduct of the way that you live. And if you're walking around lean, if you're walking around muscular, it's a byproduct of the way that you live. Your business is very similar. If you are serving and showing up from a place of value and a place of service, money is a byproduct of that. And it becomes something you don't really have to worry about. And sometimes it's we have this domain dependent knowledge with fitness that we forget that this is actually applies to business as well. And you mentioned there about the windshield test, which I love. I call it the rule of three. There's people that I meet that I want to spend three minutes with, 30 minutes with, three hours with, three days with. That's that's my rule of three. And I can normally I can normally tell within a few minutes of chatting to somebody, yeah, I'd love to spend more time with this person. Very few people fall into the category of three days. A lot of people fall into the three hours, which is nice. And then there's a good chunk of people if you have a good system in place and filtering process where they're like three and 30 minutes, that's enough. And it's interesting because it leads on to the next question, which actually goes away from the scale, but I'm very curious professionally and personally to ask it. One of the most I won't say worst advice I got in business because the advice in certain categories is great advice. And I did a talk recently at the young entrepreneur summit for Irish entrepreneurs. And this was something that came up. One of my mentors who had scaled a multiple seven now eight figure health business in the US heard advice to me in 2015. I remember was never make your clients your friends. She was like your friends are your friends and your clients are your clients. And that was really good advice for her and really good advice for specific people. I think especially if you're scaling to multi millions, going into the billion dollar frame, because you're one, you're not going to be able to spend time with people, you're not going to potentially be connecting with them. But a filter for me, and I've got I'm working with your wife Colleen, and we get on great similar to me and you getting on great people that fall into the bracket of I would be friends with this person. Everyone I have in the circle that I work with in my online mastermind similar to you, they're filtered in. It's good people coming in because it has to be people I want to see succeed. It has to be people I would work with for free. That's a filter for me. So that advice that I got from my mentor was really good advice, just really bad advice for me specifically because I want a business I don't want to retire from. I want to jump out a bit every morning. And I want to have the success being built as a byproduct of the process. Like I mentioned, what is well meaning business advice that you got that just wasn't applicable for you? That's a great question. And I think it's more traditional. You don't hear it as much now. But it's that that a business's purpose is about maximizing shareholder returns. And that's what I grew up with, especially coming from a finance background. When you focus on shareholder returns, you tend to be inward looking. And you forget actually that there's a customer at the other end of this. That actually, the reason, and I think of the etymology of the word company, cum is together with and panace, which is bread. And essentially, it's together with breaking bread. And it's about coming together to break bread in service of someone else's problem or supporting someone to reach a goal that you can support them with. So the I would say that is that's a piece of advice that that I used to focus on. But in certainly in the last decade or more, I've moved completely away from that because ultimately, when you become a pain detective and really search out customers pain points and customers problems, and you have a solution that can support them with overcoming that pain, then there is an exchange of value. They were more than happily pay for what it is that you're offering them in order to mitigate the pain that they're currently suffering. So that I would say that Brian. With the Scalex Accelerator, you obviously serve multiple pain points. And again, I think it's a Tony Robbins line, proximity is power, you're bringing people together, you're leading it, you're filtering the advice, all the great stuff that comes with it. What's the primary pain point that's most common amongst the entrepreneurs that you're working with within Scalex Accelerator? Another great question. And it's like any good answer. It depends. It depends on what stage they're entering into the program. For some, and we've defined four archetypes of leaders, the four personas of the people that come into our world. Let's say the first one is the shadow leader. And we see a lot of this in Ireland. It's the second generation leader who has the title but doesn't have the authority or the power because they're still working under the founder. And the founder tends to be a man, tends to be their father. The second generation leader tends to be their son. And they've got all of the trappings of dad's success. They've got the title, but they feel hollow inside because it's not their vision for this business. It's their dad's vision. And they do not have any authority or power because actually everyone's still looking to the founder whenever the second generation leader is making decisions. People will still glance metaphorically or literally to ensure that actually this decision has the support of the founder. So we see a lot of shadow leaders coming into our world. The prisoner is the person who has left their employment. They leave with this wonderful energy and this wonderful conviction that they can do something great in the industry. Maybe they've just left or to do something completely different to embark on something that they know and it is inside them is what really, really lights them up. But ultimately they build a business that entraps them. They become overwhelmed, burnt out and really disillusioned with business in itself. And they don't see scaling as a way out, but actually paradoxically it is because back to the old Marshall Goldsmiths book, what got you to here won't get you to there. It's understanding that I need to change. The first thing in all of this, and typically when leaders get to that point, they want everything else to change, but they don't understand the importance of changing themselves. The graduate is the newbie, the person who has founded a startup. They've had some reasonable success, maybe hit that magic million pounds revenue figure. They've got their product market fit and they think that again, back to what got them to here, it will get them to there. They think a scale-up is just a big startup. So they don't know what they don't know. So they've come to kind of this scaling up phase with a level of hubris. Then we've got the comfort zone warrior. The person who has now built a successful business, they're enjoying the fruits of their labor. They've got the cars, they have the holidays, they've got the nice house, but their business is starting to plateau because essentially they just want to keep the business as it is. And we know that again as cliched, but if you're not growing, you're a city and you cannot stay still. So we see these four archetypes come into our world. Brian, what is common in lots of those leaders that come into our world? Are fears, fear of failure, especially for the second generation leader? Well, all of them actually, there's a fear of failure. There's a fear of judgment. What have I communicated? Create a vision for this wonderful company that I'm running. Craft this vision and communicate this vision to my team and to the wider world. And then we don't realize it or what my people say is a wonderful paradigm and a self-limiting paradigm in this part of the world. Who does he think he is? He's announcing all of those grand plans. Who does he think he is? I grew up in a world where it was, keep your head down and say nothing. You were just happy to have a job and you didn't utter any discontent at all. And you certainly weren't going to parade around communicating grand plans for a vision for the future for your dream. So it's that fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of letting go. A lot of founders, and I put myself not bragging, we're control freaks. I mean, we've been all over every aspect of this business. We've had to be, we've hustled, we've scrapped, we've worked early mornings, late at night to actually get our hands around all the aspects of what it takes to run a successful business. And then when it comes to scaling, we must let go. And that process of letting go is very, very challenging for lots of leaders. Now, they will logic it as something else as, well, they won't do it quite as well as I do it. And this customer needs me. We wouldn't have a business if I don't serve this customer, this customer, this customer. And again, back to the story again, that they'll tell themselves. And we know that in order to scale a business, you must build a team of people. It's the third principle. You don't build a business, you build people and people build the business. And people can't intellectualize that and understand that. But actually, when it comes to putting processes and systems in place, communicating a wonderful, a wonderful and a very compelling purpose and an exciting vision, they struggle then with actually when they bring and attract people into their business to actually delegate what needs to be done, those processes, systems, the client responsibility to the people that they attract into their business. So there's a number of them there. But it tends to be anchored in fear. Imposter syndrome is another big one, which you will have come across. Very, very common. At the prisoner 100%, I think that's probably where the majority of people, I'd say the 80/20 Pareto principle of people are. I was there in 2016 that you're actually drowning in success. I regularly tell my entrepreneurs that you can die from indigestion or you can die from starvation. A lot of early businesses die from starvation, not enough revenue, not enough clients. Or when you scale, you die from indigestion. That's how I was in 2016 where I'm like, I have all this money and no time to spend this. I have all these clients and I'm burning myself at all ends trying to keep it going. It's when I have to learn how to scale. The comfort zone, did you call it warrior? Was it comfort zone? The person who pursues comfort and security, uncertainty and the existing lifestyle they have. I want to ask on that because I wouldn't say I fall directly into any of the brackets. Comfort zone warrior is probably the closest, not because I don't want to scale, but because when I've got two businesses, so I've got my fitness business and then I've got my business consulting, which is working with personal trainers, online coaches. We'll be doing a circle conversation for that online mastermind after, which is available in the link in the description. People can check it out alongside the ScaleX accelerator from Brendan. So again, finding what's the fit. But something that I I won't say struggle with, I will say a challenge, a very grateful challenge that I have is filtering opportunities because I know how to scale a fitness business. I've scaled a fitness business. I know how to optimize that and potentially double the treble over the next few years. But something that once brought me a lot of joy now brings me less joy. I like now, weirdly, working one-to-one on higher value problems with people. Something that I didn't do for years. We know this from working with Colleen, your wife. I love working with people like that on higher level problems. Something that scales with revenue because the price can go up, but doesn't necessarily scale with time, but brings me a lot of joy. Whereas in the consultancy with the circle, with the mentorship, that falls into the bracket of everything in that space is what I would do for free. With fitness, even the scale programs, the subscriptions, the memberships, things that I really wanted to build a decade ago. I know exactly how to do that now, but it doesn't bring me the same jumping out of bed feeling that it once did, which brings me on to my next question. When you're drowning in opportunity, which I would put you in that bracket, I'm in that bracket, a lot of people listening. An opportunity presents itself in big ways, revenue, time, etc., all the way down to insert things that show up in your personal life that might take away from your business here. What's your filter? I won't even say your filter for saying yes to things. What's your filter for deciding if an opportunity is for you or if it's an opportunity to pass on? Great question. Purpose and vision. When we talk about our purpose, freeing leaders to flourish and our vision is to inspire, connect and enable millions of ambitious leaders of small to medium sized enterprise to scale with purpose. The ecosystem that we have built is entirely aligned to that vision. Something might be cloaked as an opportunity, but really it's a distraction if it's not aligned to your vision. This is why it's so critically important and why it's the second principle after psyche, after understanding where you're limiting yourself and potentially how to empower yourself then. It's a case of why am I doing what I'm doing and where am I going to go with it? Am I going north-west or am I going northeast? Those decisions, let's just take a really simple example. Your listeners can consider this example, but if you decided you were going to treat your partner or close friend to a holiday and you're really excited about this holiday and you go home this evening and you say, "I have booked us this incredible holiday," and they're looking at you going, "Oh, that sounds great. What's the first question they'll ask you?" When are we going? I'm feeling if it was me. Where are we going? And follow quickly by when are we going? So your vision is nothing more complicated than where am I going and when am I going there? Those decisions, let's just stay on the holiday example for a moment. Now, if I'm going to North America in the summertime, then I don't have to worry about packing really warm gear, nor do I have to worry about the euro-pound exchange rate because I'm going to North America. I'll look at the dollar pound exchange rate. Those decisions have only been answered on the basis of you answering a very, very simple question, and then we start to dig into that much, much deeper in terms of giving that greater pixelation. That vision will inform every opportunity that crosses your desk, because often opportunities aren't opportunities, but they're distractions. It was Robert Brault that says, "We don't achieve our big goals because of impediments to achieving that big goal. The challenge is of achieving that big goal. It's because there's an easier path to lesser goals." So you've got to set out what your big goal looks like, and that then will inform ultimately whether those opportunities are worth pursuing because they're absolutely aligned or in the sweet spot, or yes, it looks like a lovely opportunity, but it's actually not aligned to my direction of travel. I don't need to have a conversation with you back to the holiday analogy because you're selling ski gear at a discounted rate, because I'm actually going to North America in the summer. So no matter how cheap you give me that ski gear or how well it's branded, I don't need it. It seems like an opportunity, but actually it's not aligned to my vision. I'm going here, not there. Oh, I have a few things to ask off the back of that. I'm paraphrasing a line from Charlie Munger about having an idea, take a serious idea and take it very seriously. It's a paraphrase of do the one thing and do it very, very well. Something that I think afflicts more listeners than not, an imposter syndrome is definitely up there, but also shiny object syndrome is right there alongside it, that I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do this, I want to do that. And what you've mentioned there is a brilliant filtering process for that. You know, where you're going when you're going, don't need the ski gear and go into North America, i.e. set the goal, where is the business going, where do you want to take it, when do you want to get there and automatically it filters out things that don't align with that. What are your thoughts on multiple goals? Now, I'm asking this partly selfishly, but also there's a lot of listeners who are similar, where part of my business strategy, and I think I talked about this on your podcast, if I'm not mistaken, because two of those episodes we did are two of my favorite podcasts I've done, like they're great, you're a fantastic host, I highly recommend anyone listen to this podcast, check it out off the back and be linked in the description, but also got me thinking even after the conversation on reflection going, "I need to get clear on this, I need to get clear on that." One of my strategies over the years has been, I don't specifically dial into one thing, because I get very bored if I become one master in one dedicated craft, which is actually good business advice. Pick one thing, pick a serious thing and be serious about it, pick one thing and get really good at it. For people, and you'd have seen these through the Scalex Accelerator, through the club, who are trying to do multiple things, and this might be something as simple as I want to master a podcast and I want to get great at Instagram. I want to set a fitness business and I want to do a consultancy business. I want to do yoga, but I also want to do pilates, it inserts multiple gold things here. My process has been like an old war strategy, I think I got it in Lao Tzu's, but it's Blitzkrieg things. Make sure you factor, focus on one thing, follow one course until success, master that thing, then move into the next domain and put that in an immediate, minimum effective dose. I'm not quoting Lao Tzu directly, obviously, on an immediate and a minimum effective dose, that's my language tied around it. But what's your process for the entrepreneurs that you work with or the leaders that you work with who want to hit multiple things? Do you recommend that they split their time, energy and focus and have their ladder against the wall of both and see what they're enjoying more to double down on? Or is it a case of follow one, one, but give yourself the permission to pivot if it's not working? I again don't want to put words in your mouth, but in terms of the process for that, because I think it'd be very valuable to a lot of people listening who struggle with that, trying the object syndrome as well. What undergirds everything you're saying, I feel is getting really curious, giving yourself time and permission to get curious, to understand what you like, what lights you up, what is your unique ability? I had Gaye Hendricks on the podcast, the author of the wonderful book The Big Leap and he has coined that term zone of genius, unique ability is what Dan Sullivan, who I also have in the podcast talks about, find your unique ability. You can only do that if you actually lean into these things in the first instance. You mentioned the book right at the outset, so the focus, I love that acronym, follow one course until successful. I didn't write the book and launch a podcast and launch a program and we spent time, I took the time out to actually write the book to get clear on my thought process and what the research was telling me in the context of codifying what it is to scale. I don't have any huge aspiration now to continue writing the books. Ryan Holiday is a wonderful author. What lights him up is authoring books. I wrote this book for a reason, to put a manual for scaling in people's hands. I enjoyed the process, but it's not what I feel lights me up for every one of the day. Like you, I have some one-to-one coaching assignments. I really enjoy those, but actually they're not the best use of my time, but I really enjoy them. I maintain a number of those, but they're outliers. I have a number of people leading huge businesses, multi-billion-dollar businesses who don't fit within the context of our program, but I'm excited to do it because those people bring me a challenge in terms. I have to be operating at a different level to be able to coach those people. Ultimately, the learnings that I get from coaching at that level, I can then bring in to the program. I can bring those learnings into the program. I like the one-to-one, but it doesn't scale. We want it to go one-to-one. One-to-many is where we have our group platforms, both in-person, which I really enjoy the in-person, and now in the context of scaling an online platform for smaller businesses where affordability and location is a challenge for them in terms of actually attending the physical workshops that we host. Then the one-to-millions is the reason that I host the podcast. I love learning. I mean, you and I both know we get front-row seats at our own MBA in terms of the learnings, and then you're able to bring those learnings back and augment the programs with the learnings. All of that's been wrapped around in the business of simple scaling. Alongside it, because access to talent and access to finance are two of the greatest impediments to companies achieving scale, we established an investments business. We've closed out our first fund at the start of this year. We're deploying that capital at the moment, and we set up a small talent acquisition services business, scale-axe talent solutions. I don't lead either of those two businesses. I like them, but I don't love them, but they're there because they serve the community that we're serving back to our vision again. The opportunity for you here, Brian, is to get super clear on your vision, and that piece that you mentioned at the outset said, "I really like this. I really like this. I've built something quite good over here, but it's not lighting me up the way these other parts are lighting me up." This is an opportunity to delegate to someone else where it will light them up. For everything that doesn't light you up, there's somebody out there that will absolutely relish the opportunity to lead what you've created. Believe it or not, there are people who wake up every day and love spending their day in spreadsheets. I know that's hard to believe, but they do. You might tear your hair out of having to put in voices on zero. There are people who have created wonderful businesses as a result of putting in voices on zero. It all stems back to your vision, but you getting actually curious of what it is that you really enjoy doing, because there's no sense here scaling something that you're not truly passionate about. People will smell that. You want to be passionate about what it is that you're actually scaling. I think scaling success comes at the intersection of passion, purpose, and your proposition, the extent of which the problem that you're solving is significant. That's the call to action for people to check out the book, because the next phases of plan, process, performance, inter-proposition, places, and partnership go through all of this in the framework. There's so much for people, because different things, what I love, and I think I'm correctly attributing the quote to Marcus Aurelius at the same man, never steps into the same river twice. It's a book that you'll read it today, and the psyche jumps out at you. You'll read it in two years, vision jumps out at you. You'll read it in three years. It's a process of performance that jumps out. It's one you can come back to over and over again, because different things will jump out. Brendan loved this conversation, loved the work that you're doing. Very excited. We're going to unpack more on scaling fitness businesses and the zone of genus and the circle conversation, and I'm going to link out the Scale X Accelerator for people. I'm going to link out the podcast. I'm going to link out the book. I'll link out the website. Is there anywhere else that you'd like to send people? I know Instagram is there, LinkedIn, which will also be linked, but is there anywhere specifically you want to send people off to back of this podcast? No, thank you, Brian. Thanks for having me on. Love the conversation. The last 50 minutes has absolutely flown. You've covered the basis that anyone who wants to reach out to me directly, I tend to hang out most on LinkedIn. That's to go to where your potential clients are for sure, and I think with your business models, that's exactly it. Most of my fitness ones are on Instagram, so it's where I send people to DMs, et cetera. Brendan, keep doing what you're doing long overdue podcast. As I said, not only have we been friends for a while, I'm a massive fan of your work as well, so I'm glad that I'm able to put it across to people. Again, leading from a place of authenticity, leading from a place of passion and purpose, and scaling the right way so that it's not all just revenue and money driven, which is sometimes the message that can unfortunately get highlighted or magnified online. It's so much more than that, and then building a business that creates that financial freedom that's bringing you joy, that's lighting you up. That's your message in a nutshell from what I've gathered over the years. For those listening, go check out all the content off the back of it, and Brendan, keep doing what you're doing. Thank you so much again. Brian, thank you so much. You've summed that up beautifully. It's been an absolute privilege to be on the show today. Thanks for having me on. Pleasure is all mine, mate. Thank you so much again. I did tell you in the introduction, a great podcast with scaling coach Brendan McGurgan on the principles of simple scaling, the four freedoms of entrepreneurship and filtering opportunities and staying focused. We actually took this another level in the circle conversation, talking about the zone of genius and scaling fitness businesses. This is a fantastic premium episode. The link for the circle will be in the description below. It's my online group mastermind, my online group business coaching. If you want to check that out, an absolute wonderful follow-on that, again, takes what we talked about in this episode to another level. You can check out that link in the description. That's everything from me for today's podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Catch you in a couple of weeks.