Ep249 Suzanne Taylor-King—Find the Real Bottleneck and Make Your Business Serve Your Life

Suzanne Taylor-King 0:00

That's really the root of founder development, allowing your business to be the vehicle with which you live your life, rather than have the business dictate your life.

Mike O'Neill 0:18

Welcome to Get Unstuck and On Target, the weekly podcast that offers senior leaders insights and strategies to not only lead with confidence and vision, but also to achieve groundbreaking results. I'm your host, Mike O'Neill. I coach top-level executives on the power of ethical leadership to forge teams to be as united as they are effective. In each episode, join me for insightful conversations with leaders just like you, providing practical advice to help you get unstuck and propel you and your company forward. Let's get started. Here's something that I've seen over and over with senior leaders: when the business stalls, the leader is usually the last one to see why. The team sees it, the market sees it. I've worked closely with today's guest for the last few years, and she was my coach. She asks founders the question most of them would rather skip: Who are you being when you lead? It's not a strategy question; it's the one underneath every strategy question. Every leader listening has a version of this. Stick around. Suzanne Taylor King was running a chain of five retail stores at 24. In the 35 years since, she's built multiple ventures with successful exits. Today, she works in founder development, helping established founders find the position that only they can hold, and she hosts Unlock your way with STK. Today we get into why so many experienced founders keep fixing the wrong thing and fixing it well, while the business stays stuck right where it was. Welcome back, Suzanne.

Suzanne Taylor-King 2:19

Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me,

Mike O'Neill 2:22

Suzanne. I and I have a relationship. We interact on a regular basis, and I would think that I would have already known the answer to these questions, but I don't. So I'm going to jump right in. I hope none of this will be embarrassing, but let's go back to the beginning.

Speaker 1 2:39

Yeah,

Mike O'Neill 2:39

you were running five retail stores at 24.

Suzanne Taylor-King 2:44

Yes,

Mike O'Neill 2:44

what did that teach you about why some business they they get chosen and others they have to fight for every customer?

Suzanne Taylor-King 2:53

I I think you know I started that business at 22 with $3,000 and just an idea, and you know the idea was to bring a California, you know, surf skateboard shop to the East Coast. So, and of course, it was before social media and you know the internet really. So it was old-fashioned marketing and marketing campaigns and marketing to young people was difficult back in those days, and I really think that the lessons I learned, more importantly, the mistakes I made, were really the groundwork of all the really good lessons.

Mike O'Neill 3:42

Yeah, actually, that serves very nicely to my next question, and that is, you've built and you've exited multiple ventures since the good ones and the hard ones.

Speaker 2 3:54

Yeah,

Mike O'Neill 3:55

what did the hard ones teach you that the ones didn't?

Suzanne Taylor-King 4:00

I think it's really the the belief in myself and the grit required to fail stupendously, like to really fail at something, and and to give it your heart and your all, and to still have it end up bankrupt or failing, I I think was really the stamina builder for me, and I don't know why, you know, it didn't make me give up, but I really think it's those it's those failures, the things that did not go well, that each time really enabled me to do it better the next time.

Mike O'Neill 4:48

You are describing yourself as doing founders development, and I love that term. But the founders that you work with, they're they're not beginners. 710, 15 years in, they've cleaned up their messaging, they've rewritten the website, they've made the hires, but why don't those fixes grow the business?

Suzanne Taylor-King 5:13

Typically, because they're neglecting themselves, and this sounds really, really basic, but I found you know, myself a very successful health coach in the online space in between 2009 and 2012, and I only had a revenue goal in mind at the time. For me, it was really about hitting that revenue number. I had a young baby toddler at home, and so my business was very purposeful during certain set hours, and I really burned myself out going for that million dollar a year mark, and it took me about three and a half, almost four years to hit that mark, and I started the business in figure competition shape. And four years in, was 40 pounds overweight, not feeling well, not sleeping, you know, all of the things, and really discovered that I had put myself aside, of course, because I wasn't putting my child aside. He got the best of me, and then the business got so so much of my energy and my time that I ended up really really sick and burnt out. And I just said I burnt my whole business to the ground at that point and started over and started over looking like what I don't want. I don't want 60 hours a week. I don't want 600 clients. I don't want, and it really fueled so much for me, and also made me realize that revenue really wasn't my target. And of course, it is for some people, but my target was more impact, personal satisfaction, personal growth. I wanted my business to be a vehicle for my own learning, development, and betterment. Really, and that's really the root of founder development. Allowing your business to be the vehicle with which you live your life, rather than have the business dictate your life,

Mike O'Neill 7:46

you know you're working with founders, and there's so much wrapped up with a founder. It's their name on the letterhead. I don't know they still use letterhead or not, but it it is definitely their name associated with the business. Are you finding that the same thing that you experience is still very much the case with the founders you work with? They're not taking care of themselves, and they're not getting rid of the things they don't want.

Suzanne Taylor-King 8:16

I think over and over again before creating the term founder development and eudaimonology and all the other things I talk about, I think it was over and over again discovering that the problem was in how the founder was seeing themselves and taking care of themselves. And perfect example is the founder who came to me, and his income had been stuck for four years. Business was great, good revenue, eight employees. You know, by all accounts, a successful business, but when he asked me why I thought his revenue was stuck for the last four years, I asked a really hard question, and I said, "Well, what does your personal development routine look like? Eating, moving, sleeping. How are you sleeping? How's that extra 4050, pounds serving you? Are you walking every day? Are you thinking about your business without, you know, being digitally tied? And he said, "Oh, well, that just slapped me in the face, and I knew that that question was bold of me to ask, but it also led us right to the conversation. That's the root of the problem. You're you're overworking. You're not walking. You're not eating well. You're not sleeping well, which all translates into not focusing well. So, what would that look like if you know he had already hired me at this point and said, "I said, what if we work on that first before we scale anything, and he was really shocked that that was my choice of what to work on first. But I got a phone call about three weeks later from his wife, and his wife said, "I know you don't know me, but I want to thank you because he heard you in a way that he hasn't been hearing me. So thank you for that, and that's when I kind of knew that you know this underlying mission of mine to create better founders, and so that our our work really makes a bigger impact in the world.

Mike O'Neill 11:07

You know, we've talked a little bit about the know thyself here and the criticality of putting that as a priority, so that those listening don't get the wrong impression of you. You offer far more than what we've discussed thus far. Walk us through the kinds of things that you are now doing for founders.

Suzanne Taylor-King 11:31

Well, I would say from taking that early diagnosis to systems, Strategy, technology, your personal, you know, routines and habits, whatever that looks like, and getting that true picture of the person behind the business first, and then business systems, strategy, technology, leverage. To me, AI has given my business so much leverage that I had to include that in part of what I do, but not before we do the diagnosis and the strategy, because you know AI is a very sexy, hot thing right now, and everybody wants it. Everybody wants automations or tools, but done willy-nilly without the strategy and the thinking behind it, companies are wasting a lot of money and a lot of time on things they really don't need.

Mike O'Neill 12:44

What do founders get wrong about what AI can do for them and their business?

Suzanne Taylor-King 12:51

Well, I think everybody wants to jump to automations and agents, and I have a system of creating foundational intellectual property documents and context of your business from offers and stories and testimonials and all of that foundational work that you program AI with, so that your output turns out better. Not a single person or company that I've worked with has had that when they started with me, and I am told over and over and over again how that foundational thinking and context has changed the output of AI for their company, so I think from a simple content creation plan with AI in the loop, I think without that foundation, you're getting generic content, and you know the internet and social media are full of that generic content that doesn't sound like the person or the company.

Mike O'Neill 14:10

Suzanne, you were kind of let me explore a little bit about your experiences, what worked and what did not, and the lessons you learned from maybe what didn't work. You made a pretty bold decision this year, this calendar year, and that is you've decided to stop selling services. Quite a few services, and those services were good. That's good work.

Speaker 1 14:35

Yeah.

Mike O'Neill 14:36

What made you do that? And when you did that, what's what's been the cost?

Suzanne Taylor-King 14:43

Well, I think what made me do it was feeling very fractionated. I I felt like I had too many offers and. And I do this work with my clients all the time, but turning it inward on yourself-ooh, it was interesting experience. So to look at all of the things that I could offer, and I'll equate that to a toolbox. So I have this toolbox of skills, certifications, abilities, and at the core, I didn't want to be selling a skill or a tool from my toolbox. I wanted to sell me, my knowledge, my thinking, and so by focusing on one tool, like creating offers, that felt constricted to me, and so there was numerous AI things that I love to do, but that's changing so so quickly that you know I just made something this week with AI, and I know that within the next three months, I'm going to have to change it, change the SOP, update it. And I thought, well, what does life look like if I don't base what I sell off things like that? Like truly, truly stand in the fact that I'm a coach, I'm a strategist, I'm a consultant. Sometimes I'm a mentor because I've been through all of this so many times myself. And what does it look like if I truly depend on all the tools in my toolbox at any given time, but that's not what I sell. And you know, it was many conversations with my mentor, my coach. You and I had numerous conversations about what this is going to look like. And at the very same time of knowing this was the next level of my business, I also knew that a lot of things were going to have to get deleted, not talked about anymore, and that felt very scary, to be honest. You know, I had a very successful membership years ago on a now outdated platform, but I had 6000 people paying $10 a month, and four years ago, I made the decision of I don't do that anymore, and I remember the conversation with my husband, and he said, "What are you doing now? Well, I'm deleting that. I don't, as of January one, I don't do that anymore. And he thinks entrepreneurship might be the craziest thing he's ever experienced. He was like, so let me get this straight. You're just gonna decide you don't do that anymore, and you're going to upgrade or or move on. And I think it's really a superpower of mine to be able to have something that's fundamentally working, right? But it wasn't fulfilling to me. I wasn't having the impact or change that I desired. So there was a lot of bravery in saying, "I don't do that anymore, but here's what I do now, and I fully believe that that's in every three-year thing for me.

Mike O'Neill 18:44

You know, I appreciate you sharing that, and yes, you and I have had the opportunity to have lots of conversation over last number of years, and you've been kind enough to let me see behind the curtain, and vice versa, because our work together has led to me getting clarity as a founder. Most listeners know I came out of a corporate HR background. I understood what it took to support HR in a leadership role for fast-growing companies, companies that became Fortune 500, and as meaningful those 25 years were, they don't translate to the last 15 years when you own your own business, when you're working with other business owners. You can borrow from what you've learned, mistakes and all. I like to kind of go back to how you engage with your clients, your founder clients, and you have said that there are three questions that you ask a founder before you'll build anything. Are you liberty to share what those questions are?

Suzanne Taylor-King 19:55

Well, I think they're a little fluid, you know, depending. On the type of business and you know the type of founder, I notice that the founders that are attracted or introduced to me tend to be creative, unique, different, have some sort of boldness about their offer or their their brand, and one of the things that are that's most important to me is are they in alignment with the company? I know, and I know that word alignment is kind of thrown out a lot, but morals, Values, vision, mission. If I can't agree with what they're doing, selling, or who they're being, I can't help them, and and I think I'm okay with that at this point. So, morals and vision and who that company is being in the marketplace, very important to me. I love natural companies. I love holistic companies. I love you know founders who take care of themselves at that next level. Usually, they're athletes. A lot of times, they have past military background. That's how I grew up. My dad was in the army, so I speak that language because of my 20-year dental career. I speak medical and dental very, very well. I understand that industry very well. So I think the most important question is really who are they being on a day-to-day basis in their business, but also in their personal life, you know. And if those two versions of the founder aren't in alignment, I can absolutely help it get into alignment, but if somebody's not open to that, I think that's a no for me right from the beginning.

Mike O'Neill 22:13

You know, one thing I've picked up from you is kind of a page that you borrow from medicine, and that is a doctor doesn't prescribe from the patient's self diagnosis, and when I was asking what questions you asked, I understand those questions would vary. But what you're seeking is that alignment you're talking about, so that alignment can show up in other ways too. For the founder or the senior leader, who's they're sure they know what that bottleneck is, but what's one question that tells them whether that's real or it's a real problem, or it's maybe even a decoy?

Suzanne Taylor-King 22:51

I think when you're really looking at a company and the person who's running the company, it's the company's culture and vision is typically such a reflection of the person running the company, and I'll tell a story and give an example here because I think it makes more sense. We've all worked for bosses in the past who were either bullies or didn't or didn't listen, you know, my way or the highway. And when that happens, a company can't make really fluid changes. They can't think on their feet because the team is typically afraid of the boss. So that's a red flag to me right away. If you're leading through brute force or intimidation, or you know my way or the highway thinking, well, that's a disconnection between who you are as a founder and how you want your company to show up and be in the marketplace, and I think that's a growth inhibitor. But nine times out of 10, the founder is not aware that that's who they're being, and sometimes it takes that 360 leadership assessment or getting some input from the team, the staff, the board members, to actually get to that point, and I, I would argue that the marketplace usually has a pretty good idea of the company's culture, and typically the founder is not aware of That,

Mike O'Neill 24:40

as you know, this is an unscripted conversation.

Suzanne Taylor-King 24:45

Yeah,

Mike O'Neill 24:46

you didn't know what the questions were going to be. I wasn't sure what the questions are going to be, but there may be something that you want to share that we haven't had a chance to get to. Anything come to mind?

Suzanne Taylor-King 24:58

Well, I think the only thing that I. Think of that really has come up a lot recently is when someone wants to grow their business, whether they're growing to that first milestone of 250,000, or they're growing to 500,000, which is a totally different business than 250,000, or they're hitting that first million dollar milestone. I I think the lack of awareness of how important relationships are to the growth of a business. I think everybody is very surprised to hear that 90% of my business comes from a relationship, and I know when I talk about it, somebody looks at me on social media. They look at my LinkedIn, they look at my beautiful website, and they see those things. They're like, ooh, she has it all figured out, and she must be getting business from LinkedIn and Facebook, and it's so relationship-driven that that I I think is the number one thing founders miss because they see the online space is something they want to tackle or figure out. Oh, I just want to figure out how to post on LinkedIn and get clients. And it's always a challenge to move someone from traditional marketing thinking to well, what's possible with 10 or 20 really incredible, great relationships.

Mike O'Neill 26:47

Yeah, I love that very much. So, if folks are listening and they kind of, you know, gosh, Susanna said several things. I'd like to learn more. A relationship starts with a conversation. What's the best way for people to find you and learn more about your work?

Suzanne Taylor-King 27:07

susannataylorking.com is truly the home for everything. It has my group coaching program. It has my one on one founder development. My blog, which I pour my heart out into a couple times a week, insights, funny things, AI news, and I I think that's really the best way to experience my thinking, and that's number one before a conversation. You know, does my thinking resonate with you? And if it does, then having that first initial conversation is easy to find once you've really established that. Oh, hey, I I like what she says about that, and you want to go deeper.

Mike O'Neill 28:03

Well, speaking from lots of experience, for those who have that conversation, you're in for a treat. Just as I expected this conversation to be. Thank you for joining me again.

Suzanne Taylor-King 28:17

You're so welcome.

Mike O'Neill 28:18

You know, as I kind of sign off, I want to remind our viewers and listeners: if Suzanne's got you thinking that the thing that you keep fixing may not be the real problem, reach out to her. Her contact information you're going to find it in the show notes. And if you want more conversations like this one, follow Get unstuck and on target on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen. And if someone came to mind while you're listening to our conversation, perhaps a senior leader who's surrounded by people but alone in the big decisions, I'd welcome the introduction. That's who I coach. I keep a small number of coaching relationships, and I have room for the right person. You can reach me at bench-builders.com. So I thank you for joining me, Suzanne. I thank our listeners for tuning in, and I hope this has helped you get unstuck and on target. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Get Unstuck and On Target. I hope you've gained insights to help you lead with confidence and drive your organization forward. Remember, at Bench Builders, we're committed to your success, your leadership excellence, and your strategic growth. If you've enjoyed our conversation today, please leave a review, rate, and subscribe to keep up with our latest episodes. This show really grows when listeners like you share it with others. Who do you know who needs to hear what we talked about today? Until next time, I encourage you to stay focused on the. And continue to break new ground on your leadership path. This show is powered by Media Leads. To get your next great podcast produced, go to MediaLeadsCo.com.