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Arkansas Business Owners Can Scale Without Burning Out with Dr. Jon Randall

May 27, 2026

In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, host Yonatan Schmidt welcomes Dr. Jon Randall, Founder of XFA.COACH, for a conversation about scaling businesses effectively and overcoming the invisible barriers that prevent long-term growth. From operational structure to leadership mindset, Dr. Randall explains why many businesses plateau despite experiencing strong momentum.

Overcoming Growth Ceilings and Building Scalable Businesses With Dr. Jon Randall

Dr. Jon Randall

As the Founder of XFA.COACH, Dr. Jon Randall works with financial advisors looking to scale sustainably and move beyond growth plateaus. With a doctorate in performance psychology and decades of hands-on consulting experience, he has helped hundreds of firms expand into multimillion-dollar operations, with several clients reaching nine-figure revenue milestones. Dr. Randall is also the author of The Extraordinary Financial Advisor Practice, where he explores the intersection of strategy, leadership, and operational behavior.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [02:08] Dr. Jon Randall explains why founder capacity creates a natural glass ceiling
  • [09:21] The mindset shifts needed to grow from $1M to $5M
  • [11:09] Why trimming your client list can drive massive profits
  • [16:12] How boutique firms compete against industry giants successfully
  • [19:14] The secrets to hyper-niching for unstoppable business growth
  • [23:20] Dr. Randall shares the systems top $5M practices use to scale
  • [28:47] The biggest leadership mistakes that stunt team and revenue growth
  • [37:15] What property management businesses should focus on first to break through growth ceilings

In this episode…

One of the most common misconceptions about growth is that success automatically creates scalability. In reality, growth often creates more complexity, more pressure, and more decision fatigue for business owners. Dr. Randall explains that founders frequently become the very obstacle slowing their companies down because they fail to delegate or trust their systems.

For business owners and property investors across Northwest Arkansas, this episode offers an important reminder: Scaling successfully requires intentional leadership, clear operational systems, and the willingness to step out of the daily bottleneck so the business can continue growing.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

  • “The #1 constraint is capacity, and it’s the owner-founder having too much on their plate.”
  • “So our brain craves equilibrium, so when something different comes along, our brain says no.”
  • “If they catch 70% of what you can catch and you teach three people how to fish, that’s still scalable, right?”
  • “The things that got them here are probably not going to be things that get them there.”
  • “If it’s stuck in the founder-owner’s head and they’re trying to tell it to other people, it has to become tangible.”

Action Steps

  1. Identify your primary growth constraint: Understanding whether capacity, client mix, or lead generation is limiting you allows you to focus on what actually drives scale.
  2. Delegate and leverage your team effectively: Shifting work off the founder’s plate frees up time for higher-value activities like growth and strategy.
  3. Focus on ideal clients over sheer volume: Prioritizing high-quality clients increases profitability and reduces operational strain across your business.
  4. Document and systemize your processes: Creating clear playbooks enables consistency, improves team performance, and makes scaling far more achievable.
  5. Adopt a leadership mindset centered on others: Helping team members succeed increases retention, performance, and overall business growth.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.

Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.

The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.

That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need. 

To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].

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Episode Transcript

Intro 00:04

Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management, and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.

Yoni Schmidt 00:20

Yoni Schmidt here, hosting today’s episode of The Same Day Podcast, where I connect with business leaders, entrepreneurs, and many others. Past guests include Yuval Golan, the CEO of Waltz, Ben Nemecek of BlanketHomes.com, Bob Burg, the Owner of the Go-giver, and many, many more.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter, we are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate, manage real estate. And that is why no matter what the real estate asset that you have, we help you take the headache out of managing that property.

Today’s guest is Jon, Dr. Jon Randall, who I’m very excited to host today. He is the Founder of XFA and a leading expert in helping financial advisory firms break through growth ceilings with a PhD in performance psychology and over two decades of experience. Jon has helped hundreds of firms scale to $5 million plus million practices. His work blend strategy, operational psychology and more to help leaders overcome the internal and structural barriers holding them back. He’s also the author of The Extraordinary Financial Advisor Practice, and today we are diving into what it really takes to scale a business and operate it at a higher level. 

 Welcome to the show, Jon. Dr. Randall, and thank you for being here.

Dr. Jon Randall 01:45

Yeah, thanks. I’m a fan of your podcast and looking forward to our conversation today about entrepreneurship.

Yoni Schmidt 01:51

Love it. Let’s, you know, dive right in to performance psychology, growth feelings. You focus, you focus on both operational, operational and psychological constraints. What are the most common invisible ceilings that keep businesses stuck?

Dr. Jon Randall 02:08

It’s pretty universal. So we focus in the financial advisor business space and their independence, meaning that they own their own business. They start it from scratch, they own it, they’re hiring their own people. And so I was one of these people I started in 1999 up in New York, where my wife’s from, and I stumbled into helping others when we moved to North Carolina in 2004. We had some family here, fell in love with it.

We didn’t have kids yet. And so we made the move. And in a lot of people around here started to ask me, hey, Jon, what are those big people in New York do? Would you show me? And I grew really quickly because what it took my first five years to build in New York, I sold to my best friend who I started with, and it took me about a year and a half to rebuild what it took me five years to build because I knew what worked and what didn’t. 

 I just did what worked and eliminate all the stuff that didn’t work. So all these people said, whoa, you know, how did you do this? Would you show me? And I wrote a couple books along the way to organize the information. But as I, as I evolved in and learned this stuff, you know, you mentioned constraints. 

 We’ve really based our consulting program on the theory of constraints. So it comes from manufacturing. And if there’s a clog in one part of the process, it holds up the rest of the process. So, so in our, I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through this. They want new business, which I’m a super big fan of. 

 It’s one of my favorite topics, but there’s probably some other constraints that are holding them back from getting new clients. And the biggest one I see in our financial advisor industry, which is true for many entrepreneurs, you know, the reason why they’re not getting new clients probably has something to do with their delivery, what they’re doing with existing clients. And you peel back the onion, the number one constraint is capacity and it’s the owner founder having too much on their plate and then not leveraging others on their team to scale. So it creates a natural glass ceiling for any business, and it requires a different model to break through that.

Yoni Schmidt 04:08

Yeah, it’s tough to balance giving up control and delegation when you want things done in a certain way, right? When you’re saying, I like, you know, you know, delivery to happen in a certain way. If I let it go and I give control up, the level may be diluted to something that I’m not necessarily satisfied with. How do you help owners overcome that and where, where do you see, you know, where do you see success?

Dr. Jon Randall 04:37

Yes. So this is where the psychology stuff comes into play. And I joke around and say, I got a PhD in performance psychology to figure out why these financial advisors owners don’t do what they should be doing. Really, it’s it’s just how we are. So the human brain craves equilibrium.

It’s a safety mechanism we have built in, which is a good thing, right? If we went through all day, every day living outside of our normal zone and constant stress, it would be terribly wearing on our bodies. We wouldn’t live very long as humans. So our brain craves equilibrium. So an example is like food, right? 

 We all favorite foods we have go to things we eat. We have some things that we don’t like and we don’t eat. So these preferences that we build, they, they become our our equilibrium, right? And when something different comes along, our brain says, no, that’s not what we do around here. We do it this way. 

 And I see the same thing happening in business, especially when people get busy. Right? So if we’ve been doing it a certain way, it’s just that this is the way, right? If we get used to that, and when it requires doing something different, it’s really hard for humans to do that, especially when we’re busy, which most entrepreneurs are. So you’re right, in that example, you kind of gave up of, of like an owner doing it all themselves. 

 If like we use an analogy to fishing, like if the owner or you listening was doing all the fishing and you want to do more, you know, you want to catch more fish, okay. You have to teach other people how to fish, right? You can’t hire someone and you keep doing all the fishing, right? So it’s, it’s hard because it’s completely different, right? It’s not what we have been doing. 

 So our brain is, is by nature is going to always default back to these are the things we used to do, right? And, and it’s very natural for that to happen. So that’s why I see a lot of businesses hit a ceiling because it’s different thinking. It’s different things that really scale in ten-x a business. And it’s probably a small part of what everyone’s doing will be the answers to get to ten X, but they’re caught in so much of the two X kind of things that are going to really limit the growth of the business.

Yoni Schmidt 06:48

Yeah, it, I mean, so from an equation perspective, it’s like the same input would equal the same output. You have to, you know, figure out a way to change the input grow, and from there you’ll have a different type of output.

Dr. Jon Randall 07:03

Yes. And so in that fishing analogy, let’s say the person you teach to fish can’t catch as many fish as you. But that’s okay. If they catch 70% of what you can catch and you teach three people how to fish, that’s still that’s still scalable, right? It’s still, it’s still scalable.

So yes, quality is very important. No one will ever be good as the founder, the owner, but if they can deliver a certain level of, of minimum standards or certain level of quality, heck yeah. That’s, that’s that, that’s the really the answer. And I think there’s, there, there is different dynamics of maybe some, some people are just so die hard perfectionists and quality, which is cool. You know, I really like that. 

 But you know, for what your customers need, probably 80% of what you do is probably fine. It’s way more value than they need, right? So it’s, it’s, it’s this thought of no one can ever be me. They have to be 100% or, or just, you know, they just can’t put it in front of clients or can’t do this. This goes on in many, many businesses, but we see it a lot in the financial advisor business. 

 And we there’s not many the majority of advisors produce over or under a million in our industry. We see a glass ceiling between a million and like 1.5 million. And it just comes down to time. It’s like all an owner can do. So the firms we work with that do over 10 million. 

 We have some doing over 100 million in revenue with like single owners that have built these businesses. The only thing that’s different about them is they’re just playing a different game. They’re playing more of, how can I secure 1 million to 1.5 million for someone on my team to work? And I have a big profit margin on that. Right. 

 What they’re managing for the firm, not what I’m doing. Right. Because every, every, every business owner, what they’re doing is their profit margin to scale. It really is about what’s your profit margin and other people doing the work or, you know, other people doing the fishing?

Yoni Schmidt 08:59

Sure. Is it worth it? And you know, there’s a ton of liability that comes with it. So it all factors in. You mentioned mindset just a bit ago, what mindset or what shifts when a business owner goes from, you know, $1 million practice to 5 million plus practice, you know, mentally and operationally.

Dr. Jon Randall 09:21

Yeah. So it really, they really have to understand that the things that got them here, got them here, they’re probably not going to be things that get them there to be five X or ten x bigger. And so it’s really understanding that there is a small number of things that are going to ten x. I’ve sort of alluded to one of my favorite books that’s called 10X is Easier Than 2X by, by Dr. Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. And the whole concept is 20% of what you’re doing will lead to ten x, but 20% or 80% of what you’re doing is going to limit you to maybe two x at best.

So it’s helping them see that these are the ten X level things that you need to be doing. They’re typically the growth oriented things. You know, the owner founder should be driving the growth of the firm and leveraging other people to do the servicing. The operational things. So it’s really there. 

 It’s just shifting the mindset that, okay, my responsibility is to grow this thing, not to sit at a bunch of client meetings all week. Not to, you know, Google over the SOPs of how we operate. It’s really I need, I need to get free so I can go grow the firm. Right? That’s really what owners need to do, whether it’s organic or inorganic acquisitions of other firms, whatever it might be, that that’s really the role. 

 So it’s helping them narrow down to this small number of things that are going to move the dial and helping them, you know, shift their mindset, if you will shift their thinking on this is what they need to do and they need to leverage other people to help with delivery because, you know, that’s always one of the first things to get out of.

Yoni Schmidt 10:55

Yeah. You’ve helped firms grow massively. You know, often also reducing their client base by 30%. Right. That typically sounds counterintuitive to some owners.

Tell us a little bit about how that works.

Dr. Jon Randall 11:09

It does. And so in our industry, we’re all trained. Just get more clients, more clients constantly get more assets, and everything will work out. And again, that works to a certain point. And then you get clogged up.

And so a huge issue in our industry, all these different studies reference it. There’s investment news, really does research on our industry. They all say the same thing that the financial advisor business is getting filled up and the need in America is continuing to grow. You know, there’s trillions of dollars about to roll over in the next ten years. The biggest wave of money movement in history is coming up. 

 And then McKinsey came out with a study last year in February of 25, and they said there’s going to be a 100,000 advisor shortage by the year 2034. So it’s a good business to be in where the demand is increasing. The number of providers is going down. I mean, it’s a good business to be in, but the typical practice is just caught up with too many of the wrong clients. So fidelity did a study. 

 They determined that over half of clients of financial advisors are just not profitable. So that’s the conundrum is that this old training of just bringing clients, bringing assets that’ll work out when you’re new, it helps you out and you got to grit and grind to get over a million in revenue. But once you get over a million in revenue, then you have to shift to a little bit more about quality over quantity. And so we see a lot the bottom half of practices. So let’s say practice has 400 clients. 

 Usually the bottom 200 produces like single digit percentage of their revenue.

Yoni Schmidt 12:47

Wow.

Dr. Jon Randall 12:48

So I mean, I always joke and say it’s a lot more efficient to take a big pile of money out in the parking lot and light it on fire than it is to spend all this time for you and your team working with these unprofitable clients. And so if they could just do a slightly more business with their, their top half or maybe their top 10%, it could replace the bottom half, the bottom two thirds of clients and unlock a lot of time to, you know, duplicate some of these best people. So when there’s just a lot of just average clients, unfortunately, businesses kind of gravitate to the mean. So their services ended up being for their mediocre client. The clients they bring in are mediocre clients.

And so if you want to attract better clients and drive revenue per client, you’ve got to find a way to do more with them. And it’s usually time management. It’s either having some kind of segmentation. You can dedicate more time at the top, get out of time at the bottom, or just find a different home for them, right? Sell them off, do revenue, share with another practice to service those people. 

 But that’s the big shift. And it’s and it’s like a, it’s like a child’s security blanket, right? Almost that like, oh, well, there’s 30,000 in revenue with those two, you know, 200 clients. I can’t let go of it. It helps pay for this or helps pay for that. 

 Going back to psychology and equilibrium to let go of those people’s totally different thinking. So they’ll invent reasons in their head why they need to keep those clients. But the problem just stays around their business. The worst mistake we see is, is they’ll bring in another advisor and just dump all the smaller clients on them. And so I get, yes, owners getting freer. 

 That’s a good thing. But the problem is still in your business and you’re never going to generate a proper profit margin on another advisor. That’s just only working with smaller clients. It’s just it’s never going to happen and they’ll probably end up leaving because it’s boring, grinding work. You know, they want to learn how to work with better clients that are, that are more fun. 

 So it is kind of counterintuitive. What do you mean? I would not have clients. It doesn’t make any sense. But if you look at the economics of it, it’s like you dug yourself into this hole working with a ton of unprofitable people. 

 So we need to get more clients above this profit line. And a teeny bit of new business with some existing clients would more than pay for getting rid of the bottom half, the bottom two thirds of most advisors books. So that’s that’s a big shift. And in life, so much easier. They don’t need as much team, right? 

 If they’re more focused. And yeah, that that’s I think a lot of businesses can benefit from that. Just figuring out how to do more with ideal clients and not just working with anybody.

Yoni Schmidt 15:27

And I mean, that’s all very interesting. A question that popped into my mind when you were saying all this is, you know, I understand that these financial advisory firms, they do a lot. It’s not just, you know, equities and, and, you know, income and, you know, selling, you know, these kind of brokerage account, I guess, like investment vehicles, let’s call them, you know, how do they compete with the big dogs like Barclays and Merrill Lynch and, you know, fidelity and all these all these, you know, naturally humongous organizations and financial institutions that people just naturally gravitate to as they end up with more and more wealth over the years.

Dr. Jon Randall 16:12

Yeah, yeah. The difference that’s really evolving is, is more of the advice topics. Not so much the, you know, we’re going to manage your money in a special way. Sure. That’s important, but it’s more of what can you do beyond it?

There’s a reason people are investing, right? It’s, hey, I want to be able to retire one day and not have to go back to work, or I want to stay retired or I want to leave, leave a legacy to my kids or my grandkids or great grandkids, right? There’s a reason they’re investing. So that’s the stuff, those reasons, that’s the stuff we want to dive into. That’s the difference makers of. 

 How can we save on taxes today and tomorrow? How can we leave a legacy but in a tax efficient manner so that Uncle Sam isn’t one of your beneficiaries? Your family is, you know, your beneficiaries. So that’s really where we see people winning. That’s where we see these independent practices really doing very well and delivering customized advice for very sophisticated clients. 

 And, and that it’s hard to do that at scale. So a lot of the big firms that you mentioned are wonderful firms, and they have a lot of great things. But when you get that big, there just has to be some program things from an investment standpoint, you can’t get to the level of customization. You can’t deliver the level of advice that some of these, you know, clients really are seeking. And so that’s where I really see firms winning is the client, the ones that can develop their advisors to deliver a high quality advice beyond the investments there. 

 They’re really, really doing well. So that’s one of the hottest things in the industry. And Sonali, who mentioned as industry research, they said 79% of of clients of financial advisors are willing to pay separately for advice.

Yoni Schmidt 18:03

And.

Dr. Jon Randall 18:03

Separately from just having their money managed costs, but separate costs just to get advice because it’s that big of a deal. And ten years ago it was like 30 something percent. So this is a big trend in the industry. And so the savvy practices have jumped on this train and are are cranking on it, and they’re generating a lot of additional revenue per client by going deeper with these, these things makes the client stickier. And the ones that aren’t, I mean, it’s, it’s just hard to compete out there if you’re only offering is just investments only.

It’s, it’s, it’s not so, so it’s cool to see what’s evolving, but that’s, that’s the way to, it’s really the way to compete and keep clients long term. It’s all about the advice.

Yoni Schmidt 18:45

Yeah. So you’re saying more niche positioning. As you said, basically, you know, if you’re if you’re looking for tax and tax advantages and tax strategy, helping them, you know, open the trust and, you know, being the registered agent for the trust and having an on staff attorney and so on and so forth would help those smaller operators, I guess, compete with those larger ones and maybe have more of a boutique sense to.

Dr. Jon Randall 19:12

Very.

Yoni Schmidt 19:12

Much to their practice.

Dr. Jon Randall 19:14

Yeah, very much so. I mean, you see a lot of like alliances with the CPA, with attorney in the early stages, much larger firms might get into, okay, we’re going to acquire an accounting firm and deliver it to our clients, or we’re going to acquire a state planning firm or law firm and, and bring that in in the fold and provide that to clients. That’s the that’s like the eight figure, nine figure firms. That’s the game they’re playing. But but under eight figures, you see a lot of just just partnering with them and helping.

And so what’s great about when you can niche and you can have a target market and deliver to more people in a target market, delivery becomes easier, right? It’s like we have more of the same. This wonderful solution helped this particular client. Hey, we have ten other clients exactly like them. So if you focused on maybe executives of some specific company, that’s some weird, real weird, like incentive plan and there’s some, some tax complexities with it. 

 You figure out that for one client, guess what, all the other executives that firm could probably benefit from that level of advice that most aren’t going to be able to go to that depth. So I’m not talking about like cookie cutter. I’m talking, hey, when you really go deep and help a client, you can help other people in the world just like them. So it leads to, you know, the top three constraints I talked about. I mentioned capacity, revenue per client is that second one that we talked about where it’s really just too many, the wrong clients and not doing it enough with with existing clients. 

 It’s the easiest way to drive profits, right? You do more with existing clients. That all goes to profits. So many businesses are overlooking this, but the third is then attracting enough ideal new clients. And so when you do have a focus, whether you call it a target or you call it a niche, it’s it’s easier to track people. 

 And, and so there’s this concept of hyper niching that you want to, if you’re going to attract new ideal clients like your existing clients, you got to narrow down to a pawn that’s so small that you could be the only financial advisor in that pond, right? Because the sharks are swimming in the giant ocean and it’s real hard to get noticed. But if you specialize in somebody who owns multiple car dealerships of a specific brand in a specific part of the country, and there’s four other people exactly like them that you know of, like that could be an ultimate niche, right? You have one client in here. There’s four other people exactly like them. 

 You get a few of those other ones. I mean, that’s huge, right? And it doesn’t you don’t have to acquire 25 new clients. You just need one. And and you have a huge lift, right? 

 So, so usually we see the lack of focus being a constraint to attracting more ideal clients. And then of course, the lack of framing, you would have to let somebody know in that extremely small pond that I help people who own multiple car dealerships in this part of the country, I know everything there is to know. I specialize in this and other people, just like you are who I can help best, and I would always make time for them if any of them need help, right? It’s really just framing the the who you help best because advisors get random referrals, right? They’ll get somebody kids who aren’t a fit, they’ll get someone’s brother has no money. 

 And it’s because there’s a lack of framing. So, so focus really makes delivery easier and more scalable, but also it leads to the easiest path to get to new clients.

Yoni Schmidt 22:40

Yeah. Got it. Stay sticking in your to your lane, basically is what we talk about a lot. The hedgehog concept is, you know, also something that comes up a lot in our leadership meetings. And, you know, should we take on this massive multifamily property and manage it?

And the answer is usually like, no, we shouldn’t because we do boutique multifamily, small stuff and single family. So yeah, let’s talk a little bit about operational excellence. What are the key systems or processes that, you know, every $5 million plus practice has, you know, you know, has that smaller firms may not.

Dr. Jon Randall 23:20

Yeah. So the, the trouble is usually founders have all the answers stuck in their head. Which is intangible, right? If it’s stuck in the founder owner’s head and they’re trying to tell it to other people, it has to become tangible. So it has to be written down visual so that other people can see it.

So going back to the fishing analogy, if it’s, hey, here’s exactly how we fish around here. Okay, let’s document it. And the owner founder might be a, you know, a visionary that’s not going to stop and like document. That’s okay. But you need a who and your team who can organize. 

 What the heck goes on around here? How do we how do we do things? How do we deliver advice to a really, you know, sophisticated client around here? The owner knows how to do it. We just got to extract it from their head. 

 So, so having some like the firm’s way or having some things organized is, is really the key, not just in the financial advisor business, but, but any business that here’s our playbook. Here’s, here’s how we do it. The more that you can have, the better. Because if you are going to scale and do multiple millions, eight figures, nine figures, that’s got to be pretty dialed in so that others could do it. And I think it’s pretty cool to have somebody else write some of this stuff because There’s a great, you know, father son team we we worked with in the Atlanta area. 

 They started with this probably about a half million seven, eight years ago. They’re doing over 10 million in revenue now. And these guys, they’re both ex-military. And so when sun came on board, it was like, alright, dad, there’s like no information here like how to do this. But son organized the information from his perspective as a new person joining the team, which was really interesting to have a long time veteran write something down might be really difficult. 

 So if we were, you know, talking football, Tom Brady’s known as the greatest football player of all time. Tom Brady’s level of knowledge and expertise is is like a stratosphere. If he’s going to teach somebody new about football, somebody else might be able to just learn and observe what Tom does and break down. Here’s the simple number one. Number two, number three things. 

 Whereas Tom’s able to work on number 1087, right? Because he’s just been so long ingrained in the sport and spent so much time, you know, grinding on it. It might be great for somebody else to say, hey, here’s what I noticed can get me in the game faster. So it’s really just documenting it. But, but a lot of times, even if you don’t have a hire, sometimes your first hire could be the person that that documents in and organizes things. 

 And then as you go, it’s really having a playbook, right? It’s just having a solid playbook of what you do and how you do it. And as you grow in scale, then it’s all right. How can we do things in less steps and less time? And, you know, do we need all these people because what’s it? 

 Parkinson’s law. That time fills space, right? I see a lot of that. There’s a lot of financial advisor practices that needed a lot of people back in the day. Like, you know, when I started 27 years ago, when you went into media, you needed like the stacks of paper because it was like all this crap to sign. 

 And it was, it was very labor intensive to do any kind of business with a client. Now it’s pretty darn easy, right? Tech is great. You have AI helping out. Like it doesn’t take that much to do. 

 But you know, I see these firms like, oh, my team says they’re really busy. It’s like, well, compared to other firms, they’re not, not too busy. And so it’s really looking at how can you develop some efficiency? A small number of things that you can do in less time that are really critical. How can we have them organized? 

 So that’s part of it. It’s hard to have that. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of visionaries using like an EOS or Traction book kind of term where they’re, you know, they’re like the rocket ship that’s flying. That’s what really drives them. And to stop and like write stuff down just isn’t their style. 

 But someone’s got to do it. If you’re going to scale your business, someone’s got to organize some kind of information as a playbook so that others know what the heck’s going on.

Yoni Schmidt 27:29

What are your thoughts in general on EOS?

Dr. Jon Randall 27:32

It’s cool. I see a lot of people operating on it. I mean, we’ve worked with them for for our business at our consulting firm. It’s a good framework. I think it works really well for people that are a little bit more in the analytical side, or they need some analytical structure.

So that that whole thing of like visionary and integrator, it’s great when visionaries like a rocket ship, just like, you know, we’re going to go to the moon. It’s going to be awesome. And it’s like, all right, well, how the heck are we going to get there? Like, what’s some goals along the way? What are our rocks that we focus on? 

 So it gives some structure, especially if like an integrator of like, okay, here’s, here’s how we can accomplish this, here’s how we can break down something really big we need to do in the next 90 days. And you see some long term targets. So it’s, it’s to me, I mean, people are a little bit more analytical. They love it, they thrive on it. But I think it just puts some rails on someone that’s like a rocket ship visionary. 

 Just put some rails on it. So it’s a cool system. That’s really cool.

Yoni Schmidt 28:29

Yeah, we do run on iOS. Yeah. A couple of the businesses that we operate. So. that’s great.

I, I do want to ask a little bit about leadership and execution. You know, where do you see most leaders get in their own way or in their head when they’re trying to scale their business?

Dr. Jon Randall 28:47

Yeah, this is a tough one. So, you know, we talked about the client, you know, servicing client capacity conundrum is firms get really big. They develop a leadership capacity conundrum because, you know, leadership is developing other people and helping them get what they want for themselves. And most humans want to improve. Most humans want to make money, right?

Especially in today’s world as things cost more. So if we’re going to help them do that, I find a lot of entrepreneurs have zero leadership training, right? I mean, like, I know I’ve learned how to be a financial advisor. No one ever took me through leadership classes. You had to learn that from the outside, from other experts, or read a lot of books or listen a lot of podcasts on those things. 

 So I always look at how can you simplify something that’s that’s difficult that that we’re not a pro at? And so I think there’s a small number of things that that really help, that can frame how do we help somebody else get better here? So usually the, the issue becomes somebody else isn’t doing what they should be doing, right? It’s like that that comes up a lot in, in how do I help them improve? How do I, how do I help them go better? 

 So I learned from Alex Hormozi, a diamond kind of leadership assessment model to really take, hey, well, how do you assess what’s going on here? Were they just never trained and they don’t know what to do, right? Or did they not know when they were supposed to complete it by? Or do they not know really like how to do it? They don’t have confidence in how to do it. 

 Or do they have no motivation to do it? Like, why would I do this? There’s a lot of extra work and I gain nothing from it, right? So usually, like for someone that is an expert at leadership, it’s like, okay, let’s diagnose one of these. I probably didn’t teach them. 

 I probably didn’t make it clear what they’re supposed to do, or I didn’t teach them how to do it, or I didn’t give them a timeline or I didn’t give them a proper motivation to do this. Like most things fall in one of those categories. And so really, you got to look at yourself as an owner and a leader to say it’s not their fault. It’s not there’s something wrong with them. It’s always a leader, it’s always a leader, it’s always a leader. 

 And so you got to look in the mirror and look at, okay, I probably didn’t do a good enough job helping them be successful, right. And the best leaders, they really care about helping others be successful. So if you take that mindset to it, it kind of changes it a little bit because I think the here’s the real route, here’s the real root problem in, in, in leadership is most owners and founders are trying to get theirs right? They’re trying to achieve some kind of success or something, right? They’re trying to make a certain amount of money, build their business value to a certain level. 

 They’re trying to get theirs. And when you’re trying to get yours, it’s trying. It’s hard to stop and help somebody else get theirs. So I find this being the root cause of owners thinking like, well, they just need to do this stuff for me. So I make more money and it’s, you’re going to lose people in your business because it’s not about them, right? 

 It’s about you as the owner. It’s not about them. You got to make it about them, right? What do they want for themselves? How can you help them get that if what they want aligns, you know, with with what your firm’s wants, then you got something going, then leadership’s pretty easy. 

 If you help somebody get what they want for themselves, like make more money. Awesome. All you got to do here is this. You do these things and that will equate to you making more money. So leadership becomes really simple when you are focused on helping somebody else get what they want for themselves. 

 But I think right there is like that is the biggest gap is just owners trying to get theirs. They’re not really trying to help other people, you know, get what they want for themselves. And it’s like the root cause of, of all these issues. But really it’s always the leader, it’s always the leader, it’s always the leader. So it’s having shifting the mindset, how we think, which is a natural for us as humans to think about ourselves. 

 It’s shifting that thinking and then having some basic tools to diagnose, okay, how can I help somebody better? Did I just not share what they need to do? Did I make it clear? Did I not show them how to do it right? Are they not motivated? 

 It’s using some of those four simple things in the diamond to diagnose what’s the gap and how can you help them better?

Yoni Schmidt 33:13

Yeah. So taking more of a servant leader approach and I can’t remember who said it. I think it was like Sir Richard Branson said something along the lines of, you know, train people to the point where they can leave you and go do it on their own, but treat them in a way that you know they never would. Right. Something along those lines.

Dr. Jon Randall 33:35

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you see, like great leaders that have built great organizations like, like that perfect example. That’s how you know, that’s really how, you know. So the firms that obviously we’ve helped ten x 100 X, they need really good people and, and they need to shift how they lead as an owner, but also then they need to get other owners or other leaders on their team too, that have the same kind of mindset that let’s help these other people.

It’s just, it’s the most effective way, right? The they’re actually helping other people is, is very important. I heard about to use another football analogy, but the, the one of the most successful college football coaches, Nick Saban, I don’t know his clips of him just keep popping up in my Instagram feed and they’re fantastic. I mean, he has some great things to say about leadership. And one of the things he said is, is that you helping somebody get what they want for themselves. 

 That’s that’s leadership. You’re helping develop them. You’re helping them get there. That’s your job as a leader, helping or making somebody do what you want them to do. That’s called manipulation. 

 That’s something very different. So it’s really like having a distinct difference. And you look at really quality organizations that grow. They actually help people and those people stick around.

Yoni Schmidt 34:54

Yeah, interesting. Nick Saban truly is a legend. Yeah. But I went to the University of Oklahoma. So I have, you know, other issues with him.

I know, I know. Okay, bridging a little bit to property management and to our real estate audience who’s listening in and tuning in to this. A lot of our audience runs, you know, they run property management businesses or they invest in real estate and they’re just like, you know, their business is ancillary to real estate. How transferable are your frameworks outside of the financial advising industry?

Dr. Jon Randall 35:32

They really are. You know, so many advisors get into real estate as a side business. We had one sell pretty young. He wasn’t even 40 yet, but he sold his business for eight figures and went into real estate basically. And his wife operate a, a sizable portfolio of real estate that they’ve, you know, bought and operate and leveraged who’s to do the property management.

So it’s, it’s very transferable. If you just break down the, the basics of like capacity management, how can we generate more revenue profit per endeavor that we’re doing? And then what’s our best growth methods to track more ideal business, right? Like you said earlier that we’re not going to take on any kind of thing. We have a specialist or a kind of a specialized kind of properties that we help with. 

 And when we find those, we’re really good at those. But we might not take on like our apartment complex as it may not be a fit. Right? So I think it’s that focus is, is really key. And then just any entrepreneur should be managing capacity. 

 How can we increase revenue per client, per customer, per property? And how do we grow in the right way with more ideal people? It’s all very, very transferable.

Yoni Schmidt 36:41

Yeah, it really does come down to your people. And the cost of losing an employee is far, far beyond what you actually pay them.

Dr. Jon Randall 36:51

So you’re right. Yeah. The the cost of the gap is. Oh, right. That stings a lot more than, than just paying someone a little bit more.

Yoni Schmidt 37:00

Yeah. If you were advising a property management company that say, stuck at, you know, 150 to 300 doors under management, what would be your first focus of area to break through that ceiling?

Dr. Jon Randall 37:15

Yeah, I think it’s looking at what are the ideal doors, right? Because I mean, in the business, I get volume of doors is is helpful, but but what are the ideal doors there? You know, that are really the avatar, if you will, or the ideal kind of kind of client. I think it’s recognizing that and narrowing in on it and just looking at how can I get more of those things? And it’s hard for any business owner to just let go of business, right?

It’s like, well, I’m making money here. Why would I let go of it? It’s going to be a security blanket. But if you can secure more ideal, you know, things and then let go of the non-ideal or sell them off at some point, like that’s, that’s really the route for any business to go. That’s going to be quality, right? 

 That’s really going to be an ideal player in this space. So, so as you evaluate those, how did you acquire some of those ideal properties? Right. What really worked there? Can you go back to some of those things? 

 Or can you leverage those ideal properties? Can you get access to others just like them? Right. To me, it’s, it’s the playbook so similar there, but it’s like, that’s the small number of things that are really going to create a lot of the growth. And if you create a lot of growth with ideal clients and you have a good problem to have of like, you know, the Who Not How book. 

 Now I need some other who’s to help me? You know, run this thing.

Yoni Schmidt 38:31

Yeah. Love that. Dr. Jon Randall, thank you so much for coming on. Educating me, enlightening and educating our audience. Any anything else you would like to add?

What are the what podcasts and books are you reading right now or listening to?

Dr. Jon Randall 38:50

So, I mean, I was, I work with Alex, been a client of theirs. I, his podcast, The Game is incredible. I mean, there’s so much good stuff there on that. I’ve been on. I really enjoy Dr. Ben Hardy.

He’s, he’s a great writer. I think he takes hard information and makes it applicable. I’ve been really into his latest book, The Science of Scaling. So, you know, he wrote Who Not How, The Gap and The Gain, 10x Is Easier Than 2x with Dan Sullivan. And this one is just him. 

 And so he’s on a lot of podcasts. He does a lot of speaking and on a lot of different things. So if you just look him up, he’s pretty cool. That’s some of my favorite just right now. Yeah, it’s it’s really awesome stuff. 

 And it just and it’s all like he’s, you know, psychology guy. So it’s like the thinking as an entrepreneur is really what, what he’s focused on. And it just hits home of like, oh my gosh, totally. What I’m doing here is going to limit me like I can ten X in five years. I can use time as a tool to get there. 

 But it’s just, it’s great thinking. And I think in podcasts and in books, when we’re listening, I mean, that’s what we should be doing is just influencing our thinking. You know, can I shift my thinking and think like this person or like that person that’s been helpful for, you know, Alex Ramsey? You know, for me, it’s just not just taking in every inch of content that that dude has, which is a ton, but getting to work with him and his team, I mean, it’s just been absolutely game changer for me and our consulting business. It really has. 

 But it’s really, it’s just starts with how can we think a little bit differently than what smaller number of things we can do differently that are that are going to move the dial?

Yoni Schmidt 40:29

Yeah. Love that. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And we’ll drop your website in the comments below so people can go ahead and visit and check out xuefei dot.

Dr. Jon Randall 40:44

Awesome. Yeah, we do some scaling workshops about every, about every two weeks we host them. It’s virtual and we dive into this stuff. We diagnose what are your constraints? How do you benchmark compared to the industry?

How can you grow? They’re really fun to put on. So yeah, you can get info on that on our website. There’s also some free stuff there too, but check out our scaling workshop. They’re really fun, I love them. 

 Alright.

Yoni Schmidt 41:10

Thanks so much.

Dr. Jon Randall 41:10

Thanks, Yoni.

Outro 41:15

Thanks for listening to The Same Day Podcast. Tune in to a new show each week and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes.

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