From Burnt Out to $500K Solo: How One Founder Rebuilt Everything with Mike Grinberg

Mike: [00:00:00] A lot of these firms are reactionary by nature, right? It's, "Oh, I got fired," or, "I'm burnt out in corporate, and I'm good at this thing and I've got this network. Let's go. I can do this. I'm gonna hang my shingle." And then five years down the line, you're somewhat successful. You've got a firm. Hopefully, you've got some sort of decent margin, but then you're going, "All right.
Mike: This thing has kinda gotten away from me. What is going on?"
Intro/Outro: You're listening to the Seven Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Riechmann.
Dustin: If you're a founder and you've experienced a feeling of being a bottleneck or being stuck or burnt out or even, maybe to the extreme as I have in the past where you actually want to sort of burn down what you've built, you've probably heard [00:01:00] a lot of the common advice which is like, "Oh, it's your offer," "It's just you don't have the right ideal client," maybe, "You just need a better team."
Dustin: And I'm really excited today to take a different angle on this constraint that I think all of us encounter at some point in our entrepreneurial journey. And so I have Mike Grinberg here, and Mike is a new friend and he's an expert on this. And we're gonna uncover and unpack why maybe you as the founder are the actual constraint in the system here.
Dustin: but we're not just gonna leave it there. We're actually gonna give you some practical advice for what you can do about that. So Mike, I'm really delighted to have you here as part of the Seven Figure Leap podcast. And, rather than just give you the softball and have you introduce your story, I'd love to start with a question.
Dustin: And that question is, what do you mean by the founder is the constraint? And I'm sure your story will emerge from there. So welcome and yeah, please tell us why you feel that the founder is the constraint is, something we should really be focused on in today's episode.
Mike: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me and being, interested in talking about the topic, Dustin.
Mike: So, [00:02:00] yes, my story will definitely come out. I mean, a lot of this we can say I'm, i- is built on, personal experience, both mine and, work I've done with my clients over time. And the founder as a constraint is like o- once I say it, everyone goes like, "Well, yeah, obviously." but it's like everything you just mentioned, right?
Mike: I think we've all... if you're an entrepreneur, if you're running a business, whether you're solo or not, like we've all kind of felt what's now described and kinda labeled as burnout, right, one way or the other. And we've all kind of heard that typical advice of like, "Oh, well, you're just in your own way," is a common one.
Mike: Like you just, you need to pull out of the... you gotta be working on the business, not in the business. you have to... you need to niche down. You need to do like all these things, and none of them are wrong. But what I've found both with myself and my, the previous iteration of Proof Point Marketing actually for that matter, which was a demand gen agency at a given point in time, what I found is that it, [00:03:00] none of those things sort of get at the root cause.
Mike: They're not wrong. Like yes, you do need to niche down in theory. yes, the founder should find ways to work more on the business. But all of this stuff kind of lives a bit on a spectrum, and nobody really tells you that. And the reason why it lives in a spectrum is because you as the founder are the main constraint, meaning you need something from your business financially and emotionally, otherwise you wouldn't be in this business in the first place, right?
Dustin: Yep. Absolutely. There's easier ways to make money, so
Mike: Yeah. and we tend to forget that, right? And then also the common advice kind of leads a lot of founders to like, oh, well, to be altruistic, quote, unquote. And there's nothing wrong with that either, except that you have to take care of yourself, right?
Mike: So that, that's what I mean by that is, and we can get into the details, but [00:04:00] as long as you are a founder-led firm, whether it's just you or whether you're a, $10 million and have two or three partners But as long as you don't, you're not, heavily private equity backed or VC backed, 'cause the kind of the infrastructure changes in that case.
Mike: But as long as you're founder led, this plays, right? And I've seen this with $30 million firms as much as I've seen it with, solopreneurs that are making a quarter to half a million dollars a
Mike: year. Like, it doesn't matter. It's still there.
Dustin: And so you run a company called Proofpoint Marketing, and you sort of alluded, you used to be more of a traditional lead generation agency, and now you've pivoted actually into this being one of the core things that you help other founders solve. And that's why I'm so excited to talk about this, 'cause you've lived it for your
Dustin: Like, you discovered it through your own peril and your own, burnout journey, but then you've obviously helped people directly with it, as your service. And so with that, you've developed a [00:05:00] lot of, clear ways to talk about it, fr- a frame- a key framework. so I think, like, owner's clarity is, is maybe where we should start to unpack this.
Dustin: but yeah, I'd love to kinda give you the lead here. But owner's clarity, like, what is that? How does that play into this? And if you wanna talk a little more about your own personal journey and how you f- found owner's clarity for yourself, I think there's gonna be a bit of a meta, a dynamic here where we're unpacking your journey and your client journey while we're teaching the audience how they can,get some relief, for them- for themself when, on...
Dustin: if they're feeling like burnt out or they're see that coming, down the highway in their mirror.
Mike: Yep. So the interesting thing is like my own journey was sort of, I used that as a, I retroactively... It was my stress test of the framework once I developed it. It was one of the stress tests.
Mike: the reason I even went down this rabbit hole in the first place was I kept seeing this trend with both prospective clients and, existing [00:06:00] clients in slightly different ways. And,the final kind of straw that broke the camel's back was I was,I was doing, positioning work. That- that's the core of what I do, and that's where this fits in, and we can get into that.
Mike: But, with a, a founder of a firm, and I was actually really excited to work with her. about a $4 million firm, had big plans to grow, and everything was going well. We went through all the infrastructure stuff, built out all the necessary IP, great feedback from the market, et cetera, et cetera.
Mike: And once it came time, and once it came time to, like, start activating, they're like, "Well, I don't really wanna do this thing, and I don't wanna do it this way, and I don't want it..." I'm like, "Okay, but we kind of agreed on this, and you have this goal of going from 4 to 15, and it's aggressive because you wanna do this in five to seven years.
Mike: This is kinda what you have to do." W- And it just didn't work out, right? Like, that was a relationship that didn't work, and I had a couple other, client engagements that were, they went fine, but they weren't [00:07:00] like the most exciting. and then I started thinking about all the people who didn't become clients that, like the common reframe was, "Well, I'm just not that excited about the direction of my business."
Mike: Like, that was a common thing. I could probably find at least five examples verbatim of that in my transcripts of my sales calls. And I'm like, "What? There's something there." So I started diving into it, and what it, what became very clear to me is that this was a founder issue. It's not that they, were wishy-washy.
Mike: They were, but the why behind it was is they never actually did the deep work to understand who they really are and what the heck they want from this business. And the reason behind it is a lot of these, 'cause I think like you, I work with,professional services firms, consulting firms,engineering firms, et cetera.
Mike: A lot of these firms are reactionary by nature, right? It's, "Oh, I got fired," or, "I'm burnt out in corporate, [00:08:00] and I'm good at this thing and I've got this network. Let's go. I can do this. I'm gonna hang my shingle." And then five years down the line, you're somewhat successful. You've got a firm. Hopefully, you've got some sort of decent margin, but then you're going, "All right.
Mike: This thing has kinda gotten away from me. What is going on?"
Dustin: Yeah. And I... And to expand on that, yes, there are some of those folks that we have as clients, and that's my personal story. I was an engineer, and then, I left engineering, and I didn't leave engineering to do more engineering. I took a different path.
Dustin: But whether that's the case, where you're just really technically proficient and you're like, "You know what? I can do this on my own," and you sort of become this accidental CEO, this accidental founder, or a, a common story in our community, someone overcomes a personal challenge, right? Like they've repaired their marriage or they fixed a health issue, and they just have this calling and they're like, "I gotta go help more people with this."
Dustin: And they meet us, and we're helping them with, the marketing and the podcast guesting as a strategy because they just need to help more people. What they don't do, and I think the reason I wanna [00:09:00] kinda reiterate th- what you just said there, what they never do, and I never did, until much later when I was experiencing some of these, problems, they never actually stop to like design the business or think about why they are starting a business.
Dustin: It's like the business is sort of an outlet to some either creative or technical or even faith-based calling, like, "I gotta do this," but they've never addressed what they want out of it, how it relates to their personal ambitions, their long-term goals, which is really, why I was so excited when we connected 'cause I'm like, "Yeah, this is such a prevalent problem," and really something that doesn't get talked about very much.
Dustin: 'Cause I think if you're like, "Oh, I'm burnt out-"
Mike: It doesn't because it feels like therapy?
Dustin: Yeah, exactly. It's like, who does deep work? I just want the marketing strategy, or I want the, s- fractional COO or whatever is gonna fix this thing that I call burnout. and I'll say this real quick, Mike, and I wanna let you move on into the framework and this owner's clarity idea, but I [00:10:00] experienced this, and I've...
Dustin: I had a whole podcast episode or probably multiple about this. about two years ago, we grew really fast, grew to seven figures. I was, like, completely on my own, solopreneur, and I'm like, "Wow," like, "I did this thing," like the dog who caught the car. And I, for the first time ever, started using the word burnout, and I'm like, "I think I'm kinda, like, burnt out.
Dustin: I don't know that I can keep doing this." And what I... For me, what I found was it was really more of a creative boredom. I was like, "Oh, I've solved the problem, now I don't know what problem to solve." And I'd never taken the time or space to think about what I was actually trying to build as an ultimate version or what I needed fulfilled within me from this business.
Dustin: and I did a lot of this deep work, sort of identity work. And so I just... I, all that to say, I believe deeply in what you're about to share. I've experienced it. I see it all the time in our community, and I think we typically try to atta- and I'm guilty of this too, try to attach a operational, strategic, sort of, fix to it without ever, [00:11:00] like, taking the time as a founder to answer the better questions, that we should be.
Dustin: So I'll... That's my little interjection. But yeah, I'd love to let you take it from here and talk about how we should be thinking about this.
Mike: Yeah. Well, that interestingly, like, you said something that I wanna maybe push back on a little bit, which is this idea of, well, they didn't take the time to design their business.
Mike: And that's also another common actually thing is like, oh, well, you have to... it's sort of in this... it grew out of the lifestyle business category, if you will, quote, unquote. Like, oh, well, design your business, design your life. it's like, yes, but how? You can't do that until you understand yourself.
Mike: And again, that's where this starts feeling like therapy, and that's where I'm like, "Okay, I don't... I'm not a therapist. I'm not a clinician." Like, I don't wanna be. Maybe in a different life or something, And for whatever reason, people feel comfortable sharing their, like, deeper- deepest, darkest secrets with me kind of thing.
Mike: So maybe a little bit, and I joke, I'm part therapist in the work that I do now. But it... the point is that's why I wanted to [00:12:00] build a framework that kind of allows people to understand it and not necessarily have it feel like they're on the couch kind of thing, necessarily. You know what I mean? So the pushback there is like, yeah, design the business that you want, but why and how?
Mike: And that's the thing that nobody really talks about. Even the, quote, unquote, "gurus," they don't really tell you how. they do but partially And so there's the owner's clarity is I've boiled it down to there's four constraints. So the founder is the constraint, but there's four parts to it, if you will.
Mike: There's purpose, which is like, why do you wake up every morning? What gives you energy to kind of keep moving forward in life? Forget in business, but in general. there's identity. That's sort of who are you as a person, right? And that's, that's multifaceted. None of us are one thing. We are multiple things.
Mike: It could be a builder, husband, s- animal lover. What, [00:13:00] like again, there's a bunch of things that they could be, but it's like things that are core to your identity that sort of define who you are and what you do, right? and it's, there's kinda com- the most common ones are like builder, fixer, family man or woman, whatever, mother, father, that kind of thing.
Mike: Like, those are the common ones, but there's other, others that are less typical, but, we don't have to get into the details. The third one is intent, and that's what do you need emotionally and, financially from your business in a lot of detail. One thing I forgot to mention on identity, your business needs to support at least one part, ideally more, but at least one part of your identity.
Mike: Otherwise, that's where you run into trouble. Obviously, it needs to support your purpose. We'll get into that. where most of the quote-unquote gurus stop is,the last two, which are intent, which I just described, and there's capacity. What are you good at? What are you not good at? what do you wanna do?
Mike: What do you don't wanna do at a very basic level, right? [00:14:00] Kind of, what do you, a part of that is like what do you have capacity for when shit really hits the fan, right? 'cause inevitably as entrepreneurs, it's gonna hit the fan at some point. yep. So the- Those are the four things. And I would say most of us have a pretty good grasp of capacity.
Mike: Some could do better, but we have a pretty good idea of what are we good at, what are not, what are we not good at. Sure, there are some people that have a bit of an ego, and they claim they're good at everything, but let's put those people aside. Most of us, I would say, have a decent idea of intent, although I will argue it's, we haven't defined it as good as we should.
Mike: but what almost nobody does is the purpose and the identity piece. We kind of feel it in our gut when it's off balance, but we've never done the deep work to actually be able to... And, like, if I asked you, Dustin, what's your purpose in life?
Dustin: You want me to try and answer? so I've actually done some work on [00:15:00] this, and very simply, I would say it's to be a good steward and to empower other people to be good stewards.
Dustin: And in this particular season, those people are entrepreneurs. So I get a lot of joy out of helping other entrepreneurs leverage their time, talent, and treasure, basically have a more, a better impact in the world. And m- and I'm a faith-based person, so a lot of that ties back to my Christian faith. But, to be a good steward is the very simple answer for purpose, and I've been...
Dustin: And that's something I developed over the past couple years that has had a significant role in finding more alignment in my business and how my business is an expression of that, which I think is getting to, like, why this is so important, right? So did I answer it right? I don't know.
Mike: There's no r- We're...
Mike: Not enough time to dig into it enough. Like, if we were working together there, I've got some stress test questions and exercises or whatever. But the idea is, like, at least you have an answer. A lot of people will go,I don't know," or they'll give you some sort of, like, [00:16:00] wishy-washy, like, response that doesn't, it's not anchored in anything, right?
Mike: and the identity piece, it's like, well, who are you as a person, right? And people go, "Oh, I'm a dad and I'm a dad and I'm an entrepreneur." Okay. Is that it? What does that mean? Great. Now, and I'm not, I don't wanna deny that for some people, being a parent actually is an identity piece. But we have to be careful of, and this is part of the work that I do, is there's a role that you play, and there's an, a piece of your identity.
Mike: They're not always the same, right? Like, I might be a, again, I'm, I might be a dad, but that's not necessarily part of my identity. It's an important role that I play, and I enjoy it, but it's not part n- it might not be part of my identity, let's just say, right? As an example. so I kind of forgot the question you were asking me, but that's the framework.
Dustin: Yeah, that was really the question is sort of, what you... So I'll give a quick summary, kind of catch everyone up if they're [00:17:00] like, "Wow, this is intriguing, and there's a lot." So sort of the four components of this owner's clarity or this, breaking down the things you need to address, clarify, get coaching on, get therapy on, whatever it is, to overcome this founder's problem that we all, experience at different levels.
Dustin: Purpose, identity, intent, and capacity, and the little cliff notes I made. Purpose is why do you wake up and what gives you energy, in the world? Identity is who are you as a person with or without your business, I guess, right? intent is what do you need emotionally or financial- and/or financially from the business?
Dustin: So starting to tie directly to the business, the intent of the business as it relates to you. And then capacity is like, what are you good at? And what I loved as you started to break that down, there's sort of a reverse order here. I think most people start a business based on their capacity. It's like, "Oh, I'm good at marketing, so I'm gonna start a marketing agency," right?
Dustin: Maybe they get to the [00:18:00] reverse third level here of intent where they're like, "I'd like to make $250,000. That would meet my family's financial needs. and I would like to, work with these types of people 'cause I enjoy these types of people." And so maybe they've started to have some focus on intent.
Dustin: But I 100% agree with you in where I've s- drew the line and never went above until a couple years ago when I was, felt forced into it, was this identity and this purpose part. so I don't know, Mike, like, if, where you wanna kind of go from here. Do we wanna zoom into identity or purpose? Or do you wanna, Yeah, where would you lead a client through if they're like, "I feel pretty clear on my capacity, and even I think I'm pretty good on intent. But I don't even know, like, how the heck to define my identity or my purpose,"
Mike: Well, I think the first question is get- the first problem is getting them to realize that's something they should do 'cause, like, in, I'll get into my story in a bit, but I'll give you maybe a good, example of a client I worked with that maybe puts us down a good path here.
Mike: So, 'cause [00:19:00] it really ties to your question. So, guy I was working with, successful on paper from a financial perspective at a $8 million firm, really good margins, paying himself well. want- was getting... At some point, was looking to build it to about 10 to 15 and exit. at least that was his objective.
Mike: And the reason that we ended up connecting was, The firm started kind of sputtering out a bit. It's the flatline, not flatline, but hit a plateau where they didn't grow for about a year and a half and still were not growing when he came to me. And somewhere through our conversation, he gave me that line of, I'm just not as excited about my business right now."
Mike: I'm like... And he wanted to-- Most people want to, they just say it and they want to move right past it. I'm like, "Hold on a second." Right? And we dove into it and we started working together and it, what ended up happening is he had originally started the firm like most consulting firms start. he's good at a thing, like we talked about, fairly reactionary.
Mike: and but at the core, this guy [00:20:00] was a mentor and a coach. He was, had a, He would lead youth groups,in his church. He was a volunteer in like his son's high school as like a math tutor. He was a volunteer advisor at a,at like the local, startup incubator, like all that kind of stuff.
Mike: Volunteered for, as an advisor for,some nonprofits, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like that was his thing. He started his business in a typical fashion where it's, the consulting pyramid. You have a bunch of junior people, and he had interns and, junior people, and he just loved that part of it.
Mike: He loved being the mentor and the coach and helping these people, grow. Over time, over a period of like 10 years, the business evolved where the... And it worked very well in the market, which is why he was financially successful, which is, "Hey, we don't have the consulting pyramid. It's a flat organization.
Mike: You get the partners and the senior consultants. Like we're practitioners. We've lived it. We've seen it. Like this is what you get." It worked well. Problem was he was miserable 'cause he had nobody to train anymore. He had nobody to coach or mentor. '
Dustin: Cause he was no longer in a mentorship role- Yeah
Dustin: within his own company.
Mike: Correct.
Dustin: He-- Yeah. Okay. That makes a ton of sense. [00:21:00]
Mike: So, and the part of the reason why, things started, petering out is he started trying to get his fix elsewhere, w- even within his own company. So he was like, "Oh, well, I, I wanna get the intern program going again."
Mike: And spent a bunch of time and effort and obviously dollars, and it's like why? That doesn't fit the company anymore, right? So that, that's a, that's an example of what happens, and you have to... The, those four constraints, they're n- they're interrelated. The, specifically, purpose and identity are interrelated with intent, and this is wh- th- that,Those relationships are where things tend to break down.
Mike: And it's the typical example of, "Oh, I wanna grow the company to this certain point," right? 'Cause that's what we're taught. We're gonna grow it to 10 million because 10 million is where our, EBITDA multiple is, 6X instead of 4X or whatever it is. Wanna get there, I wanna get the [00:22:00] life-changing exit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because that's what I believe is right for my family and yeah, th- that's a very typical story.
Mike: I, I told the story- Yeah ... to myself at one
Dustin: point.
Mike: I was gonna say. Right? Yeah,
Dustin: yeah.
Mike: and w- it gets challenged, and I would v- I would bet that where a lot of people get stuck is exactly that. The things you need to do to get to the point where you think you wanna get to actually don't fit your purpose or your identity anymore, and that's where you have to make some really difficult choices.
Mike: So in, in, this guy's case, it was, "Hey, you got two options really. You exit early and you don't reach your multiple, or you do a partial exit to your partners, create a partner pro- a partner track program where you bring more people into the, the partnership level over time-" Gradual exit, you mentor the partners, and that's the path that we chose.
Dustin: Okay. So he changed his [00:23:00] role from client-facing where he didn't really get to be a mentor to basically creating a mentorship function.
Mike: He wasn't even client-facing. He was just, that's the thing is there wasn't like the thing he really cared the most about, he didn't get to do. Like, and he would... And actually that's what got him in trouble, 'cause he would try to mentor and coach these senior people and it's like, "What are you doing?
Mike: I don't need this." "I didn't sign up for this."
Dustin: Leave me alone. And, so basically that, which was exactly my question, we- when you find there's this misalignment, like maybe you've grown past, like the original model actually whether by design or just because that's naturally the way you create things to be in alignment with these four constraints, well, then you change and/or the business changes over time.
Dustin: And so you wake up and you're like, "Things don't feel exciting or fun or aligned. I'm burnt out, I'm bored," and they're, they should call Mike and figure out how to fix it. But like what are some of the levers to pull to fix it? You just described a really good one which is actually creating, [00:24:00] reimagining the role of the founder within the business to actually get them back into alignment with their purpose, identity, and intent.
Dustin: What are some other options if people are starting to, if they're like hearing that story and they're like some version of that is resonating with their... and I want you to answer that, but I guess a re- a sister question and I'll just ask them both at once. Do we change? Like, like would me as the founder, does my purpose change?
Dustin: Does my identity change and that becomes misaligned with the business? Or is it much more common that the business changes and it gets out of alignment with who we already were and we didn't actually change?
Mike: It could be either/or. That's the, that, at least that's what I believe having done this work, a little bit at this point.
Mike: so a- and my advice is you wanna kinda reevaluate the, your owner's clarity, so what these four constraints are, at every major juncture either in life or in your business. You have your first child, reevaluate this. You get married, reevaluate this. You bring on [00:25:00] your or you're about to bring on a partner into your business, reevaluate this.
Mike: You're about to go, you're considering doing an acquisition, reevaluate this. Like kind of at every major juncture you wanna reevaluate it both from a is this going to be aligned to what I already am and, oh by the way, has my, like have I evolved as a person? We all do at the end of the day. And there's absolutely no way that my purpose is the same today at 41 with two children as it was back when I started my first business before I even had kids.
Mike: Like no way.
Dustin: Yep. Yep, your purpose and your identity, right? Yeah. Will both, are both gonna change over time. So- Like, whether you wanna go through your own example as sort of a second version of this, or I personally learn well from just hearing these examples. Like, I- w- the four, constraints became crystal clear when you talked about that individual guy's journey through looking at this.
Dustin: So [00:26:00] maybe you can share your own or, and/or another client. the bigger question I wanna start to unpack for people is, like, what do you do about it? But maybe y- that was one great example of he actually just created a mentorship track, did a slower exit. yeah, what are some other examples, I guess, to, to lead us through what we can do about it if we find we're misaligned?
Mike: Yeah. I mean, so my example was choosing to rebuild the business completely, but that's sort of the end, the end story. That's how, that's why you and I are even talking in the first place. But the reality is, like, we, we built our firm to, to shy of 2 million. We had, nine employees kind of at the top end.
Mike: we're doing okay. but there are two core things that, again, in hindsight, having, knowing what I know now that we did wrong was, one, both my wife and I, we ran the business together, so we both kind of,
Dustin: Oh, okay. That's interesting. That, there's probably a whole nother side story about purpose and identity when you're doing it with the-
Mike: that's a whole other story, yeah.
Mike: And it w- it actually, it worked well [00:27:00] for us. That's not why we shut it down at all. well, maybe partially, but again, we can get into that in a second. But the, we ended up building roles for ourselves within the business that actually didn't fit our purpose or identity. Now, we didn't know that at the time, but that's exactly what happened.
Mike: So, like, typical advice you get as a founder of an agency, work on the business, not in the business. You shouldn't be doing any client work. Where is the problem? I like the client work. I like building the client relationships. I didn't even realize that I liked business development until much later, but I actually enjoy business development, right?
Mike: And the typical thing is like, well, no, you gotta hire salespeople. You shouldn't be doing business development. Yeah, like, yes, there are stages, et cetera, but this is where- Just kind of y- going, for like the blanket advice that's black and white can lead you astray, 'cause the question is, well, to what level, and when, and in what order?[00:28:00]
Mike: And that's where all the nuance is, where if, honestly, if you don't work with a coach that kind of understands you as a person, you can easily go wrong. So I became kind of your typical visionary CEO who has to, manage the, the leadership team and not talk to clients. Guess what? I hate managing people, and I love talking to clients.
Mike: So, right? You
Dustin: built your own hell hole of a job.
Mike: Yeah.
Dustin: So.
Mike: And my wife, on the flip side, ended up in kind of the, chief experience officer, almost like the operational type person. Guess what? She's actually really creative. Like, d- totally not the right ro- role for her, which is why she's doing jewelry design now.
Mike: Like, it's completely not anywhere close to what she was doing before. so the... Again, my, I didn't real- recognize any of this. What I recognized was I'm burnt out. Like, well, the business took a bit of a downturn. We could, like, we could have downsized, refocused, [00:29:00] done all the necessary positioning work and come out of it fine.
Mike: We both looked at each other like, "We're too tired. We're not doing this. We're done." Right? And that was my, the realization, like, we've sort of stretched this too far. It's beyond saving. I saved the brand. The brand still exists. It's the sa- still the same proof point it was before.
Mike: I kept that. but I completely pivoted, and it's just me. I'm solo. I do all the, and I'm okay with that. Like, I've now... I know what I want. I know who I am. I know my purpose is to, help people understand themselves and each other better, so that fits in all the work that I do of, buyer research and market research and the stuff that we're talking about now, and helping them understand their company better, and kind of,
Mike: builder problem solver, which is, I mean, that's a pretty common trait, like identity trait that people have. Not everybody has it, but it's a common one that I find. for me, like the, it- it's, kind of personal development itself is a trait. Like, I think that's just what, that's what I do. I'm, I...
Mike: [00:30:00] It's one of the... Like, I really believe in the whole, if you're not growing, you're dying kind of thing. That's, I'm always just trying to improve myself bo- you know, physically, mentally, whatever, et cetera. Like, that's who I am and that's what I need to do, which is why I like doing this kind of work.
Mike: I like working with different clients 'cause it helps me learn, et cetera, et cetera. those are my three core ones. Again, like I, I thought about like, oh, and people feel weird about this like, "Oh, well I have to say father." You don't. It's completely okay for that not to be your identity. You could be a great father and not have that as your identity
Mike: So like that's-- And I had to have those conversations with myself at one point.
Dustin: And then I guess intent, do you, if you don't mind rounding it out, you don't have to like name numbers and all that stuff, but like i- intent and capacity, 'cause, this is a really, it's a live case study because you made these, you had these realizations and you're like, "Wait a second, this agency I built with my wife, is actually not serving either of us at these deeper [00:31:00] levels."
Dustin: And maybe you can share like how you got this clarity, but now you're there and you're like, you talked about your purpose, how it fits way better into this current model. You just went through the identity components, which I think is really telling. And like you said, it's not father or even husband or whatever, but it's builder, personal development.
Dustin: So yeah, tell me about intent and capacity when it comes to your specific situation.
Mike: Yeah. So i- in intent, you do have to get really specific. So, I think bo- both on the financial and emotional side. on the financial side, again, my mine is it's I wanna have, quarter million plus in take home, right?
Mike: So you got, based on my modeling, go, "Okay, well, that means I have to, my business needs to be roughly half a million in top line," pre-tax, et cetera, ballpark, and et cetera, et cetera. So that stuff. But then, okay, why? Well, I, there, I've got specific, financial targets. There's things that we wanna do for our children, for extended family, et cetera.
Mike: There's vacations we wanna take. [00:32:00] Like that's a big one. It's, wanna be able to take a, a month-long sabbatical once a year, like that kind of thing. Like those are... I'm not saying I've reached every single one of these, but that's the intent and that's the, that's where things are heading.
Mike: And then emotionally, it's like, it's really the, there's two things. One, I wanna feel like I'm growing, and two, I want it to be a,a calming presence in my life rather than a s- like a, this stress thing. Like I don't wanna stress about growth, that kind of thing, right? So I purposefully, like I artificially constrain supply.
Mike: I could do more, I just choose not to, right? Versus I would never have made that choice before in my agency. It's like, "No, it's grow. How fast can I get to this next thing?" whatever.
Dustin: Which is interesting, like- Tell me about, 'cause you just said you sort of have this innate belief in your identity that, like, if you're not growing, you're dying.
Dustin: But then when it came to the intent of the business, you're like, "I don't need it to grow. Like, I have [00:33:00] a 500,000 top line. It meets all of our needs. I know exactly what I'm gonna do with it." Like, is that a contradiction or is that, like, common?
Mike: No, because I don't... Like, I can grow to two million. Does that mean I've learned something?
Mike: I mean, yeah, sure, you're gonna learn stuff along the way, but I can get that in other ways and in other places. And it's, again, this gets back to kind of stages in life. Right now, I've got a one-and-a-half-year-old at home. I've got an 11-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. I'm not thinking about how to get this thing to two million right now.
Mike: is that gonna change once she's five and at school e- every day? Yeah, probably.
Dustin: Probably, yeah. So your identity is growth, personal growth. If you're not growing, you're dying. But the business in this season doesn't have to meet all of that need for you. You can still go work out, learn to play a musical instrument or whatever.
Dustin: There's other ways to grow. There could be a season where the business is a primary [00:34:00] lever you pull in your growth, right? and that could be in the form of revenue or team or expansion of services or whatever. It doesn't need to be.
Mike: For me, it's actually, it's giving myself the time to dabble in other things.
Mike: Like, I be- I, I became a minority partner in, like, a local, mastermind group for,things like that. just dabbling in other things, like from a media perspective and writing, hobby, stuff like that. So there's... it's giving me time to grow in different ways. at some point, am I gonna wanna hit the accelerator?
Mike: Yeah, 100%. Like, I don't... I know that about myself. Doesn't have to be right now.
Dustin: But I love the piece that... And I'm diving into this, Mike, not to put you on the spot, but more as a demonstration of how powerful it is to have these four things defined, because you can make conscious choices. If you're like, "Hey, I need 250,000, that meets all of our goals for this season," you can design a model and a business that does that, but also still honors your purpose, your identity, and what we're gonna get [00:35:00] into, and your capacity, and, like, what are you actually good at, right?
Dustin: So yeah, tell us a little more about your capacity and, and I think this is a beautiful breakdown of, like, why these, how these four things interrelate and the value in defining them in your own founder, well, your own human and founder,existence, so.
Mike: Yeah. Yep. So capacity for me, it's, There's the stuff that I'm not good at, which is I am not good at project management.
Mike: I'm not the most detail-oriented person. the stuff that I am good at is creative problem-solving. I'm good at reading and understanding people, and which again, things I would never have said about myself maybe five years ago, but here we are. and being able to connect the dots, like that's the... When it comes to sort of, business and growth, like that's always been my thing.
Mike: I'd love to dabble in and understand different things, different business models, different industries, et cetera, et cetera. I focus things now, but I can, pull things in from past [00:36:00] experiences, and that's the skill set, if you will. So those then drive how I design my service offerings.
Mike: Like, if I'm not the most detail-oriented person, I've got a whole bunch of stuff I've automated that, basic things like spell check and, whatever. although I could do better at that. and also again, this idea of understanding people, that's how this whole service came to be. It's like, well, it's a missing piece of this something I'm doing.
Mike: Let's build that, right? Now I do-- I'm trying to do more and more of it and kind of focus on that as much as possible.
Dustin: That's awesome. And so the-- We're... As we're kind of winding down here, this is a question I ask most of our guests, but I'm really interested to ask you because of what you just shared about these four constraints.
Dustin: Like Basically the question is what's your offer? like, do you do one-on-one coaching? Is it all sort of bespoke? Is it a group or is it, is there an assessment? Like, kinda like how do you get someone the result? So [00:37:00] tell me what the result is and then, like, how your current offer stack is to deliver that.
Dustin: 'cause I like to just un- unpack people's businesses, but also it's interesting to hear, like, how you're doing business in light of these four constraints that you've, clarified for yourself.
Mike: Mm-hmm. So I mean, the offer is, the Owner's Clarity sessions, and there's... It's three sessions with homework in between and then a, output where we get together and start mapping things, to their business or making decisions about their business.
Mike: and sometimes it's, "Hey, you gotta change it." Like I just worked with a guy who was r- running an agency and we came out of it with, "You're not an agency person. Let's figure out a way to wind down the agency. You need to be b- you need to be building a coaching business," and that's what he's doing right now.
Mike: so, again, the offer is the work is three sessions with, kind of I don't wanna say templated, but, homework and questions in between and things like that. there's a bit of a 360-degree feedback thing. So one of the things I do to stress test the story that people are telling themselves is I'll ask them w- who their most important people are in their [00:38:00] lives.
Mike: and it's usually like spouse, children, business partner, mentor, kind of the four common ones. here and there's others, but... and then there's a semi-customized survey that goes out to each of those people that helps validate what the people are saying. 'cause that's the thing I sort of found is like that's a,it's a way to hold a mirror up to somebody from people whose opinions they actually really care about.
Mike: anyway, and outcome-wise it's the goal is to get them aligned in their business so they feel like they can, stop pretending within their own business or stop sabotaging their own business. Sometimes it's both.
Dustin: Yeah. That's really powerful. So I would assume part of that sort of quote unquote "deliverable" is being able to do what you just did, which is articulate clearly your purpose, identity, intent and capacity, and then build it.
Dustin: So that's kind of, I don't know if it's the first phase, but it's a phase, right? But then there's [00:39:00] also this comparison of that versus the reality of your current business, and then I would imagine there's a lot of, opportunity when there's, those things don't align very well for you to coach them through using your business experience, your marketing agency experience to do what you just did with this current client, which is give them the harsh or not so harsh, depending on the outcome, reality check of like, "Hey, everything you shared here, do you agree with this?"
Dustin: "Yeah, like that describes me perfectly." "Well, guess what? This doesn't work for an agency." It's like, "Okay, well, what does work?" And then that gives you the ability to go beyond the three sessions and work with them to actually implement the changes to make them more aligned in the business application of these four constraints.
Dustin: Is that fair?
Mike: Yeah, 'cause in, where it fits in the kind of the o- my overarching framework 'cause it's sort of, there's a three-legged stool. There's the founder, that's the owner's clarity stuff. There's, how do they want their business to be seen in the market, and what do they want to deliver to the market?
Mike: And there's how does the market actually see their f- [00:40:00] their business, and what does the market actually need? And aligning those three things is kind of where the magic happens.
Dustin: Okay. And your previous work was more in the other s- legs of the stool? Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. That's where I, that's where I started because that's the typical problem is, well, we believe this is what makes us different, and the market says, "Well, no, this is what makes you different."
Mike: But that, when you identify that gap, which is what, that was what my original work was, and it still is, okay great, now we gotta activate. We gotta do this and this based on the goals that you told me you have, which is whatever. Growing from 5 million to 15 million. And then that's where I would hit friction, and that's where this whole thing of owner's clarity came about.
Dustin: So you've kind of added the third leg of the stool and with the owner's clarity. Is that nowadays or, where you want it to go, is that typically the starting point now? Or do you still get a lot of work that's more positioning-
Mike: sometimes. Again, it totally [00:41:00] depends. When the reason it's all g- I would love it to...
Mike: Let's put it this way. Do I believe it should be the starting point every single time? Y- yes, just from a idealistic perspective. Do I think it's the right thing once you consider everything? Not always, and I'll give you an example. So there's a not a current client yet, maybe at some point soon, a guy came to me.
Mike: It's a family-owned business that he's taking over from the father. and kind of came to me with like, "Hey, this thing that we say that we're, we are and we're known for, I actually don't believe. I think it's missing some things," et cetera. Okay, great. That you've already identified that gap at least a little bit.
Mike: and he was talking about how,he doesn't want to get into burnout and wants to control his time and wants to spend time with family. So that's getting into all the owner's clarity stuff. So in a perfect world, we'd do that. However, he's got some key hires that are coming on in, in a short period of time, and it's important to get clarity on [00:42:00] the positioning elements because at the end of the day, he's taking over this business anyway.
Mike: Nothing is gonna change tomorrow. So he's already been doing it, and it's like, yeah, this can ... You can wait on this, focus on these things, and then layer in and correct as much as needed after the fact. So like as an example.
Dustin: Yeah. So you're, again, we kind of exclusively focused on the owner's clarity thing today, in part because I think that's what our audience cares the most about because we're, we have an audience full of just founders and at different Ver-- on ver- different pieces of the spectrum that we started describing today.
Dustin: But I guess I wanted the audience to also hear that's one of three legs of the stool that you do at Proof Point Marketing. You also do what people would consider, positioning work, marketing work, a lot of like, client surveys and sort of like reality checks among positioning about what you want it to be and what they actually, what it actually is and perceived in the market and among your clients and prospects.
Dustin: So [00:43:00] you do more than just this owner's clarity work, but obviously we wanted to zoom in on one of those three legs so that we could just get a lot deeper with it. And frankly, I'm really glad we did 'cause I think this was really unique and insightful
Intro/Outro: and helpful.
Dustin: Yeah. And it's the one that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, right?
Dustin: Like, if you're a founder-led company, the founder's the common, denominator in all the equations, right? And, a-and you change, the business changes, and I'm just really excited about this s-this framework. so Owner's Clarity: Purpose, Identity, Intent, Capacity. Mike Grinberg, Proof Point Marketing.
Dustin: So if people are listening and they're like, "Gosh, I really need to, get some more clarity on this for myself. I'm feeling a lot of the things that have been described in these examples," like what would be the next best step for someone who's a founder who wants to get some additional help, specifically with the owner's clarity part of this?
Dustin: I
Mike: mean, obviously they can come work with me, but no, I'm kidding. I know that's not what you're asking. I think the,the place that's the [00:44:00] easiest to start for somebody if they're gonna try to DO- DIY even some of this, is really ask yourself what's your end game? Like what's your end game with the business that you're in?
Mike: Like most of us have never thought about-- I shouldn't say most of us. Many people have, don't think about it until it's much too late. Like you start thinking about your end game when you're like, "Oh, okay, I'm tired, I'm ready to sell." Too late. Way too late. Not just because of the return you're potentially gonna get, but it's like the reason why you're feeling tired is because you never did this, right?
Mike: So if you think about a lot of that work is kind of reverse engineering some of, at least some of these things. You can't really reverse engineer your purpose out of your end game, but you can start getting some nuggets, right? It's like, what's your end game? Well,I wanna be recognized in my local market as a thought leader.
Mike: Well, okay, well, why? Why is that important? Like, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then that might lead you to, oh, maybe my purpose is something... this is something [00:45:00] around that. Like, you can kinda get there. It's not perfect, but I think if you ask yourself that question and kinda do the five whys framework from there, that can take you a long way.
Mike: I think, I still think you gotta talk to somebody, whether it's me or a therapist or a coach or your spouse, whatever. Yeah.
Dustin: And I appreciate the DIY sort of approach, but I, what I was actually getting at, Mike, is if people want your help and they... Like, what is the right next step if someone's like, "I really would love to talk to Mike about this.
Dustin: I think this is something I or my company needs," what's the best way for people to basically get ahold of you or get on your newsletter or whatever is the most appropriate next step?
Mike: Yeah. So, I'm on LinkedIn pretty heavily, so Mike Grinberg on LinkedIn. Proofpoint.marketing is the website. All my services and pricing, everything is public.
Mike: It's all out there. I am in the process of building a coaching, more of a coaching-type program for more, like, solo ent- solopreneurs and micro firms, 'cause my price point for [00:46:00] traditionally is probably a little bit out of reach for some of those folks. so there's... That's incoming. but yeah, just reach out.
Mike: I'm happy to chat.
Dustin: So Proofpoint.marketing, and then it's Mike Grinberg, G-R-I-N-B-E-R-G, on LinkedIn. well, Mike, man, you're a gift to the audience. I absolutely love getting to talk about this and, getting out of the tactical weeds and talking about the stuff that really matters. And, as I shared before, this hits me personally.
Dustin: it's something that, I've experienced on both sides of the good and the bad of, of doing this and not doing it. And I just love the simplicity of your framework and, your willingness to share your own story and kinda show what's on the other side of making some of these tough decisions through an honest assessment of who you are as a founder and getting, your owner's clarity.
Dustin: So, thanks again for being here, Mike. I appreciate you and, look forward to all that's to come in this, this really cool area of focus that you've developed.
Mike: Thank you for having me