When a business needs a revival, we are quick to turn to the mechanics of it: no one's buying — what went wrong with marketing? Why is production delayed? Funders are pulling out, are the optics bad?
Yet, Grant Sherwood, CEO of La Granson International and a neuroscience-informed identity success coach, argues that the real bottleneck lies elsewhere: the mind. His argument is built on a simple but confronting premise — a business cannot outgrow the identity of its Founder.
In this Q&A, Sherwood explains his reasoning through looking at the psychological structures that show up in everyday business decisions, and why what appears to be a market problem may in fact stem from identity.
You make the argument that many business constraints are psychological. How can Founders "diagnose" whether they're facing an identity issue versus a genuine market or operational problem, or are they interrelated?
I'm not only saying business constraints are psychological, but any constraint in any area of your life is psychological. I'm definitely not discounting the fact that problems exist, but it's identity that will determine how fast and efficiently these problems get solved and the business continues to innovate and move forward. So yes, they are all interrelated.
When working with many Founders who seem to be stuck at solving these types of problems I always ask them if they were to give themselves advice, what would they say? They normally have perfect answers, but they don't seem to trust themselves to execute it.
This is the identity issue. A Founder's ability to transform challenges into opportunities will determine how big of a business or businesses they build, and this is deeply ingrained in their identity.
All problems can be solved quite quickly by a Founder who doesn't believe the problem is a problem, but an opportunity to grow and innovate.
So, if someone is burning out or stuck at a specific problem with no solutions or forward momentum for a period, it can usually be traced back to trying to solve a problem a certain way in the past or hearing of a story of failure to execute a strategy from a friend or loved one or partner — like getting burned by losing money, getting sued, losing employees, hiring the wrong employees, closing branches down and now the Founder is scared of repeating mistakes, hesitating to take action, analysis paralysis, imposter syndrome. These are identity problems, not operational or market driven.
The idea that "a business cannot outgrow the Founder's identity" is compelling, but also quite abstract. What are some observable behaviours that signal a Founder has hit that ceiling?
These are generally termed "comfort zones". When a Founder has achieved their initial goal and has created comfort, they slow down, take more holidays or time off and their priorities shift from growing the business to other areas of their lives.
This also shows up when someone fears making the decision they know will take their game to the next level. They know they need to hire someone, invest in PPE, bring on a partner or investor, but, in their head, they have a million reasons not to pull the trigger.
Those reasons for not acting is what is keeping the business from growing and, more importantly, those reasons aren't even grounded in reality, but more in the mind of the Founder.
When a business grows too quickly and gets messy, a limited Founder would slow the whole business down to a manageable level so they can cope. A limitless Founder embraces the chaos and learns how to operate in it.
A limited Founder may have a revenue target of, say R1-million a month, and as soon as it gets to R 1.2-million they take their foot off the gas by going on holiday starting unnecessary fights with employees, suppliers or the likes in order to cool the business down to where they feel comfortable back to R 1-million. An employee may suggest an incredible idea that would really innovate the business to keep growing, but the Founder shoots it down, because it would mean more work, investment, challenge etc.
The concept of a "deserve level" suggests people subconsciously cap their own success. How does this show up in real business decisions like pricing, hiring, or scaling, and how can Founders actively counter it?
If a Founder's internal success Thermostat (deserve level) is fixed at a certain point they hesitate to increase their prices, because they are scared to lose customers as they haven't been able to see how a price increase actually gets them better quality customers, or they internally don't believe their quality of work determines a higher price — scarcity mindset.
They hesitate to hire extra people because they don't believe they are competent to lead effectively or if they go ahead with hiring, they also tend to hire people who are below them, so they are easier to manage. They look to hire people who support them only and shy away from those that challenge them — and that addiction to support without challenge is what leads to hiring incompetent people.
A Founder who doesn't believe they are worthy of scaling a huge business simply won't take the actions necessary to achieve the outcome.
They may say they want to grow by x% and know they need to increase prices, hire superstars who are smarter than them, but when it comes time to pull the trigger and execute, they find some reason why they aren't ready yet, how the timing isn't right, how last time they tried to scale they got burned, and convince themselves that staying small has more benefits than scaling because they are scared to take action.
How to combat this is to learn how to process previous failures and challenges in a way where you are truly grateful for the experience and lessons those setbacks had in your life and create a clean slate, so you can move forward without a biased perception from the past.
What successful people do is embrace both the hero and the villain side of themselves, as both are needed to be successful. Elon Musk has many haters, but he doesn't care and his ability to not care is his superpower that helps him stay on track.
Your framework leans heavily on psychology. How do you respond to critics who might argue that structural issues (like access to funding or market inequality) play a bigger role than mindset?
I would say okay, then ask them to name a competitor who doesn't seem to be experiencing the same. And then ask, why they can and you can't?
If you identify as someone who is industrious and creative at solving problems and you deserve to be massively successful, then you will not think you have a limit to funding or the market is rigged.
Again, bringing it back to reality, there are people out there with less skills and abilities putting themselves in the right positions to partner with people, pitch their ideas in a way that communicates huge value and secures funding despite a lack of access to funding anyways. Master of Business understand market inequality and access to funding are problems, but they don't apply to them.
*Image courtesy of contributor and Canva