Business Growth Architect Show with Beate Chelette – Guest Appearance

Todd Hagopian Asks “Burned Out, Brilliant, or Bipolar?” on Business Growth Architect Show

On December 15, 2025, Todd Hagopian joined the Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future for Episode 203 titled “Todd Hagopian: Burned Out, Brilliant, or Bipolar?” The episode explored whether a mental health diagnosis can make you a better leader—and Todd says yes. After 15 years undiagnosed with bipolar disorder, he faced a terrifying tradeoff: sanity or success. When medication stabilized his life but muted the hypomanic edge that powered his output, he did what founders do—he built a system around it.

What Is the Business Growth Architect Show?
Can a Mental Health Diagnosis Make You a Better Leader?
What Is the HOT System for Building Seven and Eight-Figure Companies?
What Key Topics Did the Episode Cover?
Where Can You Listen to the Episode?
Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Business Growth Architect Show?

The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future is a top 3% globally ranked podcast hosted by Beate Chelette featuring conversations on leadership, growth, and building the future on your terms. The show covers business, entrepreneurship, and marketing topics for founders seeking to scale their companies.

The podcast provides resources including a talent assessment quiz at WhatsYourTalentWorth.com and maintains active presence on Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms. Episodes feature founders and experts sharing strategies for business growth and personal development.

Can a Mental Health Diagnosis Make You a Better Leader?

A mental health diagnosis can make you a better leader when you understand your neurodivergent patterns and translate years of operating on edge into systematic approaches—which is exactly what Todd Hagopian did after medication stabilized his life but muted the hypomanic edge that powered his output. Rather than accepting the sanity versus success tradeoff, he built a replicable system around his neurodiversity.

“After 15 years undiagnosed with bipolar disorder, Todd faced a terrifying tradeoff: sanity or success. When medication stabilized his life but muted the hypomanic edge that powered his output, he did what founders do—he built a system around it.”

The episode explained that great leaders don’t need neurodivergence—they need to understand the mechanics of it. This insight applies whether or not someone has a clinical diagnosis, making Todd’s frameworks accessible to all founders.

Todd shared how he first had to understand his own neurodivergent patterns and then translate years of operating on edge into the HOT system he now uses to build seven- and eight-figure companies.

What Is the HOT System for Building Seven and Eight-Figure Companies?

The HOT system is Todd Hagopian’s methodology for building seven- and eight-figure companies, developed by translating his years of operating on edge with undiagnosed bipolar disorder into a replicable system that any founder can use. The system includes frameworks for designing “profit per minute” and getting transformation teams aligned fast.

Part of the system helps founders design “profit per minute”—a metric that focuses effort on the activities generating maximum return for time invested.

The episode also explored why “under-promise, over-deliver” can keep you stuck, challenging conventional business wisdom with Todd’s contrarian perspective.

What Key Topics Did the Episode Cover?

The episode covered twelve key topics across 31 minutes: why mental health diagnosis can improve leadership, understanding neurodivergence mechanics, the hidden cost behind hustle, needing the edge without the damage, smashing rules to win, AI as a tool for making money, why doing everything yourself caps growth, chaos indicating money left on the table, why people hate wasted work, how companies slide into stagnation, what actually fixes team anxiety, and how to connect with Todd online.

High Output, High Cost: What No One Saw Behind the Hustle

The episode explored what no one saw behind Todd’s high-output hustle—the hidden costs of operating undiagnosed for 15 years.

He Needed the Edge—But Not the Damage

Todd explained how he needed the productive edge that hypomania provided without the corresponding damage it caused.

Smash the Rules Everyone Else Follows—and Win

The conversation covered Todd’s contrarian approach to smashing rules that everyone else follows as a path to winning.

AI Doesn’t Replace You—It Frees You to Make Money

Todd positioned AI not as a replacement threat but as a tool that frees founders to focus on making money.

Doing Everything Yourself Is Capping Your Growth

The episode addressed why founders who do everything themselves are capping their growth potential.

The More Chaotic It Feels, the More Money You’re Leaving on the Table

Todd shared his insight on the messy middle—the more chaotic it feels, the more money you’re leaving on the table.

Why People Hate Wasted Work—Not Hard Work

The discussion revealed that people hate wasted work, not hard work—an important distinction for leaders managing teams.

The Quiet Way Companies Slide Into Stagnation

Todd explained how companies quietly slide into stagnation without dramatic crisis signals.

Why Your Team Is Anxious—and What Actually Fixes It

The episode concluded with why teams become anxious and what actually fixes it rather than surface-level interventions.

Where Can You Listen to the Episode?

The Business Growth Architect Show Episode 203 “Todd Hagopian: Burned Out, Brilliant, or Bipolar?” is available on Amazon Music and major podcast platforms. The episode runs approximately 31 minutes and 42 seconds.

Connect with Todd Hagopian:

Website: toddhagopian.com
LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok
Book: “The Unfair Advantage”

Take the talent assessment quiz at WhatsYourTalentWorth.com to find out what your talent is worth in this market.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Business Growth Architect Show about?

The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future is a top 3% globally ranked podcast hosted by Beate Chelette, featuring conversations on leadership, growth, business, entrepreneurship, and marketing for founders seeking to scale their companies.

What is the HOT system?

The HOT system is Todd Hagopian’s methodology for building seven- and eight-figure companies, developed by translating his experience operating with undiagnosed bipolar disorder into a replicable system that any founder can use.

What is “profit per minute”?

Profit per minute is a metric within Todd Hagopian’s system that focuses effort on the activities generating maximum return for time invested, helping founders prioritize high-value work.

Why can “under-promise, over-deliver” keep you stuck?

According to the episode, the conventional wisdom of “under-promise, over-deliver” can keep founders stuck. Todd challenges this approach as part of his contrarian methodology for business growth.

How long was Todd Hagopian undiagnosed with bipolar disorder?

Todd Hagopian was undiagnosed with bipolar disorder for 15 years before receiving his diagnosis, which forced him to confront the tradeoff between sanity and success.

Podcast Transcript

Host: Welcome back everyone. Today Todd Hagopian from Stagnation Assassins is going to answer my most challenging question I want to start with, and that is: can a mental health diagnosis make you a better leader?

Todd: I really appreciate that question. I think it’s an incredibly important question to be talking about, especially now when anxiety is through the roof for a variety of reasons. Yes, a mental health diagnosis can make you a better leader. Not only that, but it should make you a better leader and it should make the people around them a better leader.

All of us read the same 20 books, right? The same 20 leadership books. We all know how to act according to the consultants and the sanitized white-paper way that you’re supposed to run a business. Everybody knows that. If you really want breakthrough results, you need to have differentiated thinking. So when you’re talking about neurodivergent thought, that really does play into how you can become a better leader. We have people like me who are bipolar and have different types of hyperfocus and Grandiose Goal Setting and things that can drive differentiated thinking and differentiated results. You have folks who are OCD who can dive deep into a topic that you wouldn’t be able to do and really go deep on it, and you can utilize that.

But more importantly than just the neurodivergent folks being important to the organization and becoming good leaders, people around them need to be able to learn those skills, need to be able to systematize some of the stuff that they do in order to make themselves better leaders. You don’t have to be neurodivergent to become a good leader. You have to understand neurodivergence to become a great leader. My message is it’s not just about the folks who have neurodivergence. Those folks should become differentiated and breakthrough leaders, but the people around them need to be able to systematize that and learn it and emulate some of those aspects themselves so that they can get out of this 20-book leadership thing that we’ve developed over time. Now everybody leads the same, and you can’t have breakthrough results if that’s how you’re managing your business.

Host: So I have now a thousand questions of course. Let’s start at the beginning. Were you always aware that your thought process is different or diverse?

Todd: Interestingly, I wasn’t. I went 15 years undiagnosed. I did not know I had bipolar. I knew that I worked more hours than everybody else and slept less hours than everybody else. That’s about the extent of what I knew was “wrong” with me. I knew there was something different there because I would sleep 2 hours a day for 15 years. I would basically be obsessively working for the other 22 hours.

When I finally got diagnosed, they were like, “Yeah, you’re very bipolar.” I went to a couple doctors and they all agreed. I took the medicine and the medicine worked. It was amazing. If you don’t know bipolar, you get this hypomanic high where you go, go, go — you just got all this energy and you set these major goals and you think outside the box and find ways to hit it. Then you have the bipolar depression that hits usually right after you’ve set a huge goal or hit a huge goal, and the bipolar depression comes in and you’re like, “Oh my god, how am I going to live up to what I just promised?”

All that went away. The problem is the good part of that also went away. I had to figure out — do I choose between sanity and success? That was a really big turning point in my life. I had built my entire life around being extremely hyperfocused and hardworking. What I decided was to systematize it. I hacked my brain, went deep into how I managed when I was bipolar, and tried to systematize different aspects of that. Essentially, that’s what I ended up doing through four turnarounds — systematizing all the different things that had made my management style different. I was able to now put them in a box where I can hand it to people who aren’t bipolar and really learn how to implement those same systems. Because you don’t need the neurodivergence. You need that thinking-differently portion of it.

Host: Now you go for 15 years. You probably were everybody’s best workhorse, if you don’t mind me saying that. If I can have a guy who only needs to sleep 2 hours and he can dedicate himself 22 hours a day to my work, that’s probably pretty enticing to anyone wanting to hire you. So now you’re finding out that there is an actual diagnosis. Tell me how you felt at that moment because I cannot imagine that you were doing a little happy dance. There’s probably a bit of relief that you finally know what it is, and then what else is there?

Todd: First of all, I probably wasn’t your favorite workhorse because a lot of bad stuff came along with that. Multiple arrests and having trouble with leadership and relationships. There were several ups and downs. It wasn’t all good working 22 hours a day.

Host: So it was working 10 hours and it was making trouble for another 12?

Todd: Exactly. It might have been more like 18 and four, but it was still pretty bad. Doesn’t take that many hours to cause trouble. When I found out, interestingly, it was kind of two phases. When I found out first, I was really okay and not that upset with it because you hear what you want to hear. They explained hypomania, which is the good part, and I was like, “Yeah, that’s me. It’s great.” But I didn’t really acknowledge that I had the bipolar depression.

My thought was that now that I understand it, I can stop the spiral downwards. They actually said, “This pill is going to help the headaches and it’ll help the bipolar. You just take more of it.” And I said, “Perfect. Just give me the headache dose. I’ll manage the bipolar now that I understand it.” About 6 months later, we all realized that wasn’t the right decision. So then I went on the bipolar dose. I could not handle it without the medication.

At that point, it actually hit me real hard because then it was like, “Oh crap, now I have this medication that’s taking away the hypomania and it’s actually affecting my work.” Everybody inside my life is telling me, “Oh, you look more present.” They don’t even know that something’s going on. They’re making these comments like, “You seem more present. You seem more calm.” They have no idea what’s going on. And inside I’m going, “Wow, I just got this promotion. How am I going to do it? I now have four to six hours less a day to do it.”

I had nothing figured out. That was terrifying. That was a very big moment in my life where I quit drinking, started the medicine, and dug deep and tried to figure out how can I emulate at least some of what I was doing before. That’s how it started. I picked one or two things and systematized them. As I went further along in different turnarounds, I picked another couple things. Eventually I had this toolbox put together. But it was terrifying at first. I was in a big position. I was a global marketing director traveling to Europe and back, and all of a sudden my whole life changed. That first day was fine. Six months later when I realized that it wasn’t fine — that was terrifying.

Host: Here’s what I’m interested in. It sounds like you understood that there was an aspect of this diversity that you had actually maximized on to some extent. You got familiar with your zone of genius that came with this aspect of neurodiversity. But it almost sounds like you were sad that you couldn’t access it anymore. Was there an emotional push and pull — and I think this is what you call “success or sanity”?

Todd: That’s exactly right. A lot of people who are bipolar will tell you, “I decided to get off the medicine because I couldn’t access that anymore. I needed it.” I’ll even say that I did it a couple times. If I knew I had to work 100 hours next week, I would go off the medicine because I knew that would allow me to work 100 hours next week. Was that healthy? No. Was it sustainable? No. When I was doing that, I knew I was wrong. I knew that was not the right move and it could get me into trouble.

Eventually I had to systematize ways not to do that. I had to figure out, okay, why are you going off the medicine? Because you need to think outside the box. Because you need to set grandiose goals. Because you need to dive really deep into something and hyperfocus. Then okay, so if that’s what I’m trying to do, how do I package that in a way that I can do it in a healthy manner?

Host: I think this is the part of the shop talk now that I want to get into. It certainly sounds like it requires a lot of self-awareness and almost a genius thinking to step outside of yourself, to look at yourself, and to recognize there is a pattern that occurs when I’m not on my medication — but there’s a reliance on this extraordinary skill, the thing that makes you different. So you now wanted to figure out how to replicate that so you could access it. Talk to me about how this whole process started and what is this process.

Todd: We call it the HOT System. The HOT System is a Hypomanic Operational Turnaround System. Hypomania obviously is the part of bipolar that’s good. You’re trying to access that type of thinking, but you don’t actually need to be bipolar.

There’s several aspects to this. A few are usually pretty popular, so I’ll talk through those and you can dive into which ones you want. Grandiose Goal Setting is all about — this underpromising and overdelivering that everyone preaches, it’s for losers. That’s not how you get promoted. If I have two people, one promises 6% and they get nine, one promises 25% and they get 22 — the 22% is getting promoted every day of the week. That’s not what they teach you. But that is reality. You need to be thinking big and going after these big goals.

The 80/20 Matrix of Profitability and 80/20 squared are concepts of the 80/20 that everyone talks about but nobody actually does. There’s only a handful of companies in the country that really do 80/20 well. 80/20 squared is to take it to the extreme, go even deeper. The top 4% of your business usually drives about 64% of your results.

That ties into the Karelin Method for explosive productivity, which is usually one that people really like. It’s basically a way that you manage your calendar in such a way that you’re only focused on that 4%. You have to drive your calendar to where you only focus on that 4%. Your calendar does not lie. Whatever’s on your calendar are your priorities. If people really take a good look, what they’re going to realize is that their calendar is full of stuff that does not drive the maximum profit per minute, which is what we talk about a lot inside of the HOT System.

The other couple that might be interesting are the 3-A Method of continuous improvement, which is about doing 52 small projects in 52 weeks instead of focusing on large continuous improvement projects. Then there’s some capacity optimization things that are pretty cool. And then the biggest one probably that drives into bipolar is the orthodoxy smashing. It’s all about thinking-outside-the-box innovation where you think about all the orthodoxies inside of your industry — the things that people believe are true and never question — and then you smash them and say, “If that was not true, what would we do differently?” You play those out and try to figure out where the next innovation for your industry is. Because the easiest way to make money is to do something completely different and smash an orthodoxy inside of an old boring business. That’s the easiest way to become a millionaire.

Host: Let’s take this down step by step. One of the things I think we should ask first is, in an environment where now everything is AI this, AI that — everybody goes, well, we know we are at the threshold of something amazing. We know AI is maybe running at 2% of what its capabilities really are. How do I apply any kind of system or methodology to understand where anything is going?

Todd: AI is actually a great example. Inside of the Karelin Method, I think a good thing to think about is how do we manage productivity in this age? The Karelin Method is all about activity times efficiency times focus.

Activity is real easy — how many hours do you work? How hard do you work? It’s easy to tell somebody to work 80 hours, but it shouldn’t be necessary. 48 hours is my threshold. At 48 hours, you can get a lot done. I used to do 22 hours a day.

Efficiency is about how efficient are you with your time. This is either about skill building — get better at your job, but that’s another thing that’s real easy to say, real hard to do — or it’s about things like systematizing, automating, which starts to get into AI, pure AI which is just things that you can actually push to AI and not do anymore or take a six-hour task and make it a 15-minute task. Outsourcing, which is a big thing that helps you get more efficient. Or even just killing things — killing activities, killing products, killing customers — and really getting strategic about who you’re serving, what you’re doing with your time.

Then the focus is where you really dive deep and you only spend your time on the things that are making you the most money. Pretty much anything that does not fall into that needs to get pushed into the efficiency bucket. Can I use AI to do that? Can I outsource it to somebody else who’s going to use AI to do it? Can I hire a better person that can do that for me? So I’m focusing all of my time on making money.

Especially for your owners, your founders — you’re used to doing everything. I guarantee you, I’ve run small companies, I’ve run big companies. You are better off putting those tasks in somebody else’s hands and putting the most profitable possible task in your hands all the time. You are going to be better off. I don’t care if it costs you another thousand dollars that you don’t have. Your time is more valuable than spending it doing that other stuff.

Host: How do we get this message across to everybody who’s listening right now? I see this all the time. I think there’s a love story — nobody likes being told that they’re micromanagers. But I want to say probably half of the audience listening is a micromanager because they’ve done everything themselves and they know where the dead bodies are and they know what works, but they’re not subject matter experts in any one of these categories. How do you tell them?

Todd: I know your audience is mostly small business owners and founders and people that are driving their own business. So this is how I would say it. I’ve done that job. I know that job. So please trust that I’m talking to you from a former owner and a current owner, current founder.

I have seen so many incredibly skilled directors get up to the director level in big companies and not be able to get out of this micromanage environment where they have to keep doing everything. Those are the people that never ever get above that. The people that get above it are so good at pushing those tasks to other people or finding other ways to get those tasks done and focusing their time on being better at driving profit per minute. Those are the people that go up.

When you translate that to small business, it is the exact same thing. I ran a small business 40 hours a week. I bought it, ran it, put systems in place, and we doubled the profit and I went down to 10 hours a week. That is what you have to do as a small business owner. Because what did I do next? Bought another business, started another business. All of a sudden I had a five-business portfolio. That can’t happen if you’re micromanaging everything in the first business. It just can’t.

The best way to look at it for folks who like math is it’s a math problem. If you work 20% more hours and you’re 20% more efficient, you’re going to get 44% more done. But if you take this third aspect and you say, out of my 50 hours I’m going to work on a hundred things, then you’re spending X amount per thing. But if you do it where you say, out of this 50 hours I’m going to work on five things, and these are the five things that drive all of my profitability — think about how many more hours you’re going to spend on the most profitable thing. That could be 400% more hours if you cut out all the noise. Now all of a sudden you’re 500 to 600% more productive than you were before. That’s how the Karelin Method of explosive productivity works. It sounds silly. It works. If you spend all your time on five things instead of 100 things, you will double your profit. I’ve done it at four different companies. Double profit in less than 18 months. That is the framework that has made the most difference in every one of them.

Host: Talk to me about the messy middle though. I just walked into as a fractional COO my husband’s business, which is a solar battery renewable energy business. Given what’s happening here in Los Angeles with the Palisades, we lost our house and a lot of our clients lost their homes. So now we are busier than we’ve ever been. Now I’m going in. But boy, when you start cleaning up and you’re wrestling things away, it gets messy. Can you tell people it’s going to be okay at some point? And when is it going to be okay?

Todd: Usually the messier it is, the more profitable it is to fix. Because messy inherently means the process and the systems aren’t in place. I just had a meeting with my team — we’re a big business, nine-figure business — and I told them, “We’re doing this,” and I laid it out and I said, “This is going to suck for six weeks. And it might suck for 12 if you guys don’t get on board.” We got to dive in and realize that the first six weeks of this are going to be terrible.

But let me tell you what it looks like at the end. I’ve done this three times. Every time it’s terrible for six weeks. This is what it looks like after six months: the 90-minute meeting is 20 minutes. It’s complete alignment instead of complete argument. Everybody understands their role, and the whole goal is to spend as few hours as possible to drive as much profit as possible so they don’t spend the other four hours arguing with you or coming up with objections.

Host: It’s so interesting that you said that. I’ve been in it for now six weeks and there was this moment last week where we had the one-hour meeting that turned into a 90-minute meeting. I really don’t like super long meetings. I find them jarring. But there was this point where I had set up a new workflow in the project management software and then one person that I thought was the least likely to say this said, “I’m recognizing that the workflow doesn’t entirely match the tasks that I’m doing.” And the sky opened. The angels appeared. I said bingo. I am so happy because now you need to meet as a team and instead of trying to make me happy, you need to take the process and make the process work for the team.

Todd: 100%. That’s the thing that really is amazing — when you start doing it up here and then the team starts doing it down here, that’s when you know you’ve won. I brought in the old engineering director from the other division I was in. I brought him in to talk to my team about this thing. I was actually scared. I’m like, I don’t know what happened to this process after I left. He might say it was terrible. But he was the one that was like, “It’s a 20-minute meeting now. We did change some stuff from Todd. We did some things differently.” He even said that I micromanaged a little more than they needed to. They were able to zoom out and do a few things differently. It was great.

I was so impressed with them that they had gotten it down to a 20-minute meeting. They’re like, “Yeah, we basically don’t argue anymore at all. Everyone knows the priorities.” This was an engineering prioritization meeting, which is part of the HOT System as well — making engineering a profit center instead of a cost center, which is really important. It was just amazing to hear how they had taken it by the reins and fixed it even further, and that I was the micromanager.

When you can get your team to start thinking that way — the other big one that we do is a nine-box of goals. You have organic growth, you have innovation, and then you have margin growth. You make a one-year goal, three-year goal, and a five-year goal. We have a raise-your-hand rule. The idea is that if you’re ever working on anything that doesn’t align with one of those nine boxes, you raise your hand and you demand your manager tells you why you’re doing what you’re doing. There are going to be times where it’s like, “We have to — Walmart wants it,” whatever. But make it so they’re allowed to be proactive and say, “Does this really align to our goals?” Then think about the answer. If it doesn’t, fix the problem. If it does, educate them on why it does and they will be a better worker for it.

People don’t complain about working an extra hour a day because they had to work an extra hour a day. They complain because they had two hours of wasted work in the middle of the day and then they had to work an hour extra.

Host: 100%. I want to go back a little bit and tie this back into your unique way of thinking. How do I know that I have a unique way of thinking?

Todd: Think about it this way. If you’re ever saying or hearing somebody say, “That’s how we’ve always done it,” and it makes you mad — or if you ever think, well, this is lean and so that’s how we look at things, but it doesn’t make sense for your situation — if you’re thinking outside the box and it’s driving you nuts, you have at least a little neurodivergence in you. Doesn’t mean you have an actual illness or disability, but you’ve got that thing inside you where you can think differently, but the corporate culture tells you not to.

They want you to stay in this box, this little sanitized, white-paper consulting box that everyone’s put you in. That’s not where you make money. That’s where companies slowly slide into stagnation. There’s this growth area of business — 20% of companies. There’s this crisis area — 20% of companies who are actively dying. And then there’s this 60% in between that are just slowly dying because they’re doing this white-paper stuff.

Host: IBM comes to mind. A company that just has not been able to change a tiny little bit of its culture. Nobody even really talks about IBM anymore in that sense. So what I’m hearing is, when people say to you “you’re a breath of fresh air,” when you get mad at having to do a budget before you have all the facts, when you get mad that you are being told “that’s how we always have done it” but nobody can explain to you why — that’s the one side. Now as a leader, how do you get people on board? Because we have tons of people in corporate or working for founders because they have a little bit of good ideas, but after all they want stability, security, and that one-two-three-four-five. How do you deal with that? Because it can’t be easy to work with you either when you’re a leader like that and your brain just constantly fires.

Todd: Great question. It’s super important, especially for smaller businesses, because your employees don’t have the comfort that they might have if they were in a 10,000-person company that maybe lays off 5% of their workforce a year but as long as they’re not in that, they’re okay. They’re worried. They’re worried that you’re going to stay in business. They’re worried when your biggest customer threatens to leave. They’re worried when you have a supply chain disruption.

The best way to get these guys really bought in is to make sure that they understand they’re supposed to make as much money as they can every minute. Because if they feel like they’re doing it, then they’re accountable and they’re tied to the results and they don’t worry as much when the biggest customer says something, because they already know that the next two biggest customers are here and this is what we do if we pivot.

If they are so bought into the strategy — that’s why this nine-box works real well — they know the short term, they know the medium-term, they know the long term. And if Walmart leaves them short-term, they know what our three-year plan is. I get people pretty deep into financials, probably deeper than they need to be. But it’s so that they are all bought in and they understand that the business is okay and what they’re doing every day is making a difference. Then they feel like, okay, I can control whether this company’s a success. That helps so much in that small business mindset where it’s like, “I love what I’m doing, but I don’t know if we’ll be here in 2 years.” Get them involved in the strategy. They don’t have to come up with it, but they have to understand it. They have to know what they’re doing that’s driving the future of the company. That would be my biggest piece of advice.

Host: But how do you manage when you see that somebody is not on board? Because in the messy middle, not everybody is willing to go with you all the way. What do you do?

Todd: Great question. We cover team transformation in the book. That’s extremely important — or I should say transformation team. There are certain people that are good at transformations and there are certain people that aren’t. And people ask, “What’s the transformation?” If you haven’t transformed in three years, you need to. That’s how business works. So everyone’s almost always in a transformation.

But to answer your question, you have to make those decisions quick. I will come in and take out half of the leadership team — not because you have to do it, but because they were not poised to be transformers. Your best person when you’re not transforming could become your worst person during a transformation because they like the old way. They’re married to the old way. You really have to be willing to look at people and say, are they going to be excited about constant change? Are they going to be excited about thinking outside the box and implementing something different? Are they going to be excited about treating customers differently?

It’s extremely important. The one time I got fired in my life was because I wanted to fire somebody and they made me wait for nine months. Then we got rid of them and they didn’t let me backfill for 6 months. We basically went 15 months out of a 24-month transformation without a key member who was on board. For nine of those months we’re fighting against them, and for the other six I’m doing that job along with my job trying to force it along. That was the one time — and honestly, the transformation worked. They’re still making bonuses off of that transformation. But it did not go fast enough because of the team transformation issue.

Now when I coach other people, I tell them — unfortunately, that’s one of the most important, fastest things you have to do. Get the transformation team in place up here at leadership. The manager level can be later.

Host: I see this. Especially when you’re building a team and you’re hiring new people, you may fall back into your old hiring habits and you bring back people in that are actually putting the brakes on because they cannot go fast or they want the processes and procedures before they can follow them, but they don’t participate actively in creating the processes and procedures because it’s not their skill set or that’s just not what they are used to. So tell us where we can find you, Todd, and your work, and where do we find the book, and how do we help people to be fast and fearless?

Todd: Absolutely. toddhagopian.com has tons and tons of free resources. I don’t sell consulting, so get on there, read it. All these strategies are on there. The Unfair Advantage: Weaponizing the Hypomanic Toolbox is pre-order on Amazon today. So you can get that there. I have three books coming out in the next 15 months. Ping me through the website. Ask me questions. I love talking about this stuff. I will tell you what article to read. I’ll give you advice. Just engage with me. I love it. This is what I do for a living. It’s so much fun, especially with small business owners because I’ve been there and I know how many questions there are. Just ping me and let’s have a chat.

Host: Sounds wonderful. Thank you so much, Todd. It has been amazing to have you on the show today. I appreciate you and your way of thinking. Until we talk again.

Todd: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you.

Host: And that is it for us today. If you are kind of nervous about being different, now you know that that’s actually one of your greatest advantages. Go check out all the resources that we are putting in the show notes, and we’ll talk again next time. Goodbye.