Ep. 55 — Kevin McCarthy: The Golden Handcuffs You Built Yourself

5 min read

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Episode Summary

You built the business. It makes money. You’re not sure you like it anymore, and you can’t say that out loud because you’re the boss and the boss is supposed to have it together. Kevin McCarthy calls that the fear of exposure, and he’s been pulling owner-operators out of it for thirty years. We got into how he reverse-engineered into purpose work by trying to do commercial real estate deals for owners who didn’t actually have business plans. Why work is neutral and your business is not your source of meaning, only your source of provision. How a two-word purpose statement becomes a gyroscope that keeps you centered when the numbers and the noise try to knock you off. And the story of the family-owned business that went from ten years of breakeven on $17M in revenue to $2M of profit nine months after Kevin sat down with the three brothers and got them aligned on what they each did best. If you’ve ever caught yourself sprinting deeper into the woods instead of stopping to look up, this one’s for you.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. Work is neutral. Your business is your source of provision, not your source of meaning.
  2. The greatest fear most owner-operators carry is the fear of exposure: that someone will find out you don’t know what you’re doing.
  3. If your business fails, that doesn’t mean you failed. Separate the two before you make any exit decision.
  4. Balance is a false concept. You’re integrating your life around a purpose, not balancing competing buckets.
  5. When you’re lost in the woods, you either run faster in some direction or stop and pull out a map. Most owners run.
  6. If you’re doing $25/hour work in your own business, you can’t afford to hire someone to replace you. Move your work up first.
  7. “Helg” is the state where you’ve convinced yourself you can’t delegate. Naming it is the start of getting out.
  8. Owners overdramatize the importance of today’s decision. If you had a heart attack this afternoon, that appointment isn’t happening anyway.
  9. Purpose, vision, mission, and values are the language of leadership. Get them wrong and the confusion ripples through every line of the income statement.
  10. The well-being of your life and your people comes first. If they’re doing well, the business does well. Not the other way around.

Sound Bites

“Work is neutral. The business is neutral. You bring the meaning and purpose to it.” (@00:04:56) — Kevin McCarthy

“The greatest fear that most midsize small business owners have is the fear of exposure. That if they really understood I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ve got to put on these sort of airs like I know what’s going on, I’m in charge.” (@00:11:55) — Kevin McCarthy

“Most of our businesses, we overestimate, we overdramatize the importance of it.” (@00:26:02) — Ryan Tansom

“Helg is the state in which an entrepreneur finds him or herself when they feel like they can’t delegate. They’ve put themselves into helg.” (@00:30:12) — Kevin McCarthy

“You have to decide that the well-being of my life and my business and the people that I have stewardship and leadership of, they are more important. If they’re doing well, then the business is going to do well.” (@00:45:39) — Kevin McCarthy

About This Episode

Kevin McCarthy is the founder of On-Purpose Partners and author of The On-Purpose Person, The On-Purpose Business Person, and Chief Leadership Officer. He started his career in commercial real estate, went through a business divorce in the 1980s, and reverse-engineered his way into purpose work after realizing the owners he was trying to do real estate deals with didn’t have business plans because they didn’t have a sense of why they were doing what they were doing. He has spent decades helping CEOs write two-word purpose statements and align purpose, vision, mission, and values across the organization. He was introduced to Ryan by past guest Tana Greene, who restructured her company around his Chief Leadership Officer framework.

Resources Mentioned

  • On-Purpose Partners — Kevin’s firm. — on-purpose.com
  • OnPurpose.me — The $5 tool to write your two-word purpose statement. — onpurpose.me
  • The On-Purpose Person by Kevin McCarthy — The personal purpose methodology.
  • The On-Purpose Business Person by Kevin McCarthy — Doing more of what you do best, more profitably.
  • Chief Leadership Officer by Kevin McCarthy — The CLO Integrity Map and the case for the post-CEO leadership role.
  • I’m OK, You’re OK by Thomas Harris — The book Kevin read at age 12 that shaped his belief that he could choose his life.
  • The E-Myth by Michael Gerber — Referenced for the “entrepreneurial seizure” framing of the technician-to-owner transition.
  • Tana Greene — Past guest who introduced Kevin to Ryan after restructuring her company around the CLO framework.

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