Intro

Scott Raven: Welcome to The Corvus Effect, where we take you behind the scenes to explore integrated self leadership and help ambitious family men build lasting legacies for themselves, their tribe, and their community. I'm Scott Raven, and together we'll discover how successful leaders master a delicate balance of career advancement, personal health, financial growth, and meaningful relationships. Get ready to soar.

Guest Introduction

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Corvus Effect. I am Scott. Today we are joined by John Paduchak, a marketing systems architect who helps business owners escape the 60 hour weeks without sacrificing their company's growth. With an engineering background and 25 years of experience, John has cracked the code on what he calls freedom architecture.

Engineering businesses to run without you from his RV adventures with family, to helping professional service providers build sellable companies, John proves that it's not about working less, it's about focusing on what truly matters. So get ready to explore how old school relationships plus smart AI can transform not just your business, but all aspects of your life.

So John, welcome to the podcast, man.

John Paduchak: Hey Scott. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Scott Raven: It is my pleasure. And you have a very interesting journey to get to where you've got to today focusing on marketing systems. Your journey started out in imaging science and when I first heard that, I was like those two don't line up with me. So talk to me in terms of that very unique journey that you've been on.

From Imaging Science to Marketing

John Paduchak: Yeah, it's kind of a funny story, Scott, and it happened really early on. One of my friends from college invited me for a job interview at his company. He had just started working here in Massachusetts at a company that makes inkjet printers.

I ended up coming out and getting a job in engineering and working in the engineering department for about six months. And then one day he comes into my office and says, "Hey, you know, I really enjoyed the contribution you're putting forward for us and you've helped us with all our materials" because that was my specialty at the time.

He says right now I'm in the situation where I need a programmer. He said, "Would you mind if I got you into the marketing department? Got you a big raise and you could be my counterpart in marketing." And I said no.

Scott Raven: Now, wait a minute. The enticement of more money wasn't enough to say yeah to all this rest that I'm a little bit scared about?

John Paduchak: Well, the other thing that's kind of funny is I really enjoyed application engineering and marketing a lot more than I enjoyed true R&D engineering. I'd worked in an R&D department before this. Not that I wasn't good at it, I was plenty great at it, but I enjoyed the challenge of working in a marketing department and just learning a new skill and seeing how I would do at it.

Scott Raven: Now I've gotta imagine because I was an engineer, I was a computer science person before I became an evil business person. But there is a part of having an engineering mindset that you apply to any environment. And I gotta assume that you brought that into how you went into marketing.

John Paduchak: Absolutely because we look at things with a different eye as we're approaching challenges and problems than our marketing counterparts would, or business counterparts as the case may be. And so I found it to be a huge advantage because we're trained to go through and analyze things piece by piece. And that's not the way your traditional business person or marketing person is trained. So yeah, I found it to be a huge advantage when I made that transition.

Scott Raven: And you know, one of the things that I know you realized right out of the gate is something that we are on a mission to help here with the Corvus platform - business owners that are trapped by their own success. I gotta imagine that that insight that you generated early on must have been a little bit shocking for you.

The Business Owner Trap Discovery

John Paduchak: It was a little bit shocking for me. I don't think until recently as I was approaching and working with some of my friends that are exit planners, that I really started to realize how many business owners were living paycheck to paycheck.

And you know, Scott, that's not the reason they left their job. That's not the reason they started a business. No one wants to live paycheck to paycheck. And so we quickly realized that we could do an awful lot of things to help them achieve more freedom, just be better business people and do a lot more with what they had.

Scott Raven: Yes. And is that kind of what you would say is a genesis of the Freedom Architecture, which I know is the foundational name for your platform today?

John Paduchak: Yes, it is definitely the genesis. And aside from that, one of the other things - I spend a lot of time teaching RV entrepreneurs about passive income streams, and I think you and I talked about that. And one of the things I'm always on the lookout for is additional lines of income for different businesses, different ways that they can expand without a lot of effort.

Scott Raven: Right. We know this, yet we don't talk about this a lot in the small business community in terms of the need to also have passive income streams while we are actively working on what is typically a very active business stream associated with our business efforts. Why is that so important and why do we not give it that much focus?

Freedom Architecture and Passive Income

John Paduchak: Yeah, it's funny. I often ask myself that question because we as business owners all know that we have peaks and valleys in our businesses, and it certainly makes sense. We've always been taught to diversify - whether when we're in our job, diversify your 401k, diversify your investments, et cetera. So why wouldn't we diversify our business in that same exact way, and develop additional streams of income so that we can weather those peaks and valleys a heck of a lot easier than we can without them.

Scott Raven: Do you find, as we think about what we talked about with business owners being trapped, that because of that lack of diversification when it comes to money that business owners inherently trade an asset, which is far more valuable, which is their time and their energy?

John Paduchak: Definitely. I think one of the things that really shocked me was the statistics of businesses exiting - only 74% of businesses tend to even get an offer. Only 18% of people even begin with the end in mind. And our business is one of the most extensive, largest assets we'll ever build. So why would we give it that little attention?

That never fails to surprise me. I'm often shocked by how little attention we give it and that it's kind of an afterthought. And usually people come to me when they're maybe just a year or two away from retirement and say, "Hey, I have to really think about selling my business." Why didn't we think about that long, long time ago?

Scott Raven: Do you feel that part of it is that these businesses that have been built up, they're their babies, you got an emotional attachment to them and you're not ready to see them out of the house, you're not ready to see them graduate and go on to the broader world?

John Paduchak: Yeah, I think that's one part of it. I think the other part is we just never expect to leave. We're here and we never expect something to happen to us to have some kind of challenge like a death or a divorce or one of those things that would put us in the position where we would want to sell our business, or scale it up more extensively so that we could have that ability to do that. That's definitely a factor for sure.

Scott Raven: What do you find in your conversations, particularly with more mature business owners, that they're missing in terms of that long-term thinking?

John Paduchak: I think the thing that I find the most that they're missing is a lot of business owners are afraid of new technology. That's been one of the big key factors that I've noticed lately that, yeah, I'm not comfortable with AI or I'm not comfortable with this other piece of technology we might have suggested.

And the other thing that I'm running into is a lack of standard operating procedures. They just didn't really think those through. And that is a major factor in the sale of a business, bringing in as much as 40 to 50% of the final valuation.

Scott Raven: Wow.

John Paduchak: Yeah, so there's a lot of different things and those things always surprise me. I could probably go on and on with that.

Scott Raven: It's fascinating because we talked about the six dimensions of business freedom as part of the Corvus framework. Two of them are decision liberation and operational independence. I gotta assume that with the conversations that you are having, that they're still founder constrained businesses where that owner ends up being a bottleneck.

John Paduchak: Absolutely in a lot of different ways. Either other officers in the company don't have the same contacts. They've never shared those contacts with them. That networking piece, like you said, the good old fashioned networking part could be a huge advantage to them if they have it.

And yeah, they are definitely one of the biggest bottlenecks. And of course, if they're a smaller business and they haven't made that move out of the hub and into the spoke of the wheel, as we often talk of it, that certainly makes them a bottleneck.

Hub and Spoke Business Transformation

Scott Raven: So that last part in terms of hub spoke wheel, is that part of what the freedom architecture kind of puts into action? It becomes kind of a catalyst, if you will, to make that owner have less of a bottleneck effect.

John Paduchak: Absolutely. And you know, not only that, it's just good business to do that. I think that's the biggest piece of it is it's just good business.

Scott Raven: You know, let's help the listening audience a bit. Maybe you can help paint a picture of an example of a transformation of this in practice, because I'm assuming that our audience has a fair amount of people who are like, this sounds like me. This sounds like me. What would it look like for me to have a freedom architecture?

John Paduchak: I am sure it does sound like a lot of people. And again, kind of starting - it usually starts with a very successful business owner who may be solo in that business. They started it, it's their baby. They haven't added any additional officers to the company. So there's nobody in the hub of that business except them. They can't move themself out to working on their business instead of working in their business. So that's certainly a big piece of it.

The 90-Day Revenue Double Strategy

One thing that we realized as we were going along, Scott, is that with the advent of AI, we can move a $500,000 annual revenue company to a million dollar annual revenue company in 90 to 180 days because technology really makes a huge difference.

Scott Raven: It's impressive.

John Paduchak: Yeah, it is impressive. It's almost shocking. In fact, I would say that probably most people in your audience probably are finding that hard to believe right now.

Scott Raven: You know, here's what I would say about my audience, right? I think my audience is very conflicted because I do believe that they understand it will be an AI driven world. AI is not going away. They also grew up and built businesses and firmly believe that relationships matter. How do you blend those two worlds?

AI Integration with Human Touch

John Paduchak: You know, gosh, that's a really easy one. And I'm going to turn the tables on you for a second here, Scott. How many times have you gone and made a call to a business? And you've got the system, and you're going around and around and around in a never ending loop of, infinite loop of pain, as I like to call it?

Scott Raven: I honestly think that it is more pervasive these days with so many of the unsolicited calls that are coming in, and so many business owners are like, look, I just let everything go to voicemail. I don't even pick up the phone anymore because I know it's going to be a spam call.

John Paduchak: Yeah, I agree with that. And so on our side, we look at it from our viewpoint as we have voice bots. I don't know if I've ever gone through a test with you so that you've actually had a chance to hear ours, but you know, as opposed to going through that system, which drives you crazy.

You get one of our voice bots. They're just like a human being. It's like getting in touch with the person you want to reach's administrative assistant and they can answer questions. They can immediately get to the right person. You know what, God forbid you get an angry client. They sense that. They will immediately send you to somebody in a position to fix it.

And that's way better than getting stuck in the voicemail ring as I often call it. And that's certainly one of the big pieces. But I think you also brought up another important point in that a lot of people are afraid that AI is going to take their positions.

Scott Raven: I mean, I can hear a number of people who are listening to this and saying, I didn't build this business to turn it over to Skynet.

John Paduchak: Exactly. Yeah. Hey, I didn't think that either. And so I think the other thing to keep in mind - the way I always saw AI and the reason I got involved with it with my marketing and it was easy for me with my engineering background. The reason for doing that is what I really saw.

There's a lot of people who do kind of mundane tasks as part of their regular daily business. If we could take those tasks out of their way, they could really focus on their zone of brilliance and not really worry about that stuff and be a much more productive employee. That's number one.

So number two is that it's not so important to be an AI expert these days as it really is to be an AI champion, and what that means is to understand how AI fits into your business, in your own position and champion that cause as opposed to - you don't have to be the expert.

Scott Raven: Yes, yes. Because I think one thing that you would profess to owners, founders, et cetera, is AI is not going to replace the wisdom that you bring to the table because you're seeing things in real life. You are experiencing things, and you are the one who are constructing and refining the vision in terms of where you want to go.

AI can be an accelerant to that, whether it be brainstorming or implementation thoughts, et cetera, but it's not going to replace your need to own your vision.

John Paduchak: Now it's not going to replace our creative talent to think out of the box either, which is tremendously important. And one of the areas that we've been working now is with an AI core diagnostic, which is kind of like the entrepreneurial operating system that a lot of businesses might be using.

And it's meant to help to develop the relationships within between members of the company, help them become better employees, help them not to be that rotten apple that ruins corporate culture and spreads from the inside of the barrel all the way out to the customer client base.

And so one of the things that's been funny about this, that I've really taken to heart and I've really noticed as we've gone along with this particular experiment is that I've seen that we've been able to notice mechanical things that we wouldn't normally see with our naked eye through going through this process, through the use of AI. We just wouldn't normally see them.

Scott Raven: Right, right. And I think that part of that, in terms of those novel insights that you're generating with AI. And you mentioned EOS and I have a lot of respect for companies and implementers who successfully put EOS into place. There's a lot of good, right.

John Paduchak: Absolutely.

Scott Raven: But there are definitely times where it can be where you're optimizing your existing prison versus designing your pathway to freedom if you're not careful. And I think that part of what you bring to the table in terms of the use of AI as part of your freedom architecture is don't necessarily take everything today as given, there may be better ways to do things that provide you the liberation that you are really looking for.

John Paduchak: Absolutely. And EOS is just a good example because I could compare it to the news, you know, if you remember when we were younger kids. It took a while for a story to get spread around. Now we know about it like almost instantaneously.

Scott Raven: That's right.

John Paduchak: And the same is true with our businesses. Do you want to wait weeks and months to get data or would you like to get it in minutes, hours and days instead? That's really the advantage we have. We can get it at a much faster rate. We're able to make course corrections faster. All of those things.

Scott Raven: And it's one thing to be able to gain access to data and insights in a much quicker manner with the technological revolution that AI, amongst other things is bringing. It's another thing to be able to utilize them. And I know this is where the relationship orientation, groups, we're both members of the Connective.

So having those really tight, valuable professional relationships to be able to act on the blinding speed of information that's coming in, that's still critically important in today's day and age.

John Paduchak: Critically important. In fact, I don't think we ever really put enough emphasis on that. We could be going along and we could be working on a particular project and something comes along and there's just that, you know what, I think this is what needs to be done, but I'd love to run it by somebody that I know who has more experience with that.

And that's where our old fashioned networking skills really come into play. It's really easy to get ahold of a certain person who's got the expertise in that, they can kind of go through that and help us out with it. And that I don't see really ever being replaced.

Scott Raven: I mean, if you think about it, right. You know, the core of AI is neural networks and large language models, almost. You have 6 billion people who are in and of themselves exactly that but with the uniqueness of the journey that they have been on.

John Paduchak: Yes, exactly. But there's always that particular piece of expertise that particular piece that can really propel you forward. That's always the spot that we're looking for to go outside of that. But you're absolutely right. I notice when I'm running on anything in particular using AI. I think of that frequently. I'm like, wow, you know, this is a huge summation of a lot of people's information put together in a very unique way.

Scott Raven: Yes.

John Paduchak: And it's cool that we can call it up too, in a very unique way and utilize it in some very unique ways to be able to accomplish a lot of different tasks.

Scott Raven: Absolutely. But you know, to your point, part of what we've built is the uniqueness of the experiences that we have built up, and you certainly practice that in terms of the uniqueness of the integrated life that you have with your RV lifestyle and family adventures. So, I'm not an outdoorsman. Sorry. You know, I'm a city kid. I'll put it that way. So what am I missing? Not being out in the wilderness, I'll put it that way.

RV Lifestyle and Family Integration

John Paduchak: Well, you know, for me, the wilderness is a way to recharge. I started out life as an introvert and became an ambivert, and so now I recharge two ways. I recharge being around smaller groups of people that I am very interactive with and being alone outside in the woods. And I really enjoy the outdoors and, you know, we see a lot of stuff in Japan about forest bathing and all of those fun things, and there's a lot of truth to it.

Scott Raven: Yeah. And you're preaching to the choir in terms of that move from introvert to ambivert. I'm the same. I'm still an introvert, but I have extroverted tendencies from time to time.

John Paduchak: Hmm.

Scott Raven: And part of that for me is that family time is a huge rejuvenator for me, and I think part of the thing that I enjoy about you and how you portray the concept of work life integration that we preach here at Corvus is you've got a business, but it supports family time. It doesn't consume from family time.

Legacy Planning for Children

John Paduchak: Yes. And you know, the other thing, I don't know if I mentioned this to you before or not, but so I've got two kids. My daughter is 29 in California and I've got a son that lives with me that's autistic, but high level functioning autistic. And one of the things that I looked at when I started figuring out, okay, what am I going to do with my business and how am I going to leave a legacy behind for my own children?

And the easiest thing that came to mind was, you know, I can't see them doing my marketing advisory, although my daughter has a marketing degree, just doesn't have the same talents that I do. I certainly can create the SOP so that she could do it. I certainly could hire somebody that could help her along with it if she wanted to.

But I do look at my RV exploits as a passion project that I could easily take advantage of through a podcast, a newsletter, et cetera, and easily develop a stream of income that they could take over that I know they can handle.

Scott Raven: What do you think that your kids are learning from you in terms of the true value of entrepreneurship and freedom? Successful entrepreneurship and freedom?

John Paduchak: You know, that's a funny question because I think at first your kids learn man business is hard.

Scott Raven: Oh yeah. Oh, trust me. My 14-year-old will tell me that. I'll put it that way. Yes.

John Paduchak: And I hear that from my son who's 26 all the time. He goes, "Dad, you know, I don't know if I can do this" because business is hard. But it all depends on how you set up your business. Some of our businesses are set up so that yeah, they're a little harder to run than others.

And I do know that as time has gone down the road, they've seen, geez, you have a lot of freedom to just kind of take off in the middle of the week and go travel and hop in the RV. A lot of times I'll do that. I'll hop in the RV, I'll take my internet system with me, go down to the local store, pick up stuff for lunch, and even work out of the parking lot just to have new scenery and get away from home.

Scott Raven: Yeah. You know, as somebody who, my first entrepreneurial venture was brick and mortar. I was opening up a couple of martial arts locations here in the Atlanta area. And after I exited that business, mainly because the operational structure was complete opposite of where my flow state is. So I was doing everything through willpower.

John Paduchak: Yeah.

Scott Raven: I learned the lesson that you learned in terms of there is such incredible value of being able to work from anywhere to be able to blend your life the way that you want to. But I think the key to that, and I'm sure that you have had to put this in place, is boundaries so that you don't over let work overrun everything else.

Business Lessons from Martial Arts and Farming

John Paduchak: Yes. And you know, it's interesting, I didn't know we shared the martial arts thing in common. That was one of the places that I learned watching the business owners of the martial arts studio that I worked out in. I was watching how it affected their lives if it wasn't set up properly for their lifestyle. And so that was one of my first business lessons in life, like while I was still in college.

Scott Raven: Right.

John Paduchak: And the other one was my father was a farmer. And I grew up on a farm watching him doing various things. Farmers always have this tendency to follow each other. You know what, what's going, oh, what went well? What sold real well this year? Let's plant more of it for next year. They don't, they're not contrarian in that regard. And so those were two big lessons for me in watching how different businesses weren't well set up for people's lifestyles.

Scott Raven: Do you feel that that's almost the proverbial trap that owners act too much as owner operators and that they put too much of a focus in their business versus on their business?

Relinquishing Control and Creative Solutions

John Paduchak: Always. And the reason is is that so many are afraid to relinquish control. And that's what it all comes down to is I just don't feel like I can relinquish control to somebody else. It's either my way or the highway when it gets serious. But yeah, absolutely.

Scott Raven: But I gotta imagine that that's even more of an interesting discussion for you because you are encouraging your clients to relinquish control to computers to a certain extent, and that that's got to be an even bigger chasm that they have to jump.

John Paduchak: Yeah, it's funny, I've found some really creative ways around that. I don't know if I can use the example of how I've helped a client to get away from that particular aspect. But what I can do is I can say that I had a client once that I was working with reworking his whole business, which he did mostly by audio. He created audio products. He was a spiritualist. And he said, "Oh, I could never go to video."

And what I ended up doing is I said, "What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to create YouTube videos. Create a YouTube channel for yourself. Let's just go through that exercise and see how it goes."

And so we went through the exercise. What I realized, and I knew all along is that he was a much better speaker on the fly. He had done tons and tons of seminars and he literally had to do no preparation. He just could extemporaneously go right off the top of his head.

What we found out really quickly is in doing the videos is that he was reading. I don't think he really wanted people to see that you're reading what you're doing.

What ended up happening is I got him doing more live stuff where he wasn't reading, he was just speaking from the heart right off the top of his head, and he was amazing.

And I think that's true with people in their business because what they're doing is they're caught up in the, I've got to do this, they've never tried to let somebody else do it and see how that would work. And usually what happens is they might find out that, man, this person really does super well at this. You may find somebody.

Scott Raven: Yeah. The concept of, you know, you may own everything about your business, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything for your business.

John Paduchak: Exactly, exactly. I hope that was a good analogy.

Scott Raven: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, as of the time of this recording, right, I've got my podcast. I don't have YouTube, so you heard it here folks, if I go on YouTube at some point, it is John's fault. I'll put it that way.

John Paduchak: Awesome. I hope you do because I really like it.

Scott Raven: There you go. Well, you know, as we close down this episode, I always give a little tip of the cap to Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture. And let's imagine because he was writing that book for his kids, your kids are listening to this podcast episode. What do you want them to take away?

John Paduchak: What I'd really like them to take away is that anything is possible and we need to continue to keep learning and keep growing. And I'd like them to believe that if they keep learning and keep growing, they could do anything that I'm doing right now.

Scott Raven: That's inspiring. That's definitely inspiring. And you know, I'm sure that they'd love to take that as their charge. And, you know, speaking of taking up the charge for others, I understand you have a complimentary business analysis offer that people could be interested in.

John Paduchak: I do, and you know, a lot of folks will come to me for many different reasons. But whether it just be to restructure and just need some guidance in that, or whether they're looking to at some point exit, you know, I'd love to see people exit their business sooner rather than later. Also lots of questions I get lately on hey, how do I incorporate AI best in my business? And so those are kind of the things that I do in my complimentary offer when people will connect with me for a strategy session.

Scott Raven: Alright. Well, we'll make sure that we have that link so people can hit you up for the complimentary business analysis in the episode links. When we post this up, how else can people get in contact with John?

John Paduchak: Probably the easiest way is on LinkedIn. And my business site is scalable growth solutions.com.

Scott Raven: Alright, scalable growth solutions.com.

John Paduchak: Yep. And I have a contact form and my calendar on there.

Scott Raven: Alright. We'll make sure we get those links up as well. Well, it's been a wonderful chat. Any final thoughts before we close down this episode?

Final Thoughts on Growth and Planning

John Paduchak: No, you know, I'm just glad Scott, that I had a chance to come on. It was great to chat with you. And, you know, I always like to, like I said, instill in people planning sooner rather than later is important. And I've seen so many businesses over the years that try to stay level and remain at the status quo. At some point it's important to grow your business out so you do have something to sell. You can't just keep it level.

Scott Raven: Yeah. There are many people who subscribe to philosophy. If you're not growing, you're dying, so yeah. Which, I mean, yes, there is a how much is enough and there are many people who it will never be enough. Right. But at the same time, we didn't grow these businesses to go backwards, so.

John Paduchak: No, we didn't grow them to go backwards and we didn't grow them to live paycheck to paycheck.

Scott Raven: That is correct. Well, John, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's been a pleasure. And to my listening audience, thank you for taking the time to listen to John and I. If you found value out of this, please subscribe. Please share with those in your inner circle who could use this wisdom. Leave us comments because we're always looking to improve as we all aim for that path to freedom through our professional ventures. I am Scott and we will see you next time on The Corvus Effect. Take care.

Outro

Scott Raven: Thank you for joining me on The Corvus Effect. To access today's show notes, resources, and links mentioned in this episode, visit www.thecorvuseffect.com. While you're there, you'll find links to our free tools and resources to evaluate where you currently stand versus your aspirations with personalized recommendations for action. If you found value in today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share with those who may benefit from it. You won't want to miss future conversations that could transform your approach to leadership and life. Join me next episode as we continue our journey towards building lasting legacies that matter. Remember, it's time to soar towards your legacy.