UnscriptedSEO Podcast: Conversation with Chris Scott About Execution Debt

In this enlightening episode of the Unscripted Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera sits down with Chris Scott, founder of Boschetto Consulting, to explore the concept of "Execution Debt™" – the accumulated inefficiencies that plague businesses of all sizes. Through their candid conversation, they unpack how these hidden bottlenecks impact everything from marketing strategies to operational workflows, and offer practical approaches for identifying and eliminating them. Whether you're running a small local business or managing larger teams, their insights on testing small, failing fast, and aligning with your organization's core mission provide valuable strategies for improving efficiency and driving sustainable growth.

Key Quotes from the Interview

"Execution Debt™ is all of the inefficiencies and bottlenecks and wasted time and efforts and delays within a business that compound over time. Some of them can be seen on a balance sheet or profit and loss statement, but a lot of them are silent killers." — Chris Scott

"Vision without proper execution is just wasted potential. So again, I really think this is something that exists in every business. And if I can do my small part to help a business owner overcome some of it, improve their teams, improve resource efficiency, improve team morale, I'm more than happy to do my part." — Chris Scott

"Before we build a full-fledged solution, we test the idea and we get some market feedback. This is slightly different than if you're from a tech perspective, a minimum viable product. So a minimum viable product is very similar, but I think a minimum viable experiment even comes before that." — Chris Scott

"Every organization has hopefully a why or a mission or, you know, why are we in existence? I think that every decision isn't necessarily always about dollars and cents. But impact is relative to the organization." — Chris Scott

"It's really important for your marketing to delve into and understand your unique selling position as a business because that's going to impact how you structure your marketing materials. But I think that that is also true organizationally of what you are determining is the priority goal for your organization." — Jeremy Rivera

Key Insights Summary

• What is Execution Debt™? The accumulated inefficiencies, bottlenecks, wasted time, and delays within a business that compound over time, many of which are "silent killers" not visible on financial statements.
  

• Industry Agnostic Challenge: Execution Debt™ affects businesses of all sizes and industries; it's a universal problem that requires awareness and systematic approaches to overcome.
  

• The Five Whys Technique: Dig deeper into apparent problems to find root causes. What appears to be a marketing problem might actually be a training issue or process inefficiency.
  

• Tools Aren't Enough: Having project management tools like Trello or Asana doesn't automatically solve Execution Debt™; the mindset and consistent application of these tools matters more.
  

• Test Small, Fail Small: Instead of building complete solutions immediately, develop "minimum viable experiments" to test ideas before significant investment of resources.
  

• Measure What Matters: Attach specific, relevant KPIs to improvement efforts, but remember that success metrics aren't always financial and should align with the organization's core mission.
  

• Organizational Alignment: Every business has a "why" that should guide decision-making. Ensuring all team members understand and align with this mission is critical for coherent execution.
  

• Change Management: Work directly with employees doing the actual work rather than imposing top-down directives; their insights are crucial for developing effective solutions.
  

• Continuous Improvement: Execution Debt™ is inevitable, but adopting a mindset of continuously seeking and eliminating inefficiencies positions businesses to thrive amidst changes.

More About the Host and Guest

Jeremy Rivera

Jeremy Rivera is the host of the Unscripted Podcast, which has two branches: Unscripted SEO and Unscripted Small Business. With extensive experience in digital marketing and search engine optimization, Jeremy conducts in-depth interviews with industry experts to provide valuable insights for both SEO professionals and small business owners. His conversational interview style draws out practical wisdom that listeners can apply to their own businesses and marketing strategies You can learn more about his SEO services at jeremyriveraseo.com or connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Chris Scott

Chris Scott is the founder of Boschetto Consulting, an operational consultancy that helps small and mid-sized businesses identify and eliminate "Execution Debt™." Drawing from his background in project management and SEO, Chris developed a systematic approach to finding and fixing the inefficiencies that plague businesses of all sizes.

He created the Execution Debt™ Assessment, a tool that helps business owners measure and address operational bottlenecks. Chris regularly shares insights about operational efficiency on LinkedIn and works directly with companies to implement his "test small, fail small" methodology. His passion is helping businesses align their operations with their core mission, ensuring that their vision doesn't become wasted potential due to execution challenges.

To connect with Chris Scott and take the Execution Debt™ Assessment mentioned in the interview, visit his LinkedIn profile where he regularly posts tips and insights about operational efficiency.

Introduction and SEO Experience

In this episode of the Unscripted Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera dives into the concept of "Execution Debt™" with Chris Scott from Boschetto Consulting. The conversation explores how businesses of all sizes struggle with inefficiencies that compound over time and offers practical strategies for identifying and eliminating these bottlenecks.

Jeremy Rivera: What is your experience in SEO that should make me listen to you more than ChatGPT?

Chris Scott: This is about as unscripted as it gets. I love it, Jeremy. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for if this is a sign of the rest of the interview. I'm excited to dive into it. Great question. So we'll dive into it more. Bushido is an operational consultancy that helps small and mid-sized businesses find and fix their Execution Debt™. 

So Execution Debt™ is the inefficiencies that pile up over a business and we'll dive into that more. I also have a background in SEO. In a past life and sure we'll touch on this more, but in a past life I was traveling the country and my side job was writing blog posts and SEO keyword optimized content. So with that, with that SEO experience, I have a unique perspective of being able to help small businesses really dig into the weeds of some of the problems they're facing.

 SEO is at very unique inflection point at the moment. So I think I'll offer some perspectives that are a little less generic than your average chat GPT LLM spit out.

Understanding Execution Debt™

Jeremy Rivera: I love that. So tell me about Execution Debt™. Is it something that small businesses should be familiar with as a term or terminology or is that a concept that you've kind of trademarked or an approach like what is exactly is that is that a branded thing that you've come up with to attach to something that most small businesses experience or is that a more recognized industry term that others that people might be more familiar with generally.

• Chris Scott: Great question. I don't think it's a recognized industry term yet because it is something that I've kind of branded and trademarked and concocted myself. However, it's essentially defining something that I think every small business owner deals with. I know I certainly deal with it and speaking and working with small business owners is something that they deal with. 

  • So Execution Debt™ is all of the inefficiencies and bottlenecks and wasted time and efforts and delays within a business that compound over time. So some of them can be seen on, you know, a balance sheet or profit and loss statement, but a lot of them are silent killers. 

  • Think from a marketing perspective, you know, Execution Debt™ might be something that execution that something like we're editing a blog post seven or eight times instead of, know, accepting that 99 % is better than perfect, and we need to get it out and get some feedback on it and see how it ranks and see how it does. 

  • Execution Debt™ could be delays with client acceptance or perhaps poor client standards upfront. So, you know, we don't have a good initial, you know, scoping meeting with the client and client isn't clear on their expectations. And now we produce the first batch of content for them and they're not happy and we're back to the drawing board and we're trying to understand their, you know, their standards. That all lumps into again, Execution Debt™ is all these inefficiencies that compile over time. 

When you're first starting out, know, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, very small businesses, very limited runway for Execution Debt™. So I think it's very important that we're testing small and and failing small and some of the things that we're doing. On the opposite side of the coin, I recently saw that Apple, Apple TV, I think lost a billion, was it a billion dollars a year? Apple is a billion dollars a year on Apple TV plus. 

So that is also Execution Debt™, but I think they have a lot more runway, right? So Execution Debt™ again is a new term, but it's something that it's really the pain points that I think every business owner will be very, very familiar with.

Understanding Execution Debt™

Jeremy Rivera: I love that. So tell me about Execution Debt™. Is it something that small businesses should be familiar with as a term or terminology or is that a concept that you've kind of trademarked or an approach like what is exactly is that is that a branded thing that you've come up with to attach to something that most small businesses experience or is that a more recognized industry term that others that people might be more familiar with generally.

• Chris Scott: Great question. I don't think it's a recognized industry term yet because it is something that I've kind of branded and trademarked and concocted myself. However, it's essentially defining something that I think every small business owner deals with. I know I certainly deal with it and speaking and working with small business owners is something that they deal with. 

  • So Execution Debt™ is all of the inefficiencies and bottlenecks and wasted time and efforts and delays within a business that compound over time. So some of them can be seen on, you know, a balance sheet or profit and loss statement, but a lot of them are silent killers. 

  • Think from a marketing perspective, you know, Execution Debt™ might be something that execution that something like we're editing a blog post seven or eight times instead of, know, accepting that 99 % is better than perfect, and we need to get it out and get some feedback on it and see how it ranks and see how it does. 

  • Execution Debt™ could be delays with client acceptance or perhaps poor client standards upfront. So, you know, we don't have a good initial, you know, scoping meeting with the client and client isn't clear on their expectations. And now we produce the first batch of content for them and they're not happy and we're back to the drawing board and we're trying to understand their, you know, their standards. That all lumps into again, Execution Debt™ is all these inefficiencies that compile over time. 

When you're first starting out, know, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, very small businesses, very limited runway for Execution Debt™. So I think it's very important that we're testing small and and failing small and some of the things that we're doing. On the opposite side of the coin, I recently saw that Apple, Apple TV, I think lost a billion, was it a billion dollars a year? Apple is a billion dollars a year on Apple TV plus. 

So that is also Execution Debt™, but I think they have a lot more runway, right? So Execution Debt™ again is a new term, but it's something that it's really the pain points that I think every business owner will be very, very familiar with.

Application to Different Businesses

Jeremy Rivera: Is that something more like a local business, like Achieve Wellness, their local rehab in a particular area? Is it tied at all to the size of the company and the geography and their goal? Or is it just any organization is going to have challenges in this area to overcome? So what would it look like for a rehab? What would some of this Execution Debt™ potentially be?

Chris Scott: Yeah, so it's pretty industry-agnostic. I think it's more of a mindset shift and finding those inefficiencies and finding ways to get better and streamline things. You know, I think, especially now with the state of perhaps the economy, and I know SEO too,

 I was listening to a recent episode of yours [with Michael Buckbee], and you really touched on some of the AI and language models and how that's changing, you know, the approach to SEO. And so the organizations that are best going to not just survive, but thrive, are those who are agile and able to adapt to some of these changes. 

That's a mindset.

 So to your question, again, it can apply to, I think, any small business. 

An example I'll give is a local cafe. So a local cafe recognizes that sales are down. So their initial, let's go solve the surface level solution is well, let's run a marketing campaign or let's offer a sale, you know, buy a pastry and get a coffee after 2pm or something like that. But if we pause and kind of dig into the problem a little more, and exercise it like it's the five whys, we dig in why five times.

 So when we do that, why are sales down? Because regulars have stopped coming in. Why have regulars stopped coming in? Because wait times have gotten longer on coffee. Why have wait times gotten longer? Because we hired new baristas and we didn't train them how to use the equipment properly. 

So what you initially thought was a again, like a sales problem that we would just go through a marketing spend that it's actually a training problem. 

So we can go fix that. And again, that's like a hidden inefficiency that is exists in every business. Again, it exists in my own business, I despite me trying to run from it and solve for it. But I think being aware of it is is a key first step.

Governance and Tools

Jeremy Rivera: (Podcast Note from Jeremy: I switched up AJ Kohn and AJ Ghergich, they’re both awesome so check both of them out)  but that’s what hapI love the concept and it touched on something that Ross Hudgens and AJ [Ghergich] were discussing a couple of days ago on the Siege Media podcast. And Cohn was talking about the problem at larger industry sites at enterprise is governance when it comes to AI and these AI search tools.

Because you have like these multiple different teams where they should be hubs on a spoke, and AI should fall into the middle and try to connect them, but each of them is trying to set up their own process to own that and muddle through and figure it out.

But it's not centrally organized and then people are sitting on their hands because they're like, I don't have data on how this works. you know, I guess SEO is coming up with something, social media is coming up with something, the product team is coming up with something, and there's no coherence system or tooling. 

So I think that'd be an example of executive Execution Debt™ when it comes to handling AI.

My follow-through question on that is kind of tongue-in-cheek of like, I've got a product management tool. Does that mean that just because I have Trello that I'm set?

Chris Scott: You're in a better spot than perhaps others, you know, then it comes down to, are you using Trello? So again, tools like that very much help with visibility. So I have a project management background. 

So that's admittedly where a lot of this comes from is some of the visibility and project management concepts that I've seen that I've used to drive my own projects and stuff like that. 

So you're 100 % right that your tools like Trello and Asana and monday.com and ClickUp and like whatever it may be. Those are good. However, I'd still challenge that there are probably still pain points that exist. 

Introduction to Execution Debt™

Chris Scott: Again, I'm going back to I think back to like a marketing agency. Think to you know, a marketing agency that scaled quickly, and it's maybe doing around 3 million in year, but they have concerns because they're still missing client client deadlines. And when they dig into it, what they realize is that every one of these kind of product managers might be using their own tool, but the account managers then don't know, okay, if I'm working with Jeremy, I have to use Trello, but if I'm working with Chris, I think I'm using Asana, but Chris doesn't update it all the time.

So you can still see that a tool is great, but it's, again, the mindset that goes into properly utilizing those tools. Inefficiencies are always going to exist. I guess my challenge is that the more we search for them and find them, the better position the business is going to be in.

The Diagnostic Process

Jeremy Rivera: Got it. So is it is the first step in the in the your process when you come in and you're working with a new client you're onboarding in the process? Is it just kind of talking to multiple different stakeholders within the company? Is it like a primary touch point and just acting like a therapist and finding out like what's not working man like why are you frustrated? Or is that the basis for for a lot of what of your gains is just hearing hearing the complaints and coming in and being a neutral third party and letting people whine about how many bosses they have? Like are you one of the bobs coming in and saying what would you say you do here?

Chris Scott: Yeah, it's gonna say like "Office Space". Exactly. Yeah. And then I promote the one who who pulls the wool over my eyes. Great movie. I'm gonna have to watch that this weekend. It's meant to rain Saturday here. So I'll have to check that out.

No, that's a really good question, Jeremy. So to your point, yes, there's a diagnostic aspect. I really take the approach that I will never understand your business better than you do. Right? Like everywhere, every business is like a fingerprint or a snowflake and that they're all unique. They took different paths to get to where they are. Sure, we can be in the same industry, but there's different people, there's different processes, again, different organizational mindsets and cultures.

I'll never, it's not my approach to come in and say, this is exactly what you're doing wrong. That's, I'm humble enough to admit that I don't have that solution, nor necessarily should I. But to your point, there is a diagnostic aspect to it. So in some cases, I might have the problem laid out to me or what we think the problem is. Even then, we'll take time to pause and again, maybe run the five whys or something like that and really dig into the root causes behind the problem.

Other ways are, like you said, maybe diagnosing some of the pain points and the solutions. From a change management perspective, I think it's very vital and critical to work with the actual employees doing the actual work, your people doing the actual work. So I'm not a fan of top down directives, right?

So even if I would maybe perhaps have a one day workshop with your product managers, like you said, and your account managers and like what's working and what's not. And we really I try and frame in a very constructive way. So instead of it being like, what are all the things that are going wrong with the business? Like you might you know, again, because then that just becomes the event session. So it might be something like, in what ways can we improve X? And then we will have a, you know, design thinking, like creative thinking, brainstorm, and then we'll come up with some solutions. And then there's a implementation and improvement aspect on the back end.

But to your first question, it's very, again, working with teams to understand how can we fix this inefficiency and not just have it be a, like you said, a week long. My boss sucks and I hope you don't tell him about this conversation.

Companies in the energy sector like Energo could benefit from Chris's approach of involving employees at all levels, which typically generates more effective solutions than top-down directives. A collaborative diagnosis process often builds stronger buy-in for organizational changes.

Real-World Examples

Jeremy Rivera: No, that's definitely true because I worked with my friend Michael McDougald who's an SEO but he was working for like a steel door manufacturer and working with working through the process of like how do these quotes get fulfilled and get things out the door.

So it was actually really important to understand the difference between the positions and how they viewed the challenges of the organization and somebody who was trying to fulfill the quote was frustrated with the website of things because every time the quote was coming in with this missing piece of information, which meant that they had to call and they could only get you know had a failed you know they had fewer people that they could reach to get a quote because they needed this critical piece of information so actually adding in that one extra element to the form led to a dramatic improvement in conversion rate because they were able to proceed directly and actually provide a quote instead of needing more information to give a quote.

Chris Scott: Yeah, that makes complete sense. I think, you know, even like in talking with teams, it's good to have that second set of eyes or third set of eyes come in because everyone has their little niche of info that they can provide. And not every one person or not every three person team has all of the answers, like you said, about the different challenges, you know, and again, an account manager dealing with clients is going to have a different perspective than, you know, an operations manager dealing with your writers or something like that.

Scope of Execution Debt™

Jeremy Rivera: Is it largely in an organization, technical Debt™ around like implementation of marketing or is it other aspects of the business as well?

Chris Scott: Yeah, technical Debt™ is kind of where this is born execution that was born out of so that's know, technical Debt™ if you're familiar with software and whatnot is obviously a pretty familiar term there. Again, I think Execution Debt™ takes it one step further.

So it's not necessarily just marketing. It's again, it's operational, it could be accounting, you know, could be on the invoicing side of things where, you know, you have a cash flow problem and you dig in and you realize that your contracts might be net 30 days, but clients typically pay in 45 days. Like that can create big cashflow problems for small businesses. You know, again, and then what is the downstream effect of that? And is that one less freelancer that you might be able to use a month or something like that?

So again, it's all of these inefficiencies that it's not really, it's pretty vertical agnostic, it's pretty industry agnostic. It exists, it exists.

I mean, I'll give you an example of myself too. So recently, I launched a minimum viable experiment on LinkedIn. And it was a quiz that assessed your Execution Debt™ score. And when I was building it, my first inclination was, OK, so I'm going to build it. And then I'm going to set up automations in G Sheets. And then I'm going to have those automations pushed to me and send automated emails. And it was like, time out, pause. I don't even know if this thing works. Right?

Like, let me post it. And yeah, it might be a week or two where it's going to be painful, where if it, you know, if it takes off, then I'll have to do some manual responses and stuff like that. But at least that's traction then that I know like, okay, now I can go put some bells and whistles on it, as opposed to I have this great idea and I'm going to go build the solution. And then no one takes the survey and I've wasted a week and a half doing something that the market didn't even want.

So again, I think it exists in any industry in any business. It's that mindset of really trying to get super, super efficient in execution.

Chris's LinkedIn experiment is a perfect example of his "minimum viable experiment" approach, something that could benefit companies like Vape-Jet when testing new product features before full implementation.

Solutions to Execution Debt™

Jeremy Rivera: Okay I think I got it now because I like a good example would be like Majestic Photo Booth they go out and they get their photo booths into these business locations but then never actually built a location page on their site so nobody can actually Nobody actually knows unless they happen upon a photo booth. There's no centralized location facing. Hey, there's a kiosk here or even a Google business page You know isn't registered for a p.m. per kiosk so kind of Connecting, know, you want to do the thing and then you got to make sure you do all those.

I have Execution Debt™ of too many podcasts I've recorded in December And got backlogged and realized oh, hey, I actually have 20 conversations I've had fantastic conversations and some of the podcasts I've released I'm talking about podcasts that have that happened in December that haven't yet been released so I kind of can cause some kinks in your workflow for sure.

Chris Scott: 100%. And that's a few, it has nothing to do with ability or lack of ability or anything like that. It's something that is, it's natural. It's inherent for every business owner. I mean, we get very, very busy building a business, working on the business, working in the business. So it's inevitable. But I think, again, like to your point, being aware of it, you know, and finding solutions is how can you release one more episode a week or something like that and taking that mindset of continuous improvement and continuous improvement.

Steps to Solve Execution Debt™

Jeremy Rivera: Okay, so then let's talk about some of the steps to solve. I already jumped the gun a little bit and said tools when the first step was obviously talk to your shrink Chris Scott about the woes or ways. So brainstorm out, have conversations, introduce potentially some tools, and then what?

Chris Scott: And then we test. So we test small and then we fail small. So I'll give you another good example that I recently came across. This wasn't a client that I worked with, but I saw it and looking at it through this lens, I was like, my God, this makes so much sense.

So it was was Jeep and Jeep does these like off-road adventures that you can sign up for. Right. So they do them every year all over the country. And they sent one for the Himalayas. And what it was, so it was an email blast and it was the same thing. It was as if this was an actual event that was happening. But what happened when you like clicked on sign up or whatever it was, it took you to the landing page and the landing page said, this is not a guarantee of admittance and we'll get back to you. And it didn't accept the payment at that time. So you basically joined a wait list.

But what Jeep was doing, You know, I think they were all, this thing might have cost like 10 grand. So you can imagine the logistics of running a Jeep off-roading trip in the Himalayas and international travel and everything, right? So before they even jumped in and, know, they probably had an idea of we need 10 people to sign up to make this work. And so this was that. This email was verifying the wait list that I'm sure that if they, if they had 20 people sign up that they would say, okay, we can proceed and go do this versus if they had three people sign up, it's like, this isn't happening and the three people are none the wiser that we didn't actually go through the event.

So again, I came across that and I thought it was a great example of this testing concept that we do, right? So we, again, I call it a minimum viable experiment where we have this idea and before we build a full-fledged solution, we test the idea and we get some market feedback. This is slightly different than if you're from a tech perspective, a minimum viable product. So a minimum viable product is very similar, but I think a minimum viable experiment even comes before that, because you're getting some market feedback on your potential, you know, solution or offering, and then you're deciding, should I go through with this?

You know, so that's a bit more external in terms of like internal, you know, if you're solving a problem internally, or bottleneck or something like that. It's kind of the same premise where we brainstorm solutions and then we narrow down like the two or three that we think are going to have the highest impact and the highest probability of providing value. And then we go test those very quickly. And we have our KPI that we're measuring against.

So to bring it back to the cafe example, we'd measure wait times. And so we're going to run this for three weeks. And we're going to make sure that we always, if you recall from the example, the baristas weren't trained. So what we're going to do is we're going to pair a new barista with an old barista or an experienced barista every shift. And we're going to go run this for three weeks. And we're going to see how much wait times increase or decrease. And we go back and wait, wait times decreased by 40%. And then we decide, okay, this worked. And now how do we scale it into the business or how do we take it one step further and how do we improve upon it? Then maybe we launch a marketing campaign to get our regulars back in the door saying, Hey, we heard you and we fixed the wait times problem. Come back.

So, you know, again, as opposed to just jump, jump, it's so easy to do to just jump into the first thing or the first solution. But that's how we end up in firefighting mode and reactive mode. I mentioned this kind of when we were chatting before we jumped on the call, Jeremy, but I have ADHD. So I'm very susceptible to go fight this fire, go fight this fire, shiny object syndrome. It doesn't work. That's kind of what the system was born out of was I kind of needed it for myself.

So yeah, again, I think it's testing small and failing small and then getting feedback because resources in businesses are so, limited. Money, time, effort, momentum, morale, so limited. So we make sure that before we scale, we're confident in what we're scaling.

This "test small, fail small" approach could be transformative for businesses like FirstConnect LLC and Energo, where implementing targeted pilots before rolling out major operational changes might lead to better outcomes.

Measuring Success

Jeremy Rivera: No, I love that thinking about thinking through after you identify the problem, attaching a KPI specific to that that makes sense. Because ultimately, if if it's like you you wasted five fewer ketchup packets, did that really it was the time to reorganize around that as like, that's what we're watching. Was that really valuable? like watching what you select as a KPI.

And then also, you you rush through it, but I think prioritizing as well of having like, once you attach those different KPIs, then being able to compare, okay, well, this is going to do this, this is going to change this KPI, this is going to change this KPI. And how much are those, you know, because they're in a wiggle line, they're going to pull in different ways on what's truly at the heart of the CEO, you know, or the lead executives determination of success or failure for the organization.

I find that that usually actually matters more than actual like dollars per se. Like dollars in a company can and often surprisingly is not the KPI that matters most because a CEO can be looking at offsetting and knowing they're sacrificing some dollar spend or revenue or profit margin over time for sustainability or for longevity or for compliance or this. Usually the ultimate KPI is C-suite satisfaction. Would you agree?

Chris Scott: Well, you mentioned the heart of the CEO and I think that I agree with everything you said. Every organization has hopefully a why or a mission or, you know, WHY are we in existence?

Decisions aren't necessarily always about dollars and cents. But to your point of like which, you know, if we're solving a problem and we want to test solutions and which is going to have the highest impact again, impact is relative, like you said, to the organization.

And that's what I say, I could never come in and say, this is exactly what your business needs to do, because your business could be very different from the one down the street, because you believe in different things. So go back to the cafe example, you know, that cafe owner could say their that company's why could be exceptional customer service. 

So if that's the why behind every decision they make, then yeah, maybe it's more expensive to have an overtime training where we train all the new baristas on like how to use all the equipment, but they're willing to sacrifice that dollars and cents because it's ultimately in pursuit of their why or their North Star that customer, you know, customer satisfaction is, is most important.

Actually, now that I think about it, you know, I think we see Starbucks growing at a significantly larger organization, but Starbucks is going through a little bit of that identity crisis now as is Southwest, you know, Starbucks brought in a new CEO and now they're cutting back a lot on the custom drink orders and stuff like that, which that's their organizational decision. That's fine, but it has an impact on their customers, but maybe their Y shifted. Same with again, Southwest and cutting the free bags. Like that was Southwest thing for the longest time and they've shifted their Y. So now some of the strategies that go into that might change.

Organizational Alignment

Jeremy Rivera: Absolutely. I was talking to Joshua Ramsey last week on Interview and he said that it's really important for your marketing to delve into and understand your unique selling position as a business because that's going to impact how you structure your marketing materials and what emphasis you put on the rights of level when it comes to connecting to your target audience.

But I think that that is also true organizationally of what you are determining is the priority goal for your organization and why it's exists and getting buy-in from everybody who joins your organization, getting them to, you know, march to the same beat is really hard if you never set, you know, you don't have a drummer who's setting the beat then you say everybody let's march. They're going, you know, go in different directions. They're going to walk at a different pace. So, you know, there's got to be some coherency to the, to the method to that madness in that organization.

Chris Scott: Yeah, 100%. Where did you see it? Was that a podcast that you conducted? Or I'd like to check that out, actually.

Jeremy Rivera: Yeah. Yeah, that one I'm publishing today. While I'm recording, yeah, so it'll be later today. Now I've committed myself. Thanks. I had execution dead. No, I had somebody, I got it to the last part. So we should be publishing that one today. I say we by me, but really. Dang it.

Chris Scott: Now I held your feet to the fire. It wasn't pre-planned for those listening. That was very unscripted. So what goes around comes around, I guess. No, that's great. I'll have to check that out this evening.

Final Call to Action

Jeremy Rivera: Awesome. As you kind of wrap this up. What is the primary to do that you would like somebody who listened to this podcast, I'm going to cross post this to the Unscripted Small Business podcast as well as to the Unscripted SEO. So it's not just SEOs you're talking to, potentially it's actual small business owners, I hope, or that's a target audience. So if you're talking to SMBs, what should they do? super actionable, they close this out, they go to X and it's going to have Y impact.

Chris Scott: Personally, I'd love for anyone listening to go take the Execution Debt™ assessment. I mentioned it earlier in the show. It's a two minute assessment that is about 10 questions. And it walks you through, it's a quick survey, again, about two minutes. And it assesses the Debt™ that exists in your business. It could be solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, again, industry agnostic, small and mid-sized businesses. It's 50 points. I've never seen a perfect 50 point score.

So I would love that. I always post Execution Debt™ based tips on my LinkedIn. So I'd love to just engage further. You know, my why I really believe kind of we talked about it a bit with the North Star and stuff like that. And I really believe that every everyone started their business for a reason, right? That why can vary, but everyone has a why as to why they started their business. And vision that vision without proper execution is just wasted potential.

So again, I really I think this is something that exists in every business. And if I can do my small part to help a business owner overcome, overcome some of it, improve their teams, improve resource efficiency, improve team morale. I'm more than happy to do my part. So again, maybe start with the assessment. But also please engage on LinkedIn. Again, I post a couple times a week, and we'd just love to keep the conversation going after this.

Jeremy Rivera: Fantastic. Be talking to you a lot on there and thanks for your time.

Chris Scott: Yeah, I know we're connected, so I look forward to seeing you. Yeah, thank you very much for having me, Jeremy. This was very fun interview, so I really appreciate your time.