Family Business Leadership: The 20% Owners Miss That Changes Everything | Ryan Kauth

In this episode of The Leadership Match with Martin Rowinski, Martin sits down with Ryan Kauth, a Business Ownership Advocate who has coached over 1,000 founders and family business owners, for a quick leadership conversation about communication, culture, trust, and what business owners often miss.

Ryan shares why the most important leadership insight is often the 20% founders do not know, especially inside family businesses. He explains why communication and gratitude matter, why the next generation may not run the business the same way, and why that can be a good thing.

The conversation also dives into:

- Why leaders need cultural enhancement, not just cultural fit
- How curiosity and humility create leadership momentum
- Why asking “dumb questions” can build trust faster
- How costly mistakes can become leadership lessons
- Why intentional networking matters for every business owner
- Ryan’s book recommendation: Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

If you are a founder, CEO, family business owner, executive, entrepreneur, advisor, or leader looking to build stronger relationships, better teams, and a healthier company culture, this episode is for you.

The Leadership Match with Martin Rowinski is built around quick conversations that connect leaders with better ideas, better people, and better action.

Subscribe for more leadership conversations, founder insights, executive lessons, and practical action steps.

Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryankauth/

#FamilyBusiness #Leadership #TheLeadershipMatch #MartinRowinski #RyanKauth #BusinessOwnership #BusinessLeadership #ExecutiveLeadership #FounderAdvice #CEOAdvice #Entrepreneurship #FamilyBusinessLeadership #CompanyCulture #CultureFit #LeadershipDevelopment #BusinessCoaching #TrustBuilding #Networking #NeverEatAlone #SmallBusinessLeadership #LeadershipLessons #BusinessGrowth

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Leadership Matter. In the next few minutes, we're going to uncover one idea, one lesson, and one action that can help leaders grow. Real conversations, practical insight, and action you can use. And today I'm joined by Ryan Coth, who is a business ownership advocate and he has coached over a thousand founders and family business owners. Ryan, welcome to this quick show. Thanks, Martin. Appreciate you having me on. Absolutely. Love having you back. So what is one leadership lesson you believe more people need to hear right now?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

So if I could go to my uh small family business uh coaching routes, I suppose. Um if I had to pick one, what I typically start out doing when I get that call from a small family business is I interview everyone. And the interesting thing about the interview process is I'm gonna go back to who called me, typically the founders, and they're gonna know about 80% of what I tell them. But it's that 20% of what they didn't know that actually changes what they do going forward. And so that 80-20 rule comes into play, but the cool stuff that I get to find out is things like even though their kids are not going to run the business the way that they did it, which quite frankly is a good thing, um, their kids absolutely love working with their parents. I have never done interviews where that has not come out. But here's the thing they don't know that. So, as you have a family, as I have a family, as we all have families of some kind, make sure you're talking. And make sure you are uh showing your gratefulness. But the thing that comes before gratefulness is communication. And those those little things where you are saying to your parent as you're working in the family business, I love working here, but not just I love working here, I love working with you. That's a really important thing. And quite frankly, after all the interviews I do and the reporting that I give to, say, the founders, that's like the best thing I get to tell them by far.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

That's awesome. That is great news. I would love to hear that. Um so I'm curious. You obviously work with a lot of uh business owner, family business-owned uh companies, but who helped shape your leadership journey and what did they see in you that maybe you did not see in yourself?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, I think it goes back to um a specific business owner. His name is Leon. Uh he is still around today, and strangely enough, I was talking to my parents the other day, and they said, Hey, uh, you need a car, and uh we saw that Leon has one of his minivans for sale at the end of his driveway. So I went by to see what it was, and I did shoot him a text. But uh this was a guy who was a serial entrepreneur, and the cool thing that he would do for me is when I was younger, high school, college, and I was kind of between jobs or I needed a little bit of money, he would call me up and he he just kind of knew when to do this. And he'd be like, Hey Ryan, I'm working on a project, I could use some help. Now, did he really need some help on the project? I'm not so sure. Did he pay me a decent hourly wage for helping him out? Yeah. But I think the thing I learned the most from him was give a call to somebody who might need some help. And you never know what you might what you might find. And so what that did was that helped me with coaching, and I really love seeing the competence in other people kind of come out, and so that's kind of what drives me um as a coach. So what Leon taught me, and by the way, he even did this to one of my high school friends as well, called him up once, kind of aimless, didn't really know what he wanted to do, and actually found out he had this knack for these certain things, and that kind of um that helped his career to what he's doing uh right now. So if you could reach out to one person, might be a kid of a friend of yours, something along those lines, do that. Because that really shaped uh shaped me. And quite frankly, I learned more from Leon about business than I did throughout my whole undergraduate college.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

So, note to everybody, don't be scared to reach out. You never know. Exactly. That's awesome. When you look at leadership today, where do you see the biggest mismatch between people, roles, and expectations?

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Well, that's a that's a really good question. You know, I think um I think we've heard enough of how you need to hire for a cultural match with your company, somebody who enhances your culture. Um and again, I don't uh that that's the right thing to do, is you need someone to uh be hired in your company who will not just fit the culture but enhance the culture. And sometimes we just talk about cultural fit and that's all we talk about. I want somebody who's gonna enhance the culture, who can take one of those pieces of the culture, maybe it's customer service, right, and that aspect of your culture and show us all how to do it better. Rather than going for cultural fit, I coach my clients to go for what I call a cultural enhancement. So find that competence, we're going back to competence now, find that one competence in that person and understand that they can actually enhance your culture, not just have a cultural fit. Because quite frankly, and as we've discussed before, if you're just kind of reactive, being reactive is that precursor for getting stuck. And to get out of that, you've got to be intentional and proactive to get out.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Yeah, being reactive, you can stay in that reactive cycle forever. Just continuous reactions to yeah, being proactive definitely sets you ahead versus again running in a uh circle or what is that rut thing called? The little wheel? Yeah, the hamster wheel. Yeah, there you go. There you go. What uh what behavior separates leaders who create momentum from leaders who slow teams down?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

You know, I think it's a mix of curiosity and humility. And here's why I say that. So most founders, serial entrepreneurs, again, that I've been around are always curious. They want to find out why something is the way they are the way it is. But if they're not humble, then they're gonna go off and just kind of do it themselves, right? And they're not gonna have any followers. So again, nothing wrong with being a solo entrepreneur, inventor, serial entrepreneur on your own. But if you want to go to the next level, you know, it's that mantra of if you want to go fast, go yourself, right? But if you want to scale a company, you gotta go together. And you have to understand that in the beginning, it's gonna feel slow. But you will know when suddenly everything is launching and feeling a lot faster, even faster than you could do it on your own. So that's what I would say to kind of answer that question is you've got to be not just curious, but you've got to be humble because that humility is going to motivate you to go back to your team, you know, the smart people that you hired, and ask them what they would do in that situation. Even if you know the answer, go and ask them anyway. Because again, maybe it's that 80-20 rule working again. You might hear something that you haven't heard before that has filled in the gap of what your brain has been trying to work on for the last several weeks.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Absolutely. Said that ego aside. What um what is a mistake or hard lesson that made you a better leader?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

You know, I think any time I failed and I could count the cost of that failure, whether that was in losing a friend, whether that was in losing money, uh, there's still a uh you know that I uh that I teach, and one of the lessons that I talk to my classes about is the time I made a $35,000 mistake with a client. And how my solution to that or my remedy to that was I'm gonna I'm gonna refer them enough business to make up for that uh that failure in in dollars. And so I keep track of that in my head, right? I don't talk to them about that, but it's a lesson that that I learned, a mistake that I made. Now, can my referrals make up for that in my own head? Maybe. And would I be referring business to them anyway? Yeah, because they're really good at what they do. But that's kind of how I how I track things. Now, right or wrong, I don't know. But um, but I would say anytime I have failed and it has cost me something, those are lessons that I learn um not to repeat those same things. Um so that's that's the answer to that question.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Awesome. How do you build trust quickly with a team, a board, a client, or a new relationship?

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Yeah, I mean, my formula for that is really to try to understand what their problem is. So let's say it's a prospect or a client, right? If I have to build trust quickly, I ask a lot of questions and I ask a lot of dumb questions. And I'll even preface it by saying, I'm gonna ask you a really dumb question right now. And typically it's because it's kind of a simple question and it's an answer that I might know. But my gut is saying, even though I might know that answer, there's something else there that I need to understand first. And so sometimes asking those dumb questions helps me understand that client, that problem, before I say diagnose it, because my personality is I want to jump in right in and solve the problem now. But I have to realize I've got to spend some time with this person, getting to know them and understanding their issues and their problems. So it's the same thing with team members. I want to know what makes them tick. What are they motivated by, generally speaking? Um, and then also what are the things that they like to avoid? And if there's something they like to avoid, is that something that I can help them do? So an example of that uh would be I had a colleague once, or a direct report, who hated Excel spreadsheets, just couldn't stand them. But there was one step in the process where he had to use it. And I had an office next to him, and sometimes I could hear him swearing under his breath, right? And I knew that it was because he had an Excel spreadsheet up on his up on the street. So I went in there and I just said, Hey, do you mind if like this process here? What if I do that step for you? And I think I made his year. And it took me three minutes, right? And it took what where it would have taken him like an afternoon, because for some reason he kept having to kind of relearn this step. Now, as his manager, I could have went in and just tried to remove that step altogether. And I kind of did because I offered to volunteer to do it. And how many times did I have to do that a year for him? I don't know, maybe once a month. Not a big deal, right? But that helped us kind of grow our relationship and help me understand him a whole lot better.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

That's awesome. Um question: What is one book, person, habit, or idea you would match with every leader listening?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

So, you know, I kind of go back and forth on, you know, like what's the best book to recommend to somebody? But I've almost never gone wrong uh recommending somebody read Never Eat Alone uh by Keith Farazzi, even though they might be the most extroverted person on the face of the earth. And and here's why I say that. Um there's plenty of research out there that says, you know, uh introverts tend to make better coaches. And I'm I'm really introverted. But the reason that I want to meet more people is because one, I'm generally interested in people. I like people. As an introvert, most people kind of go, I don't think you like people at all. I'm like, no, I actually do. I love working with them one-on-one. It's just that big groups of people drain my energy. So meeting with people one-on-one, getting to know them, building trust quickly, right, and just talk just talking about um not necessarily business, but other things going on with them, um, is really good. And if you want to intentionally, right, build your network, which in business you've got to do, without a doubt. Um I tried to do it without that, it doesn't work. But that Never Eat Alone by Keith Farazzi is a really good book to help you understand not just why you want to do that, but also how you want to do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

That's awesome. All right, we'll put that in the notes. All right. Leadership is build one conversation, one connection, and one action at a time. Thanks for listening to the leadership match. I'm your host, Martin Ravinsky. And if this conversation gave you one idea to act on, subscribe, share it with another leader, and I'll see you in the next match. And Ryan, thank you. This was awesome.