Why Patterns Matter More Than Processes with Rion Westfall (stage 5) - Ep. 344

In this clarifying episode, Rion Westfall, Founder of 537bd, shares how to hunt internal revenue patterns and scale without chaos. If you struggle with unclear messaging and profit erosion, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- How to answer “What do you do?” in seven seconds with power

- Why continual evaluation beats more processes for margin growth

- What deep questions unlock control over your revenue

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 5 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Rion Westfall has spent years working across 15 countries and founding nine companies, gaining a deep understanding of how businesses operate on a global scale. Throughout his travels, he frequently conducted independent audits and operational evaluations, uncovering a recurring truth — while people, processes, and equipment may differ, the underlying patterns of business success remain remarkably similar. Driven by this discovery, Rion developed a specialized program centered on identifying and leveraging these internal patterns — the key to achieving scalability for small and mid-sized businesses.

Want to learn more about Rion Westfall's work at 537bd? Check out his website at https://www.537bd.com/ or connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rion-westfall-own-your-revenue-business/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Episode Transcript

Scott Ritzheimer (00:00):
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

(00:02):
to the Start scale and succeedpodcast. It's the only podcast
that grows with you through allseven stages of your journey. As
a founder, I'm your host, ScottRitzheimer, and there's
something that I see all thetime. There's founders who've
had an enormous amount ofsuccess. They've successfully
navigated their first majorscale. They've got solid
systems, they've got provenproducts, they have great teams,
but somehow that's not allenough. The playbook that got

(00:26):
them to this point isn't workinganymore, and it's just a
staggering mystery when you'reright in the moment, but they're
trying to scale further, and itfeels like they're building on
sand rather than bedrock. Ifthat's you, you're in for a
great episode today, becausetoday's guest is Rion Westfall.
He spent years working across 15countries and founding nine
companies of his own and withothers, gaining a deep

(00:49):
understanding of how businessesoperate on a global scale.
Throughout his travels, hefrequently conducted independent
audits and operationalevaluations, uncovering a
recurring truth while people,processes and equipment differ,
the underlying patterns ofbusiness success remain
remarkably similar. Driven bythis discovery, Ryan developed a
specialized program centered onidentifying and leveraging these

(01:12):
internal patterns, the key toachieving scalability for small
and mid sized businesses. Well,Ryan, welcome to the show. Glad
to have you here.

Rion Westfall (01:19):
Scott, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Scott Ritzheimer (01:21):
So as I we dive in here, one of the things
that I want to pull we've hadguests from other countries, but
having had the opportunity totravel a little bit myself,
there's there's a different wayof thinking about the world.
When you do how is it that allof those contexts have kind of
come together to to form yourkind of thought and theory on

(01:42):
how businesses operate?

Rion Westfall (01:45):
Traveling around, speaking different languages.
I'm fluent in both Spanish andEnglish, so that that fluency
opened different cultures to meand culturally, work ethics,
everything that there's alwaysdifferences in how they approach

(02:05):
work. Some people, a a six hourwork day is all they want to put
in. Some people, a 12 hour workday is just standard and normal.
But regardless of who you areand what country you represent,
your background, how you wereraised. There's, there's a lot
of it that just comes back to,in essence, how the company

(02:25):
helps you organize yourselfmentally to be able to produce
whatever, whatever product orwhatever injured you're working
for.

Scott Ritzheimer (02:36):
It's, it's interesting how many assumptions
are baked into that. And one ofthe things that happens, and I
found one of the best ways of,kind of breaking free of those
assumptions, is to see thebigger patterns that are at
play. And as I was getting readyfor this episode, there was just
so much in what you do and whatyou teach that jumped out on
that. So when you talk about,let's start kind of internal

(03:00):
patterns. What are some of thesekey internal patterns that
you're seeing for scalability?

Rion Westfall (03:06):
One of the very first ones that I see and to
your point, when a an SMB,small, medium sized business,
when you have your yourownership team, you've got your
leadership team, most often,everywhere that they are finding
themselves. They're traveling toevents, they're visiting with
customers, they're out on thestreets. Whether it might be in

(03:29):
LinkedIn, it could be virtual.Everyone gets kind of one
question. And when you meet withsomebody new for the first time,
you haven't known them, you'veseen this. Hey, what do you do?
Right? So when somebody meetsyou for the first time, they're
going to ask you, Hey, what doyou do? And that's a window of
opportunity that is eitherfilled with clarity or it is

(03:55):
often filled with jumbledanswers. And one of the first
patterns that I see insidebusinesses is that initial
question, what do you do isunclear amongst the leadership
team. Sometimes it's evenunclear amongst the owner
themselves. To go on a fiveminute rant as to what you do. I

(04:18):
like to say that that question,what do you do? Is often a plea
for, what problem can you helpme solve? Right, right? So if
I'm interested potentially inwhat you do, I'm really,
actually trying to seek behindthe scenes. I'm trying to say,
hey, what problem can you helpme solve? And if that clarity is

(04:39):
not part of, especially theleadership team, then that right
there, to me, is an immediatekind of chaos. It's a red flag
to the lost potentials acrossmultiple fronts.

Scott Ritzheimer (04:55):
Yeah, there's this saying we have from the
church world, that if it's a fogon the pulpit, it's. Missed in
the pews and and so. So walk methrough this, because it's not
like we're talking about peoplewho who've, like, not started
their business yet or and and sohow is it that we create all
this success and still not beable to answer that question

(05:16):
succinctly?

Rion Westfall (05:18):
Most of the time, that's one of the first
questions I ask when I startwith a client, is I will ask
that specific question, andclarity is power, to your point,
the fog and the mist. I mean,clarity is power when you
eliminate that fog, when youeliminate that mist, you're
empowered to be able to see somuch more than you otherwise

(05:39):
see. If you can't answer thatquestion, and virtually, I kid
you not. I, I was just on aphone call about about three
weeks ago. This particularfounder, he's got about a $25
million company. It's beenstruggling here the last year,
specifically, they ran into someissues, and I asked him this

(05:59):
question. Scott, three hourslater, within two, two and
actually three differentsessions, we were still working
on a good answer to thatquestion, something that he can
give inside. I call it sevenseconds. You know, other people
call it elevator pitch, whateverit is you want to call it, but

(06:20):
you have to be prepared toanswer that question within
about seven seconds, and most ofthe time when you can then the
recipient, the person that askedthat question, they're going to,
oh well, tell me more. Or orthey're going to be able to oh,

(06:41):
well, that that's interesting,and then they just move on. You
will know very quickly in yourrelationship with that
individual. Hey, is thissomething that's going to move
forward, or is this somethingthat has has potential or it
doesn't? And so I really harpspecifically on being able to be
clear with answering thatquestion. Because what it does

(07:03):
is, is it just removes so muchfog, so much missed from the
company owner, right? I mean, ifthere's fog, like you said, if
there's fog from the pulpit,from the company owner, from the
leadership team, then there'sgoing to be missed in the pews.
Your your people, your employeeshave no choice but to kind of

(07:25):
mold their way through whatevermist it is in the work that
they're doing.

Scott Ritzheimer (07:29):
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's so true. And I want
to zoom out a little bit,because one of the, one of the
things that we learn in theearlier stages is how to solve
problems. But the problem withsolving problems is that your
problems scale way faster thanyour profits, and so as the as

(07:50):
the organization starts to getbigger, you can get better and
better at problem solving, butyou still lose the game faster
and faster because thoseproblems just scale so quickly.
How do we start to turn thataround? Because the obvious
answer, I can't even say theobvious answer, but the popular
answer, the one that all thecool kids say, is like, you need
systems and processes. You needmore systems and more processes.

(08:12):
And for many organizations,that's exactly right, but it's
not enough. What is it that wecan do beyond processes to
really overcome this, thischallenge with the pace of
problems?

Rion Westfall (08:25):
The pace of problems. Well, as you
mentioned, problems are everevolving. They're always coming
at us from from different sides,different pews. It might be
internal, it might be externalinfluence, regardless of its
location, the skill set andability and their to your point,

(08:48):
the processes that we put insidecompanies, right? Hey, here's my
sop one, here's my sop two,here's my sop three. We want the
assembly line of this to beexecuted in such and such a way.
What we're talking about here isthe evaluation style, mindset,

(09:10):
being able to look, not onlyfrom a leadership team, but also
from your your actual team, thepeople who do the work on the
ground, most often, they willhave solutions that they either
don't feel empowered internallyto implement, they don't have
the chance, they don't have thefreedom, they're not being

(09:31):
guided by leadership, byownership, to actually help
evolve the company. And youknow, as well as I do, we've got
top line numbers and we've gotbottom line numbers when we
often think scaling. Myexperience is owners think, hey,
more money in means more moneyat the bottom right. I grow my

(09:52):
top line. I'm going to grow mybottom line. But to your point,
everything in between thosepieces, if we've. Got bad
habits. If we've got marginbeing left on the table because
we're doing this a little bitwrong, or we could be doing this
a little bit better, we'reforgetting to do certain things.
If the internal aspect is notbeing continually addressed

(10:16):
throughout that scaling growth,then you know, the bottom line
is just going to be from apercentage standpoint, sometimes
less. And you're you're reallyjust creating more headaches for
yourself. Last week, I was in aconversation with one of my
clients. He's doing about 6, $7million and his comment to me,

(10:39):
as I was digging in a little bitfurther, he says, I was actually
making more money when I wasjust a $2 million business. I
was making more money when I wasa $2 million business, and it's
nowhere near the amount ofstress. And he honestly said, he
says, I think I might go back tothat. Yeah. And he's like, I

(10:59):
don't see the point in growingto become a 10 million or a $15
million company or a $20 millioncompany, if the transition of
what he's experienced from twoto six or seven, if that's what
I want, he says, I don't wantany of that. I That's not why I
started a business so. So toyour point, absolutely, we have
to be in a position tocontinually evaluate, and there

(11:23):
is a process, there's a pattern,a recipe to kind of follow to be
able to help pull those thingsout in time.

Scott Ritzheimer (11:31):
Yeah, so Ryan, what's the difference between
that and something that so manyof us have experienced? I know I
did so when we started bumpinginto some of these challenges
that you're talking about notbumping into, just getting
crushed by some of thesechallenges. Yeah, we went out

(11:52):
and it's like, okay, we can'tfigure this out. Let's hire
somebody who can. And so wehired three consultants in three
different areas of expertise,and systematically, all of them
failed us. In fact, I made someof the worst decisions following
their well meaning but Ill timedadvice than I did any other
place. We lost so much moneyfollowing that advice. Why does

(12:13):
that break down so often? What?What's, what's the difference
between that and what you'retalking about here, from a
pattern perspective?

Rion Westfall (12:22):
Because consultants are notorious for,
most oftentimes, giving youadvice, right? That's probably
why you hired him. You couldn'tsee something, and you said,
hey, if I hire a consultant, Iwant him to help me see
something that I'm not seeing,right? I mean, would that be
correct? Is that is that kind ofwhy you typically hire? So the

(12:45):
question, then your questionabout, why does that break down?
I find mostly I can't speak forother consultants, but I find
mostly when I do work with myclients and they tell me
comments like, Hey, I've learnedmore from you in two sessions
than I did in, you know, a yearand $20,000 working with X

(13:08):
consultant. One guy even told meafter about our fourth session,
he says, I've learned more herethan I have in three years at
Vistage. And as you go through Ithink, I think part of it i i
love sports, and so I grew upplaying sports. I was with the
Dodgers at one point on their ontheir farm League, and I had

(13:32):
one, one coach. I had no ideawho he was, and he just comes up
to me and he looks at me and hesays, radial deviation. And I
was like, What? What does thatmean? And he's like, here, let
me, let me help you and explain.And in baseball, when you're
holding the bat and you takeyour your front wrist and you
radially deviate your wrist, itcreates a different angle in the

(13:54):
bat, and as you bring it throughon the swing, it creates much a
higher bat speed, which thencreates, you know, basically a
bigger pop when you're actuallyhitting the ball. I had no clue.
I mean, Scott, I had played onthese select teams. I'd been up
in, you know, college. We'd beendoing all these things. I had no
clue what it was, but this oneindividual just pointed it out

(14:18):
to me and shared with me what itwas, taught me what it was, and
then I went to implement sowhen, when you're saying these
consultants really, my bestanswer would be that you're
right. I've seen that play out.My role, I feel, as a
consultant, as a coach, is tohelp you see what you haven't

(14:42):
seen yet. Is, is to ask thequestions, not dictate what
you're doing, but just simplyhelp, help you see. And so I
built my entire pattern finding.I mean, that's what that's what
I say. I do. I tactically huntrevenue patterns. I'm just on.
Hunt. We're continually hunting.So if we take that analogy kind

(15:03):
of like a guide, right? Guidesguide you to whatever it is that
you're wanting to hunt, but youstill have to pull the trigger.
So I think to your point, manytimes those consultants are are
trying to pull the trigger, andthat's where that breakdown
happens. They're pulling thetrigger when it's not being
founded by the by the by theowner themselves.

Scott Ritzheimer (15:26):
Yeah. And to be fair, and not paint this all
as a consultant problem, wechose folks that would do that
right. We were we, and I seethis all the time in the
founders that I work with. Butthere's this pool of, hey, if
they've done what I want to do,if they're a good batter, they
can make me a better batter,right? But what you really need,

(15:47):
you don't need another batter totell you how to bat. You need
another batting coach who canidentify the problems in your
swing, the opportunities thatare available to you, and they
do that with just a verydifferent lens, like what you're
talking about, of coming in andhunting for the patterns. I love
that language. That's excellent.So Ryan, there's this question
that I ask all my guests. I'mvery interested to see what you

(16:08):
have to say, especially with thebackdrop of the conversation so
far. But what would you say isthe biggest secret that you wish
wasn't a secret at all. What'sthat one thing you wish
everybody watching or listeningtoday knew?

Rion Westfall (16:21):
All patterns follow a process, right?
There's, there's a recipe. Thisis either intentionally built or
it's an unintentional chaos tothe company and in, in order to

(16:45):
unlock those pieces. Like yousaid, What is the biggest
secret? I mean, it's really nota secret. I think it's the
biggest challenge. It's it'shard to actually get deep, to do
that deep dive, I think theconsultant's biggest influence

(17:07):
on an owner lies in thequestions that are being asked,
right? And the more powerful thequestion, the more powerful the
potential answer and the findingof whatever it is that they're
in search of. In this case,we're looking for two things.
Actually, most of the time,we're looking for a higher

(17:29):
profit margin, and we're lookingfor ownership. That's why I call
it own. Your Own your revenue.If we're looking for control of
the revenue within our company,how are we growing? How are we
succeeding? To your point, Iabsolutely love your your your
breakdown of the entrepreneurs.You know your seven stages as
you're you know, we're reallytalking about what, four and

(17:51):
five right now. You know thekind of that stage where we've
got our business, we've got our10 million, our 20 million, our
30 million, whatever it is. Andwe're trying to say, hey, how do
I step away from this? How do Ibecome, if I got the terminology
right? I think it's visionary.Founder, you're stage seven,
right? How do I reach that?Those are deep dive questions.

(18:15):
So my, my, my counsel to anyonelistening to this is, yes,
consultants will have history.They'll have performances when
they've done well, but really belooking for who's going to
challenge me, who's going todeep dive into questions and ask
me things that I just I justhaven't really thought of, or I

(18:37):
haven't had the wherewithal toactually ask those specific
questions, and when you can findsomeone that's going to actually
sit down and challenge you,that's when you found that's
when you found gold. That's whenyou found something that's going
to help you become thatvisionary leader. And so, so
that would, that would be my, Iguess, secret.

Scott Ritzheimer (19:00):
Excellent, Rion, there's some folks
listening, and it's just theright word at just the right
time. They're looking for thekind of help that you offer.
Where can folks find more outabout the work that you do and
reach out and connect with youdirectly?

Rion Westfall (19:11):
The best place to connect is LinkedIn. I do a lot
of work there on LinkedIn.Obviously there's a web page,
537bd.com, or businessdevelopment, so I'm on there as
well. And links there, you canschedule times, and I'm sure
with this, you'll also have mycontact information on here too.

Scott Ritzheimer (19:27):
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Ryan, thanks
for being on the show. Really aprivilege and honor. Having you
here with us today, for those ofyou watching and listening, you
know your time and attentionmean the world to us. I hope you
got as much out of thisconversation as I know I did,
and I cannot wait to see younext time take care.