In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Alec Broadfoot, founder and CEO of VisionSpark and author of Hiring Your Right Number Two Leader. Together, they explore why leadership misalignment is one of the biggest barriers to scaling entrepreneurial companies and how founders can overcome it by building the right leadership team.
Alec shares practical insights on identifying the ideal second-in-command, aligning visionary thinking with operational execution, and avoiding the common hiring mistakes that create organizational bottlenecks. You’ll hear actionable strategies for improving leadership alignment, empowering executives to focus on their strengths, and building a company that can grow without relying on the founder for every decision.
01:13 Leadership Misalignment: The Hidden Growth Killer
03:00 Why Every Visionary Needs the Right Number Two
04:22 Setting Expectations and Aligning Around Vision
06:06 Why Founders Struggle to Get Teams to Execute
07:42 Hiring for Alignment Instead of Experience
09:58 Defining the Ideal Number Two Leader
14:33 Practical Advice for Founders Ready to Scale
15:48 Rapid-Fire Leadership Questions
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecbroadfoot/
https://visionsparksearch.com/
Linda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/
Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency
Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/
Linda:
Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast. This is the podcast where we will explore ideas, strategies, and leadership decisions shaping the future of business growth. I’m your host, Linda Fanaras today, and we’ll be diving into one of the biggest hidden growth killers inside entrepreneurialship companies, which is leadership misalignment. Our guest today is Alec Broadfoot. He’s the founder and CEO of VisionSpark. They’re a premium executive search firm based in the Columbus, Ohio. And for more than a decade, Alex and his team have helped fast growing entrepreneurial companies make some real critical people decisions by putting the right leaders in the right spots. And his retention rate is over 95%, which is very, very impressive. So just to give you a little bit of background on VisionSpark, they’ve been recognized as one of the Inc. 5000 lists for three consecutive years. So congratulations Alec on that. That’s pretty exciting. And he’s a sought after speaker, a member of Strategic Coach, author of Hiring Your Right Number Two Leader, and someone who spends a great deal of time helping founders solve one of the hardest problems in business leadership. So welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast.
Alec:
It’s great to be here, Linda.
Linda:
Yeah, it’s great to have you. I think this conversation will hit home for a lot of entrepreneurs because I think most founders think that the company bottleneck is strategy, marketing, sales, but in often reality, it’s when leadership just doesn’t align. So if you have a founder that’s running at one speed and then you got a team that’s operating at another, let’s kind of start there. Where does this misalignment silent killer actually start when it comes to scaling a company?
Alec:
It’s really having the wrong leaders in place. So oftentimes leaders, and I’ve done this myself, but hire friends and family, or maybe it’s that executive assistant that has been super loyal to you and you move them up through the ranks, but you get to a point where they have reached their capacity, and so you’re trying to grow another phase. And so maybe you’ve gone from point A to point B and you’re trying to get to point C, but you can’t with the current leadership. So there’s something called the leadership Lid. It’s a concept by John Maxwell, and that is that if you’re a 6 out of 10 leader, it’s impossible for your department to be a 7, 8, 9 out of 10. And oftentimes the 6 out of 10 leaders don’t hire individuals underneath them that are 7, 8s, 9s. And so the leadership is really the bottleneck. So number one, we as founders got to get out of the way. We got to stay with our superpowers and unique ability, and then we have to hire the right leaders that can help us grow and scale.
Linda:
Yeah, no, that’s a great point because I think entrepreneurs, they’re visionaries, right? They’re builders. They can see in the future, they move fast, they see these opportunities that are coming and going quickly. So they’re kind of always ahead of the game. But I think that most organizations are not really designed at that sort of founder’s brain speed. So what do you do when the founder keeps accelerating while leadership is struggling, just to figure out, okay, what does this person really want to do? What is this vision? How do I get this all put together? There’s a lot of friction and confusion, and even I’ve experienced it myself with my own team. It’s like it also creates bottlenecks. So how do you address all that when you have a leader who has the thoughts in their mind and maybe is expecting everybody else to have those same thoughts too?
Alec:
Yeah, that’s great. That’s very common. And leaders can get frustrated because why can’t they understand or why can’t they see things the way that I do? So the healthy companies, the healthy leaders, they’ll often hire a number two or a second in command or an integrator that essentially runs their business. And that’s why I wrote a book on that. Those organisations do really well, that number two, that integrator, they act as a barrier, a translator, someone that can help prioritise the vision they are making sure the business runs well. Visionary’s going to have several ideas today, really good. And that number two’s job is to determine what idea is relevant, what’s best, how are we going to grow and scale? And we’ve seen that from books like 10 X is easier than two X or the science of scaling is that when there is a simplified vision, that’s when companies can scale.
Linda:
That’s a great point. So what happens when you bring in that number two and you think maybe they’ll be able to take your vision and move with it, but maybe they don’t have the same level of enthusiasm or priority that you may have around these initiatives that you’re thinking of or that you want to get executed, especially from a founder’s perspective?
Alec:
Yeah, it’s important to get on the same page. So when you hire that number too, that integrator, you really want to set expectations of what success looks like. You got to communicate your vision. What’s your three-year vision, one year vision? What are your 90 day goals at the end of 90 days? What has to happen for you to be really happy with that leader’s success? And it’s to have frequent communication around that vision. When there’s no communication, when there’s no expectation set, when there’s no vision sharing, that’s when companies really get into trouble.
Linda:
It seems like sometimes that second person almost needs to be a little bit of a mind reader and definitely an executor. I’m not an expert in your field, of course, but it seems like those would be some of the key priorities that would be important.
Alec:
Yeah, very much so. Yeah.
Linda:
Do you want to tell us a little bit about your book? Just maybe you can touch on that a bit.
Alec:
Yeah, so it’s meant for very busy visionaries, entrepreneurs that don’t have a lot of time, maybe they have a little ADHD, I have a little bit of that myself. So it’s meant to be consumed very quickly and get the general ideas. So it’s all around hiring that right number two leader, how they can gain more time, have more freedom, and create a bigger impact. So one is why is it important to hire the right number two leader? And the second part of the book is what attributes, what are the indispensable traits that you want in that number two leader? It’s not that they have to have a great resume.
Linda:
Yeah, I think from a founder’s perspective, I would see a lot of frustration. Why can’t my team just execute my ideas? I mean, it’s so simple to them. I think because they’ve spent, and I always find this, especially even with bringing on new staff, it’s that A CEO may have these ideas that they’ve been thinking about for months or weeks, and they’re trying to figure out, well, why doesn’t anybody else embrace these same ideas? Because they actually haven’t been, and I almost want to say educated in that vision in a really good way. I would think that you would see that as well on your side.
Alec:
Yeah, we see that a lot and we see a lot of visionaries who are frustrated because their leaders don’t have the level of mental acuity that they have. And so that mental acuity is a really important factor. It’s not an IQ measurement, it’s a learning speed. And what we’ve seen is that leaders who have higher mental acuities, they can innovate. They can come up with new ideas and embrace new ideas from the visionary much quicker. Those that have a lower mental acuity, maybe they did great in school, maybe they’ve been a great leader, but they rely so much on their past and they really struggle to innovate, come up with new ideas. And so that’s where leaders fail. So we’ve had met with clients that can’t tell you how many times where the leader feels like they’re the smartest person in the room. When we actually evaluate their leadership team, we can say, you’re actually right. You are the “smartest guy in the room.”
Linda:
Right. So how do you work with, I mean, let’s say you bring in a number two or you bring in a team, or whatever the case may be. How do you make sure that they have the qualifications and sort of that acumen necessary to work with a leader? Because every leader has a unique personality, a unique style about them, and it’s not only getting to execute on the leader’s vision, but it’s also being able to connect with a leader and making sure that you’re sort of moving in the same place. So could you talk a little bit about that?
Alec:
Yeah. It’s all part of step one of our Hire with Confidence blueprint, and that is really understanding who the leader is, what they value, what their vision is, what their core values are, what the culture is, that is critical. And so a lot of recruiters will just throw resumes over the fence.
There’s not any sort of matchmaking or alignment. So it’s so important to get that first step correct, that we’re on the same page. So we call it a blueprint because we actually develop something called a position profile that maps out exactly who we’re looking for in that role. So we’ll start with the target, and by the end we’ll have a bullseye of who we’re looking for. That visionary sees that they look at the position profile and they say, you got it right, you’re spot on. That’s exactly who I’m looking for. And so we create this really compelling ad that attracts dozens if not hundreds of candidates. And also we have a database of candidates that are in the pool, and then we vet them. We go through and we vet them. So we do some resume interrogation. We’ll vet their mental acuity, their other mental aptitudes. We’ll evaluate them in 12 areas of what makes a great leader. So every one of them goes through a leadership study interview. So we may start with 200 candidates by the time we’re done, and we’ll have two or three candidates that our client chooses from. And so it’s all part of the Hiring with Confidence blueprint.
Linda:
That’s great. I mean, I would think that most CEOs will tend to hire based on, oh, I might need somebody who’s technical, or I need somebody who has great organizational skills. But on the other side of the stick, it seems like they need to find somebody that really fits the gaps within the company. So let’s talk about the number two leader. What is exactly a right number two? How would you go about figuring out what that is?
Alec:
Yeah, so a number two or an integrator, they essentially run the company. They oversee all divisions, so operations, HR, finance, marketing, sales. So they oversee all of those other leaders, and then that frees the visionary, the founder, the entrepreneur, to focus on what they do really well. So their superpower. So maybe it’s inventing, creating, maybe it’s discovering new verticals, it’s problem solving, relationship building. And so that visionary gets back to what they do really well, and so they’re able to make a much bigger impact. We have found that when that happens, there are several byproducts. One is the visionary has a lot more energy, they also have a lot more joy, and they have a lot more freedom of time. They’re sleeping better, more time with their family. And then that number two that we place, they learn that it’s their dream job. They’ve been waiting their whole life to do this work, and so their family is blessed. So it’s really rewarding for us to do what we do when we get to make a difference in the lives of others.
Linda:
That’s great. Let the visionary be the visionary and the other person be the operational, and it seems to be like a good marriage. When you’re hiring that number two, are you also trying to build out those leadership teams that also help compliment the number one and number two, or are you mostly focused on number one and number two?
Alec:
About half of all of our searches are that number two role, but we do many other leadership level and director level positions. So right now my team is helping a few clients hire that head of sales and marketing. We’ve got some operations leaders, some controllers, CFOs, any of the positions that are going to allow our clients to have that business that runs without them.
Linda:
Do you find that a lot of founders when you go in, do they already have somebody in that number two?
Alec:
Sometimes they do. So I would say about a third of the time they have someone already in place and that person is not doing a great job. They’re struggling, they’re pulling out. Yeah.
Linda:
And do you think a lot of it is based on the structure of the company or do you think it’s based on the founder and the way that they sort of manage and execute on their behalf?
Alec:
I think it’s both. And so we worked a lot with companies that run on EOS or another operating system. Oftentimes they have the right structure, but they know they have to hire that right number two, so they can really roll out that operating system. Other times, it’s that founder that gets in the way. And so we have seen visionaries, they can be micromanagers or they can be the exact opposite. They can be abdicators, and sometimes we’ll see them, I call them helicopter visionaries. They’re kind of hands off and then all of a sudden they fly in like a helicopter, a helicopter parent, and they kind of manage a situation. So we help coach those visionaries. Oftentimes, they’ve never hired a position before. So the intentional clear visionary is someone that is going to get tons of return out of their investment in this position.
Linda:
I can absolutely see that as from a CEO’s perspective, flying in trying to fix something and flying out, which actually adds a lot of confusion for sure, I would imagine. If you have a team that’s sort of like sales/marketing alignment or even operational, they don’t know how to prioritize the business, is there ways that you work with the companies to make sure that everybody sort of stands for the same thing? And so let’s say you have a CEO, they have their own idea that might not totally align with that number two person. So there’s multiple messages going on in the company, which can sometimes stagnate growth. I’m wondering if you see that very often and maybe how you would address something like that.
Alec:
Yeah, we see that sometimes, those companies that do have an operating system. That is less rare because they all share the same business plan. Maybe a 10-year big, hairy, audacious goal, and then it may be a three-year vision, a one-year, then 90 days. And so most of the time, most of those individuals, they tend to have a lot more clarity around that, and they’re oftentimes aligned. Those companies that don’t have an operating system, it’s critical that that visionary maps out what their three-year vision is so that number two and other leaders can align.
Linda:
So if you were to give founders, I think, a good solid takeaway on maybe how to best balance vision and execution, what would your recommendation be?
Alec:
Number one, I would start with writing everything down that they do. Just write it all down, whether it’s responding to emails, working with customers, solving customer issues, solving employee issues, everything they do. And it can also include creating, inventing, spending time speaking, write everything down, and then go through and delineate which ones they love doing, which ones do they like doing, which ones do they resent and hate? And then to envision, what would your life be like if you just got to do things that you love and created the biggest impact for your company. And then what’s left over is what you should have your leadership team do. Your number two, your executive assistant. That is number one, is to really do some self-inventory.
Linda:
That makes complete sense. And I think to your point, once that’s done and once some of those responsibilities shift over, then the CEO or innovator gets more energy to do the things that that person wants to do, which is most likely create. So I’d love to jump into what I call some rapid fire questions. If you would be open to that, which means you have to answer them in no more than two or three sentences.
Alec:
Alright.
Linda:
Number one, what is the biggest hiring mistake founders make?
Alec:
Is hiring someone based on resume.
Linda:
I was just going to say hiring for experience instead of alignment. So best leadership trait in scaling a company?
Alec:
Mental acuity.
Linda:
On the self-awareness, what kills momentum fastest?
Alec:
Really hiring the wrong people.
Linda:
And then one word that defines great execution?
Alec:
Yeah, hitting your three-year vision. Yeah. Can’t say that in one word. Yeah.
Linda:
Right? Alright, here’s your trick question. So, tennis or pickleball?
Alec:
Tennis, all the way.
Linda:
You look like a tennis player. Yeah.
Alec:
Yeah.
Linda:
Awesome. Thanks for all your insight today. I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your leadership alignment strategies. I think everything you said really makes a lot of sense. And honestly, from a CEO perspective, it’s easy for them to just keep hiring on the backend instead of really thinking, alright, need somebody on, I need a second person that can really take my concepts and ideas and move with them. So I’d love for you to share how people can get in touch with you.
Alec:
Yeah, so if they’re interested in the book, it’s called Hiring Your Right Number Two Leader. It’s on Amazon. Also, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. My company page is https://visionsparksearch.com/.
Linda:
Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. And if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe, share it with your team, and leave us a review. And remember, the companies that scale fastest aren’t driven by just great vision. They’re supported by the right leadership and structure to execute it. Thanks for listening to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast.
