Most CEOs want results yesterday. But as Ryan Austin shared with me on The Scaling CEO, impatience is often what destroys promising businesses.
Ryan is the founder and CEO of Cognota, the world’s first LearnOps platform. His mission is to make learning operations as strategic and data-driven as finance or marketing. Before that, he built and sold both a consulting firm and a hardware company. He’s bootstrapped, raised venture capital, and exited. Along the way, he’s collected scars and lessons that every CEO should hear.
Businesses Don’t Die: Entrepreneurs Kill Them
Ryan learned this lesson the hard way.
“I’m a big believer that businesses don’t die. The entrepreneurs kill them. A lot of the time, they die because of foolish mistakes or being impatient as an entrepreneur.”
His first startup made $10,000 in its first week, but because it didn’t hit $1M in its first year, he assumed it was a failure and shut it down. Years later, he realized it had all the markers of success, but he simply lacked patience.
The Overnight Success Myth
Stories of companies hitting $100M in a year mislead founders. Ryan pointed out that most real success takes 5–10 years, sometimes more.
“What looks like overnight success often took a decade to build.”
As CEO, your job is to set realistic expectations for yourself, your investors, and your team. Impatience leads to short-term decisions that sabotage long-term growth.
Alignment Is the CEO’s Biggest Job
Ryan sees a consistent blind spot in CEOs: alignment.
“As you’re growing and you’re in the weeds… everybody starts to have different ideas and things get chaotic. But most companies don’t take the time to focus on that chaos.”
His solution is simple but powerful: after each quarter, spend a full day as a leadership team talking about the “ugly stuff.” Get to the truth. Reset alignment. Then execute the next quarter with clarity.
The Discipline of Saying No
For Ryan, alignment isn’t just about planning. It’s about protecting focus.
“If your CEO stands on stage and says these are the three most important initiatives, and you work on anything else, you’re failing automatically as a business leader.”
This applies across functions: from HR to learning and development. CEOs must build cultures where saying “no” is not only acceptable but expected.
Scaling Yourself as CEO
As Cognota scaled, Ryan learned the art of stepping back. After hiring a CRO, he asked his team whether they still wanted him in the weekly sales meeting. Their answer: “Bye.”
That moment reminded him that scaling requires vulnerability and trust. “If you bring in leaders, you must empower them,” he said. But he also cautions against blind trust: every new leader should prove themselves in the first 90 days.
The Role of AI in LearnOps
Cognota doesn’t build learning content. It builds the operating system for learning. AI plays a critical role by connecting workflows and structured data.
“Without structured operations, you can’t have an end-to-end AI strategy. You’ll have pockets of AI, but never a full solution.”
Ryan’s vision is clear: AI won’t replace learning, but it will make learning operations smarter, faster, and more accountable.
Final Takeaway
Ryan Austin’s career proves one thing: impatience kills companies. CEOs must set realistic timelines, protect alignment, and focus relentlessly on the few priorities that matter. Success is rarely instant. It’s the result of discipline, patience, and learning quarter after quarter.
I’m Glenn Gow. I coach CEOs who want to scale with patience and focus. On my podcast, I reveal the strategies top leaders use to grow faster without killing their own companies.
Listen to the full episode of The Scaling CEO with Ryan Austin to hear how to scale without letting impatience destroy your company.
