The "Mini-Me" Trap: Sel Watts on Culture Architecture and Scaling Past the Founder Bottleneck

Building a Firm That Outlasts Your Instincts

Scaling a professional service firm requires moving past the comfort of hiring people who think and act exactly like the founder. We explore why true operational freedom comes from inviting friction into the team through deliberate behavioral diversity. The trap often starts with a recruitment error where founders hire mini-me’s to handle the overflow. While this feels frictionless initially, it results in a team that lacks the analytical rigor or attention to detail required for true scale. Sel Watts explains that a firm owner must become a culture architect, designing a structure where different behavioral profiles support the business plan. Relying on personality and chemistry is a recipe for founder dependency. By implementing tools like DISC, a leader gains visibility into how to communicate and delegate based on data rather than mood. This shift moves the firm away from being a personality-driven boutique to a scalable, exit-ready enterprise.

In this video we discuss

• The danger of hiring for chemistry which often leads to a team of people with identical blind spots.

• Why culture architecture is a strategic business requirement rather than a fluffy HR initiative.

• Using behavioral data to identify exactly which profile is missing to stop the founder bottleneck.

• How to manage different styles by adjusting the language and length of one-on-one meetings for maximum clarity.

• Deciphering between a bad cultural fit and healthy behavioral friction that actually improves the business.

• The hard truth that a founder must lead by the team's language rather than expecting the team to mirror their own.

Transcript for Search and Skimming

Randell Mauricio: I've really been looking forward to this conversation because one of the things that I empower our clients with is that you can have strategy and vision, but if you do not have the people who are aligned to that vision, then you fall flat. Our topic at hand is DISC and everything people. So before we dig in, Sel, please give us a quick origin story: who you are, your business, and the problem you solve.

Sel Watts: Thank you so much, Randell. I am Australian and I started my first company in Australia eighteen, actually nineteen years ago. That is a full-service HR consulting firm for small to medium businesses. Six years ago, I decided that I wanted to chase a dream. I’d exceeded my expectations of what I thought I could do in Australia, and I wanted to see if I could start all over again in the hardest city in the world.

So, I came to New York. I commuted for two years because I have three sons who were still in Australia. I realized very quickly that no one here cares about what I have done in Australia. It was like starting over. I finally got the boys over at the beginning of 2020, and then obviously 2020 happened. I basically restarted the company a few times since I’ve been here.

One of the things I noticed when I came here was that when I talked about HR from the perspective of performance and engagement, people would look at me with a weird face and say, no, HR is compliance, benefits, and payroll. After a few false starts, I decided to focus on one part of the business: culture architecture.

We work specifically with professional service firm owners who are wanting to exit in the next three to five years. Our goal is to say, if the company wants to get there, what structure and what type of people do we need? How are we going to ensure they are performing? What is the clarity around the roles? None of this is fluffy. It is strategic and led by the business plan. I’ve always been a promoter of less people because people are the hardest part of being in business. Now that we have AI, the way we are structuring businesses and teams is just a whole new world.

Randell Mauricio: Preach, Sel. I love it and I totally agree. In the years that I’ve known you, I’ve known you to be fearless and daring. Here is my question: You mentioned it is not fluffy. A couple of weeks ago, you took me and my partner, Brian Albers, through a DISC analysis. I found that incredibly accurate to a point where it was almost scary. We got a deeper sense of what motivates us and what stresses us. What is DISC, what is its power, and how can it help you achieve everything you mentioned?

Sel Watts: We use extended DISC as a behavioral profiling tool. There are many tools on the market like Myers-Briggs or Culture Index, but I chose extended DISC because it is easy to remember. It needs to become part of your language. We use it for many things: individual behaviors, team performance, and even why someone might suddenly start not performing well.

If you don’t understand how to read it and utilize it, it is a lost opportunity. It becomes a leadership power tool—like a secret hack. Most people think they know DISC, but they don’t actually know it. If we want to achieve an outcome through people, we need to be able to talk to them in their language. We need to understand them more than ourselves. That provides the answers to make that leadership relationship a lot easier.

Randell Mauricio: You said there is a risk of missing an opportunity. Is there an example that embodies the risk of being laissez-faire with how you interpret and utilize this?

Sel Watts: I’ll give you an example in relation to recruitment. When I was first growing my business, we had a small team of five people. Our team consisted only of I and D profiles. I realized we were weak in the C-style, which is attention to detail and analytical. Because we were a consulting business, the people attracted to it were people-people. We were falling through the cracks because we didn't have that natural way of thinking in our team.

I went out to recruit and found an incredible person. I told her during the recruitment process that her style was completely opposite to everyone else in the business, and that we wanted that. If we hadn't had that conversation, she would have come in and felt like she didn't belong. I told her, we are bringing you in because you are different, and we are probably going to annoy you. I didn't want her to change or try to be something she wasn't. Because she knew the expectations and the team culture, she stayed with us for a long time. Having that different perspective really elevated the business. Without DISC, I probably wouldn't have recruited her because we tend to hire people who are like us.

Randell Mauricio: That’s a powerful example. I’d like to direct the spotlight to the founder. It’s so easy to succumb to the pitfall of hiring mini-mes. Many founders are high D’s and I’s, but they eventually realize they need to hire someone more detail-oriented to pull themselves out of the bottleneck. What advice do you give a founder who is trying to figure out if they have bad chemistry or just healthy friction?

Sel Watts: Firstly, you should look for the people who are opposite to you. All of my EAs have always been opposite profiles. My assistant and I are opposites. We were able to have a conversation right at the beginning about our areas of weakness. Because of her, we don’t let anything slip through the cracks.

You don't need a team that is perfectly balanced between all styles because certain industries attract certain styles. Accounting firms will have many C styles; non-profits will have many S styles. I have never come across a situation where someone is trying to ruin someone else's life; it's usually because they see the world through different lenses. If we don’t understand that, it creates conflict. If we do understand it, we can leverage it.

If you are managing people, you need to understand their language. If I had a one-to-one with every direct report, I used the same agenda but a different process. I allocated an hour for my I’s and S’s because they needed to talk and interact. I allocated half an hour for my D’s and C’s because they didn't need that and would actually get frustrated by it. The meeting was styled to the person to get the best out of them.

Randell Mauricio: In my own history, I’ve seen the dynamic change every time the company doubled in size. I was challenged with deciphering between personality issues versus a cultural issue. At what point should I stop using personality styles as the excuse?

Sel Watts: It should never be an excuse. These are behavioral profiles, not personality profiles. Regardless of your profile, you can still be a terrible person.

I once watched a team member give a DISC interpretation. They said D styles are the ones who make decisions. I corrected them: every style makes decisions, they just do it in different ways. A D style makes decisions quickly because they are driven by outcomes. A C style needs data and time because they are driven by accuracy. I styles are driven by how it feels for people. S styles are driven by quality.

There are times when any one of those decision styles is better suited to a situation. If you are thinking, "oh, it’s just their profile," then you are probably making excuses. My whole business is about creating high-performing teams. If you can’t give them clarity and lead them, and it’s still not working, it’s probably just not right. The quicker we make the decision, the better.

Randell Mauricio: Amen to everything you said, Sel. Thank you for cramming 20 plus years of wisdom into this conversation. You are a queen among women.

Sel Watts: I could talk to you about it for weeks. It is such an invaluable tool and I would say really look into it more.