Day 2 – Breakout Session 4 – 9:45-10:15 AM
Room: Fixxology
You’re Probably Doing Better Than You Think
Jeremy Hix · RizeCon 2026 · Pocatello
Jeremy Hix got back to Pocatello at 2:00 a.m. the morning of his talk. The night before, he had taken his son — the one who spent two years in Argentina watching Messi’s home country win the World Cup — to see Inter Miami play Real Salt Lake. Messi had five or six shots on goal and didn’t score. The whole crowd, including the Real fans, was rooting for him anyway. Jeremy got almost no sleep and walked into a room full of people who had just heard James Clarke talk about giving away $60 million, and he decided to talk about something different.
Not the gap between where you are and where James Clarke is. The question underneath that — why do some people end up rich and miserable and some end up rich and happy? — and what the pattern actually looks like when you examine it. And then, because he had about five minutes left and 20 slides he didn’t use, the practical framework for why businesses stall and what actually moves them forward.
What he covered
Comparison is the death of joy. Jeremy opened by naming what he suspected half the room was feeling after a keynote from someone who has generated billions in enterprise value: the creeping sense that you haven’t done enough. His antidote: go back through your own photos, year by year, and look at what you actually did. Cool trips. Things built. Moments that mattered. “I actually have done some pretty cool things” is the thought he was reaching for — not as false comfort, but as accurate accounting.
Rich and happy vs. rich and miserable. Jeremy asked the room directly: how many of you know someone who is very wealthy and deeply unhappy? Then: how many of you know someone who is wealthy and genuinely happy? The pattern he and James Clarke both pointed to: the people who end up satisfied are the ones who use their resources to give to other people. Not the ones who accumulate them. The gas station story was Jeremy’s proof of concept — he filled up the tank of a music teacher in a Scooby-Doo van whose card wasn’t working. It cost him $15. It meant nothing to his finances and something to her morning. He almost drove away. He’s glad he didn’t.
Most businesses don’t fail — they stall. Jeremy’s growth framework starts with a simple curve: uninformed optimism at launch, early growth, a plateau, and then either a relever or a decline. Most plateaus look the same from the inside: fires every day, questions about whether the product is still good, wondering whether the problem is the team or the leader. The mistake is waiting until decline to relever. A client of Jeremy’s had been bouncing between $2 million and $1.5 million in revenue for four years — hitting two million, watching things break, recovering, hitting two million again. The ceiling wasn’t market conditions. It was the pattern of waiting too long to address what was stalling the business.
Relever during growth, not during decline. The prescription: don’t wait until the curve is pointing down. The business owners who break through plateaus are the ones who use growth-stage momentum — when there’s still oxygen in the room — to build the systems, teams, and culture that can carry more weight. Coming to a conference like RizeCon, Jeremy pointed out, is an act of lifting your head up. That’s when the relevering happens.
The direct supervisor is the single biggest factor in employee experience. Survey data says it over and over: more than pay, more than perks, more than the company’s mission statement, the direct supervisor has the highest impact on whether an employee is happy and effective at work. Jeremy traced this back to his video game store days, where he had to undo the retail habit of asking customers “Is there anything I can help you find?” — a question engineered to receive “No” and end the conversation. His alternative: talk to people like they’re family. Someone’s standing in front of the Xbox display, wearing a Cowboys hat — you don’t need a script. “Hey, about them Cowboys.” That’s the whole training.
Rolling up your sleeves even when you don’t have to. When leaders lose visibility into the actual work, they make decisions with incomplete information. The person who has worked the line for 25 years and has had a transformative idea for five years that nobody has ever asked about — that’s the cost of executive detachment. Jeremy argued for intentional time in the weeds: going into a store to make drinks, being on the floor, staying close to what’s actually happening. Not because you can’t delegate. Because when you stop seeing it, you stop understanding it — and that’s when the drift that precedes decline starts.
People before profit — or profit before people? A dental practice owner Jeremy knows received a box in the mail one day. His CEO had sent “People Before Profit” T-shirts to every employee. The owner’s response: “If we don’t have any profit, we’re not going to have any people.” Jeremy’s take: both are probably true, but the order matters differently at different stages. The culture you build determines how long and how well you grow — and the employees you invest in, even the 16-year-olds you’ll only have for six to eighteen months, carry what you taught them into every job they work after yours.
What attendees got
Jeremy had about 20 more slides and five minutes of time, and he acknowledged both freely. His offer: come find him afterward for the full version. His parting thought was deliberate: your ability to scale is not all reliant on you. It’s reliant on you helping other people, building other people, leading and guiding people to be better humans for themselves. When you do that, the satisfaction comes with the business — not after it.
One story that landed
Half awake, somewhere near the end of the session, Jeremy showed a photo of two of his four sons — Kevin and Eli. He warned the room there was no crying intended, and then almost cried anyway. The photo was from the night before, taken by his wife. The night he had taken his son to watch Messi play. His son had been in Argentina for two years when that country won the World Cup, had stayed inside his apartment for two days while the streets were on fire with celebration. They watched Messi not score a single goal. The whole arena was on his side anyway. Jeremy held it together, showed the picture, and said: this is what resources allow you to do. Not the charitable kind. The kind where you show up for your kid.
“Your ability to scale a business is not all reliant upon you. It’s reliant upon you helping other people, building other people, leading and guiding people to be better humans for themselves.” — Jeremy Hix
“You’re probably doing better than you think you are.” — Jeremy Hix
About the speaker
Jeremy Hix has spent fifteen years working with businesses as part of the BBSI executive team, helping owners navigate growth, culture, and the people challenges that determine whether companies scale or stall. He previously owned video game store franchises and has worked across industries with entrepreneurs at every stage of the growth curve. He is based in Idaho and considers himself a member of this community first, a business advisor second.