Scale To Win with Dominic Monkhouse

“If your business isn't growing without sales, it may not be a sales problem, it may be a design problem with your product or a problem with your delivery.”Are you struggling to make sales? In today’s episode, we’re chatting with Justin Roff-Marsh, sales contrarian, CEO and founder of Ballistix, an LA-based international management consultancy specialising in Sales Process Engineering. Justin will be in the UK, speaking with us, on 27th January, and to whet your appetite and to get you excited he’s coming over, he’s back on the podcast. In this episode, he’s talking about lifetime value and customer acquisition cost, LTV to CAC; about how you re-engineer that into the number of salespeople you need, and how you then measure the success of that sales team so that you can make sure that it works, and then scale the hell out of it. Justin also shares his thoughts on managers versus supervisors and the importance of supervisors, and the mindset that CEOs and businesses might have around incrementalism versus aggressive business growth. Finally, Justin expands on his view that companies shouldn't use revenue as a performance indicator. This is a fascinating conversation, there’s so much great content, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. To find out more, download and listen to this latest episode of #themeltingpot, or come and see Justin, in person, on the 27th January - more information to follow.On today’s podcast:How to estimate lifetime valueMeasuring the success of a sales teamManagers versus supervisorsIncrementalism versus aggressive growthRevenue isn’t a performance indicatorWhat to look for in a salespersonLinks:The Machine - Justin Roff-MarshIt’s Time To Build - Marc Andreessen

If you struggle with recruitment, either as a recruiter or a job hunter, then don’t miss this week’s episode with Sam Franklin. Sam is co-founder and CEO of Otta, the recruitment company helping job seekers find roles at the world’s most innovative companies. Formerly a consultant at McKinsey, and then Interim Head of People at Nested.com, Sam cut his teeth working on the pressing problems of this fast growing startup. At Nested, he formed the Business Operations team and led the Recruitment, HR and People Operations teams. It was in this latter role that he realised how soul-destroying the recruitment process was for many applicants. So he set up Otta with two other co-founders with the aim to be the number one platform for job seekers looking for jobs in tech firms in London. They went niche because, simply, that is what they’re passionate about. This is a fantastic story about how to solve recruitment from the candidates’ perspective and how to potentially drive good behaviour from employers so they get the best people applying for their jobs. Don’t miss this great conversation, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:The Otta story How Otta differs from other hiring platformsHiring diverse candidatesHow to write a cover letterTinder for jobsRating a company’s interview experience

If you’re struggling to get customers for your business, then Flavilla Fongang, the effervescent managing director and founder of 3 Colours Rule, an award-winning creative branding and neuromarketing agency, has written a book 99 Strategies To Get Customers. In today’s fantastic conversation, Flavilla talks about some of her favourite strategies from the book, so grab a pen and paper and take note of how to get the most out of your business. But Flavilla isn’t someone who has just one plate spinning at a time. She’s a serial entrepreneur. An international speaker. She's a brand ambassador for the BBC. She hosts the Tech Brains Talk podcast providing insights and advice to tech entrepreneurs and companies. She's also the founder of Tech London Advocates (TLA) for Black Women in Tech, where she puts black women on a pedestal. We discuss the thousand women that Flavilla now has in the UK in TLA, and how TLA is doing fantastic work to promote equality for women and black women in technology. This is a really illuminating conversation, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:Tech brains talkBeing the only black woman at tech networking events99 strategies to get customers How to have a great brandHow to attract diverse candidates when recruitingNeuro-branding and neuro-marketingLinks:Podcast - Tech brains talkEpisode - How to become a lucky tech millionairePrepaid financial servicesTech London Advocates (TLA) for Black Women in Tech

It was an absolute pleasure to have, world-renowned business growth guru and author of best-selling books, The Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't, at the Summit at Foundry Farm. He joined Dominic Monkhouse for a discussion of the latest trends he has noticed in scaling businesses and leadership teams. Verne’s talk at the Summit feels very timely. It was recorded back when the sun was still shining in September and when a “second wave” was on the horizon. Since then, most of the UK has been back into some form of a lockdown or another. Verne’s knowledge feels just as on point as ever, so we are ecstatic to be bringing his conversation with business leaders at the Summit to The Melting Pot. For obvious reasons, Verne was not able to make it to the farm back then, but – lucky for us – he was happy to beam in from Boulder, Colorado via Zoom. His intervention is littered with informed business examples from top companies, and full of realistic optimism. He highlights the need for businesses to be brave enough to make the best of their circumstances - “to plan for the worst, but more importantly, to hope for the best”. For Verne, leadership is central to this. Leaders like those he works with, and like those that came to the Summit, need to use their own mindsets to inspire their teams. He quotes Greg Brenneman in saying “great leaders absorb fear and exude hope”. In this episode Scaling Up expert, Verne Harnish, lays out his key hacks to lead through a crisis:Mindset “planning for the worst but hoping for the best”.CEO communication is key - your team needs to be up to date with what’s in your head.Sales when you’re sailing against the wind. Why you need to drive all communication through synchronous communication.The most powerful question a leader can learn: “that’s fantastic… how did you do it?”.Strategy tips for right now.Execution tips and why “if your job as a company is to make the lives of others easy, then your job as a leader is to make your employees lives and jobs easy”.Verne Harnish’s advice on positive leadership for post covid strength Positive, powerful communicationVerne urges leaders to help their teams to take an optimistic approach to planning in changing situations. Leaders should build empowered, open-minded teams, looking to “plan for the worst but hope for the best”. Leaders should be able to position teams to look for opportunities to innovate, grow into, and make the best of changing spaces. Central to this is also the idea that the CEO needs to be constantly in touch with the leadership team. Sounds simple, but is so often understated, says Verne. He discusses the weekly communications used by the likes of business giants, Facebook, and the strategies used by his own team to keep track of the thought processes of the leadership. Having a central communication like his weekly newsletter, Where’s Verne, is paramount for business leaders to keep the whole company on the same page. Building company culture through engagement, but also by allowing the CEO to process ideas outside of their own head. Synchronous communication to never miss an opportunityFor Verne, staying in touch is a foundation that needs to carry over to your sales teams and customer communication. Communication has always been key. But, how often do you actually sit back and look at the amount of time your customers have of your attention? Verne argues that now is the perfect time to look at this process. He believes you should never allow a proposal to go out on an email, without a human there to help the prospect through. He has also found that companies land big contracts by never leaving customer queries to be answered by email. It’s more...

Eli Goldratt wrote a book called The Goal, which Verne Harnish has described as one of the most important business books ever written. With such an accolade, we had to have Andy Watt, MD of Goldratt, on the show. Andy is a founding member of the Theory of Constraints International Certification Organisation (TOCICO) and a Chartered Fellow of CILT (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport). He’s also the owner and driving force behind Goldratt UK, and he has the singular aim of increasing the exposure of Theory of Constraints (TOC) in the UK.Over the last fifteen years, Andy and Goldratt UK have worked with hundreds of organisations implementing TOC including Bentley, McLaren, Honeywell, Masterfoods, Bombardier, Eurostar, Siemens and Johnson Matthey.Today, Andy talks about managing constraints, not just in a manufacturing or engineering business, but in any business that runs project work. The idea that constraints should be managed is applicable to so many businesses, regardless of their industry. The common thread is that people often know what the constraint is, and what the solution to the problem is, but somehow can’t fix it themselves. “Fundamentally, it's how you release work into the system, which is really important. So we release it at the rate at which the constraint can produce it. So shoving it in doesn't make it come out, which is a lesson that most people don't understand.”We also discuss how many CEOs and business leaders have a belief problem that they need to overcome and that the actual constraint might be a belief and not a real thing. This is a fascinating conversation, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:Why a physicist wrote a business bookEli’s algorithm to release work into the systemThe constraint is often the most simple thingFlow dynamics/ flowing capacityKnowing what done/good looks likeOvercoming beliefs

What do you do if you want to keep your business going after you exit? What processes can you put in place to ensure your business survives without you? How can you extract maximum value from your life’s work?Chris Budd is the founder and former CEO of Ovation Finance. He is also one of the UK’s foremost experts in selling your business to an employee ownership trust. Why is he an expert in this? Because this is the route he chose to exit his own business. “What I wanted, which, at its essence, was to see the business continue. I wanted to be able to exit but not see the business broken up or sold or merged with another company, I wanted to continue because I have a big ego. And I'm proud of the business.”As well as writing the book on it The Eternal Business, Chris also advises business owners how to follow suit. By creating an employee ownership trust and selling your business to an employee ownership trust, and then moving out the way is how to do it. But how do you do it successfully? It’s all linked to purpose, culture and happiness, says Chris. This is a fantastic episode, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.On today’s podcast:Becoming an expert in employee ownership trustsWhat is EOT business?The eternal businessPreparing employees for EOT businessManagement and trustees in EOT businessesWhat do you need to sell your business forLinks:www.ovationfinance.co.ukwww.cbudd.co.ukBook - The Eternal BusinessEmployee ownership associationFinancial wellbeing podcast

If you’re wondering how you can find time from everyday business operations to do innovation, today’s guest, Tendayi Viki, is the guy you want to listen to. He’s an award winning author and corporate innovation expert. He’s also been recognised by Thinkers50 as one of the world's foremost business strategic thinkers, and he’s the author of three books, the latest of which is Pirates In The Navy. Tendayi’s biggest bugbear is innovation theatre, those companies that look like they’re doing innovation, but aren’t, and so he shares his thoughts on how to innovate properly. What you don’t need, says Tendayi, is an entrepreneur in residence. Having a startup mindset doesn’t require you to actually employ a startup founder, nor do you need to install ping pong tables either. What you actually need, if you're going to innovate, if you're going to come up with another big idea that's going to drive the revenue of your business in the long term, is to figure out how to structure it, how to staff it and how to measure its success. So to find out how to innovate in your business, because let’s face it, any business that stands still gets left behind, download and listen to this latest episode. It’s a great conversation. On today’s podcast:Why businesses suck at innovationHow to become a pirateCorporate intrapreneursWhy you don’t want startup innovation theatre The metrics to measure innovationThe companies doing innovation wellHow to spot core business troublesLinks:The Corporate StartupThe Lean Product LifecyclePirates In The Navy

If you want a point of difference with your company, if you want to be more Apple than Blackberry, then don’t miss this week’s episode of The Melting Pot with the Godfather of Category Design, Christopher Lochhead. He self-describes as a dyslexic paperboy who got thrown out of school at 18 and with few other options he started a company. Now, Christopher is a #1 Apple Business Podcaster and #1 Amazon Marketing author. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups, is a venture capital limited partner and a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO (Vantive, Scient, Mercury Interactive), and entrepreneur.“For me, entrepreneurship, like many entrepreneurs, is not necessarily a way up in the world, it's a way out of a life of struggle.”Today, Christopher hosts the award-winning dialogue podcast “Follow Your Different” and award-winning “Lochhead on Marketing” podcast and is co-author of two international bestsellers: Niche Down and Play Bigger.Christopher is a firm believer that categories make brands, rather than brands make categories. In this incredibly insightful (and slightly longer than normal) episode, he talks about what might have happened if Steve Jobs had followed a traditional marketing playbook and why Google Plus was a failure. Plus, he discusses the importance of dialogue and what happened when Dan Alexander, the guy who covers President Trump's business dealings, came on his podcast. On today’s podcast:Why he started the podcastCreating a category with Play BiggerHow the legends do marketingHow Steve Jobs created a new categoryCreating the sushi burritoInterviewing Dan AlexanderLinks:Podcast - Follow Your DifferentBook - Play BiggerBook - Niche Down

Do you know what your company’s nine touch points are? The things that are the most important to your clients? Could you say, off the top of your head, what is most important to your customers pre-sale, during the sales process and after sale?Do you even have touch points that are so remarkable that people continue to talk about you long after the engagement?Meet Hilary Corna, author, speaker and CEO of coaching consulting business, Corna Partners. Hilary is on a mission to humanise business. She works predominantly with SMB to help them design uniquely human custom experiences to enable them to grow. “I’m humanising their customer experience, from end to end point, really focused on this new world that we live in. It's an intersection of work, humanity and culture. And as the world is becoming more human, more aware, more conscious, more open minded, we're allowed to show more of our sides of our identity.”Hilary says that every business has nine touch points that are important to the customer, not to the company, to the customer. It’s your job as the leader of the company, to identify those nine touch points and make them wow your customers. This is a really insightful conversation with a truly effervescent person. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:Why she’s focused on humanising businessHumanisation of processDigi-human divideIntentional human customer experience designCustomer for life cycleYour nine customer touchpointsHumanise your agreementsCreate customer focused contentLinks:Book - One White Face (Hilary Corna)

In November 2013, Alex Lewis was rushed to hospital with just 30 minutes to live. He was 33 years old. Leading up to his hospital admittance, he’d been suffering with a cold and a sore throat. Within hours of being admitted to hospital he was on full life support and was given less than 3% chance of survival. What had brought this otherwise healthy man to his knees? Strep A, Toxic Shock Syndrome, Septicaemia and Necrotising Fasciitis. In order to survive, Alex needed a quadruple amputation, extensive skin grafts and facial reconstruction surgery. With his life turned upside down, it was time for Alex to start living. “Everything that's gone on with losing my limbs and legs and arms, everything else, I think the biggest driving force is having the ability to help people like me, in a similar condition.”Alex is the ultimate motivational speaker because he hasn’t had an epiphany that he wants to share with the world, he’s had a near death experience. On top of that he’s had to overcome adversity in order to take on new challenges such as living day to day life, becoming an entrepreneur and hand cycling up mountains. In this extraordinary episode, Alex shares what it takes to go through something like this, what resilience really looks like and what we can learn from his experience. On today’s podcast:Alex Lewis TrustStrep A, Toxic Shock Syndrome, Septicaemia and Necrotising FasciitisRebuilding his lifeBecoming director of a number of startups Working with Imperial College LondonHand cyclesLinks:Alex Lewis TrustThe Extraordinary Case Of Alex LewisKoalaa - affordable prosthesis

If you have bucket loads of content that you regularly share with your audience across your social media platforms, but it’s not getting any traction, or if you don’t have content and you need some, then you need Beck Power. Beck is the queen of repurposing existing content to keep you front of mind for your audience. Today’s conversation isn’t about how to be globally strategic with an author, this is a tactical how-to conversation with somebody who enables others.So if you’re wondering how, in the age of content is king, you can possibly create enough content to feed the beast AND still run your business, then Beck has the answers you've been seeking. Beck is a leading content marketer and the founder of the Amp Content Academy, the HQ for making more relevant, consistent content and leveraging it into opportunities and clients.Her podcast “Amplify Content” and her content marketing agency help coaches, speakers and authors create and spread more powerful content across social media, grow their audiences and connect with their ideal clients.So if you’re wondering how to take your first steps to build your brand and your authority. How to turn yourself into a key person of influence in your industry. If you’re curious what the minimum viable product you need is. How you can get started with a podcast or at the very least, how you can get yourself on someone else’s podcast, and how to take that content and amplify it, then this is the conversation for you. On today’s podcast:How to start a podcastHow a content marketing agency can be authentically youHow to do email marketingFinding your target audienceSocial media marketing toolsCreating evergreen contentLinks:Podcast - Amplify Content

Everyone’s heard of WD 40 company, it’s been a dependable staple of every garage and DIYer for over 50 years. The distinctive blue can with its yellow label and red cap has been oiling and lubricating homes across the globe for half a century, creating memories and lasting relationships. But it isn’t the spread of this product that CEO and chair of WD 40 company board, Garry Ridge, is renowned for. Yes, when Garry took over as CEO he transformed the business from an American manufacturer of WD 40, to a global supplier and manufacturer of all things oil and lubricant. But he’s also known for building a workplace that people are queuing up to work for. For bringing out the best in his team. For placing such a high value on core values. “I think one of the biggest opportunities we have at the moment is to really get a message across to leaders that it's all about the people. If we can create environments where people go to work every day, they make a contribution to something bigger than themselves, they learn something new, they feel safe, and they go home happy.”On today’s podcast:Why Garry’s view of company culture is rareGarry’s algorithm for cultureWhy WD 40 company have managers not coachesHire first for valuesThe journey from WD 40 to creating memoriesWhat WD 40 company learned from COVIDLinks:www.thelearningmoment.netBook - Helping People Win At Work

What did Steve Jobs and Blackbeard have in common? According to Sam Conniff, they were both pirates. Why would Sam know this? Because he wrote the bestselling book - Be More Pirate in 2018, and was amazed when it inspired a global movement. From Tate & Lyle to Mercedes Benz, financiers to farmers, CEOs to students, some of the biggest brands around the world, including our very own NHS, have taken heed of Sam’s message, created a pirate crew and rewritten the existing rules. Because that is what being a pirate is all about:Pirates don’t just break the rules, they rewrite them. Pirates don’t just reject society, they reinvent it. Pirates don’t just challenge the status quo, they change it. “It's now more of a global social movement and a method and a way of creating change within organisations.”The network that has grown up around Sam’s book recognises that too many of the rules, norms and conventions that uphold our systems and business models no longer serve people and planet; we need to create new ones.“Being more pirate is a shift in your mindset; a willingness to think differently, to challenge and be challenged, and to stop asking for permission to do what you know is right.”In this episode, Sam and newly appointed Right Hand Pirate, Alex Barker, share the 5 Rs framework which helps mutineers become more pirate. As well as that, Alex talks about how she takes this framework and uses it to run workshops and helps people who are searching for change. On today’s podcast:How Be More Pirate became a social movementThe pirate mindsetThe 5 Rs of piratingWhy Extinction Rebellion and Banksy are piratesHow To Be More PirateThe future of the pirate movementProfessional rule breakingLinks:Be More PirateHow To: Be More Pirate

If your company culture could do with an overhaul, then who better to impart advice on this very topic than the culture transformer guru with a track record of making workplaces better, Siobhán McHale?“We've got to move beyond the framing of culture purely in employee experience terms. It’s about how to create more agile, innovative, and commercial cultures that can be sustainable over time.”Siobhán has worked across 4 continents helping thousands of leaders create more agile and productive workplaces. One such example of her work in action was the radical 7 year change initiative at Australia and New Zealand Bank Ltd (ANZ). In her time with ANZ she transformed the bank from being the lowest performing bank in the country into one of the highest performing and most admired banks in the world - a recognised paragon of customer service.This work forms the backbone of her book The Insider's Guide To Culture Change which she talks about in this episode. She also discusses her four step approach to driving culture and what needs to happen inside an organisation to make that happen, how to test for EQ when recruiting and how to hire for customer-centricity. One thing that is apparent during this conversation with Siobhán is that she is adamant that culture is in service of strategy and that it follows on from strategy. Culture isn’t about staff engagement. It's about where your business is trying to go and what culture does your business need to put in place to enable its strategy to be successful?A truly insightful conversation, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:How Siobhán defines cultureHow she turned ANZ culture aroundRewriting valuesChanging the way you hireRunning a ‘day in the life’ programmeCulture is about you deliver your strategyLinks:Insider's Guide to Culture Change

What would you do if you’ve sold your company for enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life - sail the Caribbean? Or start over. Today’s guest, Jonty Slater, Manager Director at Blue Globe Innovation is in the latter camp. Jonty decided to create a business and to give back at the same time. Blue Globe Innovation is like no other company, it’s an organisation that solves amazingly complex technical challenges for companies, governments and NGOs. Blue Globe Innovation runs open innovation challenges around the world and in this incredibly insightful episode, Jonty shares with listeners a few of the challenges he’s recently been involved in, including the UK government's ventilator challenge and the Rwanda Lake Kivu challenge. While these challenges are exciting, you might be wondering how they’re applicable to your organisation. Well, here’s the thing - CEOs are often great at linear innovation, really good at running business as usual. But a lot of the time they’re struggling to have incremental innovation. And that’s precisely where Jonty’s team can help. Open innovation isn’t just for finding solutions to big pandemic problems, like COVID. It’s a process that can be applied to solve your current business problem. This is a fantastic conversation and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:What is Blue Globe InnovationOpen innovation and the innovation funnelUsing the crowd to solve your corporate problemAfrica Drone ForumHow to reward staff for innovationInnovation databasesUsing innovation challenges as a CSRLinks:InnocentiveAfrica Drone Forum

If you want to improve the managers in your business, says Michael Bungay Stanier, do more coaching. You might think coaching equals being soft, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. “When I'm asked to talk about my philosophy of coaching I've got two words, and the words are Fierce Love.”Michael wrote the book on coaching, literally. The Coaching Habit is the biggest book on coaching this century. He is the go-to guy for anything coaching related - his 7 questions format has revolutionised coaching, and while we don’t necessarily talk about those today, they do feature. In this enlightening episode all about coaching, Michael, who’s also founder of Box of Crayons - a learning and development company helping organisations shift from advice-driven to curiosity-led, talks about his latest book - The Advice Trap. This conversation is full of fantastic insights from Michael on how to be a better coach, how to be a better leader, and how to encourage coaching inside your organisation. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:The Coaching HabitThe need for social contracting when hiring a coachThe principles of coachingWhy ‘and what else?’ is the most powerful question to askThe power of staying curious a little bit longerThe advice trap

“The journey of leadership is a journey to irrelevance. It has to be. Otherwise you're just a do-er, you're an individual contributor like everybody else.”The problem with military command is that when you say ‘jump’, your subordinates are supposed to say ‘how high?’, regardless of the danger or the stupidity of the order. L. David Marquet realised there was something fundamentally wrong with this form of blind leadership when he took command of the USS Santa Fe, the US Navy’s submarine with the worst morale out of all its ships. David didn’t know his way around this submarine, he wasn’t trained on it, but he was still expected to command it. He realised that the only way to take control and quite literally turn the ship around, was to adopt a radical approach to leadership. He decided to empower his subordinates as they knew far more about their day to day roles than he did - he told them to take ownership of their decisions. He needed the ship to manage itself. His revolutionary approach to leadership went against everything he’d been taught, but it worked. In the three years under David’s command, the Santa Fe rose from the bottom of the ranks to being the number one ship in the US navy. In this latest episode, David shares his story, how he had to park his ego in order to succeed and how he relinquished control in order to take command. This is a truly fascinating conversation with actionable insights. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. “I used to be a control freak. Well actually, I'm still wired to be a control freak. But I'm trying to get over it.”On today’s podcast:Get out of the decision making businessFrom permission to proactivity You can’t change characteristics, only behaviourThe psychological safety netThe power of ‘I don’t know’ How to play the feedback gameLinks:Turn the Ship Around!

How do you give difficult, impactful feedback in your workplace without offending anyone or being misconstrued?“Pause, right now, and think about that moment in your career when someone told you something that stung a bit at the time, but stood you in good stead for the next 10 years. That is radical candour.”If you just do one thing this week, listen to Kim Scott, co-creator of an executive education company and workplace comedy series based on her best-selling book Radical Candor - Be A Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. Kim led AdSense, YouTube, and Doubleclick teams at Google and then joined Apple University to develop and teach “Managing at Apple.” She’s also been a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and several other tech companies. Kim knows what she’s talking about. In this latest episode she talks about why it’s so difficult to be frank with people, how to be better at being candid, where you should start and more importantly, how to be radically candid in today’s workplace - i.e. how to give feedback when you’re not face to face. “If you're doing it right, if you're doing routine radical candour maintenance, it's more like brushing and flossing. It's not a root canal, it’s a two minute conversation.”This is one podcast episode you don’t want to miss. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did!On today’s podcast:The impetus to write the book What radical candour means and looks likeHow to deliver radically candid feedbackHow to solicit radical candourDelivering feedback via videoRadical candour is culturally relativeLinks:Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You MeanJust Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & Fair

Death is such an unusual, fascinating, and emotional area to work in, however the industry hasn’t evolved much since the 1850s. But today’s guest, Dan Garrett, CEO and co-founder at Farewill, is on a mission to change that - to bring wills, probate and funerals into the 21st century. “[Will writing] is the most amazing industry because it's basically the biggest consumer industry that's been untouched by technology. It’s a multi-hundred billion dollar business globally. The industry looks and feels like it did in Victorian times.”Having just raised £20 million in a Series B round and with their absolutely awesome recruitment process, Farewill is the UK’s leading tech firm in the death space, working to bring technology and an improved customer experience to a difficult time in everyone’s life. Starting a business, raising funds and recruitment are all common topics for discussion on The Melting Pot, what makes this a truly unusual episode is simply because of the industry Dan is revolutionising. From tech and the death business, to the incredible recruitment engine he’s built that gets the hiring process right 80% of the time, this is a really interesting discussion with useful points pertinent to all entrepreneurs. On today’s podcast:Why he started an online will writing businessTheir chosen marketing channelsThe problem with the existing funeral industryRaising a successful series B during lockdownHis aggressive growth planThe effect of burnout on him

Leadership isn’t about you, says Frances Frei, co-author of Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You. Leadership, according to Frances, Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School, depends on how well you unleash the potential of other people. Frances has not only carried out extensive research investigating how leaders create the conditions for organisations and individuals to thrive. She also regularly advises senior executives (famously turning around the toxic culture at Uber), to implement large-scale change initiatives and organisational transformation. This involves addressing and embracing diversity and inclusion as a lever for significantly improving performance.In today’s challenging podcast episode, Frances discusses her new book and shares some fantastic takeaways about how to create a business that plays to the strengths of minorities. Because if you’re only hiring white men, you're only fishing in a pond with 25% of the available talent. The businesses that will be successful in the next 5 years will be the ones that actively bring on board the remaining 75% of talent that aren’t being fished. This is an incredibly insightful conversation packed full of great, actionable advice. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.On today’s podcast:Leadership is about empowering othersThe pros and cons of recruitment legislationWhy you can’t find the diverse employees you’re looking forUse an indignities list for your next hireUnconscious bias during recruiting and promotionThe trust triangleLinks:Frances Frei - TED talksUnleashed

What’s your business aim? To achieve growth? To create a winning corporate culture? Deb Gabor, keynote speaker and bestselling author is on a mission to inspire 1 million brands to create irrational loyalty. Yes, that’s also the name of her latest book, Irrational Loyalty, but the premise behind it should strike a chord with anyone who owns a business - not least because the subtitle is - Building a Brand That Thrives In Turbulent Times. And times don’t get much more turbulent than the ones we are currently living through. The irrepressible Deb was born to brand and excels at her craft. With Dell as one of her core customers, Deb knows her stuff and is compelled to share her ‘grow or die’ mindset with other entrepreneurially spirited leaders. At the heart of this episode is the need for businesses to understand their core customer as a person, and (in Deb’s own words), understanding what your customer needs to do to get laid and if you can achieve that, you’ll get their irrational loyalty and growth for your business.“Irrational loyalty is that condition where people are so indelibly bonded to a brand that they feel like they were cheating on it if they were to choose a competitor or an alternative… I'm in the business of creating those conditions, which can sustain brands for the long term, make them grow profitably, rapidly, and in a highly focused way.”On today’s podcast:Irrational loyaltyThe four things the biggest brands in the world do Creating the ideal customer profileA niche is the sexiest thing about businessThe branding misconceptions holding businesses backCreate core values to benefit your business and your clientsLinks:Branding Is Sex: Get Your Customers Laid and Sell the Hell Out of AnythingIrrational Loyalty: Building a Brand That Thrives in Turbulent Times

If you have a fear of pricing, or if you’re worried that if you put your prices up you’ll lose customers, then you need to listen to the Pricing Man, Hermann Simon, author of over 35 books on the subjects of profit and pricing. “Pricing is about value, or more precisely, the value perceived by the customers. If the customer perceives a high value, he or she is willing to pay a high price. If the perceived value is lower, you have to offer the product at a lower price.”Hermann Simon has lived two lives: in the first he was a boy on a farm in the Eifel region of Germany. In the second he is the Founder and Honorary Chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners, a global consultancy with over 1500 employees. He’s an expert in strategy, marketing and pricing and he’s the only German in the “Thinkers50 Hall of Fame” of the most important management thinkers in the world.“No company has ever failed from making a profit. Most companies are revenue driven, market share driven, sales driven and only about one quarter are truly profit-oriented.”This is an incredibly insightful podcast about the importance of pricing and the need to understand the complexity of price, as well as looking at new pricing techniques. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:How people should think about pricing now with CoronavirusPricing is not primarily about pricePricing is about the value perceived by the customersHow to establish the value of PorscheThe power of branding when pricingHow Evian beats the local waterThe power of multidirectional pricingNo company has ever failed from making a profitLinks:Confessions of the Pricing Man: How Price Affects EverythingPrice Management: Strategy, Analysis, Decision, Implementation

If you’ve ever sat in the pub and dreamed of quitting your job to go in search of a better life, then this week’s guest, one half of Corporate Rebels, Pim de Morree, is a guy you need to listen to. Because Pim and co-founder Joost Minnaar didn’t just write down their plan on the back of a beer mat, they executed it too. “We worked in outdated workplaces characterised by inertia, bureaucracy and a lack of motivation. We simply couldn’t accept that the world of work, for far too many, is a place full of misery and despair”. And so they simultaneously quit their jobs in January 2016 in order to research progressive workplaces. Their aim? To travel the world and visit 70 inspiring workplaces to see how work could be more fun. They created a bucket list of some of the world’s most inspiring workplaces and set about visiting each and everyone to learn what it takes to be considered ‘progressive’. So far they’ve visited over 150 workplaces, worldwide, combining their practical insights with academic findings from their PhD research, sharing everything they’ve learned along the way on their blog, on their podcast and in their book. In this episode, Pim chats about some of the trends they have found from visiting progressive workplaces all over the world. The place of values instead of profit, the place of network teams instead of hierarchical pyramids, and the search for talent and mastery over job descriptions. He even reveals which businesses were disappointing, not living up to their progressive hype. This is a great conversation, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.On today’s podcast:The genesis of Corporate RebelsThe benefit of no business modelTheir bucket list of organisationsHow to measure the success of progressive workplacesWhy self-managing won’t work for every workplaceThe 8 trends that they’ve seenThe problem with copying

Innovation, according to entrepreneur, author and co-founder of Strategyzer.com, Alex Osterwalder, is what your business needs for longevity and success. Alex believes that successful companies are those that compete at the level of business model, not just at the level of product, or service, or price. “Innovation is not a talent or idea problem. It's a process and culture problem. Companies are not putting in place the right systems for the great innovators and great ideas to emerge. People on the ground know very well what could work, but we don't give them the space to explore. And if that doesn't change, a lot of companies are actually going to pay the price and go out of business.”Alex knows what the challenges are in driving innovation. He knows what needs to be done in terms of structure, power and resources. And he knows how company culture fits into a business model. And in this incredibly insightful episode, he shares his thoughts and actionable processes with listeners. “An invincible company has three characteristics - they always reinvent themselves, they compete not just on products, technology, price and service, they compete on superior business models. And they understand transcending industry boundaries. People who see themselves in one industry, usually that's not going to play out well in the long term.”It’s a slightly longer episode, so make sure you’re sitting comfortably, and don’t forget to bring a pen and paper, you’ll want to take notes. On today’s podcast:Creating an innovation culture in a companyRethinking business models and business R&DTranscending industry boundariesEntrepreneurial CEOs don’t have to be foundersInnovation needs money and power to succeedThe monetary value of experienceLinks:Book - The Invincible CompanyBook - Business Model Generation

If you’re looking for a new way to innovate your business, don’t miss this latest episode of The Melting Pot with Dennis Hahn, Chief Strategy Officer at Liquid Agency. A few months ago we had Marty Neumeier on the podcast (you can find the link to his episode in the links section). Dennis and Marty work at the same firm. You may wonder what Dennis can share with you that you wouldn’t get from Marty’s episode. The short answer is, a lot; the longer answer lies in the podcast. Dennis leads teams of strategists across Liquid’s offices, providing expertise, mentoring and consulting on a wide range of significant strategic branding initiatives for clients that include GE, John Deere, Microsoft, Nasdaq, Nordstrom, PayPal, Silicon Valley Bank and Walmart.Dennis’ particular expertise lies in what they call ‘The Swarm Method’. Swarming is a way of helping businesses pull from the very essence of their being, the solution to a problem that they’re struggling with. Swarming involves not just sitting down with the executive team and hashing out details, but rather running a workshop with as many stakeholders as possible, across your whole organisation, to pool resources and conduct an incredibly diverse brainstorming session.“We're solving brand problems, we're designing brand strategies, we're designing culture for workplace culture, we're doing customer experience mapping and all kinds of things through the swarming method.”If you haven’t tried swarming, we hope this episode gives you the impetus to go away and try this method of innovating in your own business. There’s collaborating, and then there’s swarming.On today’s podcast:What swarming is and how it’s used to engage leadership teamsThe evolution of swarmingThe benefit of using the Swarm methodWhy innovation happens in a down cycleThe tools Liquid usesThe power trio in an organisationLinks:https://about.me/dennisfhahnhttps://www.dominicmonkhouse.com/the-melting-pot-with-dominic-monkhouse/how-to-sell-more-things-at-a-higher-profit-with-marty-neumeier/

What do you do when you’re an entrepreneur and your first two businesses go swimmingly well, so much so, you start a third and end up bankrupt?Do you admit defeat and go and get a ‘real job’? Or do you shake yourself off and decide you’re going to dedicate the rest of your working life to the commitment to eradicate entrepreneurship poverty?If you’re Mike Michalowicz you do the latter. Mike is an entrepreneur and author. He built two incredibly successful tech businesses and exited them for a lot of money. But his third venture as an angel investor, didn’t go so well. However, it was off the back of this failure that he found his subsequent life’s mission, as an author. “I was making it [entrepreneurship] more complex than necessary and I was confused about what worked or not, so I endeavoured that day, that the rest of my life I’d devote to studying entrepreneurship and simplifying it.”Mike’s latest book, Profit First, is what he talks about in this episode (although of course, he touches on his journey to get to this point). Because profit in a post-COVID world is something that businesses and entrepreneurs are really going to need to focus on to survive. Rather than putting profit last or talking about ‘the bottom line’, we have to put profit first. We have to extract value from our businesses and reinvest it in a really deliberate way. This is a really interesting conversation about a topic close to all entrepreneurs’ hearts. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:Why Mike wrote Profit FirstThe advice Tim Ferriss gave himHow Profit First can help small businessesThe fascinating thing about consumer behaviourThe business hierarchy of needsPeople speak the truth through their wallets

These are uncertain times, and now more than ever, the success of your organisation can literally come down to its culture. But what if you don’t have a company culture (that you know of) or maybe you’re wondering how to implement your ideal company culture, wonder no more. Today’s guest, Gustavo Razzetti is not only a culture practitioner, but he’s spent the last 20 years helping teams work smarter and faster, together, partnering with clients to design fearless workplace cultures, unlocking the whole team’s potential and giving that organisation a competitive advantage. Gustavo has amalgamated all of his company culture knowledge and distilled it down into creating an easy to use and easy to implement culture tool, the Culture Canvas, an open framework that makes culture actionable.If you have any questions about it, or if you’re curious how to put the Culture Canvas into practice, what elements of it need to be contiguous with those you already have in place, how to surface the Canvas, how to share it and make it easy to live every day, as well as how to ensure that your hard work implementing your ideal company culture isn’t lost, this is one episode you don’t want to miss. “Culture is something fluid, now, it's not one thing. It's not something that you do once and that's it.”On today’s podcast:What Culture Canvas isHow to implement the different elements of itHiring for culture fitAligning sub-team culture and company cultureSurfacing norms and rulesCreating psychological safety Links:https://liberationist.org/culture-design-canvas/Stretch for ChangeStretch Your MindStretch Your Team

While you will have heard of the Ritz Carlton hotel group, you may not necessarily know who founded it - meet Horst Schulze, the man, the myth, the legend. Horst is legendary for creating the infamous operating and service standards for which the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company are renowned. “I talked to an institution recently and I said, ‘Don't you want to be the very best in the country?’ He said, ‘well that would be arrogant’. In other words, you don't intend for your investors, for your employees to be the very best?”Horst has been in the hotel business since he was 14 years old, cutting his teeth as a server’s assistant in a German resort town. He ‘worked to work’ before realising one day that he’d been approaching work wrong. An inspirational maître d'hôtel had taught him early on to ‘work to create excellence’, and he hadn’t been doing that. “I didn't go to work to create excellence, which you taught me. I apologise, it will never happen again. And what a silly thing to waste your time to just fulfil a function, like a chair.”That was the turning point for him. From there his career accelerated and exploded.After leaving The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, Horst went on to found Capella Hotel Group. Again, you may not know who they are, but you’ll remember when President Donald Trump met with North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un - that meeting took place in the Capella Hotel in Singapore. “Excellence is never an accident. It's always the result of high intentions. Vision and high intention and hard work. Yeah, that is culture. High intention, hard work.”This is a truly insightful and entertaining conversation, we hope you enjoy it. On today’s podcast:Building a culture of excellenceTipping in hotelsThe difference between a manager and a leaderHow to build the best organisationRepeat teaching valuesThe three types of customersEmpowering employeesLinks:Horst Schulze - Excellence WinsThe Ritz CarltonCapella Hotels and Resorts

You’ve probably shifted your thinking from ‘how to survive the pandemic’ to ‘how to survive the upcoming recession’. In which case, you don’t want to miss this episode with Shannon Byrne Susko, CEO of Metronome United, serial entrepreneur, author and speaker. You may be familiar with Shannon as this isn’t her first time on The Melting Pot; we’ve had her on the podcast before (you can find a link to her previous episode in the links section). We’ve invited Shannon back to discuss what she’s learned over the last few months, to share with our audience what she thinks the future looks like and to find out what she is seeing with the businesses she is currently working with in the US and Canada. And what in particular they’re doing to ensure they’re not just surviving, but thriving.“So the number one thing I learned is that a repeatable growth system works in good times and bad times. The same fundamentals, the same things that we want to put in place to grow a company also works when there's a huge crisis in the market.” And that’s what Dom and Shannon discuss today. The topic of conversation has quickly moved beyond ‘how to run a business during lockdown’ to thinking longer-term, to making it through the upcoming recession. Because running a business in a recession is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before unless of course, you’ve run a business in a recession. This is a really great conversation with lots of actionable insight, we hope you enjoy as much as we did. On today’s podcast:Adaptability of people’s mindsRepeatable growth systemThe changing needs of your core customerMetronomicsThe coach cascade systemThe importance of language in an organisationMetronome growth system softwareLinks:https://www.dominicmonkhouse.com/the-melting-pot-with-dominic-monkhouse/rebroadcast-shannon-byrne-susko-the-accidental-ceo-turned-reluctant-bestselling-novelist/

Are you wondering how your business is going to survive not just the remainder of the pandemic, but the looming recession too? Perhaps you’ve realised you need to rewrite your business strategy but you aren’t sure what you need to focus on? Then you’ve come to the right place. Rita McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She’s one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth and is one of the most regularly published authors in the Harvard Business Review and a frequent speaker on business strategy. She’s the perfect guest to discuss how leaders can navigate these imminently choppy waters. In this episode of The Melting Pot, Rita, whose expertise lies at the intersection of strategy and innovation, discusses her incredibly useful model for rapid portfolio review and what she calls ‘discovery-driven growth’. I.e. how do you find things that you can drive revenue from, not just now, but in the future too.We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.On today’s podcast:What got Rita into the uncertainty spaceThe entrepreneurial mindsetWhat can people do in a crisisRapid portfolio reviewExamples of companies pivoting during COVID-19Links:https://thinkers50.com/The Best Service is No Service - Bill Price & David JaffeSeeing Around Corners - Rita McGrathRita’s YouTube Channel

Do you drain your team or engage them? Are you wondering how to make your leadership team even greater? You need to listen to Liz Wiseman, author of New York Times bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. Liz is a researcher, executive advisor and author, writing Multipliers over 10 years ago. She’s recently updated it, although its core ideas still very much apply today. In it, she identifies two types of leaders - multipliers and diminishers. The multipliers get twice the output from their teams than the diminishers do. So you might be thinking, then why don’t we all strive to be multipliers? Because, Liz says, most of the behaviours exhibited by diminishers are completely accidental - only 20% of diminisher behaviours are deliberate.“About two thirds of diminishing behaviour that we see is what we would call accidental diminisher behaviour, meaning it's done with the best of intentions.”In this episode Dom chats to Liz about what these diminisher behaviours are - maybe you’ll recognise yourself in some of her descriptions. So if you think you could be holding your team back accidentally, preventing productivity and the only thing standing between your team and greatness is an awareness and desire to do things differently, then this fantastic conversation is not to be missed. On today’s podcast:How teaching programming led her to becoming a researcherNot every smart person creates a smart teamThe limitations of diminisher leadershipThe behaviours of a diminisherWhy perfectionists are the bottlenecksLinks:Henry Stewart - The Happy ManifestoLiz Wiseman - Multipliers

Do you recruit for ‘culture fit’? If you do, then you’re wasting your time, says Bretton Putter, author and CEO of CultureGene, a culture development, consultancy and software business.“My vision is to help millions of people lead better work lives by changing culture globally. And my mission is to help change culture development into a critical business function in the way that sales and marketing are.”Brett is a self-declared reformed recruiter, who saw the light when he was doing executive search for some CEOs who really got culture in their businesses. They made him hire based on behaviours, and while it wasn’t something he was initially keen to do, he saw how effective it was - hiring great employees into a business that was clear on its culture, and has since built a business based on the idea that as a CEO, your company’s culture is your only source of sustainable competitive advantage. On today’s podcast:How to nail down a company’s valuesCulture Decks Decoded came out of failureThe company culture decks he admiresHow to hire for values Why culture fit is his bugbearHow to embed culture into your businessHow COVID-19 has shown holes in company cultureLinks:Culture driven leader - Forbes article

How is your company culture looking? Worried that it’s taken a hit during the ongoing pandemic? What can you do to stop your best employees leaving? Who better to provide the answers to these questions than the doyenne of culture herself, Melissa Daimler. Melissa cut her teeth at Adobe, Twitter and latterly, WeWork, leading their learning and development efforts globally. Today she helps organisations, predominantly tech firms in Silicon Valley, operationalise their culture.“There's just a lot of companies who are now realising having seen the downfall of WeWork and other companies that if you don't pay attention to that [company culture], you know, things fall apart on the business side.”In today’s episode, Melissa shares her thoughts on company culture and her model for how to make culture real in an organisation and how you take a value statement, and how you then turn that value statement into a set of behaviours that you overlay with performance expectations. “Make sure that if you have values, that they're not just values on a wall, that they're actually behaviours that you can see and experience in the daily workings of the company. And if that's not true don't even have them. Don't bother.”We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:Operationalising your cultureWhy culture isn’t ‘the fuzzy stuff’The impact of culture on employee churnThe theme of bad meetingsEmbracing remote workingHow to maintain company culture in this new normalLinks:Why Leadership Development Has to Happen on the Job

In an otherwise bleak world, today’s guest is a success story who just keeps going from strength to strength. Martin Bysh is CEO of Huboo Technologies Ltd, a fulfilment company that takes stock, stores it, picks, packs and delivers it on behalf of e-commerce sellers, automatically.But Martin hasn’t always been in this industry. In fact, this is his first company that has physical things, like people and space. He’s always had companies with no people in them. This 180 degree business model is completely down to Paul Dodd, his business partner. “[We figured] we’d do something together in e-commerce. We ran a few shops online to get a sense of where the pain points might be, and immediately stumbled on fulfilment. It's a massive problem for lots of e commerce companies. And so we started to explore it and just gradually found ourselves in this business, which I love, but it is very much a people business. I think we've got about 70 staff now. And it's all about the people, but it's a lot of fun as a consequence.”But scaling a business that consists of so many people with so many moving parts is a challenge. How do you scale small without breaking small? “This isn't about massive sheds and treating people as robots. This is about building a distribution system for e-commerce businesses, based on human beings. How do we take the best of human beings and build a business on that, which drives high margin rather than trying to treat human beings like robots to drive margin into the business.”This is a fascinating conversation, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:The little known world of fulfilmentBuilding the companyThe micro-warehouse/hub fulfilment modelStaying open during the pandemicHis plan to turn the business into a billion dollar companyIntegrating last mile as a way to save costs

Are you bored of hearing about the negatives of a recession? Well, if you listened to last week’s episode with Jack Stack, you’ll have heard him share how he’s on his fifth Black Swan and how after each one his business doubled. Why are we mentioning this again? Because a recession doesn’t necessarily always spell doom and gloom. In fact, today’s guest, Dr Kaihan Krippendorff, strategy, growth and transformation expert, keynote speaker, author and consultant is using the time to pivot his business. Kaihan hosted a conference last week with guest speakers including Rita McGrath and Amy Webb, and he’s holding another one on 6th May, with guest speakers including Amy Edmondson and Scott Anthony. (Link below). These conferences have given him the seeds of a new business model. They’ve allowed him and his team to focus on something else right now, they’ve created new relationships, and they’ve allowed him to build their audience as well as their brand.So if you’re wondering what you can do to fill your days, why not use this time wisely to think about your business strategy, and perhaps take advantage of coronavirus accelerating trends that were already in place?In today’s podcast, Kaihan and Dom discuss the tools Kaihan uses with his (mainly) Fortune 500 business clients, and how these tools could also be used by mid-market firms. He also discusses the online conference he ran last week and his top takeaways from it.On today’s podcast:How clients find KaihanThe outthinker processWhy it’s so hard for humans to be strategicExamples of innovations his clients have been able to driveThe importance of employee self-realisationHow to create a 2x2 matrix for scenario planningLinks:Outthinker 2020Outthink the CompetitionDriving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs

If you’re struggling to see how your business is going to survive the current Black Swan, then you should listen to Jack Stack, CEO of SRC Holdings Corp, the oldest employee-owned remanufacturer to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in North America, to learn why The Great Game of Business could help you. Jack is currently in his 5th Black Swan event. That’s right. His 5th. And each one he’s been through has been a significant catalyst for further growth for the company. In fact, after each recession, the business has doubled in the next five years.“When we do our business plans, we say, okay, we know there's something out there we can't even figure out, so let's set money aside for the most catastrophic event you can imagine. So in ‘09, we actually put together a long term plan to raise $100 million in cash for the next Black Swan.”In today’s conversation, Dom and Jack discuss how the open-book management approach is a way of running your business by making your financial instruments personal, giving people a stake in your business and getting people to own elements of the income statement and the P&L. They also discuss how, if you're an organisation, you might follow in Jack's footsteps and run your employee bonus programmes based on the weaknesses of your financial statements, rather than a profit share or based on revenue goals. For our lucky listeners, Jack is offering a preview of both his new books along with a resource kit. See the links below for more information.On today’s podcast:What Jack is famous forThe advantage of financial literacyWriting The Great Game of Business bookHow Jack saved International HarvesterSurviving his fifth Black SwanStarting an open-book journeyLinks:https://www.greatgame.com/jack

Are you an entrepreneur looking to scale up your business? Or perhaps you’re still figuring out your company’s purpose. Then you need to listen to Daniel Priestley, showman, visionary, speaker, and author. Daniel’s willed a number of multi-million-pound businesses into existence from nothing, written four best-selling business books and is the co-founder of Dent Global, an incubator for startups run by people with business experience under their belts. “The one thing that stood out to me is that very few of them [entrepreneurs] are 22-year-olds. Most entrepreneurs have been in their industry as an employee for 15 years before they then get the confidence and the skills and the connections to start a company. Most entrepreneurs are around 40 when they start, and most people who achieve an exit are typically in their early 50s.”So if you’re someone who has an idea, knowledge and network to create a business and want to create a better life for yourself, Daniel is the guy you want to go and see. In this podcast, Dominic and Daniel discuss the inspiration for Dent Global, the type of people who might want to join the entrepreneur accelerator programme, what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and an easy hack for finding a purpose for your business. On today’s podcast:The Silicon Valley inspiration behind his entrepreneur accelerator programmeThe CHAOS methodologyWhy most entrepreneurs don’t want a big exitWhy you need a value proposition creationThe dichotomy of being an entrepreneurHow to create purpose in your businessLinks:OversubscribedKey Person of Influence24 AssetsEntrepreneur RevolutionDarren ShirlawShoe Dog - Phil Knight

How should you as a business leader, respond to disruptive change in a decisive way? As the current global crisis gathers momentum, ensuring your organisation is able to respond to disruption is vital for survival. But it isn’t just coronavirus that is out to disrupt you, there are thousands of things that could potentially derail your business, not least the economy, access to talent, access to capital, access to markets to name but a few. Today’s guest is an authority on the subject of change, in fact, Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School not only teaches it, but he’s authored several books on the topic too. So if you’re an entrepreneur wondering what frameworks your business should be putting in place to support growth and create a valuable business, or how to look at strategy and how to get your business fit for the future, then this is one conversation you don’t want to miss.On today’s podcast:How big businesses handle disruptionHow to do face to face work remotelyWhy managers need to adaptThe ABC methodWhat makes a great coachHis prefered models for entrepreneurshipLinks:Becoming a Better Boss - Julian BirkinshawFast / Forward - Julian Birkinshaw and Jonas Ridderstråle Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow - Larry E. Greiner

You may not have heard of Patty McCord directly, but if you’re in HR or recruitment, you’ll have likely heard of her work. Patty was Chief Talent Officer at Netflix for 14 years and co-author (alongside Netflix CEO Reed Hastings) of the infamous Netflix culture deck. This document was one of the first slides on Slideshare and is probably one of the most viewed documents up there too. Patty has worked in many different tech companies in and around Silicon Valley, and today she is often in the media with interviews and articles, as well as speaking at CEO forums and business schools. But it is her work that she did during her time at Netflix that she is most well known for. While at Netflix she abolished performance reviews as well as challenged the need for policies. Patty firmly believes people come to work as fully formed adults with a desire to make an impact and be proud of what they do. “It starts with the idea that people are adults and that they're smart, right. And so what I mean by that is, people who have demonstrated the ability to make a commitment and follow through, I mean, that's sort of baseline 101 for adult behaviour.”In her chat with Dom, they cover some of the elements of the culture deck, A-players and how to hire them, how to hire and build teams, what the main job of a team leader or manager is, and how to exit staff from an organisation with dignity and fairness.On today’s podcast:How the Netflix culture deck ended up on SlideshareThe difference between hiring adults and hiring childrenWhy she hates the term ‘empowerment’Why you should build a team for the future, not the nowAbolish the annual performance reviewLearn how to let people goLinks:https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

How is your branding? Do you have a branding strategy in place? Who is in charge of your branding, or have you passed it to the marketing department to deal with?Marty Neumeier is in a league of his own when it comes to branding. With over 24 million views on his slide deck about branding, he is an authority on the subject.Marty is an author and a brand consultant in the area of brand design and innovation. He’s written quite a few books on branding, and in addition to his work at Liquid Agency where he does CEO branding, he also has a company called Level C, which trains people up, around the world through five levels of brand strategy. In this podcast, Marty talks about what is brand, the history of marketing, what it might mean for a CEO of a business thinking about their brand and how branding isn't marketing. How branding overlaps with customer experience, and what some stepping stones might be to create a customer tribe. As well as how to get your customers to feel something about your business, and how to use your brand to shorten your sales cycle in order to sell more things at a higher profit. “Branding is about getting more people to buy more stuff for more years at a higher price. The secret to profitability. It's a long term investment in your company… If you want your company to last, you need customer loyalty. And the really good thing about branding is that brands last longer than customers.”On today’s podcast:Why people get brand and branding so wrongHow small businesses can think about brandingB2C branding and B2B brandingWhy branding is customer experienceThe importance of naming and logosFrom customer experience to customer identity

With more people opting to work remotely, particularly in light of the current health issues surrounding Coronavirus, today’s guest couldn’t be better timed. Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a partner marketing agency that helps brands with a form of marketing also known as affiliate marketing. What sets his marketing agency apart from the competition? He built his business to be remote from day one - all 175 members of his team are based around city hubs, but all work entirely remotely.Which has led him down many interesting different avenues, not least writing a book, starting a podcast and authoring a truly fantastic and #1 newsletter on LinkedIn. “I am obsessed with people sort of living up to their ability both inside and outside of work that's become a universal thing. For me, I think one of the biggest shame is not living up to your own potential or capacity.”This is a really wide ranging conversation, covering how to work remotely (including the cultural implications), the genesis of Acceleration Partners, how (and why) he started his newsletter and what has driven his personal high performance as a business leader and entrepreneur. On today’s podcast:Acceleration Partners and affiliate marketingHow his team of 175 people work remotelyHow to recruit for remote workingThe core values that drive himThe newsletter that started as an emailWhy meetings should be held in the afternoon, not the morningLinks:The elevate podcastFriday Forward (newsletter)

“I believe that it's not just that we are masked, it's that we are addicted to them. And so what that requires is a solution that is similar to what helps addicts get free.”Michael Brody-Waite has gone from being a drug addict to a successful CEO. Not only that, he’s an author, a public speaker, and a sponsor. His TED X talk has had over 700,000 views, and although he was talking about great leaders doing what drug addicts do, the most polarising comments were about his choice of footwear. This is a guy who has learned what it truly means to be authentic. And he’s written a book about it. As he learned to take his mask off in recovery by following the 12 step programme, he realised that the process to help addicts recover is the same process that creates great leadership. If we all just take our mask off, turn up, be authentic, have difficult conversations, our businesses would run better, we’d have better places to work, we’d be better humans and our lives would be more successful and more fulfilling. “I'm not the first person to write a book on how to be a great leader, that's been done before, and I'm not the first addict to talk about their story, that's been done before. But what has never been done was taking the process that addicts use to recover, that's been working for millions of addicts over 80 years, and translate that into a leadership framework that allows anyone to truly become a great leader.”We hope you enjoy this conversation with Michael as much as we did, he truly is a great human being. On today’s podcast:What the mask free movement isWhy we are taught to hideHow Michael learned to be authenticWhy sponsors are the best leadersThe three principles of authentic leadershipWhat CEOs should be doing differentlyHow to take your mask offLinks:Book - Great Leaders Live Like Drug AddictsTED Talk

If you’re trying to deliver remarkable customer experiences that will get customers talking, then you’re trying to create Talk Triggers. And that is exactly what this episode with Jay Baer, the founder of five multimillion-dollar companies, New York Times bestselling author of 6 books, public speaker, social media marketing and customer experience guru, is about. “Word of mouth influences 50% of all purchases, and it influences 91% of B2B purchases. And for major purchases, word of mouth is the number one decision-making criteria. Yet fewer than 1% of businesses have an actual word of mouth strategy.”In this episode, Dom chats to Jay about his most recent book, Talk Triggers. A talk trigger is defined in Jay’s book as an operational choice that is designed to create conversations - something that customers will go away and tell their friends and family about. So if you’re trying to figure out your business’ talk trigger, then this episode is for you. On today’s podcast:The work that Convince and Convert doesUsing customer experience to create conversationsWhen talk triggers go wrongThe marketing power of word of mouth5 types of talk triggersLinks:Talk Triggers - Jay Baer

“We're not really evolving, the way that we work… it's no wonder that a lot of us are finding work exhausting, repetitive, wears us down.”Is your job wearing you down? Do you hate Mondays? Perhaps it’s not your work that’s the issue, but in fact the workplace culture. Before you jack it all in and start looking for gainful employment elsewhere, take a listen to Bruce Daisley.You might know Bruce Daisley from his #1 Apple business chart topping podcast Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat on work culture. Or you may know him as the former VP Europe for Twitter, having spent over a decade running Twitter and YouTube (the latter at Google) for Europe, leaving Twitter as its most senior leader outside of the US. Regardless, he is an authority on the subject of workplace culture, now spending his time championing reforms to it and finding solutions to climate change. This is Dom’s second recorded chat with Bruce (the first didn’t make it to publication) so luckily this one is all encompassing. Whether you’re the CEO or the new kid at the company, sit back and listen to this enlightening podcast episode, as Bruce talks about the things he's learned along the way to make your work culture suck less. On today’s podcast:The genesis of what made him do the podcastWhy anyone can improve their workplaceThe challenges of remote workingHow to make open plan office space work for youHow to build psychological safety with work colleaguesSilent meetingsHeadphones in the office

Today’s guest is Nic Marks, CEO and Founder of Friday, the company Nic set up to track employee happiness, in order to help businesses build a more positive, productive work culture. A statistician by trade but with a background as a therapist, Nic has a slightly weird speciality—happiness—having used it spending the last three decades creating a measure of people’s quality of life. Nic firmly believes that measuring happiness kick-starts a process which ultimately builds happiness.In just over 6 years, Nic and the team at Friday have worked with more than 9,000 teams across 1,000 organisations, measuring and improving happiness at work. Happiness is a great proxy for quickly judging how things are in a team at a moment in time—if you’re happy at work things are likely to be going well, if you’re not happy, they’re not. On today’s podcast:Why Nic measures happinessHow happiness is an indicator of how content people areThe benefits of increasing happiness among the population of the UKThe link between happiness and political affiliationWhy Friday is the best day of the week to conduct a happiness survey5 ways to increase happiness at workLinks:FridayDaniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and SlowMaslow’s hierarchy of needs

By day, this week’s guest on The Melting Pot, Jamal Reimer, works for Oracle as an enterprise SaaS rep, helping pharma R&D squeeze every drop of value from their clinical data. By night (and at weekends), he coaches the CEOs of late stage startups land mega deals that will change the course of their business’s growth. It’s not Jamal’s work at Oracle that Dom talks to him about today - although they touch on it briefly as it explains why he’s so well placed to coach CEOs: “I'm an intentional individual contributor. I've been selling for almost 20 years, and I've made the choice that I love what I do. I love being in the field, in the foxhole, doing the work with the customer through hard times and great times. And it's never appealed to me to go into management ... but I certainly work with executives on both sides, at the table every day.”It’s what he does in his spare time that Dom discusses. Because in his spare time Jamal coaches CEOs and individual sellers, helping them change their mindset and put in place a structure in their organisations which allows their businesses to land their first mega deal - the deals that will change the trajectory of their business's growth. So if you’re a CEO wondering how to get away from the run rate and make mega deals that will transform the growth of your organisation, then this conversation is definitely one you want to listen to.On today’s podcast:Why Jamal made the choice to stay in salesThe steps to conducting mega dealsHow to use CEOs to hunt dealsWhy Jamal teaches how to shift your mindset on his courseWhy you should chase mega deals (as well as small and medium deals too)Jamal’s thoughts on close rates

Do you know how to use LinkedIn? As in really know how to use LinkedIn? As in to generate leads, make sales, connect with meaningful prospects and make decent money from the platform? Because if LinkedIn is a platform you want to be leveraging, or you’re trying to leverage, then listen to this week’s episode of The Melting Pot with John Nemo, author and marketing coach, for some amazing advice and top tips. John helps business coaches, business owners, small business owners and consultants use platforms like LinkedIn to find and engage and win new business online. He will show you how to leverage LinkedIn to find and engage your ideal prospects, along with how to use content as currency to "purchase" the time, attention and interest of your target audience. In fact, John was an inspiration behind Dom’s transition from the corporate world to becoming a solopreneur, so it’s quite poetic to have him on the podcast, sharing his secret sauce. And what is John’s secret sauce?“The book I launched my business on was called ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie, written in 1936. I built my whole business around that book. I built my whole business around this one line, which is: ‘your ideal prospects don't care about you, they care about themselves, morning, noon, and after supper, so make it all about them’.”So if you want to find and attract the type of prospects who will be a real fit for your brand, then keep on listening - this is a great conversation, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:You’ve got to have a story and be memorable if you hope to succeed How to leverage LinkedInUsing content marketing to get big winsHow to deal with failureSuccess is 98% mindset and 2% talentBe unique when connecting with prospects

What do you do when the banks foreclose on your $6.5m loans, just as you’re trying to scale your business? And then you endure a very public bankruptcy as the bank wants to show that no one is untouchable? For some people that might be the end of them, for Andy Buyting it was the beginning. “It feels like I died. And the whole town is showing up for the reading of the will to see what they can get out of it.”Andy is founder and CEO of Tulip Media, a very successful business combining digital and print media. This idea sprang from the ashes of his former business, Green Village Home and Garden - a home and garden shop in Canada. Like many people and businesses, Andy was hit hard by the global financial crisis of 2007, but he didn’t let it drag him down. Today, alongside running Tulip Media, Andy is also a certified Scale Up coach, sharing over 20 years of sales, marketing, operations, business development and entrepreneurship experience with his clients as he travels across the US and Canada, talking to entrepreneurs about how they can own the ink in their industry. “My track record speaks for itself. Over 57% of the “for-profit” organisations that I have coached over the past 10 years have gone on to sell for 2x+ industry multiple and often 5-10x founders expectations.”This is a hugely insightful and honest conversation; we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:The rise and fall of Green Village Home and GardenDealing with a very public bankruptcyWhy he became a Scale Up coachHow he got into the publishing businessHow Tulip Media can help your businessWhy you need to create content for both digital and print platforms The importance of performance reviews for employees

If you’re looking to sell your business, then you will be wanting to get the most out of what is effectively the sale of your life’s worth. But how do you do that? You’ll probably need to draw on the expertise of financial advisors, and today’s guest, Daniel Havercroft is MD of Oakley Advisory, one of Europe’s leading independent corporate finance firms.Daniel is focused mainly on origination and execution of M&A and fundraising mandates, and has considerable experience helping companies that operate in hosting, colocation and digital media/online sub-sectors. Having completed over 20 transactions in his time with Oakley, helping shareholders sell businesses, companies acquire competitors and private equity investing in new opportunities, Daniel is incredibly well-placed to talk all things selling a business.When it comes to selling your business you want to drive your company’s valuation, and be able to look at your business from the eyes of the potential purchaser rather than through the eyes of the people running the business. Because in order to extract maximum value from the sale, you will probably need to change some aspects of your business. And Daniel shares with us what those changes should be.This is a fantastic conversation with Daniel, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. On today’s podcast:The benefits of being a sector specialist advisorWhen an entrepreneur should bring in an advisory firm in the sell cycleThe KPIs you should be looking at prior to selling your companyThe impact of the management team on valuationGlobal trends and hot topics for 2020What to consider when appointing an advisor

Shannon Byrne Susko isn’t just a CEO, she’s a serial entrepreneur, business coach, keynote speaker and the reluctant author of two best selling books. Recognised and named as one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 in 2000, Shannon co-founded, served as CEO and led the sale of two SaaS companies in less than 6 years, before turning her hand to business coaching in 2011.That’s quite an achievement for someone who comes from, what she describes as, a pretty traditional household where dad worked, mom stayed at home and she was expected to go to university and then get married. “You know, I was like, that's not happening, I have things to do. I didn't know I was going to do these things. But I definitely knew like, no, I don't think so.”Looking back she realises that: “I didn't have a problem being a woman CEO. The problem is the old school thinking about women being CEOs. I didn't even think about it... tech was probably the most accepting industry of a woman CEO at that time, because we're all a bunch of geeks and geeks accept geeks, they didn't care.”In this hugely insightful episode, Shannon tells the incredible story of her rise to the top. Of her time as CEO, how she grew and sold two businesses in less than 6 years, of how she got Verne Harnish to help her get her company to a good place. As well as why she needed a mentor when she was running the show, why she’s transitioned into a business, leadership and CEO coach and more importantly, why she wrote two bestselling books that she never wanted to write. On today’s podcast:How her entrepreneurial journey began by simply wanting to solve a problemWhy she became CEOHow she got Verne Harnish to help her The less than traditional business things she did during her time at the helm3 HAGHow she ended up coachingThe inspiration for her two booksLinks:Verne Harnish - ScaleUp Summit3 HAG way