Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

Purpose-driven companies who are focused on doing the right thing. Words like ‘fair trade,’ ‘eco-friendly,’ and ‘triple-bottom-line’ are commonly associated with these companies, but does it all really matter to a scaling-up business? Today’s show dives into the difference a purpose-centered business can really make! Elizabeth Crook was a Scaling Up coach for 15 years and is currently a 3HAG Certified Coach. As an executive entrepreneur, Elizabeth is the Founder of Orchard Advisors and the author of Live Large: The Achiever’s Guide to What’s Next. It used to be true that businesses could focus on one thing and one thing only — profit, but today’s world is much different and there are a lot more options to consider. If you’re looking at just your profit margins without considering the ‘externalities,’ then your company will eventually suffer financially. When it comes to creating purpose-driven companies, it all started for Elizabeth when she was living in Venezuela in the ’70s and ’80s. When she moved back to the U.S., she found other entrepreneurs mimicking the same thing — incorporating social justice work with their profits. Fast forward to today, driving purpose and sustainability in your company is a hot topic that piques the interest of both magazines and investors. More and more businesses are thinking about how to make their workplace or products more accessible for those who have limitations or disabilities. They’re asking questions on how they can better educate their workforce — especially those with felonies — so that they can get back to work and become productive members of society. All of this thinking boosts the economy. Companies are solving business problems as well as social problems. Interview Links: Orchardadvisors.com Elizabethbcrook.com Live Large: The Achiever’s Guide to What’s Next Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

We intellectually understand the value of failure, but so few of us actually want to experience it. How can we embrace failure with less of the sting? Is it even possible? How can we freely experiment and try new things, whether it works or not, so that we can achieve growth in our industry? Brian Scudamore is the Founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? He is a serial entrepreneur and a high-school dropout. Brian is also the author of his newest book, WTF?! (Willing to Fail): How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success. As an over-achieving failure, Brian has learned a thing or two about picking himself up and dusting himself off. As Brian and his co-author Roy H. Williams were wrapping up the book, a theme kept popping up over and over again; it was ‘failure.’ Failing repeatedly was what led to Brian’s bigger successes in life. These failings were actually big, big blessings in disguise for Brian. For example, five years into the 1-800 business, Brian found himself hating his work and knowing he didn’t hire the right people. So, he fired them all and built everything up from scratch again. These were big and very tough lessons Brian learned early on in his career. Today, he’d rather take the time to find the right people than hiring ‘bodies’ to fill seats. Interview Links: www.o2ebrands.com 1-800 Got Junk Website Brian on LinkedIn Scaling Up Podcast Episode 012 with Brian Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

In today’s day and age, being digital is a big buzzword. It’s true, there is an importance to being digital, but there is also a technology fallacy. The people behind the tech are really the ones that can make and break the technology. So, how can you create a happy blend of technology, people, and scaling up? Gerald (Jerry) C. Kane, Ph.D., is a Professor of Information Systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. He is also the author of The Technology Fallacy: How People are the Real Key to Digital Transformation, where he surveyed over 20,000 executives worldwide and interviewed over 100 executives and thought leaders to determine the key factors associated with digitally mature companies. There is a mistaken belief that a lot of the problems companies are coming across in this modern age are due to a fast-paced technology environment. Often, companies fight this problem with more technological solutions, but the reality is, quality people are the real solution behind this. In the five years of researching The Technology Fallacy, Jerry spoke to countless of leaders in cutting-edge companies like Facebook and Google, some at traditional companies like Walmart and John Hancock, and some at small startups, to get a good range of data. When interviewing the Chief Human Relations Officer at Walmart, she shared that leadership realized they probably would be out of business in 10 years if they didn’t adapt to new changes. When a giant like Walmart realizes they need to adapt or sink in this environment, every company should pay attention. In Jerry’s survey, 90% of employees came back to him saying that they felt they had to update their skill set at least yearly to keep up with the demands of their job, but yet less than half of them said their organization was able to provide these resources. Employees were also 15X more likely to leave their organization within a year if they weren’t getting additional resources to improve their skill sets. This causes a big problem for companies looking to expand and adapt to the marketplace. Keeping and educating talented team members that could grow into new environments was the key to success for companies; not the implementation of new technology. Interview Links: Jerry Kane at Boston College Jerry on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

The lack of concentration, focus, and expressing empathy or compassion are just some of the things leaders struggle with. How can we get better at this and use it during the tough and stressful times? Dandapani is a Hindu priest, international speaker, and entrepreneur. For 10 years, Dandapani lived a life of personal discipline and training at his guru, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami’s, cloistered monastery in Hawaii. When Dandapani graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, he decided to move to Hawaii to become a monk instead. What Dandapani has learned over the last few decades is to keep life simple. Find out what your core purpose is and use a few select tools to help you get there. Simplify, simplify, simplify! Many people struggle with focus and have a hard time picking one set of priorities for the quarter, or even for the day. The reason people struggle with this is that we haven’t been taught how to concentrate. Have you ever had formal classes on how to do it? In order to get focused, Dandapani believes it’s first important to understand how the mind works; then you can learn how to harness it, and then you can direct it, which is where learning how to concentrate begins. Interview Links: Dandapani.org Sivaashram.org Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

A board of advisors or even a peer group is incredibly valuable because it gives you some perspective. This episode is all about how you can get access to seeing yourself from the outside and becoming more self-aware. Paul Witkay is the Founder & CEO of the Alliance of Chief Executives, which he founded in 1996. Paul designed Alliance to bring CEOs together to help them learn faster, make better decisions, and move forward with more confidence. The seed was planted in Paul’s head five years prior to starting the Alliance of CEOs. At the time, he was an executive for Air Liquide and the chairman wanted to make more money in the U.S. Paul was named Head of Strategy and was the first person to be appointed in this position. He was in charge of restructuring the company and its profit margins. Shortly after, Paul was asked to join a group of CEOs in the healthcare industry and it was a no-brainer for him to join. Everything that he knows today was because of people and their knowledge. When he attended the meetup, he fell in love. He was in a room of people that were smarter than him and they were thinking at a higher level. From there, he quit his job five years later to start the Alliance of CEOs. He would meet with CEOs one at a time and slowly built contacts that were outside of the healthcare industry. From the start, Paul always knew the importance of having diversity to spark new ideas from the outside. Interview Links: Allianceofceos.com Paul on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

The act of giving a truly meaningful gift to show the significance and importance of your relationship with others can be a tricky balance. What does gifting done right look like? Today’s returning guest is back with some wisdom on how to show appreciation and love through gifting. John Ruhlin is the Founder of the Ruhlin Group, where he helps companies develop VIP gifting programs. He is also the author of Giftology. He is an expert on the topic of meaningful gift giving. What do you give someone who has everything? How can you give a gift that makes a real difference in someone’s life? It all started when John met a very generous man. He’d often buy half of the raffle tickets at school auctions, win, and then donate it all back because he loved making people smile. John says that, still, the biggest gift that works well is gifting knives. Why? Because it’s difficult to gift an item that successful people can already buy. However, if you can take care of their inner circle; like their spouse, the kids, pets, and the family, that’s when you make the biggest impact. John likes to gift custom inscribed knives to each family member that by the time dinner rolls around, everyone is fighting over knives! People are still humans at the end of the day and being able to connect one and one with them is what makes a big difference in the quality of a relationship. Interview Links: Ruhlingroup.com Johnruhlin.com Giftologybook.com John Ruhlin — The Strategic Way to Use Gifting Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

What has your team learned lately about growing and scaling a business? What have they learned outside of your industry? A team that is continuously learning and improving is important if you’re scaling. Today’s show shares a preview of some of the topics that were discussed at the Scaling Up Summit to help you become a better leader and entrepreneur! The whole idea behind these summits is to develop yourself. Verne notes that Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Mark Cuban are all voracious readers; they’re constantly trying to better themselves. As a Mckinsey report notes, the competitive weapon used to be cheap labor, but now it is smart talent. The challenge is, there are 11,000 business books released per year and it’s become a job, almost, to curate what’s good and what’s not. This is why Verne and his team formed the Scaling Up summit where twice a year you can go and consume 12+ books worth of knowledge in 48 hours. Who will be speaking at the summit this May 21-22 in Atlanta, Ga? Verne is excited to announce Henry McGovern, who scaled from opening the first pizza shop in Poland to 48,000 thousand employees. Steve Martin will also be there, he is Robert Cialdini’s partner and is a master at understanding influence and persuasion. The summit will also have Denise Lee Yohn, who is a brand expert and knows how to elevate your brand and have your culture be aligned with the brand. Susan Packard will be speaking at the summit, she is the Founder of HGTV and will be there to discuss actionable ways to include EQ in the workplace. There’s also a ton of fun incorporated into these events as well. There will be a red carpet event along with some great live bands performing plus some insightful Q&A sessions with the speakers. And on May 23rd, there will also be a user conference for those who would like to take the strategies they’ve learned days prior and apply them with a more hands-on approach. Interview Links: Henry McGovern Steve Martin Denise Lee Yohn Susan Packard Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

How do we grow and scale, build process and systems, while also maintaining wonder, serendipity, and innovation at the same time? Is it even possible or does one have to sacrifice the other? Today’s guest shares some light on this very topic. Edward Tenner is a writer, a speaker, as well as a Distinguished Scholar in the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. His latest book, The Efficiency Paradox, dives into the sharing economy, life hacks, our efficient culture, and how to benefit from serendipity. One of the lessons Edward learned about efficiency was in the 1980s when he saw that there were more and more computers being installed and more and more paper being thrown in the recycle bin. The Efficiency Paradox gives a look into new technology that has emerged with mobile computing, artificial intelligence, big data, and the cloud. It takes a look at both the productive use of it as well as some of its underlying problems. Artificial Intelligence recognizes patterns and thus helps us become more efficient. This information is perfect to determine what items are in your inventory and which customers have been the most profitable. However, with prediction, there are also weaknesses in these algorithms. One of these weaknesses being that AI algorithms detect changing patterns and so you can’t count on your recent experience to be a complete guide on what to do next if you don’t also supplement it with imagination and serendipity, as well as making controlled mistakes. Another problem with AI is that it’s not very good at achieving diversity, especially among different gender and ethnic groups. Edward personally sees these errors as a systematic issue of a much more fundamental problem. By keeping within our respective lanes, we are less likely to venture out and bring in diversity, bring in new ideas, and bring in thoughts that might challenge the status quo. Interview Links: Edwardtenner.com The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do, by Edward Tenner Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

Did you know that 83% of small businesses around the world are not profitable? Business owners are living month-to-month and are desperately struggling. Today’s episode dives into how to never live paycheck-to-paycheck again. Mike Michalowicz is the author of several books including The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, Surge, and Profit First. He is also the Owner of Profit First Professionals, his third million-dollar venture. Why did Mike decide to write Profit First? Mike had grown his companies to multi-million dollar businesses but was not profitable at all. He had refinanced his house multiple times and was not making ends meet. He thought if he could run the business long enough, they’d eventually hit their ‘big break’ and become profitable. After selling his businesses, he decided to become an angel investor with this mindset and — guess what — the 10 businesses he invested in all tanked. Within two years, he lost every penny that he had ever made. After he told his family that he had failed them, he went through two years of ‘functional’ depression. It was not a proud moment in his life. Through this journey, he was able to ask himself some hard questions and those hard questions lend to a lightbulb moment. How can I make my businesses profitable, always? Keep in mind, it’s also a lifestyle problem for many entrepreneurs as well. As they’re trying to live a good life and create a profitable company, in the back of their mind they’re worried about whether or not they can afford their car or their home tomorrow. The amount of stress this puts on someone makes it very hard to see the bigger picture. Mike’s accountant was trying to help him by showing him the real numbers, by showing him the metrics, and Mike would brush him off and not listen to his advice. If Mike saw he had money in the bank, then he had money in the bank! But it isn’t always so simple. Mike knew that he had to change somehow, but changing your behavior right off the bat is a very difficult thing to do. So, what he did was he decided to put a percentage of his money into a ‘profit’ bank account and run his business on the remaining cash. By making this simple shift, he was able to see things from a bigger perspective and he was forced to reverse engineer his business so it would survive on the remaining cash no matter what. Interview Links: Profit First Book mikemichalowicz.com: For access to Mike’s Wallstreet journal articles, book excerpts, and entrepreneurial tips. Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

We see CEOs and leaders make a lot of the same mistakes and today’s show highlights a frequent mistake that occurs: inattention to results and cash. This is episode has two high-level coaches to chime in on the subject! Ethan Martin is the Founder & President of PFD Group, Inc. and a Rockefeller Habits Certified Coach. Ethan has a passion for helping mission-driven CEOs build their companies. Prior to this, he has always been a serial entrepreneur and was an EO member for seven years. Dale Meador is the Founder of Finanza Coach and has been a Rockefeller Habits Certified Coach for the last two years. Prior to this, he ran his own CPA firm and helped his clients implement systems of strategic planning and financial controls into their business. Today’s subject is about the inattention to results and cash. As in, not having dashboards or having too many metrics, or not paying attention to the data that’s in front of you! We also dive into some of the common struggles people are faced with when trying to implement the Scaling Up framework. Ethan shares an example of a CEO that was pursuing different business strategies for his distribution company and didn’t have a clear purpose on cash flow or profitability by customer. Ethan and his team came in and used the Scaling Up framework to help guide this CEO into understanding his strategy and what the main priority should be. Dale believes one of the things that’s critical for when a team comes together is to really get a clear definition of what is ‘winning’ for them. Dale shares an example of how there was a disconnect between leadership and the owner on what a successful, thriving company looked like, and thus, why it was hard for them to retain a positive cash flow. In some teams, the financial team might guard their financial numbers so close to the vest that the rest of the leadership team end up being blind or unaware of how successful or unsuccessful the numbers are. And for good reason too, sometimes when it is revealed how much money the company is making, everyone wants raises even though it is simply not feasible. In cases like these, Ethan recommends the leadership team have a clear dashboard where anyone can look up the numbers and the health of the company within a matter of 15 minutes. For things like this, it’s important to get the core numbers right so that the entire team can take the correct steps to ensure the company has a positive cash flow. Interview Links: Pfd-group.com Finanzacoach.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube TWEETABLES: “What got you to this stage of growth won’t get you to the next stage of growth.” “If there’s not clarity on that one thing, that one number, especially financial, it really holds the team back.” “Make sure the leadership team has a very simple and clear dashboard on these critical things like cash that anyone can look at in a matter of 15 minutes.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

With a breakthrough strategy, you can actually out-think your competition and do something bold – but how do you get there? Today’s show dives into a repeatable process you can implement in your company and culture to naturally create those “aha” moments. Kaihan Krippendorff is the founder of Outthinker, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, and has written four books on business, strategy, growth, and transformation. Kaihan is committed to helping organizations and individuals thrive in today’s era of fast-paced disruptive technology change. Kaihan has always been fascinated by strategy. When you think about it, good strategy comes down to being a disruptor. How can a group of people come together and create a strategy that will disrupt, rather than be disrupted? How does someone create ‘The Fourth Option,’ as Kaihan likes to call it? There are always great ideas that pop up within a company, but for some reason or another, they do not get pursued. Most of these reasons were not based in fact or strategy, or even in analysis. Great ideas were getting shot down through naysaying from someone on the team or even from the founder. To be a disruptor, it means you hold a belief that is inconsistent with the way business is run in your industry. If you’ve been in your industry long enough, you start developing these rules and beliefs of what will and won’t work. And, people will always choose to hold onto their beliefs, even if it’s to the detriment of the company. This is where the fourth option comes into play. It is really a metaphor and it means that there’s a point in the process where people stop looking for options. What a disruptor does is recognize that their competition has stopped looking — stopped thinking — and looks for a fourth option that will surprise people. Kaihan lays out a simple process on the show to help you easily pinpoint and discover what that fourth option is. Interview Links: Kaihan.net Outthinker.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Register now for our next workshop on Scaling Up! Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Check out this episode!Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Industries are being disrupted again and again with disruptors like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and more. You might want to be a disruptor yourself, or maybe even learn how to better manage disruptors and work alongside them. What frameworks can you apply to be more of a disruptor? Today’s guest has some answers! Mike Maddock is the Founder of an internationally-recognized innovation consultancy firm, Maddock Douglas. The firm helps corporations invent and launch new products, services, and business models. Mike loves to solve problems with disruptive ideas and has launched more than six successful companies. Mike is out with a new book, Plan D, which dives into what disruptors have in common. Time and time again, Mike noticed that so many entrepreneurs just seem to be lucky people. In chapter five, Mike explores this concept a bit more and it appears the secret to their success is that they have an abundant mindset. So, how do you manufacture an abundant mindset? After interviewing dozens of people for the book, some entrepreneurs sit down every day and write a list of everything they’re grateful for, others have an achieving exercise where they email their close friends a list of tasks they’d like to achieve for the week and check in with each other at the end of the week. By seeing the progress they’ve all made together, it creates gratefulness. Experiencing little moments of gratefulness is what these disruptions are using, often unconsciously, to propel themselves into unknown and scary territory. It’s physically impossible to be afraid and be grateful at the same time, and by working with an abundance mindset, these disruptors are always looking for opportunity in the chaos. Interview Links: Mike-maddock.com Mike on LinkedIn Scaling Up Business Podcast Episode 81 with Mike Maddock Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube TWEETABLES: “Entrepreneurs seem to be able to manufacture serendipity, which is to say, they’re lucky again and again.” “It’s physically impossible for you to feel afraid and grateful at the same time.” “I’ve never met an incredibly successful person who is not either chasing a ghost or being chased by one. The question is who’s got who.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

When scaling up a company, finding the right people is the hardest part. We love to work with people based on their strengths, and find ways to align this with the overall company culture. Today’s show focuses on the deep work necessary to develop a thriving values-based business. Brandon Miller is the co-founder and CEO of 34 Strong, an employee engagement firm that helps build great workplaces. Brandon and his team leverage the Gallup StrengthsFinder tool to help identify and maximize employee strengths. Brandon’s ultimate career choice as a young child was to become a teacher and a football coach. However, that changed at 22 years-old and he became a young pastor instead. He served 2,500 congregants at his church and was in an executive role, where he managed 28 staff members. He wanted to improve his workforce by building a strengths-based culture around it. When it comes to values, it’s important for leaders to be clear on what the core values for their organization are. Studies show that people have retention for no more than four values in their lives. Therefore, looking at a list of values and picking off all the ones you like might seem great in theory, but it rarely pans out in practice. People need to know what each value means and how it can be carried out in the team. Cultures are built, and they cannot be bought. Culture, at its core, starts with leadership. It has to be something where the leader can be an example. In order to create a successful culture, it has to pass the ‘Three M Test’. You’ve got to be able to Message it, it’s got to be a Model, and it has to be Mirrored back to you. Interview Links: 34strong.com Brandon on LinkedIn Gallupstrengthscenter.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Today’s episode addresses two different areas in the world of cash as well as a novel and innovative business. We’ll be taking a dive into the employee/employer relationship and the stresses that lead to lead employee discomfort around the topic of cash. Safwan Shah is the Founder and Ceo of PayActiv, an employer-sponsored financial wellness platform. With a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering, Safwan has a unique perspective about the finance industry. His company serves millions of employees worldwide and settles over $1B in timely EWA funds annually. Safwan is originally from Pakistan and has been in Silicon Valley since the mid-90s, where he stumbled into becoming an entrepreneur. As an engineer, Safwan has had the opportunity to work in several NASA centers throughout his career. PayActiv started after Safwan noticed a pattern among employers and employees. People work every day, yet they get paid after every two weeks, or after a month. Is there a reason why employees are giving a time loan to their employer? Yet, if you own a store or shop, you pay your vendors and even your landlord in advance, and your customers pay you almost immediately. For employers, cash flow is often an issue. At a large company, around 50-70% of payroll consists of hourly workers. Before an employer can get up one morning and decide to pay their workers instantly, there is definitely some logistical challenges they must first think through. What happens when an employee wants early pay or even an early bonus? Employers often get annoyed by these requests because of how time-consuming it is to fulfill. PayActiv helps employers eliminate these painful logistical challenges by creating a seamless way employees can ask for their pay (and receive it) without bothering anyone. Interview Links: PayActiv.com Safwan on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

This is a very special episode, because our guest is sailing around Antarctica. And, because of where our guest is, the interview was conducted via satellite phone. What has taken place is an incredible and historic journey that we can't wait for you to be a part of. Randall Reeves is about to undertake two treacherous routes. The goal is to navigate both the American and Antarctic continents in one season. The Figure 8 Voyage will go through a circuit of the Southern Ocean and a transit of the Northwest Passage (forming a figure 8). No one has ever done this before! Randall has been alone at sea for 125 days, thus far. He's passing Tasmania, Australia and plans to be near New Zealand in about a week. Average wind speeds are around 25-35 miles per hour. He averages around 145 miles a day. Today is a nice day, but it isn't always like that! On the boat, Randall does not have any luxuries like pressured or hot water. He doesn't have heat, a microwave, or even a coffee maker. His journey is bare-bones. He sleeps in a sleeping bag at night and has 6 pairs of socks that he circles through. He is unable to wash them, because it gets so cold on the boat that they would never dry. This is Randall's second attempt. The last time he tried it, he experienced a lot of hardship and unexpected problems. He lost both of his self-steering systems in the course of a week and it set him back a couple of extra weeks. When he was near Madagascar, he got caught in a huge storm. It was 20-foot sea waves coming and crashing down all around him. Water ended up getting on his equipment and everything was dead. By that time, he was approaching winter and he had to stop. Randall has been planning for this project since 2013. It took him a couple of years of trial and error to find the right boat type that could navigate the waters. To get a taste of the Arctic, he also joined a boat crew to become familiar with the environment. Even now, with his journey underway, there's a high risk that the project might fail simply because the Arctic Northwest Passage might not open this year. Last summer only one boat with a crew of 35 was able to get through. But, he remains optimistic. Interview Links: Figure8voyage.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Register now for our next workshop on Scaling Up! And hurry to get one of the limited $100 discounts for loyal podcast listeners (while supplies last). https://scalingcoach.com/scaling-business-growth-workshop/ Enter code “SUP” for scaling up podcast during checkout. We’ll see you there! Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Check out this episode! Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

Ron Lovett is an author, entrepreneur, and a leader with a passion for change. He is the Founder of Connolly Owens, where he and his team build companies with a purpose. They teach companies how to create accountability so that their entire team is focused on the same company goals. Are you looking to get more engagement from your team and from your front-line staff? And, do we really need that much middle management support? Today’s show is all about developing a more agile and less ‘managed’ team that’s also engaged, happy, and empowered! Ron struggled throughout high school, but he was always finding ways to make a buck and hustle. At one point, he had three jobs and was selling marijuana on the side. He decided to go backpacking and when he came back he started his security business. Within four years of starting his business, he had 350 staff members doing security for an 85,000 person Rolling Stones concert. The security industry hasn’t changed much in terms of innovation, but after Ron hired his first Gazelle’s coach, it really turned around his company and sparked him to take some risks. Ron actually didn’t believe in the whole ‘culture’ thing. After reading the book, Nuts!: Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, by Kevin Freiberg, skeptical, he asked a Southwest employee one day if he liked his job. The employee said, “This is the best … company to work for on the planet.” It blew Ron away. He realized he had a lot of work to do to bring his company to the same standards. Ron decided to take some interesting HR practices to help get his front-line staff more aligned and empowered. However, Ron ran into another challenge: his corporate staff loved the company and their culture, but they hated their jobs (specifically, their tasks). So he found ways to outsource the tasks they hated to their front-line staff (who loved the extra work). It was messy at first, but eventually it ended up increasing everyone’s happiness levels. Interview Links: Connollyowens.com Ron on LinkedIn Resources: ScalingUpforBusinessGrowthWorkshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Register now for our next workshop on Scaling Up! And hurry to get one of the limited $100 discounts for loyal podcast listeners (while supplies last). https://scalingcoach.com/scaling-business-growth-workshop/ Enter code “SUP” for scaling up podcast during checkout. We’ll see you there! ScalingUpSummits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. ScalingUp is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Wendy Lieber is the Founder of ContentBacon, an inbound marketing service that helps clients tell their stories through digital content. Wendy approached Bill because she’s ready to scale her business by 10X. The company was founded in 2014 and it’s ready to make the next big jump. What strategies come to mind that would allow for Wendy to scale her business 10X? Wendy and her team have been focused on building their infrastructure and are in the process of customizing it to fit their needs. They are looking into automating some of their processes so that they can better leverage their team. The biggest challenge right now in this strategy is performance — the ability to deliver the agreed-upon work without the use of additional staff. Wendy has seen a growth of, on average, 40 percent a year and has had some huge wins from the marketing point of view. Wendy currently has 10 full-time employees and a pool of 30 freelancers/contractors. Wendy realizes that the team that got them to where they are today isn’t going to get them to their next BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). So, Wendy has had to invest more in her team. Bill recommends Wendy use a Scaling Up coach to help her detect blind spots that she’s not aware of. So far, Wendy has done a really good job structuring her company for successful 10X growth, but having someone hold your hand through the process can make a world of difference. Interview Links: Contentbacon.com Wendy on LinkedIn Aligntoday.com Metronomegrowthsystems.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube

Good storytelling is essential to both great leadership and great marketing. At the core of telling great stories, is the ability to be real and to go beyond the superficial level. You can accomplish this by having the courage to be vulnerable. Corey Blake is the Founder and CEO of Round Table Companies (RTC) and is also the publisher of Conscious Capitalism Press. Some of RTC’s clients include Microsoft, First United Bank, and Marketo. Corey has spent over 12 years helping business leaders use storytelling to transform themselves and their organizations. When Corey’s mother was diagnosed with depression and had also exhibited traits of bipolar disorder, Corey began to learn really quickly how to read a room and develop survival tactics to reduce the number of outbursts and to make his mother laugh. It was through this experience that he discovered (although unconsciously at the time) he liked being a performer and went to school for acting. After Corey got married, he decided to make a transition from acting to something a little more consistent, so he started his own company! Before RTC, Corey created two other storytelling companies for the film industry. He learned a lot of valuable lessons and did a lot right but in the end, he made some huge mistakes he could not recover from. As Corey worked with his clients at RTC, he and his team saw the kind of impact they were able to have on their clients when the client felt safe enough to be vulnerable in their story. They would often share things they hadn’t even told their spouses or, it was the first time they even expressed these vulnerabilities out loud to themselves. Flipping the script, when Corey was able to become vulnerable with his team (and vice versa) about trying to avoid making the same mistakes he made at his prior two companies, a deep and profound trust was developed. By having the courage to express vulnerability in the workforce, the team was able to grow in a meaningful way and had each other’s backs. Interview Links: Roundtablecompanies.com Consciouscapitalism.org Corey on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Today’s show is about hacking happiness, fulfillment, and connection for both yourself and your team. Our special guest has generated terrific business results by digging deep into something so simple, but complex: happiness. Mike Simonsen is the Co-founder and CEO of Altos Research, a company that analyzes real estate markets in real-time. Mike is also a Board Member for the San Francisco chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. In 2001, Mike bought his own house in Silicon Valley. It was overpriced, the mortgage was ridiculous, and the NASDAQ was going crazy. Mike started building models based on the data he had about the U.S. real estate market to better help him understand what was going on. Realizing he had collected more data about this industry than even the financial institutions, he started his company in 2006 to help anyone with an interest in real estate. What exactly does it mean to ‘hack’ happiness? Mike noticed himself getting into a funk. He was feeling uninspired and just getting lazy in his business, and he wanted to get out of it… he wanted to feel inspired again. During his research, he discovered nine pillars that would help him feel connected and happy again. He tried it on himself and discovered something amazing — he had a really good year in 2018, both professionally and personally. In fact, It wasn’t just a ‘good’ year, it was actually the best year he’s ever had. What did he do? Well, first, he changed the way he tackles stress. Typically, when Mike gets stressed, he starts to avoid things. So when Mike noticed he was getting stressed, he decided to meditate, which immediately drops cortisol (stress) levels. After three months of meditation, there were positive changes in his physical tests. Second, he stopped putting goals down because he would routinely never complete them. Instead, he put measurements in place so he could track his progress and he also set a schedule for himself so he made sure he’d do that thing. This took an enormous amount of pressure off of him. Third, Mike wanted to boost up his serotonin and oxytocin (joy/happiness) levels, because it’s much more sustainable than dopamine (reward). He did this by recording his moments of joy. This gave him the opportunity to remember all the positives that have happened in his day. He would also journal his negative emotions down because it gave all this pent up energy an ‘out.’ Interview Links: http://bit.ly/hacking-happiness-mike-simonsen Altos Research Mike on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

The secret to successfully scaling up is to focus on a few things, but be different, be unique, in your industry. So, how can you stand out from the crowd and be different? Today’s show is a rerun all the way back to Episode 1 and it dives into your unique talents and how you can discover what you bring to the table. Robert (Bob) Bloom is the authority on customer-centric growth. He is the author of The Inside Advantage and The New Experts. Bob was the U.S. Chairman and CEO of Publicis Worldwide. He got his start as an entrepreneur, took his company national, and then sold it. Bob has developed strategies for companies like BMW, L’Oreal, Nestlé, and even helped to launch Southwest Airlines, T-Mobile, Juicy Juice, and many others. In today’s episode, Bob and I talk about strategy and finding your own inside advantage. There is a secret that so many business leaders are missing. Most people start with a strategy, but it is one that is in their minds and may not be contemporary at the moment. Secondly, the most important thing that a strategy has to have is consensus internally with all of your staff, whether you have three people or hundreds. If everybody doesn’t agree that you are going in the right direction, it doesn’t matter because you will never get there. The other thing that is absolutely critical is differentiation. In this day and time, if you don’t differentiate your brand, your company, or your services, you will not make it. The competition out there is mushy; everybody is doing the same thing. There are four steps in the Growth Discovery Process Who is your core customer? You must start with the first element. Customers are human beings; you can't talk to a statistic. You must talk to this human being and understand his/her company or personal needs from that standpoint. When you do that, you understand your ‘Who.’ Get inside that person’s head and heart. Look at your customer as if that person was right in the room with you. What does your core customer want, need and desire? You want to look inside your business. What does your core customer want, need, and desire? You have a WHO and WHAT. What do you do inside your business? What is the uncommon offering that your business will own and leverage? ‘How’ is the persuasive strategy that will convince your core customer to buy your uncommon offering versus all competitive offerings. You need to persuade or convince your customer that you are really going to do what you say you are going to do. You need to develop an approach to convince your customer to buy from you and not your competitor. ‘Own it!’ is the series of imaginative acts that will celebrate your uncommon offering and make it well known to your core customer. You want your brand or company to stand for it! You have to own what you say you are going to own. OWN YOUR WHAT! It has to be yours and yours alone in 15 words or less. Simple — Consistent, Committed and Clear! Check out the podcast to find out more in-depth about how Bob took these strategies into the big businesses mentioned in the introduction. Interview Links: Bobbloom.biz Robert on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

As we transition from the end of the year to the new year, we might imagine what’s next in our future and what kind of goals we should aspire to do. Verne Harnish joins us today to guide us through the goal-setting process! As Verne is coming up to his 60th birthday, he is faced with the ‘what next?’ question. He attended a Tony Robbin’s seminar to help unblock himself from… himself! As Bill says, you’re never truly finished, so it’s important to continually grow and develop yourself until you die. We want to be informed of the past, learn from it, make our peace from it, and then get ready to move on. As Verne sits and imagines the future, he has some changes of thought on the goal-setting process. We have some real cultural barriers when it comes to our accomplishments. Every day, Verne is more and more convinced that you’re a danger to yourself if you think you can have three-year objectives. The whole idea of even knowing where you’ll be in 3, 5, or 10 years is very limiting. This doesn’t mean Verne is against making your BHAG for the next 20 years, and taking steps for you to get there, but it just means that everything in between before you get there is a big guess at best, and it’s okay to learn and grow from that. Interview Links: Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, by Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube TWEETABLES: “The greatest lesson of history is we fail to learn from history.” “The biggest constraint is between our ears.” “You’re either winning or you’re learning.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they too can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

As we head into the holiday season, we start to make New Year’s resolutions, and they often don’t get completed! How can we avoid that? Today, we’ll be sharing an older podcast episode that will help you paint a picture for your life and for your future… so that you can actually get your goals finished! Brian Scudamore is the Founder and CEO of 1-800-Got-Junk? and has been running the company since 1989. Since then, he has started several companies like Shack Shine, You Move Me, and Wow 1 Day Painting. Here are the steps it takes to create a painted picture for your business (and your life). First, it starts with you being in an inspirational place. Second, you want to take out a piece of paper and write in very specific and intentional language. Brian didn’t write, ‘I hope to be’ or, ‘I want to be,’ he wrote, ‘I will be.’ Third, Brain gave himself incredibly specific goals, in this particular case, a five-year goal to achieve his big vision. And step number four, after writing out the big idea, he added color to the picture. What would we feel like as a company? What would the culture be like? How would the brand be presented to the world? Here are some questions you can ask yourself: What is your top-line revenue? How many people are on your team? How would your people describe the culture of your company when talking to a family member? What is the press saying about your business? Be as specific as possible — what would your local paper say about your company? What would your favorite magazine say? What do your people love about your vision and where the company is headed? How would a customer describe their experience with you? What would they say to their best friend? What accomplishment are you most proud of? What accomplishment are your people most proud of? What do you do better than anyone else on the planet? Describe your office environment and culture in detail. Describe your service area. Who are your customers and how do they feel? When he was finished, he was surprised by the results. As he re-read what he wrote down, Brian realized what he wrote was absolutely possible, so he shared it with his team. Some members of his team were excited, and those who weren’t ended up leaving. Brian believes it’s best to come up with a vision about where you’re going and then recruit the who – the people that will help figure out how to get there. However, the one thing a painted picture will not do or even try to do is to say how to get there. The reason for this being is that the CEO doesn’t always know best. His team will have a better execution plan than he will. It also prevents the CEO or the founder from getting cold feet when he realizes the ‘real’ work involved. Let your team support your vision and use their expertise to help guide you to your end result. Interview Links: Painted Picture Visualization O2Ebrands.com 1-800 Got Junk Website Good to Great, by Jim Collins Brian on LinkedIn Twitter – @brianscudamore Facebook – bscudamore Instagram – brianscudamore Scaling Up Business Podcast – Bruce Eckfeldt Scaling Up Business Podcast – Brian Scudamore Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

How do we get beyond the startup phase and into the scale-up zone? And what are some of the unique challenges women face throughout this process? Today’s guest has some insight on how this transition can be made a little bit easier. Julia Pimsleur is an entrepreneur and the author of the best-selling book Million Dollar Women. During her years as a CEO, Julia has raised angel and venture capital for various startups and discovered that only 3% of all women entrepreneurs ever reach the one-million-dollar mark. Today, she aims to change that and coaches women through their business so that they can scale and grow effectively. When Julia built her language business into a multimillion-dollar business, she looked around and saw that there were very few women at that level. Despite women starting twice as many businesses than men over the last two decades, they still weren’t reaching that million-dollar mark. Julia suspected that women were running into the same kinds of problems she did when she first started out, which was what inspired her to write her book. For example, bank loans. Very few women seek financial aid, and when they do, they’re often turned down by the bank. In the Million Dollar Women® masterclass, Julia helps her students in three core areas: finances, mindset, and strategy. Finances and strategy are timeless but when it comes to mindset, women are much more cautious in their approach to scaling up, and this can hold them back significantly from growth. Interview Links: Juliapimsleur.com Julia on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Meetings! They can either be great or they can be terrible. The general consensus is that meetings suck, but today’s special guest wants to transform your experience with meetings so that the entire team feels productive and ready to go! Elise Keith is the Founder of Lucid Meetings and the author of Where The Action Is, a book about more productive and happier, meetings! She helps her clients implement an effective meeting operating system so that everyone in the company prospers. When Elise first started her career, she experienced a lot of pointless drama and needless side conversations. Different departments had different objectives and they would often clash with one another, which meant the meetings were endless and also ruthless. These mixed messages would also confuse their customers too! Elise experienced all the ‘interventions.’ Leaders did the DISC and StrengthsFinder’s assessment. The DISC profiles became excuses and the strengths became weapons. The diversity interventions ended up creating more barriers between team members. Yet, still, everyone tried so desperately to work together. They still cared. Things changed for Elise when she witnessed firsthand what it was like to have competing interests and a system that was able to bypass all the drama and get things done. That system was centered around a very clear and defined way on how to run Monday meetings. They weren’t always interesting, but it got the job done. These meetings had clear goals and objectives already laid out each week so that everyone was on the same page before they even started the meeting. Just with this simple shift, Elise saw people being aligned on what they had to achieve and… they were having fun doing it! If you run your meetings better, your people will get along better! Interview Links: Blog.lucidmeetings.com Elise on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTubeMentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

What lessons can we learn from a symphony orchestra? More importantly, what can a symphony conductor teach us about teamwork and leadership? Our special guest shares how we can enhance and develop our leadership skills by learning to lead with deeper listening skills. Roger Nierenberg is a Symphony Conductor that has enjoyed long tenures as Music Director of both The Jacksonville Symphony and the Stamford Symphony. Roger is also the author of Maestro, which contains surprising messages about business leadership. What does a symphony conductor do? A conductor is in charge of making the whole music piece, all the little different parts, coherent. They are in charge of taking big messages and simplifying them, and they help lay out the vision of the music so that the musicians can buy into it and follow it. All of this is translated by the simple movements of the baton. In Roger’s process, first, he sets the tone for his business students so that they understand how an orchestra works. They come into a room where they sit right where the action is, inside the symphony orchestra, and find themselves side-by-side with the musicians. Without any words spoken, the music begins and the students watch as Roger conducts. After the show, Roger explains that the orchestra is a metaphor for a well-run, successful organization. The funny thing is, Roger had only met with the orchestra an hour prior and they, too, had no idea what Roger was going to ask them to do until the baton was moving. So many people are not musicians, so by structuring it in this way, students are able to fully comprehend and experience what it looks like to work together unscripted, in a flow, without trying to explain or converse. You are only using the power of observation and your listening skills to understand what it means to really work in sync. Interview Links: Musicparadigm.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

When you’re launching, scaling, or even selling a business, it comes with a lot of tough challenges… as well as some amazing breakthroughs. Today’s show is all about achieving those breakthroughs on a regular basis and getting more of those ‘aha’ moments. Scott Duffy has been listed as a “Top 10 Keynote Speaker” by Entrepreneur and even sold one of his businesses to Richard Branson. He is also the best-selling author of Launched! and gives a deeper dive into his most recent book, Breakthrough, in today’s episode. As a junior in college, Scott got into a horrific car accident with a garbage truck while he was going 90 miles an hour. He had two brain hemorrhages and had to drop out of school. While on bed rest, Scott was listening to motivational speakers and he made it his mission to intern/work for these very people who helped him recover. After his recovery, he went back to school and landed an internship with Tony Robbins. The job was hard. Scott would be on the road for 50 straight weeks and his training team would speak up to seven days a week, five times a day. Unfortunately, Scott burned out from this high-paced and high-energy environment. After some time off, Scott joined with his old roommate to create an Internet company (this was back in 1994). The first two months were a disaster. Nothing was working. So, Scott decided to go where the action was and move to San Francisco where all the smart guys, like Yahoo, were. A ton of friends’ couches and six months later, Scott ran out of money and people stopped calling him back. So, he pawned all of his stuff! He took the money he had, bought some pizzas, smashed his resume into the cheese, and delivered them to companies. He got a call from Bill Peck, the father of Internet Advertising, and that’s when Scott got his first breakthrough. Interview Links: Scottduffy.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount) Bill on YouTube TWEETABLES: “We have this energy, we have this enthusiasm, and we know if someone would just give us a shot, we’d do a great job!” “In life, we gotta position ourselves.” “The rule number one I’ve learned with being around people like Richard Branson or Tony Robbins — just never get in the way of possibility.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they too can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies. We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

This week’s show is a case study featuring an entrepreneur finding the right balance between the people vs. the profits. Our entrepreneur has created a for-profit business with an emphasis on the people who work there. Find out more! Matt Altman Co-Founded the brand Sportiqe, a lifestyle clothing company. He serves as CEO of the company with a mission to help people feel comfortable. Matt has a lifelong passion for helping people be the best version of themselves. He also serves on the board of The Prem Rawat Foundation, which serves to address fundamental human needs of food, water, and peace. Matt had a 12-year career in retail operations before starting his own business in 2006. From day one, Matt and his co-founder were constantly thinking of their company culture and how they wanted to develop it. He believes the health of the company, the profits, the people, are all integrated. In his career, Matt saw time and time again decisions being made that grew profit… but at the expense of the people. For him, it didn’t seem fair to operate a business that way. He knew there was a better way and sought out to find it. Matt first heard the term ‘Conscious Capitalism’ four to five years ago and didn’t think much of it. However, he was invited to his first Conscious Capitalism summit two years ago and the event was eye-opening. He discovered so many companies that had a purpose-driven reason to exist and it transcended beyond ‘just to make money.’ He was able to see first-hand the positive-impact capitalism has had on a global scale. Conscious Capitalism is about thinking long-term instead of short-term. It’s planning out the sustainability in a company and utilizing smart business practices to leverage the humanity of people. It’s basically asking yourself, “What are the decisions I can make today that will help the company five years from now?” Interview Links: TPRF.org Sportiqe.com Episode 088: “Rajendra Sisodia — Conscious Capitalism” Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount) Bill on YouTube

Stressed out? Are you constantly facing tough challenges on a regular basis? Everyone goes through people problems, relationship problems, family problems, and financial problems but our reactions to these stressful events can be changed through the use of mindfulness and meditation. Rob Dube is the Founder and President of ImageOne, which focuses on Print Management. Rob is also a Forbes Best Small Giants Company Leader and the author of the bestselling book, Do Nothing, which is what Bill and Rob will be talking about on today’s show! Growing up, Rob had a host of health issues as well as some family issues under his belt. As a kid, he was always anxious and stressed, but he kept it bottled up inside. After college, he and his childhood friend started a business, which did not help Rob’s anxiousness and stress. By the time Rob was 25, he was already married, had a kid on its way; he also had no money and was living with his dad… which meant even more stress! It finally took a toll on Rob and he went into therapy. It helped a lot, but it didn’t ‘cure’ him. When Rob first heard about mediation in the early 2000s, he was skeptical. However, he reached a breaking point after he sold his business and was willing to try anything. He tried it… and he felt better. His problems were still there, but at least he felt a bit better. That’s when he dug in deep to see whether there was any scientific proof behind all of this meditation stuff. 14 years of practice later, Rob is a believer. He is a fan of doing silent retreats because it brings you to the present and he has done eight of them so far that were each around 7-10 days in length. Although there are different types of meditation, Rob likes to do MBSR (Mindfulness-based stress reduction) meditation. How does Rob define mindfulness? There are a couple of definitions for it, but one of them is the ability to be in the moment, right here, right now. As one body, as one breath. As challenges are coming at you, you are able to bring yourself right into the moment and not let your mind go into problem-solving mode. Interview Links: Imageoneway.com Rob on LinkedIn Donothingbook.com Smallgiants.org Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach TWEETABLES: “I just kept building that foundation of stress and anxiety and I just didn’t feel like I was as good of a person as I needed to be.” “Having been an entrepreneur basically my whole life and never having worked for anybody, I was just not adapting to this new company/environment.” “We learn to first bring awareness to yourself. Then, over time, you bring that awareness to each moment you’re experiencing.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

What story does your cash flow tell? Is it a happy ending? Does it end in romance? Or is it a horror story? Your balance, your cash flow, tell a story. The good news is there are four levers you can pull to change it! Alan Miltz is a numbers guy from South Africa but currently lives in Australia. He is the co-founder of Cash Flow Story, the co-author of Scaling Up, and he’s an International Speaker. Alan is on today’s show to shed some light on the numbers and help Founders and Entrepreneurs get a better understanding of what it all means. Unless you come from a financial background, looking at the numbers in your business can be overwhelming and hard to comprehend in a ‘big picture’ perspective. As Alan likes to say, you might be speaking Spanish, but the bank is speaking Portuguese and these language barriers can be disastrous for a new startup. Alan left South Africa in 1987 while the country was in the midst of apartheid. Through his accounting degree, Alan was able to travel all over the world, where he finally landed in Australia at 26 years old. At the time, he was an advisor and realized everyone he spoken to (accountants, business owners, etc) all spoke “numbers” very differently. They all interpreted it… differently! So, Alan and a few other South African expats decided to create a technology platform that could be used by anyone. The belief was that banks should be able to communicate in credit in one simple language and have businesses understand it. Through that adventure, Alan and his co-founders were able to sell it about six years ago and start Cash Flow Story shortly after. Cash Flow Story is aimed at CEOs, Coaches, and Accountants to tell a story in a way where everyone will understand the numbers. The biggest danger in a business is what you don’t know about your own business! The goal is simple, to help people eliminate their financial blind spots. Alan believes revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king. When CEOs look at their financials and see their profit margin, they think they understand the business. Alan says you don’t! Profit numbers are just an opinion! You can manipulate your profit. Cash, however, is a fact. Interview Links: Alanmiltz.com Alan on LinkedIn Cashflowstory.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Fast-growing companies typically grow between 20-30% a year and doubling that every few years. However, some companies grow quite a bit faster than that. Today’s topic is Blitzscaling, where companies exceed their growth expectations ten- or twenty-fold! Chris Yeh is the Co-Founder and General Partner of Wasabi Ventures. Chris has worked in high-tech startups since 1995 and attend Stanford when he was just 15 years old. Chris is also the author of Blitzscaling, which Bill and Chris will be discussing in depth today. How do you define Blitzscaling exactly? It is the pursuit of rapid growth, where you prioritize speed over efficiency and environmental uncertainty. More and more industries and markets are winner-take-most or winner-take-all. The first to reach scale becomes the dominant player. For example, Facebook was not the first social network. Before it, there was Friendster and MySpace. However, Facebook was the first to scale and get its name out there. The perfect example of Blitzscaling is actually Google. When Google decided to partner with AOL, they made a commitment of $150 million dollars a year with them. This was a huge jump because the year before they had only done $19 million. Through their AOL partnerships, they became the dominant player in advertising today. Is Blitzscaling just all about getting big fast? No, it’s not! It is a systematic way to understand and take intelligent risks. Blitzscaling has four growth factors and two growth limiters. It first starts with market size, distribution, gross margins, and network effect. The two growth limiters are lack of product market fit and operational scalability. For example, Groupon by all measures should have been successful, but what stopped them dead in their tracks was lack of product market fit. They offered a poor customer experience for both the vendors and the buyers as they grew. They had rocket-like growth in the beginning, but it ended up crashing due to their inability to cater to their core customers. Interview Links: Wasabiventures.com Globalscalingacademy.com Blitzscaling.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach TWEETABLES: “Blitzscaling is the pursuit of rapid growth by prioritizing speed over efficiency.” “The ability to actually scale your people, your technology, and infrastructure is absolutely essential.” “When you’re a Blitzscaler, you need to be able to continue learning new ways to play the game, because it’s changing at every stage.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

What does it truly feel like to 10X your company? How does your mindset change and how do you navigate between the startup phase to the $10 million in revenue phase? On top of that, how can we keep sustaining that growth? Today’s episode features a case study that details this entrepreneur’s experience! Kevin Pasco is a 26-year-old entrepreneur who built an eight-figure brand, Nested Naturals, into an eCommerce powerhouse with his partner Jeremy Sherk. Kevin has a team of 25 employees and plans to grow to more than 50 in the next 3 years. How has he been able to see such success? Find out on today’s episode! When Kevin first started 4-5 years ago, he was trying to pursue a more nomadic “4 hour work week” schedule. However, it slowly grew into something more. The company first began because both Kevin and his business partner were fed up with taking supplements that didn’t fully disclosure what was — really — inside the bottle. The first product they launched was to help with sleep since both of the Founders had trouble sleeping regularly. When they launched, they had to really bootstrap it and get the support of their friends and family to support their first product, initially. In the first year, their product saw a lot of success and it grew to a million dollars in revenue. What led them to quick growth in the first year was their ability to listen to the customer and adapt to their needs. The customers were still paying the same price for a better product and they were thrilled. Also, their extensive A/B testing helped significantly to see what was really working and what was not. The keys to Kevin’s success, in the beginning, was listening to feedback, adapting, and then brand testing. By getting social proof early on through Amazon Reviews, Kevin and his business partner were able to charge a higher price for their product as well and stand out from the competition. They’re not just selling ‘pills,’ they’re selling a good night’s sleep where you won’t be waking up groggy. People really value that and are willing to pay extra for that feeling. Interview Links: Nestednaturals.com Kevin on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach TWEETABLES: “We really learned to listen to the customer.” “We found pretty early on that the more reviews we could get — the more people talking about the product — the more we could charge.” “In year 3, we placed such a big emphasis on people, leadership, autonomy, hiring great people, and offering them incredibly culture and perks.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

We often focus on company performance and leadership, but what about individual performance? What can we learn from just the individual and how can we improve it so that everyone on your team is a star performer? Today’s guest has the answers. Morten Hansen is a management theorist, motivational speaker, and author. Formerly a professor at Harvard Business School, Morten now teaches management at The University of California. He also co-authored the New York Times bestseller Great by Choice with Jim Collins. Morten has recently released a new book titled, Great at Work, which he dives into, on this week's show. Morten was working 80+ hours to achieve good work, but his colleague was working 50 hours a week and still delivered good work, if not better. How was it that she was able to achieve such great quality of work within less time? This spawned the question, why are some people great at work and others are not? Through extensive research and five years later, Morten discovered that there were 7 factors or principles that explained two-thirds of people’s work performance. If you’re good at these seven things, it will go a long way into really performing exceptionally well in your role. This is great news because it doesn’t necessarily mean ‘do more’ or ‘work harder.’ The great performers are not the ones up in the middle of the night sending emails at 3 a.m. to their staff. In fact, they’re much more organized; they’re more focused and incredibly good at prioritizing. Morten found that if you’re working more than 65 hours per week, you’re getting diminishing returns in your performance. To find out how to increase your performance and what the seven principles are, listen in for more! Interview Links: Mortenhansen.com Morten on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoachMentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

It takes a team to scale and grow but how do you do that with ease and grace? How can you become a powerful leader that both inspires and engages your team? Today’s guest has some answers! Jeff Hoffman is a successful entrepreneur and the Founder of Priceline, UBid, and ColorJar. Jeff has worked alongside celebrities like Elton John, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. He knows a thing or two about what it takes to engage people and on today’s show, he shares his expertise in team building practices that bring good people together! One of the most important lessons Jeff learned about scaling up is the value of teams. As a founder, you started the company yourself and are used to taking care of everything yourself. The problem with this though is that if your company does well, you start to think you’re pretty good at all of this. But later, founders find themselves overwhelmed. They find themselves working harder than ever before and putting in more hours than they’ve ever done before, yet, despite this, they’ve stopped growing. The truth is, you’re never going to do anything massive or at scale by yourself. Jeff was not smart enough to understand this in the beginning, but through his mistakes, he’s learned that the day you start taking some of your time to delegate your tasks and to find people that are smarter than you to run the company, is the day you can finally work less and be less stressed. Jeff had to make an active effort to find talented people. Sending out an ad doesn’t work. The best people in your market aren’t looking for a job, so schedule the time to scout them. The second part of running a successful team is getting out of their way. Let the people who are smarter than you do their jobs! Your real job as a founder is to build a workplace environment and culture that people love to go to, where the best people in the industry all want to work for you and never want to leave. Your job is to take care of the people who work for you. When you’ve achieved this, you never have to worry about the growth of your company. Interview Links: Jeffhoffman.com Jeff on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

The bigger you get, the harder it becomes to know what’s going on within your company. You may know your financial numbers, but how are you really doing? Are your people happy? How are you doing on those ‘softer’ skills? Well, you are able to track this in real terms by using a system called Net Promoter Score (NPS). Sturdy McKee is a Physical Therapist, Entrepreneur, and Business Coach. He has been using NPS for the last five years and shares on today’s show his case study and some of his business insights on how NPS has helped grow his business and measure those ‘intangible’ metrics. Sturdy had been in business for over 10 years before he even considered implementing NPS. He had 6 locations and over 40 employees, and he was losing touch with the frontline experience. He didn’t know how his customers were doing across the board and it was difficult trying to find this info from all of his different locations. In the NPS survey question, business owners can ask their customers, “How likely are you to recommend this company, this product/service, to a friend or family member from 1-10?” 1-6s are considered detractors, 7-8s are neutrals, and 9-10s are promoters. The formula works like this: Take the number of promoters minus the detractors and divide the remainder by the total surveyed and then you end up with your ‘Net Promoter Score.’ Typically this system ignores those who voted 7-8 and looks carefully at those who rated the service 1-6 to see what you can learn from them. And from those who rated 9-10, you use this data to see how you can attract more of these people and even receive a testimonial from them. Sturdy’s company sent an automatic follow-up email two weeks after a patient’s evaluation asking the ‘Would you recommend us?’ question and sent the same follow-up question around the six-week mark, which ended up being a really good decision. For those who weren’t happy at the two-week mark, and having Sturdy’s team quickly address and fix it, they ended up changing their score at the six-week mark to a more positive one. During this time, Sturdy discovered two things about his company. Volunteers and students studying physical therapy were observing/treating patients, but some patients did not consent to this and felt like they were paying a high cost only to be treated by an unskilled staff member. This caused Sturdy to change his process so that students could still learn and volunteers could still observe, but it was documented more effectively and the patients still felt like they were receiving the highest quality service. Interview Links: Sturdymckee.com Sturdy on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach TWEETABLES: “For people who are brand new to this, NPS is really asking one question and then leaving an open end.” “Even from the get-go we realized it was a process, it wasn’t just a number.” “Fortunately, we’ve eliminated specific things that were being done across the board.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

In order to grow your business, you have to recognize that you are often times the bottleneck. Everything needed to grow your business starts with you! This is why it’s important to become a lifelong learner to better develop yourself and grow your business. Daniel Marcos is the co-Founder and CEO of Gazelles Growth Institute. He is also a long-time coach and an international speaker who has shared the stage with thought leaders like Peter Diamandis, Guy Kawasaki, and Jack Canfield. On today’s show, Daniel dives into what it means and why it’s important to be a lifelong learner and how it accelerates your career. Daniel was a very bad student academically but he built his first internet company in Mexico City back in 1999. As Daniel began hiring Stanford and Harvard graduates to come work for him, he felt uncomfortable that he wasn’t able to understand what they were saying to him. They were using jargon he had never heard before. This experience prompted him to study for his own MBA and to better understand the people who work for him. When Daniel started his next company in the U.S., it went under during the 2008 crash. It was awful and he lost a lot of money. Verne Harnish reached out to him, and after complaining for 30 minutes, Verne asked, “What’s next?” Daniel, feeling like an absolute failure, said he was going to return to Mexico and get a salaried job to pay for his kid’s education. Verne thought this was nonsense and offered him a new opportunity. The rest is history! Through that experience, Daniel has become obsessed with KPIs and looking at the numbers. He now has insight into what good numbers look like to help prevent others from suffering the same faith his company did back in 2008. Back then, he saw the warning signs but ignored them. Today, he helps entrepreneurs avoid them. Daniel has a very extensive book collection, but the problem with books is they tell you how to do things, but they never mention at what stage or when you should do those things. As we go through different stages of growth, each company is going to experience something different. A one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work the way the books say it does. Daniel saw a chart that stated the U.S. today has 28 million firms and 96% of them will never do over a million dollars in revenue a year. Only about 0.4% of companies go over $10 million a year in revenue. In the end, only 17,000 companies go above $50 million in revenue each year. And in each of these financially diverse companies, they all need a completely different level of attention and systems. Interview Links: Growthinstitute.com Daniel on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach TWEETABLES: “The reason we’re great coaches is not because we’re so ‘brilliant.’ It’s our willingness to share the things that didn’t work for us.” “Everything was backward for me. How much money we made, we were looking into the past. Now, a lot of my metrics are for the future and I can see what’s going on.” “Are you, yourself, coachable?” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).

People are certainly the hardest part about scaling up a business. Finding the right people is crucial to helping you grow. So, how can you improve your odds from 50% to 90% or better? Through smart recruiting methods! Geoff Smart is the Chairman & Founder of ghSMART, which was founded in 1995 to help Fortune 500 CEOs and entrepreneurs achieve their goals through hiring, developing and leading talented teams. Geoff is also the bestselling author of Who, Leadocracy, and Power Score. As a freshman at college, Geoff was fortunate enough to get an internship at a venture capitalist firm and he noticed that large sums of money were either gained or lost due to who the investors invested in. Geoff wondered if there was a way to hack the system to help investors make better bets on people, and so his company was born. The topic of how to get the right people on your team is one of the most popular concerns for people in business. If you get this aspect right, you are going to have the most solid improvement in your revenue and profitability and in your own enjoyment in your work. A lot of entrepreneurs/hiring managers use their gut feelings to hire, but this could possibly be the worst mistake you can make. The reality is, you can’t judge a person based instantly on gut feel. You’re going to make a mistake and it’s going to cost you a lot of money. Leave the emotional hiring methods behind! The average success rate for hiring is about 50%. Recruiters only get it right 50% of the time, which means people regret every 1 in 2 hires! That’s horrible! A bad hire can cost you 15 times that employee’s annual salary. However, you can improve your 50% into 90% by focusing on these four things really well: Scorecard, Source, Select, and Sell. Geoff explains each section in depth inside the podcast episode! Listen in for more wisdom! Interview Links: Geoffsmart.com Geoff on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Growthinstitute.com/scalingcoach TWEETABLES: “If you look at global surveys on what’s on the minds of entrepreneurs, talent is number one or two out of 30 different topics.” “If you get [talent] right, you’re going to have the most solid improvement in your revenue and profitability.” “Ever since I started my company, I realized that managing is easy… except for the people part.” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits). Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

If you think about it, there’s really no such thing as B2B. People are behind these businesses and they work with other people! It all comes down to relationships and communication. Today’s guest shares how you can build more meaningful, deeper, and stronger relationships! Mo Fathelbab is the Founder and President of Forum Resource, LLC and co-founder of Alumni Forum Services. He is also the author of the best-selling book, Forum: The Secret Advantage of Successful Leaders and his latest book, The Friendship Advantage: 7 Keys to Building Relationships that Transform Corporate Culture and Drive Productivity. Mo will be diving into why strong relationships make all the difference and how you can build deeper relationships from the ground up in this episode! Mo is so passionate about relationships because he knows what it’s like to not be able to connect with anyone. Growing up, he purposely put himself in situations where he was forced to talk to people so he could get better at connecting. During a ‘Forum’ training, Mo experienced something magical. He was sharing personal details with mere strangers, things he had never shared with his family or closest friends, and it was liberating. Mo thought it was so valuable that he decided to host these trainings all over and deliver it to busy entrepreneurs wherever they may be located. These trainings provided a model for powerful, meaningful, real, relationships that people don’t usually see in their day-to-day lives. Looking back, Mo reflects that he has shared literally everything with his group; he has no secrets and it’s an amazing feeling. The seven keys to building relationships that Mo has outlined in his book, The Friendship Advantage, are judgment-free, mischievous fun, vulnerability, kind-truth, reliability, sharing and generosity, and to share purpose and value. The combination of these seven help build connections wherever you are. Mo provides an example of how this would typically play out in a company setting. The first thing to determine is how does a company handle or resolve conflict. After that, it’s time to set an agenda, and then have those difficult conversations to pull everybody onto the right track. Interview Links: Forumresourcesnetwork.com Mo on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube

An effective growth strategy is key to everything we do in scaling up. Growth strategy is a thinking game and today’s guest shares tools that will keep your growth consistent and help you figure out when to pivot when things just aren’t working. Tiffani Bova is the Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce and was previously VP, Distinguished Analyst and Research Fellow with Gartner. She is also the author of Growth IQ: Get Smarter about Building Your Company’s Future, which she will dive into on today’s show! It took some time before Tiffani got into the groove of what she does today. In fact, it took her nearly eight years before she got her stride and felt comfortable giving intentional and helpful advice to struggling companies looking to grow. Businesses were looking for that silver bullet, that ‘one thing,’ to turn their companies around and hit their numbers. The truth is, 80% of companies will experience a growth stall and fewer than that will be able to recover from it. So, how can Tiffani help companies avoid the stall in the first place? She discovered many companies were not looking at the context of the market today. They might have looked into it briefly when the plan was made 12 months ago or 36 months ago, but few were following up with the market trends of today. Things move too rapidly in today’s environment and, by not keeping up-to-date, it can be a real growth killer. Tiffani also noticed that it’s never been ‘one thing’ that keeps a company’s growth accelerating. It was always a combination of things that the company was doing that gave them the competitive advantage. For company A, for example, it was about entering a new market with the right partnerships and with the right sales model. That’s what led them to growth. The third thing that’s also an important factor in growth is timing, which Tiffani calls ‘Sequence’ in the book. If you put partnerships in place after you’ve entered a new market, you may be delivering a poor service experience, which will end up breaking customer trust. Context, Combination, and Sequence are the three things that make up an intelligent growth IQ. Interview Links: Tiffanibova.com Tiffani on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

How do we become ‘known’ for something and remain top-of-mind? How can you use content marketing to help you achieve influence and engage with those who matter to you? Today’s guest speaker has some ideas. John is the CEO and co-founder of Influence & Co., a tech-enabled content marketing agency that helps brands and individuals extract and leverage their expertise to create, publish, and distribute content to gain influence, visibility, and credibility with their key audiences. Despite having experience under John’s belt, he would constantly walk into meetings and people would get confused as to why this ‘kid’ was there. John was running into trust barriers right out the gate and he hated that feeling. He knew he couldn’t have been the only one, so he and his partners decided to create Influence & Co. to help others overcome this barrier. Bill has also run into this in the past. He struggled to get taken seriously as well and one of his bosses even suggested wearing prop glasses to look older. We all deal with things like this, especially as leaders, it’s hard to get taken seriously when you look like you have no experience. This is where trust plays an important role. How can people become top-of-mind and build trust naturally? It starts with being helpful. Everybody needs help in a professional and personal setting. Ask them what that missing piece is and then begin to connect the dots by introducing them to others. This works wonders on an in-person level, but how do you scale up trust? The best way to scale up trust and grow your influence is through creating content. Remember, people don’t want to deal with ‘the brand.’ They want to deal with the people in the brand. By humanizing yourself, you’re humanizing your company and it attracts wonderful recruitment opportunities as well. Consistency in your marketing message plays a huge factor in building trust within your audience. People’s memories are a powerful thing and if you hit people with the right type of content at the right time, they will remember you forever. Interview Links: Influenceandco.com Topofmindbook.com John on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Have you ever wondered how you can effectively scale a service-based business without losing quality and your sanity? Today’s guest expert shares a case study on how she scaled a reception business to 500 employees and $50 million dollars. 15 years ago, Jill Nelson started from humble beginnings, but has grown her business, Ruby Receptionists, into a four-time winner of FORTUNE magazine’s top five Best Small Companies to Work for, and has helped over 8,000 small businesses across the US service and create loyal customers. Today, she shares a case study of how she was able to make it all possible. Jill found out after graduating from university that her accounting degree just wasn’t for her. On a whim, she took a receptionist position and that’s when things clicked. She learned that there was real value in having a personal connection while growing a successful business. She was a critical touch point for the company. Jill wanted to create an executive suite, but she had no money and she had no business experience. After obtaining a business loan, she was able to launch everything an executive suite could offer… minus the office space. Jill used her resources wisely and learned early on what her unique value proposition was and used it to her advantage. With an extreme focus on friendly and attentive customer service, Jill’s client feedback praised the receptionist for making an excellent first impression on their customers and helping them land new client deals because he/she sounded professional and knowledgeable over the phone. This very friendly and personalized service can be difficult to scale up, but Jill has managed to grow it to nearly 500 employees and still retain a personalized feel for each of her customers. Jill has maintained this consistency by having a lot of systems in place and also by their trademarked ‘service pyramid’ that outlines clearly their business model and how they deliver exceptional service to their customers. The service pyramid is a bit of a regulation cheatsheet meets personalize service that incentivizes rule breaking. Interview Links: Callruby.com Jill on LinkedIn Callruby.com/scalingupbusiness Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube TWEETABLES: “The phone call is the most important touch point for your customers and your new customers.” “We just won a new client because the receptionist was so nice or we just won a new customer because you actually answered your phone!” “How can you make a personal connection when you have all these rules and regulations?” Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed, where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and a leading business coach with Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

What can we learn about our businesses through sports and the way coaches coach? Today’s discussion is all about how no team is a bad team and how you can be a better coach to your team and business! Craig Ahrens is a speaker, author, and consultant as well as the Founding Partner for Fungo, a consulting firm designed for coaches to practice fundamentals with their teams. Craig was first introduced to this field through his children’s sports leagues. He started out as a passionate spectator and then later as an assistant coach, head coach, and board member. He noticed that the people who were coaches were also small business owners, mid-level managers, and senior-level executives. It gave him the opportunity to watch different leadership styles on the field. During the seasons, Craig noticed a correlation between successful youth teams and successful businesses. Regardless of the sport, successful coaches had a certain mindset that would help the team win games through and through. Bill reflects on why two of his own children never really got into sports. It boiled down to how the coaches treated them. Craig believes a good coach is able to close the gaps. They are able to recognize grumblings, apathy, and other weak links and quickly address them. Coaches need to know their short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. Coaches also need to be able to get feedback from their team to develop buy-in as well as accountability for those goals. When people understand the ‘why’ behind the goals, they are able to work efficiently towards them. Interview Links: Teamfungo.com Craigahrens.com Craig on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

Whether you love it or hate it, diversity is an important aspect of our workplace culture. Today’s guest has some interesting insights on how diversity can actually make you money! Diversity can impact your business for the better and also improve the quality of it. Maureen Berkner Boyt is the Founder of Moxie Exchange Movement, an organization that focuses on tackling the talent issue from both sides so that business owners can recruit and retain the best talent on the market. They also provide resources and systems for you to interrupt unconscious bias and create an inclusive workplace. People often complain about how Millennials need to be treated extra specially, but the reality is, you should be treating all your employees that way. The only difference is that millennials demand it from their employers. People want to know your purpose, your values, and what you stand for. People want to make an impact in the world … everybody, not just the ‘millennials’. It’s both smart to introduce diversity in your company culture and it’s also the right thing to do. When you have a diverse set of people working for you, everybody wins. Your teams are stronger, they’re smarter, and they innovate more effectively. Maureen was serving on the board of a company that was in real trouble. If they didn’t make any changes soon, they’d go under. After a week in a room with leadership, she was more exhausted than usual. She realized she was the only woman in the room. She also realized that there should never be an ‘only’ in the room. There are plenty of capable women and people of color, so why do businesses not promote them? Maureen dug deeper and realized that nobody is doing this on purpose. No one says they want ‘all white men’ on their board. In fact, companies are frustrated that they cannot keep or retain diverse sets of people despite mentorship and guidance. Whether we like it or not, every single one of us is biased. It’s just the way our brain functions to ensure we are in a safe environment. Our unconscious biases are just mental shortcuts. If you want to interrupt your biases, question what you’re thinking whenever you have a thought about a person and their performance. Ask yourself why and dig deeper. Find out what could be true vs. not true and then go from there. Interview Links: Moxieexchange.com Maureen on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

There is more than one way to work in a team setting these days. At an office, at home, remote, or a combination of the three. Today’s guest discusses the different ways you can create a team that incorporates flexibility and yet is still responsive to the daily needs of a business. Frank Cottle is the Chairman and Founder of Alliance Virtual Offices and Alliance Business Centers Network. He is a recognized expert within the business center, executive suite, and virtual office industries and often speaks on topics related to all forms of alternative officing. Frank and his partners built buildings with the purpose to house and host executive suite centers for professionals who needed a quiet and private space to work. These are quite different compared to the more open space, coffee-shop-esque feel of a co-working facility. Frank explains the difference between service offices, coworking spaces, and incubators. Technically, these working spaces combine people, place, and technology into a single bundled product that’s delivered with a highly flexible service agreement. However, each of these spaces offers a different type of brand promise. Virtual office spaces help the small businessman and startup founder create effective growth by lowering their monthly business expenses on rent, utilities, staff, and office equipment. However, they don’t just house small business professionals. The two biggest groups who use Frank’s service offices are actually the government and the global Fortune 1000. Large companies are changing their business models radically. If you looked at an annual report five years ago from a large company in the bay area, they would have had roughly 300,000 ‘employees’ in the report. Today, that number is listed as ‘workforce’ with about 20-25% being listed as contractors. This shift is drastic when you think about how much money companies are saving in leasehold debt. Interview Links: Alliancevirtualoffices.com Abcn.com Frank on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

What is conversational intelligence? We know about emotional intelligence and ‘traditional’ intelligence, but there is also a third part to it. Today’s show is all about how leaders can produce greater results and be more effective by developing their conversational intelligence. Conversation can bring us closer together and allows everyone to effectively co-create. Judith Glaser is an author, academic, business executive, and organizational anthropologist. She is the Founder & CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc., an executive consulting and coaching company with an emphasis on the importance of conversations in shaping corporate culture and achieving corporate goals. How do you create an environment where every human being has an identity of their own, even when they share the same job title? If leaders think of every human being as being unique and different, it creates a completely different atmosphere in the workforce and it even creates innovation. What happens in the brain when people treat us with respect and love us, vs. when we’re told we’re doing everything wrong and will never amount to anything? They create chemical, and sometimes, structural shifts in our brain. Leaders can find ways to create an environment that opens up part of the brain that will make people smarter and the best part is you can do that with just a conversation! That’s what it means to have ‘conversational intelligence.’ Part of conversational intelligence is understanding how to listen and hear in between the lines. Many people listen to figure out how they can fit into the conversation or to correct somebody. Unfortunately, that doesn’t build connections. If you listen without judgment, listen to just listen, you are able to see more clearly the kinds of emotions people are talking about but can’t seem to put into words. As a leader, it is important to be able to connect with everyone, but just know that some people may take more work than others to reach common ground with them. Interview Links: Creatingwe.com Judith on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

Mark Cuban believes the world’s first trillionaire will come from the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Today’s show will focus on what you can do with the AI tools of today. Find out what types of opportunities are available and mistakes to avoid in this interview! Doug Rose was one of the early adopters and teachers of Agile Software Development. For over 25 years, Doug has transformed organizations through technology, training, and process optimization. He is the author of several books on artificial intelligence, data science, and management and software development. He also teaches classes at the University of Chicago and online through lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. Doug discovered artificial intelligence through his passion for computers and programming. As more organizations started working towards machine learning to better understand their customers, Doug saw a need to help educate managers, and those with a less techy background, understand it all and help them develop products with it. When it comes to working with predictive AI, what are some of the ethical challenges managers are faced with? A lot of these ethical decisions fall onto the engineers, which isn’t always the best path to take long-term. Doug shares a couple of examples of what these ethical challenges look like in real life. Unfortunately, consequences of AI aren’t being addressed early enough. Doug believes there aren’t enough people in the room right now to make calculated and educated decisions about the direction and development of the company’s AI. He attributes the lack of understanding of key terms and concepts among leadership teams as the biggest factor in this. Interview Links: Dougenterprises.com/ Doug on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon SuskoMentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

We want companies to be more than good — in fact, we want them to be more than great — we want them to be excellent! Today’s podcast show is all about achieving business excellence and our special guest will show you how. Tom Peters is the co-author of In Search of Excellence, the book that changed the way the world does business. 17 books and 35 years later, Tom is still at the forefront of the business management industry. The best part of all of this is that Tom’s written and speech material covering the last 15+ years is available and free, to download on his website! Through his father’s recommendation, Bill first read Tom’s book in 1982 while he was still in college. The funny thing is, a book critic, in an attempt to shame and undermine Tom’s business book, said that ‘Fathers are just buying it to give to their teenage kids.’ This ended up being a fantastic endorsement. How did Tom’s search for excellence begin and why did he decide to write the book? Well, it all started with the Vietnam war. Tom graduated with a civil engineering degree but suddenly found himself responsible for the lives of 15-20 sailors. He was underprepared for a leadership role to say the least. After two deployments, Tom saw two different leadership styles. One he calls ‘Captain Day,’ who was a fantastic leader and mentor of what good leadership looked like and the other was ‘Captain Night,’ who was the direct polar opposite and made Tom and his crews’ lives hell. Why is it that people use the word ‘excellence’ to describe ballet, theater, football, baseball, etc., but never use the same word for business? Tom thought this was nonsense! Excellence should be an aspiration all of us in business strive for. By adding personalized human touches and making customers feel valued, recognized, and appreciated, it will only increase your business — not hurt it. Interview Links: Tompeters.com Excellencenow.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

What can your organization learn from nature? What important lessons does nature have to offer to make your organization better, stronger, faster? Find out on today’s show! Dr. Tamsin Woolley-Barker is an Evolutionary Biologist, Biological Innovation and Organizational Consultant, and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University’s Biomimicry Center in the School of Life Sciences. She is also the author of Teeming, which introduces proven strategies nature’s ant and honeybee teams use to create lasting and growing value in an unpredictable world. Dr. Woolley-Barker was working alongside wild baboons as a primatologist in Ethiopia when she came to the realization that humans are more like ants than we are like apes (actually, we really are both). Our social system has made such a big jump and has turned into a more collaborative superorganism where none of us can truly survive on our own, like ants. When you take a close look at ants, they all have a different job and they all depend on each other to function. Human societies have the same undertones. You did not make all the clothes you’re wearing, you did not grow all your own food, or make your own phone. We are so fundamentally intertwined and depend on each other to work. That’s a radical shift from our closest relatives. Dr. Woolley-Barker shares some examples of how companies she’s worked with have successfully increased their employee engagement, innovation, and productivity through the use of biomimetics. Interface, the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpets, asked the question, “How would nature make a carpet?” By going through this thought process, they ended up making the best selling carpet product of all time, and it’s non-toxic! They now have a mission to eliminate any negative impact the company has on the environment by 2020. Productivity shot up by double and that’s because the employees now have a mission they can get behind. People always ask, “How can we make an organization like an ant team?” Well, if you watch ants, a lot of them are really terrible at what they do. They wander around in circles and are often clueless, but it doesn’t matter! The errors of those individuals cancel out due to the structured process the ant team, as a whole, have put in place. Their process is fool-proof and so everyone succeeds. Interview Links: Drtamsin.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko Mentioned in this episode:Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.comQ20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20

Are you getting better every day? Kaizen is a rough translation of ‘change for the better’ and today’s show is all about what it is, how it’s different from other models such as Lean, and how you can achieve Kaizen! Hilary Corna is the former Senior Executive Office for Toyota in Asia, where she managed a team of people across fourteen different countries as a Change Leader for all of the dealerships in Asia. Hilary is also the author of One White Face, a memoir of her time abroad working for the company. Hilary studied in Japan and secured a job at Toyota Motors in Singapore after college. She then transferred into a more managerial role in Indonesia where she ran a pilot program with the end-goal of rolling it out throughout all of Toyota Asia’s facilities when it became successful. This is where Hilary learned that it’s important to start small and test and test before scaling up. Hilary sees first hand how business owners get ‘shiny object syndrome’ with technology. People are constantly looking for bigger and better tools when the simplest tool you can use is pen and paper, or a free technology system, which is what the staff at Toyota use until they can prove results. Kaizen is about trying to find the root cause or problem within a process as early in the process as possible to prevent it from becoming a bigger problem in the future. Most problems are just problems of problems of problems and Kaizen kills that right from the beginning. Through Kaizen, it looks directly at the process and takes a real look at why did the process fail in such a way that the team member couldn’t complete the job, not the other way around. So many times upper management puts blame on the employees, when really, they might have just been working with a broken and unrealistic system all along. Kaizen helps shift the mindset of putting blame on others or pointing fingers at those who are responsible and puts a focus on where did the process break down and how can the team fix it so that everyone succeeds. Interview Links: Hilarycorna.com Hilary on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko

How do you fund your business? Is it with investors? Loans from the bank? Or something else entirely? Today’s guest will share the various ways you can fund your business and what option is right for you! Ami Kassar is the founder and CEO of MultiFunding and a bestselling author of The Growth Dilemma. Ami specializes in helping people develop creative cost-effective alternatives to navigate the (very expensive) needs of a business. Ami shares an example of how entrepreneurs should be thinking about their businesses. If all of your dreams came true, what would your business look like three years from now? And, what’s holding you back? In Ami’s example, what was holding the entrepreneur back from growth was because she was still managing payroll and admin when her talent was really in consulting and leading the consulting teams. In order for her to switch her focus, Ami asked her, “How much would that cost you and how long would that take to start paying for itself?” Her answer was 350K. So, the question was, could she afford the switch? She couldn’t. She runs her business the way many small business owners do, on a hustled budget, which means they don’t feel like they can spend more than what they can bring in. Ami opened her eyes to the different loan options she could afford based on her situation. She qualified for a Small Business Loan, which means she could borrow 350k without putting a lien on her house. She would have a monthly payment of $4,300, which was around 12-13% of her cash flow and it would allow her to successfully make the switch in the least painful way. This is the perfect example of how you can responsibly use leverage to scale up and grow without putting too many financial risks and burdens onto you and your personal household. If everything works according to plan, the entrepreneur would have paid the loan off in 2.2 years and she would triple her bottom line. Interview Links: Multifunding.com Ami on LinkedIn Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com

Is it possible to grow a business worth over a million dollars with just one person? Yes, it is! Today’s guest shows you why this question is relevant for companies who aspire to grow its worth into the several hundred million dollar mark. Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist who specializes in small business, entrepreneurship, and careers. She is the author of the Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, which takes a look at how entrepreneurs are hitting seven-figure revenue in businesses where they are the only employees. Elaine is a contributor for Forbes and writes frequently for them about solopreneurs, also known as the one-person business. While researching for her next new piece, Elaine stumbled upon a treasure trove of data about the one-person businesses who were making over a million dollars in revenue. How were they able to achieve such success, solo? This sparked the idea for the book. Elaine shares some of the common traits these one-person businesses have in common. They automated things right away! They also hired freelancers to help them with small tasks like designs, templates, and more. These solopreneurs were also quick to outsource certain tasks to bigger companies who were experts in that particular task or field. By being able to outsource tedious tasks to the experts, these solopreneurs could spend more time where it matters; cultivating relationships with their best customers and finding new business. A lot of these solopreneurs make an active effort to step away from the business so that they’d not tied to the phones or the computers. Instead, they’re attending business events and they hire coaches to help them get to the next level. They’re constantly surrounding themselves with high-level ideas. When it comes to automation and if you’re not feeling 100% secure about hiring a freelancer just yet, Elaine recommends making a detailed inventory of what types of things you’re spending your time on in your business. See if there’s anything you can outsource based on that data that would free you up to do something more beneficial and useful. Interview Links: Elainepofeldt.com Elainepofeldt.com/new-book Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Q20 Diagnostic OfferStuck? Q20 Growth Diagnostic will give you a fresh perspective and it's free. ScalingCoach.com/Q20Busy is Broken bookOur new book, Busy is Broken, coming this September. Sign up for the release at busyisbroken.com