Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

You’re knowledgeable, right? So how come you’re not known for what you know? How come you’re not the thought leader in your field? Well, if you’ve ever wondered, then this is the show for you. Bill and his guest dive in on the steps it takes to become a thought leader. Andy Buyting is a full-time CEO and a part-time Gazelles business coach. Andy is a leader in brand positioning and thought leadership. His strategy of “Owning the Ink in Your Industry” has served both himself and his countless clients exceedingly well. On top of that, he brings over 20 years of sales, marketing, operations, business development, entrepreneurship, management and executive experience to his clients. Andy’s parents were Dutch immigrants living in Canada and came from a farming background. As a kid, Andy had to work on the family farm, which was the largest carrot farm in the country. His parents were very entrepreneurial and were always looking to expand their operations. Andy ended up taking over the family business at the age of 25 and began implementing the Rockefeller Habits into his family retail business. The 10-year old business grew 86% in two years because of it. After the initial 86% growth, Andy further grew the business by another 600% over the next couple of years. Andy knows that the process works. However, it can be daunting to take action because you’re working towards changing your bad habits and that can become incredibly uncomfortable. Andy worked with a Gazelles coach for six to seven years and it helped him get over those uncomfortable moments. Andy remembers Verne saying, “Tiger Woods has two coaches! The best golfer has two coaches. As a business leader, who are you to say ‘I don’t need a coach?’” You need a coach! Even the best in the world need a coach. Verne kept asking Andy, “Who owns your industry?” and Andy was having a hard time understanding what he meant. This was his first introduction to what a thought leader was and why it was important. When his company started publishing his own garden-news magazine, it was a game changer, and his relatively small business became a big authority in the marketplace. Companies that want to stand out as a thought leader — as an authority — really need to build a publishing arm out. Print is not dead and you should not write it off. Digital marketing is essential, but it has a short shelf life. Print, however, is there for credibility and longevity. Andy’s father would have said this quote, “The secret to success is that you need to know what you’re doing. You need to know you know what you’re doing (be confident), and you need to be known for what you know.” Interview Links: Andybuyting.com Andy on LinkedIn Carlepublishing.com How to Win Clients & Influence People: Create Instant Credibility and Gain an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition, by Andy Buyting 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: “Always take your future in your own hands.” “Even the best performers in the world need a coach.” “Print is more believable, more credible, and it will stick around longer than digital will… but you still need both.” 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 a Gazelles. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up...

Leaders lead people, which means we have to show up with a certain level of energy to inspire others and get things done. How does this show up differently between introverted and extroverted leaders? And, how can we manage our respective energies to keep the fire lit without burning ourselves out? Our special guest this week has the answers! Morra Aarons-Mele is the founder of award-winning digital agency Women Online and its database of women influencers, The Mission List. She is an internet marketer who has helped launched online campaigns for world leaders and organizations including the United Nations, Malala Fund, Hillary Clinton for President, President Obama, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Morra is also the author of Hiding in the Bathroom. As an introvert, Morra wanted to grow her business but did not want to travel nor go out at night. She hates networking and, despite being a consultant, has travel anxiety. Morra wanted to build and grow her business on her own terms and made it her goal in 2016 to achieve this. We have endless conversations about ‘crushing it’ and always saying yes, but for a lot of people, they’re just not built that way. Introverts might want to crush it and get out there, but it really zaps their energy and some of them, like Morra, have social anxiety. There simply wasn’t a roadmap for people who are introverts as well as leaders, which is why Morra decided to write her book. Some of the world’s most successful people are introverts. It’s a total myth that introverts are all shy and quiet. Introversion has nothing to do with how people handle ambition or their social skills. Some people even have a hard time believing Morra is an introvert because of how funny she is and that she makes eye contact with people. Introverts can be those things! However, they do need to be more diligent about how they’re managing their energy. Our culture is obsessed with entrepreneurship, obsessed with scaling up, but what’s motivating you to do those things? Are you trying to grow bigger and bigger for the wrong reasons? Sometimes, you need to stop and tune in to what YOU really want before you experience some sort of health or professional crisis. It’s really important, no matter what level of your career, to take a step back and see whether you’re truly happy with where you are. If you’re not, are there ways you can fix it so that you can have a more intentional business? Can you scale back? Work from home? Travel less? The reality is, you CAN do work you love and do it on your own terms. Interview Links: Womenandwork.org Wearewomenonline.com Themissionlist.com Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You'd Rather Stay Home), by Morra Aarons-Mele 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: “Leaders tell us to never eat lunch alone, to always say yes, but a lot of us aren’t built that way.” “Walking into a room full of prospects and strangers fills me with panic and dread.” “Introversion is just about energy. It’s a total myth that introverts are all shy and quiet.” 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 a 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...

We don’t take enough time to stop and assess our progress. We are always reacting and not thinking! Do you find yourself making some of the same mistakes again and again? If so, it’s time to take a thoughtful retro perspective approach. Bill and his team do it at the end of every quarter and here are some exercises that show how you can do it, too. Bruce Eckfeldt is a consultant, Certified Gazelles coach, author, and speaker on organizational development and performance management. Bruce is on the show today to talk all about retro perspectives and how you can use exercises to get better at it. How did Bruce first get into retro perspectives? Bruce was first introduced to the concept when he was in software development. He’s been on projects where he spent weeks, months, and sometimes even years developing new products only to have them fall flat on their faces. How could he prevent this from happening? By taking a more lean approach to technology and by using retro perspective to strive for continuous improvement. Before we dive into examples of how retro perspective works, what does retro perspective mean, exactly? To put it simply, it’s the process of looking at the past to improve the future. The goal is to use the things we’ve done, the results we’ve already generated, as data. One of the best ways to cultivate a retro perspective environment is by creating a safe environment in the office to openly share mistakes without fear of pushback. From there, we need to collect the raw data, analyze it, drive down on what really happened, and then brainstorm for solutions. There’s so much pressure not to mess up that people often try their best to cover their ass, as opposed to openly letting management know there are problems within the organization. There’s so much spin in an organization that ‘it’s okay to mess up,’ but it doesn’t help solve the true problem. What are some of the best ways to create a safe space to openly share mistakes in the office? Bruce does two things. The first thing is called a prime directive, which sets the context of the meeting. This is said at the start of every meeting to help remind people it’s okay to share. This is the way the prime directive reads: Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand. The second thing Bruce does is to makes sure the senior team is modeling this behavior, too. It can’t just be on the staff’s side to admit mistakes. It’s important that senior leaders call each other out on mistakes they’ve made and bring them to the table as an opportunity to learn how to improve. When the team begins to see the senior team doing this, it really sets the tone and drives the point further that it’s okay to admit your mistakes. Interview Links: Eckfeldt.com Bruce 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: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

Do your beliefs help you or hurt you in life? Leaders with limiting beliefs prevent themselves from showing up as powerful leaders. The thing about it is, everyone has limiting beliefs, it’s how we identify them and improve upon them, that helps us get out of the trap. Elizabeth Crook is a business strategist and advisor at Orchard Advisors. She is also a Gazelles coach and the bestselling author of Live Large. When Elizabeth was 30 years old, she was living in Latin America and working directly with the American Embassy as well as consulting companies on how to expand and grow. One day, Elizabeth was invited to speak at a reading and learning group. Despite her extensive experience at the time, Elizabeth kept starting every sentence with, ‘I’m probably wrong, but...’ This belief was seriously limiting her career and her potential in life. When it was pointed out to her, Elizabeth had to stop and break through this. We can’t scale a company without scaling its leaders as well. An important part of Elizabeth’s work is helping leaders develop and increase their self-awareness so that they can show up in a powerful way. If you’re not evolving your leadership, there is a serious problem within the company. People can turn a strength into a weakness as they take on more responsibility. For example, Elizabeth was working one-on-one with a leadership member who believed asking for help was a sign of weakness. He cited that his best strength was being self-reliant. This might have worked when he was an employee, but as a leader, he now needs to grow and start to depend on others. By putting this man in a leadership role, his primary strength effectively got turned upside down. This is where working closely with your leadership team and to help them develop awareness about their limiting beliefs is critical. Interview Links: Orchardadvisors.com Elizabethbcrook.com Elizabethbcrook.com/resources A Free Chapter of Live Large 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

There are five big ways you can improve your business credit. Today’s guest will discuss how it is slightly different than your personal credit, why it’s important for your business, and how to separate the two so they don’t get mixed up! Ty Crandall is the CEO at Credit Suite, a leading finance software and business credit company in the country. Ty and his team help clients build their business credit and help them get financing. When Ty experienced the 2008 market crash, he saw first-hand what it was like to build a successful business and then see it disappear. His revenue had dropped 90% and he couldn’t serve his clients as effectively anymore. He had no idea that business credit even existed at the time, much less know how to keep both his personal and business credit separate. Ty signed everything to his personal credit, so when business was down and he was forced to default on payments, creditors were now able to take assets directly out of the company. It was a mess. Once the creditors couldn’t get any more money out of the company, they then went directly for Ty’s personal assets. He lost everything. Fortunately, Ty was able to get out of it and he knew he had to help people fix their credit and repair the damage the economy had caused on them. He didn’t want anybody to go through what he went through. This is why he is in the line of work that he is in today. At the time, there wasn’t a lot of information about corporate credit. Ty had to dig deep to find out how to obtain it, how it worked, and how you could use it to protect your personal assets. Ty was blown away by the various ways you could protect yourself and the financial opportunities you could have with business credit. Ty walks through the five steps that will improve your business credit: Step 1: Set up your business correctly! Step 2: Do a free check with all the reporting agencies. Step 3: Start building vendor credit. Step 4: Start building store credit. Step 5: Start building fleet/vehicle credit. By doing these five steps, you build enough trust with the banks where you can qualify for loans and credit lines for your business. Step 1 is often the hardest part, but once you have it completed, building business credit is actually quite easy! Interview Links: Creditsuite.com Creditsuite.com — D-U-N-S® Number Creditsuite.com — Monitoring Ty 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 TWEETABLES: “I ended up being very successful at a young age and then systematically lost everything.” “A downturn of one kind or another is inevitable.” “Having your business and your personal credit intricately tied can make it a very personal crisis.” 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 a 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

As someone who is trying to grow your business, what can you learn from the biggest of companies out there? We define fast-moving companies as gazelles and we depict the big, larger, companies as elephants. However, there are important lessons you can learn from both that should not be ignored! Mike Maddock is a serial entrepreneur, author, and keynote speaker. Currently, Mike is the Founder Partner of Maddock Douglas, an innovation consulting firm that has helped more than 25% of the Fortune 100 companies. Mike has personally launched five successful businesses, written three books, and he is also a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek and Forbes. Mike worked all throughout his teen years and has seen what good bosses and bad bosses looked like. A year-and-a-half after graduating high school, Mike started his own marketing communications company and grew the business up to 50 people. Mike had a ‘Jerry Maguire’ moment and shifted his focus more on innovation. He started a new company and made $3.5 million in revenue within a couple of years. Since then, he’s learned a lot about research, consumer behavior, and fear! Whenever you’re changing anything, people freak out and they go to what makes them feel strong, which is often the worst thing you can do when the world is changing around you. Fear makes people go ‘back to the basics.’ At the end of the day, it’s a balancing act between the creative/innovation types and the analytical types in an organization. When you can get the right balance of both, these companies survive and thrive in new environments. Mike shares an example of a meeting gone wrong, at least it appeared to be. Mike was presenting research to dentists about an emerging marketing, teeth whitening, and they ripped into him. Mike and his team predicted teeth whitening would be a $4 billion opportunity, today it is an $11 billion market. The dentists that ripped into him were experts in their market. However, the more you’re an expert in something, the harder it is to see growth, opportunity, and possibility. Interview Links: Maddockdouglas.com Mike 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

Can you answer this question: What’s your life purpose? Most of you might not have a very good answer. When Bill asks high-achievers this question, only about 10-20% of them can answer honestly. People who know what their life purpose is have a competitive edge over everyone else. Find out the steps you need to take to discover your purpose, in this week’s episode. Craig Filek is the Founder of Purpose Mapping, a tool to help high-achievers find meaning and purpose in their life. He holds over two decades of experience when it comes to inner work, authenticity, and agile entrepreneurship. He built what he thought would be his ideal life, only to walk away from it all and focus on what really matters — raising his family and living his purpose. When Craig was introduced to The E Myth, by Michael Gerber, he did the Primary Aim exercises every six weeks for about a year to really hone down on ‘what’ his purpose was. A few years passed by and a couple of career changes later, Craig decided it was time to start Purpose Mapping in 2010. Our identity is so tied up in the work we do. When we no longer work, we can sometimes start to have an identity crisis. And even then, some executives will suffer from depression after they’ve hit their personal and professional goals because they are left with a void of ‘what’s next?’. They have the vacation house and the high-status job, but those things do not sustain them emotionally or mentally. This is where purpose comes in. How do you find your purpose? Craig found his purpose almost by accident. As an adopted child, he had an intense desire to answer the question, “Who am I?” Through taking several personality tests and introspection, the same keywords started showing up for Craig. When you feel fear, that’s when you know you’re at the edge of your comfort zone and in order for you to get into your ‘flow’ state, you have to jump off that cliff. There are things we do that take us out of our flow state and end up sabotaging our success. Every one of us has shame, but the people who face their shame end up not letting it spill out into the rest of their lives. By owning up to our flaws, we are able to dig even deeper into who we are and find out our purpose in life. Interview Links: Purposemapping.com Craig on LinkedIn The E Myth, by Michael Gerber 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 can you develop yourself and your team more holistically than just job training? In the beginning of the company there’s a lot of focus on job programs to help staff learn how to do their job, but what about after, when you have those systems in place? Today’s guest will show you how! Robert Glazer is the Founder and Managing Director of Acceleration Partners as well as the Founder and Chairman of BrandCycle. He is a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record of success. On today’s show, Robert discusses different ways you can develop your team (and yourself) beyond simple job training. Robert was always an entrepreneur and as he was getting comfortable with risk, he was also finding ways to minimize it. Through this, he started to align himself around how to make processes better and how he could also make himself and others better. After running a high-performance company, he came to notice that you end up breaking a lot of people along the way. When you’re growing 30-40% a year, most people simply cannot keep up with that. Robert was finding issues where his team was great, at first, but he kept having to shift them out of positions as the company grew bigger and bigger. How could he keep and retain his people no matter what the company’s growth looks like? Robert was determined to break the cycle. One of Bill’s values today is ‘Never Finished,’ which means that it’s important for him and his staff to always be growing and evolving. If companies want to scale up, they have to develop themselves and their leadership team along the way, because strategies and tactics will only get you so far and you will plateau. People want to talk to Robert about their product, but Robert is more interested in the business of the business and the business of people. In fact, every business has two parts to it: the product and the business of the business. Many founders love working on their product, but completely ignore the business side of things and get overwhelmed by the growth. As the founder, leading based on the company’s level of growth can be very tricky. You start off small and are visible to everybody, but as you grow, you have to begin putting new leaders in place, so that you can become a different kind of leader within your company. It’s difficult for many founders because their management/influence styles have to adapt rather quickly and that isn’t always easy. When you focus on people not just in their job role but help them holistically develop themselves that they can apply it to their professional and personal life, you get a more engaged and dedicated workforce. However, with that being said, that can’t happen if the founder doesn’t lead the charge and work on improving him or herself first. Interview Links: Accelerationpartners.com Brandcycle.com Fridayfwd.com The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz The Miracle Morning, by Hal Elrod 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: “One of our values today is ‘Never Finished.’ Always be growing and evolving until you die.” “Every business has 2 businesses: the product and the business. A lot of founders don’t like the ‘business’ part.” “You’ve got to be a different kind of leader and influencing differently than you do in the beginning.” 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 a 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

The best brands in the world make you feel sexy, invincible, and like a hero — and you can be just like them! When you start thinking about yourself and your business as a brand, it can open up all kinds of opportunities that you may have never seen before. Find out how to develop ‘the best brand in the world’ on this week’s episode. Deb Gabor is the Founder and CEO of Sol Marketing. She is a brand dominatrix and investor pitch whisperer. At Sol Marketing, Deb has helped develop brand strategy for household names like Dell, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs, just to name a few. Deb is also the author of the bestselling book, Branding is Sex. After trying to become a doctor, Deb found herself being really, really bad at medical school. She decided to switch fields and study communication instead. While still in college, Procter and Gamble came to her school and she helped launch a test product called Fruitopia. This sparked a huge interest for Deb on the research involved as to why someone would buy a product. There are so many other drinks to choose from, what’s the person’s story and why would they pick this drink out of all others? The best, most sustainable brands in the world are the ones who can create and convey a vision for the future and deliver on that promise. The biggest disruptions in business models tend to happen outside of the given industry. For example, big food innovations and disruptions that are happening right now are not coming from within the grocery market and food producer industry. When it comes to branding, it comes down to a breaking point of “Brand or be branded.” You don’t own your brand, your customers own your brand. Your brand technically has two parts: The identity and the image. The brand image is the part the customer owns. It’s their reflection back on you; it’s their perceptions and relationship with you. Most importantly, it’s their immediate experience with you. The brand identity is the part you own and control. It is how you show up. It is how you make promises and deliver on those promises to those you are serving. You have to manage both in order to deliver effective messaging. If you fail in these two areas, you leave your brand up to the control of your customers, and this can lead to broken brand promises. Interview Links: Brandingissex.com Solmarketing.com 8hourbrand.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 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

Bahaa Moukadam is a former Silicon Valley CEO with an extensive track record of success. He is also a Certified Gazelles International Coach and throughout his career, Bahaa has grown companies from $0 to $40 million in 5 years and $60 million to $173 million in 3 years. Now, he helps teach executives and Entrepreneurs how to avoid critical business mistakes while also enjoying the journey of building a successful company. Although Bahaa worked mostly in the IT sector, he has helped CEOs and companies outside of his industry of expertise. In one example, Bahaa worked with a company in the MRI machine service industry. Even though he knows nothing about MRI machines, he was able to help the founder take vacations twice a year and enjoy more freedom. Prior to that, the founder had not taken a vacation in over 10 years. When your company is organized in such a way where the leader can take time off, that company becomes much more valuable. There’s nothing worse than having to sell a company that only really works when there’s one man (the founder) running the show. It’s in everyone’s best interest that the leader can take a vacation and the business keeps on working correctly. A lot of CEOs are really good at one of these two things: results or relationships; very few are good at both. Some business owners are focused on developing results and keeping the eye on the prize, unfortunately, they might burn relationships in the process. On the flip side, some founders are really good at creating a country club feeling with their customers but lose sight very quickly of their results. The perfect example of this was a husband and wife team Bahaa worked with, a year ago. They had been in business for about 14 years and had 125 employees and 3 locations. They built a company that made 12 million a year, but neither of the two founders made any profit. They were too focused on the relationship side of things, which was good because they’re employees were very happy, but they weren’t focused on the results. After working with Bahaa, they ended up consistently making $50,000 to $90,000 a month in net profit. On the flip side of things, Bahaa worked with a defense contractor that was heavily driven by results. It was a 250-million-dollar division out of a multi-billion-dollar company. The president of that division was not relationship-focused at all. In fact, his lack of awareness on the people side of things really started creating a lot of issues and it weakened the team heavily, which affected results. With some help from Bahaa, the president became a lot better about the needs of his staff and how to treat people. The key thing to remember here is to keep a balance on the results of your company and the relationships of your staff. The easiest part of business is the systems and the production. The hardest part is the people. It’s okay to be good at one or the other, but just make sure you have the right people in place to help you in your weaker areas. Interview Links: Seemetricspartners.com Business Fitness Assessment 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: “When the company is totally dependent on their CEO or founder, that’s a weaker and less sellable company.” “CEOs are like ‘it’s so expensive’ when working with a high-level coach. I promise the return is there in the 1st year.” “The easiest part of business is the systems and the production. The hardest part is the people.” 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 a 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).

This week it’s time to cut the BS out of your writing, your language, and your business. No one wants to hear lies! Most business writing and the way executives talk is just filled with BS and people are just sick of it. It’s time to stop now! Josh Bernoff has been a professional writer since 1982 and is the author of Without Bullshit. Also, for 20 years, he was at Forrester Research, where he wrote and edited reports on the future of technology. He was also a speaker at the Gazelle’s Growth Summit this year. While working at Forrester, Josh would often get briefs and press releases from hundreds of Tech startups, but he noticed that most of the communication he received was BS. Of all the press releases he received, only .02% of all the words in there had any real meaning to Josh. That’s a lot of waste. So, when Josh left Forrester, he wanted to teach people how to get rid of the bullshit and get straight to the point. People use jargon because somewhere in their head they think everybody uses this terminology. However, when you use jargon, you are actually more likely to alienate the people you’re trying to connect with, your customer. People who are used to pitching and promoting are used to using certain words like ‘widely successful,’ ‘great,’ and ‘powerful’ to drive home that big point they’re trying to make, but to the outside world, it looks like complete BS. In fact, the more of these overexaggerated words you use, the less credible you look. Instead of being super intense and using these big empty words and jargon that no one understands, you can take lessons from famous speechwriters who would often open the speech or conversation with a proactive fact. Bill likes to lead with, “One in four of you will not complete this program, statistically speaking.” That immediately got the attention and the engagement of the entire room. People’s attention spans are very short. Based on a survey Josh conducted for his book, people spend a total of 46 hours a week reading and writing for their work, more than a full-time job, so anything you have to say to them, it had better be eye-catching and important. When you need to write an important memo or message to your team, then you will need to think of these four things before you craft it. The first thing is, who will be reading this? Second, what’s the objective? What change are you trying to make? Third, what action should the reader take? And fourth, what kind of impression would you like your reader to be left with about you? Josh uses the ROAM acronym to help him remember this: Readers, Objective, Action, iMpressions. Interview Links: Withoutbullshit.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 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

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 addresses this so that you never have to worry about living 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. This is Mike’s second guest appearance on the show! Why did Mike decide to write Profit First? Believe it or not, 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 living check-by-check. He thought if he could run the business long enough, they’d eventually hit their ‘big break’ and become profitable. After selling his businesess, 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: Mikemichalowicz.com Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine, by Mike Michalowicz 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 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

This week’s episode explores Maria’s personal journey and discovery over the years. An entrepreneur at a very young age, she gave up the boyfriend, the oceanview property, and her business for a deeper meaning. Through traveling the world and finding her life’s purpose, she ended up creating a billion-dollar company in return. Find out how by listening in. Maria Sipka created her first company at the age of 19 and by 21, it was a $2 million dollar business. What seemed to be the ‘perfect life.’ Maria gave it all up to search for deeper meaning. In 2005, she co-founded XING, which is now worth over a billion dollars. Maria later moved to San Francisco and Co-Founded Linqia, a company that aims to educate and inspire marketers. Maria’s childhood sweetheart, a high-performance athlete, encouraged Maria to attend a Tony Robbins’ seminar at the young age of 16. She is forever grateful for going to that event at such a young age because it really opened her eyes to the world. She came out of it a changed person. At the age of 17, Maria’s parents gave her $20,000 of what was supposed to fund Maria’s future wedding party to use as an investment instead. She took that money and invested in real estate. She was then hired as a marketing and communications specialist after she finished high school. And before she knew it, she had her first business at 19 and she was completely out of her league. After hiring staff, Maria’s business was doing well, hitting a couple of million dollars in revenue within the first few years. However, what changed for Maria was when her childhood sweetheart introduced her to his personal trainer, and that’s when she found out he owned over 100 properties. How did a personal trainer own so much property? She found out her way of investing was all wrong. She went home that night and put a spreadsheet together using his formula. She was able to work out that by the age of 40 she could own a billion dollars worth of property using his example. While following his model over 8 years, she acquired 50 properties by the age of 27. Despite waking up to oceanfront views, she decided it was time to close this chapter and find a bigger purpose in her life. So, she left her business and her boyfriend behind in Sydney and went on a 10-day retreat to restart herself. After the retreat, Maria later traveled the world for two years and met inspiring and amazing entrepreneurs along the way. Since then, Maria looks at her life like a storybook and tries to completely change, update, and rework her story and entrepreneurial journey. For the last 15 years, she has picked yearly themes that help her grow and live a more meaningful life. Interview Links: Linqia.com Xing.com/en Maria 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: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 episode is worth a million dollars! That’s right! Your business is a leaky bucket and there are probably more than a million dollars in it that are leaking away and you’re just not aware it. How can you spot those leaks and get them fixed ASAP? You’ll have to listen in to this week’s show! Howard Shore is the author of Your Business is a Leaky Bucket as well as a Business and Executive Coach. Howard has worked for 3 top Fortune 500 companies and has over 12 years of experience as a coach. He is also a Certified Gazelles Coach. Throughout the years, he has seen clients leak money unnecessarily and this is what inspired him to write his book. Howard began his career by owning his first business when he was 18 years old. Over the years of working one-on-one with high-level executives and leaders, Howard came to realize something important. We all live our life like Dilbert, the popular comic strip. It was astonishing to Howard how everybody could be working so, so hard in their industry, yet they were not getting as much traction as they should through this extra hard work. It just seemed counter-productive. Most people are very good at working in the business but do not know how to work on the business. This is to say, they do not know how to focus on strategy, execution, and people to help save themselves from these big financial leaks and their own personal time. Howard was hired to help a client in the restoration business improve his profits and bottom line. Just by working with Howard and applying the principles that are in the book, their profit grew by over 80% this year and their top line grew by over 30%. This is highly unusual in an industry like theirs and this was done through all organic means (no acquisitions). Also, their net profit grew by over 50%. The good news is, the general manager and CEO can now take time off and actually enjoy their lives while running a growing and successful business! You can put any kind of framework in place, but if you don’t have a strong culture of accountability, or even the right accountability systems in place, then fixing the leaky bucket is destined to fail. Howard likes to replace the word execution with the word accountability because, in the end, it takes accountability to create long-lasting and meaningful action. Interview Links: Your Business is a Leaky Bucket: Learn How to Avoid Losing Millions in Revenue and Profit Annually, by Howard Shore Dilbert.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 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

Going through hardship is difficult and can sometimes leave very painful memories. But what if you can take the challenges you’ve gone through and turn them into a powerful story that inspires others? This week’s episode dives into how you can find your story and tell it in a powerful way. JT McCormick is the President and CEO of Book in a Box, a company that will help you tell your story and write your book. JT has personally faced a lot of hardships growing up. By all accounts, he shouldn’t have succeeded, but he worked his way up from scrubbing toilets and is now the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company. Find out his story on today’s show. For the first ten years of JT’s life, all he saw while growing up in the projects were pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, and overall despair. He did not know any better, until one day he and his father drove through a very rich neighborhood and it opened his eyes to the possibility that life has much more to offer. JT’s father was a pimp in the 70s and JT is one of 23 children fathered by him. He is the only child on his mother’s side and she grew up in an orphanage. JT grew up mixed race and faced discrimination from both ethnicities because of it. For the first nine years of his life, he grew up with his mother, who was a single mom on welfare. After that, he lived with his dad and the experience can best be described as ‘chaos.’ A billionaire once told Bill, “One of my main lessons in life was to be thankful for the problems you have.” Your problems are difficult, they’re unpleasant, but at least they’re yours. For this billionaire, he'd rather have his own problems than someone else’s problems.JT’s mother told him to never judge someone because everyone has a story and you don’t always know what their story is. This piece of advice stuck with him and became the inspiration for his business today. Bill has noticed that all of the relationships we hold as people, no matter what position you’re in or whether you’re a young adult or a senior citizen, all of the ways we relate are just extensions of things we learned as children and the way our parents interacted with each other. The thing about is, if you don’t access your story, you close yourself off from relating to other people or from other people relating to you. Everyone has hardships and struggles, whether it’s losing their house or getting a divorce from their spouse. You don’t have to be ‘perfect’ or leave the emotions/stories out of business because no one is perfect and we are all emotional. When you share your story, you also build trust with your peers. Interview Links: Bookpeople.com What Is the What: A Novel, by Dave Eggers The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni 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: “I can’t change the past. I can’t change I was sexually abused or the parents I was born to. I can change the future.” “One of my main lessons in life was to be thankful for the problems you have.” “Never judge people because everyone has a story and you don’t always know what their story is.” 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 a 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

Are you having trouble scaling your business effectively? Have you ever thought that you might be doing it ‘wrong’? This episode dives into the biggest mistakes we see leaders making in the quest scale up. Our guest for this week is the one and only Verne Harnish. As most of you already know, he is the author of Scaling Up, Founder and CEO of Gazelles. He is also co-founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO). The tools that Verne and our team at Gazelles have put in place have worked for over 40,000 companies, across many industries, and around the world. This is Verne’s 35th year working helping business to scale. In fact, Verne and EO are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the organization and the 25th anniversary of the originating MIT program, the Birthing of Giants. It’s also the 20th anniversary of our Gazelles organization. There is a lot of education for startup founders, but much much less on successfully scaling up. In this show, Verne shares the story of a 76-year old who accidentally became a CEO and was recently named CEO of the year in British Columbia, Canada. With 3 decades of experience as a cancer researcher, he cites Gazelles as what helped him navigate the chaos of growing his company, now approaching a $1 billion valuation. We also look at what people are missing the Strategy area: it’s pricing! Companies are leaving massive amounts of money on the table. There are two things you want to think about when it comes to pricing. First, adjust your pricing based on the time and/or the season (develop dynamic pricing). And second, there’s psychology behind this. Human beings are not rational decision makers and sometimes need 3 tiers of pricing in order to be convinced that a higher tier is the one for them. In People decisions, this is the best piece of advice Verne ever received: If you want to scale your company by 10x, figure out who are the top 25 influencers in your industry that need to get behind your company. The bigger the names, the faster you will scale. Verne was bold, so he put President Ronald Reagan on his list, along with Steve Jobs. Verne also knew he had to get Inc. Magazine and Venture Magazine involved. He spent an hour every week figuring out how he could get himself in front of these influencers. 3 years later, they were global. Just because Verne aimed for the President at the time doesn’t mean that’s also your only option. In this day and age, there are tons of influencers you can target. Do not ignore bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram stars, etc. Every industry has their lead customer. If you’ve got them onboard, your product will fly off the shelf. Listen to this show for big insights on getting proactive with your Execution habits and managing the Cash decisions of your business model. Resources: Download our Growth Kit for Scaling Up with instructions, agendas, and worksheets for your leadership team. Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website 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

This week’s episode focuses on the 3HAG. As many of you might be familiar with a 10+ year BHAG, the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, our 3HAG is not too far off from this concept. How do you effectively structure your mid-term goals? Today’s expert guest has some tips for you! Shannon Susko has more than 20 years of experience building and leading high-growth technology companies in the financial services industry. She is also a Senior Gazelles Coach and has a ton of experience helping business leaders put strategies in place to achieve their 3HAG and BHAGs! When Shannon was the CEO of her first company, she had to stand in front of her team, her shareholders, and investors to discuss the company’s BHAG. However, you have to do more than just exclaim it, you also have to prove you can do it. This is where the 3HAG comes in and it is how it helped Shannon make the long-term goal achievable and believable. The reason most companies do not even have a 3HAG is due to fear of failure. That’s a lot of pressure for a CEO and nothing good comes from having their three-year goals fall short in the eyes of his or her investors. The BHAG is the first strategic goal, but the 3HAG brings everything together. As Shannon says, it’s like the pivot point. Shannon and her team decided to map out 36 months, 12 quarters, of what the key milestones were going to be in order for them to put the strategy in place. They also studied the current climate of the market throughout these months to ensure they were still on track with their target audience. During this time, the 3HAG helped Shannon and her team stay focused and all the decisions in the company were striving to hit those goals. After about five years of incorporating that framework, the company was able to take a very successful exit. Shannon’s second company experienced similar success, except within a shorter timeframe, due to this framework. Three years and three months to the day, she was able to sell the company and reap the rewards of another huge exit. Interview Links: Shannonsusko.com More 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 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

Entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders both have a lot to learn from each other. Even though it may seem like they’re working in completely different industries, both worlds have a lot of interesting insight on how to grow, partner, and market to a larger audience. Dr. Ken Thiessen is the Founder of Power of One Consulting, where he focuses on consulting for the social sector and nonprofit organizations. Dr. Ken is also a certified senior Gazelles coach and uses his expertise to help business owners and nonprofit leaders succeed in their industry. By working with both nonprofit and for-profit sectors, Dr. Ken has found some very interesting lessons that we can all learn from, and use, in our business. When Dr. Ken was 18 years old, he decided to buy a restaurant. He had no business plan, and yet the bank gave him a loan for it! However, surprise surprise, two years after he bought his restaurant, Dr. Ken went bankrupt. From Dr. Ken’s failed restaurant attempt, he learned a lot of important lessons at the ripe age of 20. This was a good thing! The lessons he learned, like having a plan, is something a university could never teach him. When Dr. Ken turned 29, he did a major career shift and went back to school. Truth be told, Dr. Ken is surprised he even did this as he wasn’t very good at school in the first place. Dr. Ken decided to become a minister at this time, and he continued to do this for the next 20 years. The shift from for-profit to nonprofit was a major wake-up call. Dr. Ken did consulting work for 45 churches to help them get more organized and make a structured plan for their future. He worked with so many people who meant well, but couldn’t plan beyond that. After 5 years of doing this, Dr. Ken wanted to do more and help others in a bigger way. This is how he got introduced to Gazelles and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Once he adopted Gazelles framework, things changed for him. He began helping a variety of nonprofit organizations. So, between entrepreneurship and nonprofits, what kinds of differences and lessons has Dr. Ken learned so far? In the nonprofit sector, you had people rise up in the ranks (executive director positions, etc), despite not knowing how to read a financial statement or run a team. How did this happen? They got there because they were passionate about the cause and were willing to roll with the punches and learn on the job. A lot of nonprofit leaders will say that they’re not a business, but Dr. Ken tells them that they owe it to the people who fund them to show them that they’re using their resources effectively. This is why it’s so important that you treat a nonprofit like a business. The reality is, you can run a nonprofit like a business and you can do it without compromising the core values and the core reason why you’re helping others. In fact, by treating a nonprofit like a business, you are able to effectively structure your organization in a way that helps more people. Who doesn’t want to do that? Once nonprofit leaders realize this, they actually end up scaling and growing their nonprofit to new heights. Interview Links: Powerofoneconsulting.ca Ken on Linkedin Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish More 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

Have you ever been on the brink of losing hope and losing your business? Today’s episode dives into the nitty-gritty and shares some of the not-so-pleasant hardships many entrepreneurs face. Today’s guest shares some of the key lessons he’s learned while he was trying to start and grow his own business. Tom King is the Founder and CEO of Steviva Foods, one of the largest importers, manufacturers, and distributors of clean-label sweetening systems and natural sweeteners. Thom’s success did not come easy. In fact, Thom had experienced several growth-related hardships in his business before he truly ‘made it.’ On this week’s show, find out why he never gave up on his business even when all the arrows were pointing for him to do so. Thom first discovered Steviva through his friend. Tom’s friend came back from Paraguay looking for a natural supplement for his daughter, who was suffering from a rare disease. When Thom first tried these leaves from Paraguay, he found them to be very sweet and they had no calories. The light bulb went off in Thom’s head and thus began his journey of creating a sugar/sweetener substitute. Thom officially launched his company in 1999. At the time, most of his sales were coming from health food stores due to FDA restrictions on his products. However, in 2008, the FDA allowed Steviva to be sold as a sweetener and his sales began to skyrocket. Thom admits that from 1999 to 2008, it was a real struggle getting his business off the ground. Thom’s business started from his garage and it was his side hustle. He was working a full-time job on top of trying to convince stores to sell his product. When he decided to move the business from California to Oregon, that’s when he began to run out of capital. When Thom was running out of money in 2007, he made a tough call to his father asking him for a small loan. He couldn’t make his mortgage payments anymore. He had maxed out his credit cards, and banks weren’t loaning money to him. Thankfully, his father said yes and lent him $175,000. Once he received the funds, he put his business plan in place and started to bring on employees. His first 10 hires all focused on the production side of the business and Thom was able to focus strictly on selling. During this financially trying time, what made Thom carry on? Why didn’t he just hang up the jacket and call it quits? Truth be told, Thom really believed in the idea and — here’s the important part — he had the data to back up the product idea. Diabetes and obesity rates were rising and Thom knew he had a product that could do good and help those people. Interview Links: Steviva.com More 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: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

Is your company expanding and growing quickly? Usually, when a company grows but does not have the right systems in place, the organization rapidly feels the extra pressure and it often causes serious blocks in the chain. How do you avoid it? Well, this week’s guest is a fellow coach and has seen time and time again the top biggest three pitfalls that occur in a rapidly growing company. Ron Carucci is a consultant with more than 25 years of experience working directly with CEOs and senior executives. He has consulted for a wide range of organizations — everything from Fortune 50s to startups. His consulting has taken him to more than 20 different countries on four continents. On today’s show, Ron discusses the three top biggest constraints a growing company faces. Ron is a recent empty nester, and Bill is just months away from having an empty home as well. As these two parents see their children grow up, there is a common theme that can be directly linked to business — growth and change produce unsettling moments. The old ways of doing things just don’t apply anymore. The reality is, no matter where you are in life, you still have to reinvent and adjust to the new changes that are coming your way. Ron repeatedly sees three very common pitfalls into which organizations have dug themselves. One of them is that they have grown, but they have not scaled. For example, an 80-million-dollar company trapped in the body of a 20-million-dollar organization. No one has ever told these organizations that scaling up requires growing up. As Ron begins his work, he sees companies putting pieces and systems together on a whim and they usually do not have a long-term game plan. All they’re doing is just trying to fix the leaks, and, of course, this method is not sustainable. The company ends up losing identity as well as vision. The first question Ron asks his clients is, “What is your strategy?” Often times, he’ll get handed a mission statement, a value statement, a financial plan, a sales forecast — everything but a strategy. For many of his clients, they are unable to answer why they’re better than their competitors and why customers should choose them over the next guy. If you cannot answer this, then it means you do not know who you are or what your company represents. And, if you do not know who you are and what your company represents, this means that you do not know who is leading the charge. For many clients, they find out that they do not have an identity, do not have a long-term game plan, and do not have strong leadership. However, the good news is that all three of these pitfalls are completely avoidable! You avoid this by setting your identity, your intentions, your strategies, and what clients you will say “no” to, at the very beginning of the organization. This helps you build a strong foundation and you will find yourself not having to struggle to fix those leaks. Interview Links: Navalent.com Ron on LinkedIn More 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

Many business owners have found themselves working on important presentations throughout their careers. However, have you ever worked on one that has fallen flat, or even failed to wow investors or clients? Well, today’s episode breaks down what goes into a successful presentation! Dustin Mathews is the co-founder of Speaking Empire, a company that helps train aspiring speakers into pros. He is also the author of the No B.S. Guide to Powerful Presentations, which is why he makes for an excellent guest on how to develop inspiring presentations that produce results. Dustin never wanted to be front-and-center with an audience. He was always a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, and would constantly run from the idea of standing in front of a crowd. One day, he couldn’t run from it any longer and he had to cover for his boss. When he stood up there and spoke, something interesting happened — it was not as bad as it seemed. He’s been hooked ever since. Dustin ended up doing 3,000 events in a short time frame with his team. Through lots of trial and error, he learned there are five components to an effective presentation: An intro, powerful stories, an offer, the meat of the presentation (the content), and the close. To expand on each of these five components, the intro is what sets the stage. If you look at the most influential people out there, there are always introduced by somebody else. So, when you’re personally about to do a presentation, have someone, or something, introduce you. One of Dustin’s tips is that he has a video to give him the introduction. This gives his audience an idea of what he’s done in the past. The 2nd component is the story. Stories need to be in a presentation. You have to be able to tell a before/after story. A story of why your client’s life was awful, what happened when they found/used the product, and how they’re life is now 10X better now. Now that you’ve told your transformative story, the next step is the offer. This is where you do not make assumptions about the audience. Do not use jargon or expect you’re talking to experts/peers. In your offer, you have to describe why this is a challenge/a real pain for your target audience. When you effectively describe the pain, that’s when you come in with the solution. This naturally leads you into the fourth component, the meat of the content. Here’s where you offer a three-to-five-step process as to why this product will solve their pain point. Do not give them more than five, as this will overwhelm the audience! Be sure to bring out your client case studies as well, to help convince those who are skeptical about your solution. The last piece of the presentation is the close. In reality, when you’re trying to close, you don’t wait till the very end. In a room, make sure you get clarification that you’re making sense to your audience. You ask your audience questions throughout the entire presentation to get ‘mini closes’ along the way before you go into your big ask. This is key! Interview Links: Speakingempire.com Nobspresentations.com Dustin on Linkedin More 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: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

Randy Cohen is the Founder & Chief Energizing Officer for TicketCity Management. Randy is also the author of Secrets of Swagger, a book to help guide business owners and entrepreneurs through the process of understanding, and obtaining, confidence. Do you struggle with getting your swagger on? This week’s guest knows a thing or two about being cool, calm, and confident. Find out how you can obtain these seemingly unattainable traits with guest Randy Cohen on this week’s episode! Randy first started TicketCity 27 years ago. He took his life savings of $1,200 and bought 200 $6 sports tickets, which he later resold for $15 a piece. From there, he slowly built his business up and now he has a $150 million operation. How does Randy cultivate swagger in his life and in his business? It all started when he had an epiphany of what TicketCity was all about. What is your company about and how are you making a difference? When you know these answers, and are passionate about them, you can effectively rally your troops and lead them in the right direction for your company. One of the secrets to swagger is finding your passion in life. That’s just one part of it though. You still have to walk the walk and talk the talk. People respect a leader who gets his hands dirty. Keep in mind, there are different levels of swagger too. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to swagger. You might be brilliant at what you do and have an intelligence swagger about you. You might be highly competitive and have a competitive swagger about you. Richard Branson, Lady Gaga, and George Clooney all have different types of swagger. People with swagger typically have a couple of these things: Passion, Collaboration, Charisma, Commitment, Courage, Coolness, Competitiveness, Character, and Creativity. How can you obtain some of these things? Well, you certainly should not fake it till you make it. That’s not how you obtain swagger. Walk the talk of something that’s really important to you, something you really care about. You get swagger by working on something truly meaningful to you and showing up, being committed, to that every single day. Interview Links: Ticketcity.com Secrets of Swagger: How to Own Your Cool in Life and Business, by Randy Cohen More 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

Steve Little is the CEO and Managing Partner of Zero Limits Ventures. Steve first started his entrepreneurial career at the young age of 13, and sold his business a few years later for a 6-figure sum. Steve has over 40+ years of experience in entrepreneurship in a wide range of industries, which is why he is the perfect guest for this week’s topic. On the show, Steve discusses some of the important factors you need to consider, to drive value in your business! Steve started just like any other kid on the block, cutting his dad’s lawn. After two years of taking care of his neighbors and clients’ lawns, and having 35 employees under his belt, he sold the contracts he acquired for a little over $200,000. He didn’t realize it at the time, but when he looks back, this was one of the earliest lessons he learned about how to drive value into the business. There are all kinds of value hidden inside the walls of businesses. There’s valuation that’s tied up into constraints, like things that exist in your business that’s keeping it from being valuable; and there are things outside the business, like opportunities in the marketplace that owners are not fully leveraging. Today, when Steve sits down with prospective clients, he asks two questions, “What’s your exit strategy?” and “Do you know what drives the value of your business?” Many people are unable to answer these questions. Steve often cites Amazon buying Zappos as one of the prime examples of high value. Why did Amazon pay a billion dollars to acquire Zappos? It wasn’t for their products. It was for their company culture. And if you talk to the Founder of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, he will tell you he built the Zappos culture for that exact reason; he knew someone would want to buy the culture, not the products. You may not want to sell your business today, and that’s okay, but you really can’t know what your business is worth unless you understand who would buy it, why they’d buy it, and what they’d be willing to pay for it. Interview Links: Zerolimitsventures.com More 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

John Ratliff first applied The Scaling Up Rockefeller Habits when he was the Founder/CEO of Appletree Answers. He grew it from relatively small company in 1995 to 700 employees, before selling it in 2012. Today, he is the Managing Director of STS Capital Partners, and sits down with Bill to discuss our overall mental health and how to combat depression when you’re sitting at the top. When it comes to mental health, John looks back and reflects that he had been struggling with it since he was a little kid. So, instead of facing it, he did what most people did, he dived into his work, and did not confront what was going on with himself internally. When it comes to mental health, sleep is very important, yet John picked a business where he didn’t get much of it at all. He was working 100 hours a week, and was up at all hours of the night when he first started his answering service. He was so sleep deprived that he doesn’t remember the entire year of 1997. To be completely honest, John kept his life-long battle with depression a complete secret from everyone in his life until now, when he’s finally able to talk about it. It was something he didn’t want anybody to know about. From the outside, he was often the life of the party and a fun guy to be around. Bill reflects on his own personal experience and how many entrepreneurs pretend that it’s all ‘cool,’ when it really is not. Through some reflection, Bill was able to notice, just like John, the various ways we try to hide from the outside world, and to make it look like we’re more than just okay. It seems entrepreneurs have the tendency to overcompensate to try and avoid what’s going on in the inside, which has its pros and its cons. Interview Links: STSCapital.com John on LinkedIn More 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

Jack Daly is a sales coach with over 25 years of experience. Throughout his career, Jack has helped six companies grow to hundreds and hundreds of employees nationwide. Jack is also the Amazon bestselling author of Hyper Sales Growth. On today’s show, Jack discusses what makes a great sales playbook. Jack’s sales playbook has evolved over time. Why did Jack create this sales playbook, in the first place? Well, it goes back to the company that went from four people (Jack and three colleagues) to 750. Jack’s BHAG was to be the #1 mortgage company in Orange County, California. This was back in 1985, and Jack was suddenly faced with Bank of America, Countrywide Funding, Shearson American Express, and Wells Fargo as competitors. Knowing the competitors he faced, he knew he needed a system and processes in place to help roll out his business model to other store locations as quickly as possible. This is how Jack’s sales playbook was first created. Over time, Jack noticed that, for most companies, systems and processes are pretty much non-existent in the sales department, and he slowly began improving his sales playbook to help others. Jack’s largest sales force was 2600 sales people, and he would visit over 100 offices with the same mentality, “Sports teams are run better than most businesses.” There isn’t a coach out there who would put their players on the field without a playbook, yet most companies do not have a sales playbook. No sales playbook? This means each salesperson is making it up as they go and that is dangerous when you begin to scale up. Interview Links: Jackdaly.net “Good to Great,” by James C. Collins More 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

Tristan White is the Founder & CEO of The Physio Co, a physical therapy clinic based in Australia. Tristan’s company has been ranked #1 of Australia’s best places to work. How did he do it? By creating a winning culture everyone within the company can get behind and support. Tristan explains how he was able to achieve this, on today’s show. Tristan is an accidental entrepreneur. He began his career as a physical therapist, and although he loved the work he did while he held a traditional job, he knew he could make a bigger impact on his own. Slowly, his business grew and he had to hire employees. Five years later, Tristan found himself with a team of 20 people and didn’t know anything about what company culture was, or how it should look, so naturally, he ran into some serious problems. He was just a physical therapist, after all! So, at the five-year mark, Tristan realized he wasn’t happy, his company did not have structures in place, and it was starting to become utter chaos. He knew something had to change. At the time, Tristan believed he was just meant to be a physical therapist, he didn’t think he was cut out for entrepreneurship, at all. However, Tristan was determined to find a better way, and to make his and his employees’ lives easier within the company. So, he did something that scared the hell out of him. He took a break from the company. He left for 2-3 weeks and left the country to research other companies who had ‘nailed it.’ Through that experience, as well as reading the book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, he came home inspired, and ready to tackle his company culture problem. Interview Links: Tristanwhite.com.au Thephysioco.com.au Culture Is Everything by, Tristan White Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, by Verne Harnish More 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: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

Ronen Gafni is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-Founder of FreshBiz, a training company that infuses fun and smart thinking into organizations. Ronen is also the author of The New Entrepreneurz. On today’s show, Ronen discusses how to make business more playful and exciting for everyone. Ronen started his career as a software programmer in the army. He understood you couldn’t take life too seriously. You win some and you lose some. So, with that mindset in mind, he began trading on the stock market during his free time. He was able to convert his $100-a-month salary into $100,000 just from the stock market. There’s a bit of a game at play when it comes to business, but two things tend to get in our way from enjoying it; our competitive spirit and own feelings about what success looks like. No one wants to be seen as a loser, or just some goofball, this is when the game of business stops becoming so fun. Business is not a win-lose situation. If Ronen makes more money, that doesn’t mean you make less of it. The reason Ronen made money is because he added value, and someone gained positively from it. Business should always be win-win. There is no reason why business should be so competitive. Interview Links: Freshbizgame.com Ronen on LinkedIn Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website 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

Melinda Wittstock is the CEO & Founder of Verifeed, a company that helps you grow your audience in an authentic way. We all understand the power of authenticity, but what is it exactly? Melinda sheds some light on how business owners can build an authentic and meaningful company on this week’s episode. Melinda and her team have actually created a program that can measure your authenticity. After looking at millions of social conversations, it becomes easy to detect who’s real, and who’s not. There’s a lot of interest in authenticity, but it often gets confused with sincerity. There’s no secret that authenticity is a bit of a buzzword these days, and that it can mean different things to different people. For example, for Melinda, authenticity is about being true to yourself. It applies that you know yourself. This is often a scary thought because people don’t always want to be seen in such a vulnerable light. We don’t want to be rejected by our community. At the end of the day, authenticity is about being true to yourself, and being brave enough to show it to the world. Brands who hide behind a corporate image tend not to come across as human, and this disconnects them from their customers. Nobody wants to be seen as just a number, and people today see through that facade very quickly. Interview Links: Verifeed.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website 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

Helen Chang is a journalist, editor, writer, ghostwriter, and video journalist, specializing in business, motivational and lifestyle topics. As the former business editor of San Diego News Network, SDNN.com, she covered topics in tech, venture capital, personal finance, and more. Today’s episode is all about writing your first book and using it to market yourself as an expert. As a business journalist, Helen was able to interview amazing entrepreneurs, and often saw that the most successful entrepreneurs were those who had some kind of a failure, or some kind of despair, before they learned lessons that eventually propelled them to success later on. The first book she ghostwrote was a complete flop at first. The marketing manager told her she had to completely rewrite it because the book was not marketable. This news crushed her, but she saw this as a learning opportunity and took the challenge. However, this early lesson was an important one because to put a good book together, particularly a business or expertise book, it needs to have a personal story that creates an emotional connection with the reader, and it also needs to have useful information that the reader can use and apply in their everyday life. After rewriting that book, the author brought Helen along to some of the bootcamps he was hosting, and readers would come up to her, thanking her for writing something so beautiful. The book had changed their lives! Ever since the author released his book, it led to a new division of his business that is now worth $100 million dollars. A book is a fantastic way to establish yourself as an expert, and grow your business to new heights. Interview Links: Helenchangwriter.com Humanisteq Website 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

Andy Bailey is a serial entrepreneur and author of No Try Only Do. He is also the Founder and Lead Coach of Petra Coach, an entrepreneurial coaching firm. Today’s show is all about the illusion of work-life balance and how we can bridge the gap between those two more seamlessly. Andy and Bill also discuss how language plays an important role on how you show up to others, which is why you should get rid of the word ‘try’ in your vocabulary. How does the concept of ‘no try, only do,’ which was originally said by Yoda, show up in Andy’s life? Andy has always tried to solve problems head on, and ‘There is No Try. Only Do’ has become a core value in his coaching business. When he and his team come into organizations with this mindset, it rapidly sets the standard that you can’t have a victim mentality, or put up excuses, if you truly want to succeed. When you completely remove the word ‘try’ from your vocabulary, it brings a whole new, and real, meaning to what you will say you’ll do. Either you will do something or you won’t. By saying ‘try,’ you’re shifting the responsibility away from yourself and you are possibly wasting everyone’s time. Whether we like it or not, words have power on us. The way we speak and the words we choose do shape the way we act, on both a conscious and subconscious level. This is why it’s so important to speak with conviction and to eliminate excuse words like ‘try.’ Interview Links: Petracoach.com Humanisteq Website 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

Rory Vaden is the best selling author of Take the Stairs, and Procrastinate on Purpose. His expertise on improving self-discipline, overcoming procrastination, and enhancing productivity make him the perfect guest for this week’s show. Today, Bill and Rory discuss some of the best ways you can multiply your time and get more things done the smart way! Although Rory does sales consulting for his business, the number one challenge his clients face is managing their time effectively. This propelled Rory into researching how the most successful people think about time. He found that there were two major things that stuck out with how ultra-high achievers think about time vs. everyone else. Rory and his team do extensive polling and national studies for his business, but he experienced a surprisingly big breakthrough from a lesson he learned from a 3-year-old girl. That little girl showed him unintentionally that time management isn’t just logical, it’s emotional, too. If you really look at it, there is no such thing as time management. Time carries on whether you want it to or not. When we talk about time management what we’re really talking about is self-management. Self-management includes managing our emotions, our behaviors, and that’s what this is all about. We have to first grasp that self-management is an emotional issue before we can begin to multiply our time. Interview Links: RoryVaden.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website 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

Mark Green is a Certified Gazelles Coach and Business Growth Expert. Mark is also the Founder and President of Performance Dynamics Group, where he has helped executives and salespeople dramatically increase their performance and their personal results. How did the journey of authenticity start for Mark? Well, it first began during the very early start of Mark’s childhood (although he didn’t realize it at the time); he was always that kid people could easily talk to. Mark became the go-to person for his peers during middle school and high school because he was a good listener and he was very approachable. Fast forward to 2003, Mark tried to start his own business, what is now the Performance Dynamics Group, but at the time he still didn’t quite understand what he was meant to do in this world. He discovered that he was having personal mental blocks about what success looked like for him, and it was preventing him from being authentic. To Mark, it seemed people around him just ‘understood’ what they were meant to do and were fearless, and authentic, about how to get there. So, Mark embarked on a journey to become more authentic and to discover his life’s purpose, only to find that he had the skills to help others all along — dating back to his early middle school days where he helped his peers through tough problems. Interview Links: Performance-dynamics.net Humanisteq Website 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

Cameron Herold is the Founder of the COO Alliance and the author of the global best seller Double Double. Cameron has over 10 years of experience as an entrepreneurial mentor, and has grown several companies to over $100 million dollars in revenue over the last 25 years. Why did Cameron start the COO Alliance? Cameron had been an EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) member for 6 years, and realized as he was attending some of those events that he no longer fit in. He wasn’t the CEO or the founder anymore, but he was still second in command and played a vital part in the organization. However, people at those events would often brush him to the side and ignore him, because of that title shift. Over the years, Cameron saw that there were a ton of masterminds for the CEO or founder, but there wasn’t a place for COOs to get together and mastermind/enhance their skillsets. Cameron organized a small group of his clients together, who were all COOs, and thus, the COO Alliance was slowly born last May. How is the COO Alliance set up? The COOs attend four times a year in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are currently 40 core members right now. The model is set up in such a way that 30% of the time the COOs mastermind together and help each other solve some difficult problems happening in their industry. Another 30% of the time, the members break off into small groups of 3 or 4, and brainstorm ideas on how they can make their company better, and they bring these ideas back to the bigger group, kind of like a shared brain trust. The remaining 40% of the event contains one guest speaker, Cameron talking on certain subjects related to the COO position, and a quick 5-10 minute presentation from COO members who know about something they have deep experience in. Interview Links: COOAlliance.com CameronHerold.com Humanisteq Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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).

Evan Rudowski is the Founder and Managing Partner at Atlantic Leap, a company that helps digital startups achieve growth through international expansion. On today’s show, Evan shares some tips and tricks on how companies can successfully make the leap, expand beyond their borders, and enter into the European market. So, how did this all begin? Evan traveled to London from Silicon Valley for what was supposed to be a couple of months’ worth of work. 19 years later, he’s still in London, and doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. When he first started, Evan did not have any international experience. He knew American English and that was about it. Evan discusses some of the clients he’s worked with, and how he was able to help them make their transition and break into the European market. It’s difficult to break into a different continent, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Junior members of your team lack the experience to successfully execute such a move and senior members often tend to be too busy to dedicate their full resources to the transition. This is where Evan comes in. When looking directly at the UK market, there is also a vast cultural difference that many Americans might not think about. Yes, both the British and Americans speak English, but from a cultural perspective, you’re dealing with two different worlds. So, how do you begin to make the leap and expand beyond your borders? You’ll have to tune in to this week’s episode to hear what Evan and Bill have to say on this very subject! Interview Links: Atlanticleap.net Humanisteq Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Jay Harman is a naturalist, author and award-winning entrepreneur and biomimetic inventor. Born and raised in Australia, Jay started his career as a naturalist with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in Australia and went on to found several multi-million dollar research and manufacturing companies. Today, Jay talks to us about his book The Shark's Paintbrush: Biomimicry and How Nature is Inspiring Innovation. How did Jay discover that nature has the solution to all of our problems? Well, it first started when he was in school. He had no interest in the teaching materials and would often daydream about going down to the beach to surf, fish, and scuba dive. You could always find him near the water when he wasn’t in school. However, the one subject Jay did pay attention to was physics. The strange thing was, physics worked in a slightly different way in nature than it did in the classroom. Jay first realized this when he saw seaweed, often fragile, keep its shape during the worst of storms. It would always form in a certain pattern and this pattern would help it keep it intact and survive the rough weather. In school, Jay was taught that the path of least resistance was in a straight line. Well, in nature, nothing moves in a straight line! It became very apparent to Jay, but not to Jay’s physics teacher, that the path of least resistance in nature was a spiral. So, Jay began applying these spiral shapes in a practical way and slowly ended up discovering that nature, really, had all the answers. However, how does all of this apply to the business world? Well, you’ll have to listen in for more great insights from Jay and how he slowly discovered that answer. Interview Links: Thesharkspaintbrush.com More Resources: Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Did you enjoy today's episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. __ Scaling Up 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 with Humanisteq Coaching and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Rob “Waldo” Waldman is a decorated former fighter pilot for the U.S. Air Force. He is also a professional leadership speaker, and the author of Never Fly Solo, a book on how to reach new heights in business through building trusting relationships. A lot of lessons can be learned through flying a plane. It requires focus, preparation, and even teamwork! When Bill and his team are training his clients’ teams on execution, they will normally show a picture of planes flying in formation. It’s a powerful image because there’s so much work that goes into it making look flawless. The same metaphor can be transferred over into business. Whatever you do in life, one thing remains certain, there will be uncertainty, there will be fear, and there will be doubt! There will be things out there that are outside of your control, and this is where true leadership will come into place. A good leader can navigate through the unknown and bring his people out onto the other side. Fear strikes us all at very different times. For example, Rob had to get over his fear of heights. One of the requirements to graduating in the academy was he had to jump off a 30ft diving board and it was the scariest thing ever! Bill can agree. He’s jumped out of planes as well as flew them and yet, the diving board is what got him. There’s no predicting where your fear is going to hit you at any moment. Fear strikes when you least expect it! The good news is, the opposite of fear is growth. If you’re able to break out of your comfort zone, you’re already on your way to creating new heights for you and your business. Interview Links: [email protected] Never Fly Solo Book More Resources:Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing. Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Business Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

John Ruhlin is the author of GIFTOLOGY: The Art & Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through The Noise & Drive Referrals and founder of the Ruhlin Group. There’s an art and science to using gifts to cut through the noise, and drive real referrals to your business. In this episode, John discusses how to use gifts to scale your business and increase referrals. John was a young, broke college kid who took a job at Cutco to hopefully pay his way through college. Fortunately at the time, John knew a lawyer outside of work who had the ‘secrets of business’ figured out, and, with his help and philosophy, John invented the first corporate gifting program for Cutco. The lawyer taught him this: If you can take care of your client’s family, everything else in business seems to work itself out. However, just gifting out a basket of fruit during Christmas is not going to help you cut through the noise. There’s a method to how and when you should gift. Want to know what’s considered a bad gift? Anything involving food. It doesn’t stand out! Gifting alcohol is not far up there, either. If you want to quickly offend somebody, give them food and alcohol. When people gift, they’re not looking at it as an ROI. They really should. When you spend money, you should get money back. In old biblical times, gifting represented the value of the relationship. It’s more than just a ‘thank you’, it’s a communication tool. Interview Links: Giftologybook.comRuhlingroup.com More Resources:Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing. Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Business Website Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. __ Scaling Up 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 with Humanisteq Coaching and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Heather Patterson is the Founder and Chief Happiness Officer at Happier Talent Development. Heather uses her expertise to develop happier, and more fulfilling, workplaces. So, what’s the secret sauce to employee happiness? Find out on this week’s show! Although Heather currently lives in Hawaii, which may bum some of our listeners out, the truth is, you can be happy in an office during a blizzard storm too. No matter where you are, there will always be moments of happiness and frustration in the workplace. Despite the fact that Heather sees palm trees everyday, she still faces the same work-related problems anybody in the rest of the U.S. might experience. It’s important to keep in mind that the palm trees don’t make the problems go away. So, how can you optimize your workforce through a positive environment? Heather shares an important example of how she turned a skeptical, arms crossed, eyes rolled, CEO into an avid supporter. This CEO now has a much, much happier team because of Heather’s work. It comes down to not telling what the CEO should do to create a happier team, but opening up a strong dialog between the team and the leader; that way the leader can deliver and meet the needs of his or her staff. Interview Links: HappiertdHeather on LinkedIn More Resources:Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing.Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Business Website Did you enjoy today's episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. __ Scaling Up 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 with Humanisteq Coaching and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Roland Siebelink has 24 years of tech experience in product management, product marketing, customer success, and strategy. Originally from the Netherlands, Roland came to Silicon Valley in 2016. Today, Roland and Bill share some thoughts and lessons about keeping the balance on both innovation and scale. Roland has seen three small startup companies grow into large-scale organizations from both sides of the world (Europe and the U.S.). Roland believes the effects of good leadership, or bad leadership, usually take between 7-10 years to show up in traditional companies. However, in tech, the growth is so accelerated that it can become quite obvious when there’s good or bad management leading the team. The founder’s personality, habits, and values automatically show up in the people he/she hires. It’s difficult to have structure when developing a fast-growing company. However, in startups, there are often no plans written down, or goals set, and this can add further chaos to a company’s growth. This often means that in the very beginning, the team has to continuously try to figure out what the founder wants today, and not develop anything meaningful for tomorrow. There’s nothing wrong with hiring on a good operational partner to help build structure in the company. Roland knows there are many different ways to approach how to run a startup, and he’s not advocating one, and only one way, but it’s important to make clear management decisions early on, to really help set the tone of the company. Interview Links: Roland on LinkedIn More Resources:Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing.Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Business Website Did you enjoy today's episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. __ Scaling Up 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 with Humanisteq Coaching and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Lynne Twist is the author of The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life. Money, and the lack of it, is a very important subject for entrepreneurs, but Lynne is here to tell you that your limited beliefs on money are actually hurting you, not helping you. Today, Lynne discusses how you can become liberated from money, instead of being chained by it. From Bucky Fully to Mother Teresa, these are just some of the inspirational people and mentors Lynne was able to work shoulder to shoulder with. When Lynne was younger, she used to call people who were financially lacking, ‘poor,’ but now that she’s seen the world, she would never use that title to describe them. What’s poor is just their circumstances, not the people themselves. The most underprivileged and underserved have show Lynne pillars of strength, courage, and resilience. On the flip side, while working on The Hunger Project and raising money from the rich, Lynne noticed that the rich, too, have their problems. Everything from addiction, to abandonment issues. The ‘rich,’ something Lynne no longer calls them, are human too. Too much money can cause us to lose our identity. So, by working with these two very different contrasts, Lynne discovered something important: On top of needing to feed ourselves, we also have a hunger for meaning. Both groups have distorted images of money, and its worth. Interview Links: Soulofmoney.org THP.org Humanisteq Website 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 est 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Dean Jones is the Talent Development Architect at Gallup. Dean’s primary expertise lies in developing strategic solutions to address key business issues, including organizational development, performance management, learning and development, productivity, and workforce effectiveness. He has acted as a mentor for Bill over the years. Today he talks to Bill about how to lead with your strengths. Dean has been at Gallup now for 11 years. Prior to Gallup, Dean believed he was going to be in sales all of his life, until he stumbled upon self-development and adult learning. When he first joined Gallup, it was a life-changing experience. For the first time in his adult life, he understood why people did what they did. He’s been passionate about it, ever since. The ‘why’ you do what you do is a very important factor to both your work and personal life. When people first begin to really understand their own talents, something magical happens. They begin to ask, “What am I built for?” The more you can unlock your own talent, the more you can unlock your own greatness. As you understand what you’re built for and, what you aren’t built for, that’s when you begin to understand who you are. Interview Links: Gallup Strengths Center Dean on LinkedIn More Resources: Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Ari Weinzweig is the co-founder of Zingerman’s Community, a chain of delis with purpose. Ari and his business partner, Paul Saginaw, opened their first deli in 1982 with a $20,000 bank loan. Today, Ari and Paul have over 700 employees and their business grosses around $60 million in annual sales. Named one of the world’s top ten CEOs by Inc. Magazine, Ari has a world of knowledge on how to lead a purposeful business no matter what industry you’re in. Ari had no dreams or desires of owning a business. In fact, he had pretty negative beliefs about business, growing up. After he graduated college, he got a job as a dishwasher to try and ‘figure things out.’ This is where Ari met his now business partner, Paul Saginaw, who was the general manager at the restaurant. After 40 years later, Ari says that they — still — like each other and are good friends. An important lesson Ari learned from Paul was that business is merely a tool. It’s not the tool itself that’s the issue, it’s how it’s used. This concept completely changed Ari’s belief about business. It sounds odd, but Ari never really thought about the impact of beliefs in business on a fundamental level until about 5 years ago, despite already incorporating (almost subconsciously) strong beliefs into his businesses. Everything people ever do is based on beliefs. Every action they take is based on their set of beliefs. So, it makes sense why also bringing beliefs into a business, and making them clear, helps the business thrive on new levels. Interview Links: Zingermanscommunity.com Zingermanstraining.com The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life, by Lynne Twist Transformed!: The Science of Spectacular Living, by Bob Wright and Judith Wright Humanisteq Website 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

Gleb Budman is the CEO and Co-Founder of Backblaze B2, which offers the low-cost cloud storage and backup. Gleb and Bill share similar circles and because it’s a small world, Bill helped Gleb meet his wife. Today’s conversation focuses on Gleb’s business, and how he got a leg up from his competition by trying to solve a major problem with big constraints. How many of our friends, family, and co-workers are not backing up their data? Over the last ten years, everything work-wise has been converted digitally. Despite there being backup solutions out there, for whatever reason, people just aren’t doing them. This discussion of ‘why’ people are not backing up their data propelled Gleb, Brian Wilson, the other Co-Founder of Backblaze, and three other people to quit their jobs and look for a solution. With a minimal budget, Gleb and Brian were able to come up with a solution that was comparable to some of the biggest cloud companies out there. After asking customers how much they’d pay for their data to be backed up in a no-brainer way, they said they’d pay around $5 a month. So, another problem occurred, how do you back up so much data for so little money? The short answer is to build it from the ground up. With little financial backing, and a drive to solve this problem, Gleb and his team used their financial constraints to come up with a creative solution to their problem. Interview Links:Backblaze.comGleb Budman More Resources:Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing.Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops.Humanisteq Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Geoff Gwynn helps ambitious leaders of mid-market organizations change their unhappy performance and their current patterns into more fulfilling, and happy, growth. Geoff is a Certified Gazelles International Coach and served in the Royal Air Force. In today’s conversation, Bill and Geoff discuss how to achieve 4x growth in less time than you think. Geoff is located in the UK, and, as many of you may know, Bill is located in the U.S. It’s comforting to know that the work both of these coaches do is universal, and it applies to very vast and unique industries. One of Geoff's clients focuses on industrial-sized rubber belts and he has been working with this particular company for a little over a year now. When Geoff first began working with the founder, Dan, he realized really quickly that despite having a team of people supporting him in his company, at the end of the day, the key decisions always fell back on him. This put enormous pressure and constraint on Dan and his company. Geoff had to first sit down and figure out what should the company structure look like. Geoff looked at the people Dan had in place and where their strengths and weaknesses were. In fact, he used a number of Gazelle’s tools to help him discover what the employees excelled at. For year one, Geoff made it a point to only focus on three sections of the company. These were: Sales & marketing, operations, and finance. These three sectors are critical for growth. Through taking a finer look at these three sections, Geoff discovered that the company needed to employ some key players to help with stock & inventory, among other duties. Geoff also discovered on the operations side that parts were being shipped incomplete, and, as you can imagine, their customers weren’t very happy about this. However, by going through this very important process, Geoff was able to smooth out the process and get more sales. It took a little bit of time to see the growth happen, but by fixing some of these blockages, Dan and his company increased their margins and efficiency. Interview Links:Go-2-market.co.ukGeoff on LinkedIn More Resources:Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing.Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops.Humanisteq WebsiteScaling Up WebsiteGazelles Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Pamela Kan is the President of Bishop-Wisecarver, a manufacturer in rotary motion products. Pamela is the second generation to lead the family business, which was founded 67 years ago. Today, Pamela speaks about her personal experience with developing strategic partners — what works, and what doesn’t work! Let’s first focus on the things that didn’t work. We often learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Pamela tries to develop a culture of fail fast, but unfortunately with this particular example, it took a little longer to fail, and her company ended up burning some money because of it. Pamela partnered with a competitor in her industry to do a joint development on a product. Both companies were very well aligned on management and everything seemed to be going fine. Pamela already had a design for the product and even ordered the necessary parts to get this product on its way. But by the end of it all, the entire project ended up failing, and the reason why came down to a number of things. First and foremost, the parent company was outside the United States and even though the C-suite executives and management were all on the same page, it turns out that the parent company did not approve of the joint venture. Biggest lesson there was that you have to be sure that the people you’re talking to have decision-making power. Another reason why the joint venture failed is that both companies had different cultural values, both on a company and country culture perspective. This was one of the main reasons why the parent company did not wish to continue their venture further. Interview Links: Bwc.com Humanisteq Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Tom Schwab is a digital marketer who helps entrepreneurs harness the power of the Internet, through the use of podcasting and more! Today, Tom discusses how you can get front and center with your ideal customers, for free. Tom’s business is digital, which allows him to explore different cities one week out of the month. The great thing about today’s technology is that no matter where you are in the world right now, as long as you have the internet, you can achieve remarkable things. So, what does it take to be a great podcast guest? You don’t need a fancy mic to speak to a podcast host. Your phone or even an earbud mic can work perfectly well when you’re conducting your interview. Tom himself has done over 400 podcast interviews from a variety of different places like hotel rooms and even at the beach! Most of us have a great product or service, but the only problem we have seems to be we’re just too obscure in a noisy world. More and more, customers are starting to filter what they want to hear and what they don’t. So, it’s better to get in on the conversations that are already happening, right from the start. Tom has six steps to help his clients get placed right in front of their ideal customers, through podcasting. Podcasts are just the perfect resource for any person to leverage, because there’s no better way than talking directly into the ears of your target customer. Want to know what those six steps are? Then you’ll have to tune into this week’s show for more information! Interview Links: Tmschwab.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website 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

Mike Faith is a serial entrepreneur and Founder/CEO of Headsets.com. Mike’s company is best known for their world-beating customer service. In fact, his company has been awarded the INC 500 Fastest Growing Business three times, and awarded the Best Place to Work in the Bay Area twice. Today, Bill focuses on Mike’s success story and how he used Scaling Up to grow his business. Mike and Bill have been friends for a long time. They both met at the Entrepreneurs Organization. Mike originally grew up in England, but felt as though the United States had a stronger business environment than the UK. When he moved here in the early 90’s, Mike had about $1,000 in his pocket. He took on a job at first, but started his own business in 1996. After making about $2-3 million a year, Mike noticed how poor the phone headset and mic quality was, and created a business opportunity selling headsets at a discount. Mike was about 3 years in the business when he decided to make a very important pivot. Instead of struggling to sell discounted headsets, Mike was going to focus on giving premium customer service. Overnight, he switched to a new business model and was disrupting his company in every sector, but it paid off! Headsets.com has been in business for 20 years. Interview Links: Mikefaith.com Headsets.com Humanisteq Website 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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Cheryl Beth Kuchler is President of Ballantree Consulting Corp., and the Founder of CEO Think Tank®. She has over 25 years of experience with leading strategic change initiatives, coaching executives, and more. Today, Bill and Cheryl do a growth analysis between two companies; one that went through a typical growth trajectory, and another that was able to grow to $10 million in profits within a year. Cheryl discusses the difference between the two companies. One was a design company in the Manhattan area; they came on as her clients in the summer of 2014. The other company was an aerospace company that focused on helicopter maintenance and repair as well as leasing/flight services. They came on board October of 2014. Both companies were similar in size in terms of profit. Neither company had worked with a business coach before, but both were eager to grow and expand their businesses. Despite both companies being in a different industry, they each took similar paths that lead them to grow so successfully. Each company faced dynamic industry shifts; the design company facing a competitor like Amazon, and the aerospace company facing challenges from oil going through a significant recession. When companies are faced with such significant market dynamics, it’s imperative that leadership becomes a main focus. In this case Cheryl helped ensure the right people were in the right seats to level up the leadership team. Leadership plays such an important role within a company, but many people hire fast and fire slow. It can be difficult firing members of your leadership team, but you have to think about the health of the overall company. Cheryl had one company who stayed with their current, but unaligned, leadership team, and another who made the tough decision to fire and replace their leadership members. So, who grew quicker? You can probably guess, the one that was willing to make those tough firing decisions was able to see their profits increase by $10 million within the first year. Interview Links: Ballantree.com More Resources: Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you growing. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Did you enjoy today's episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. __ Scaling Up 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 with Humanisteq Coaching and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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

Dave Fuller is a professional business coach who works with small companies. Located in Prince George, Canada, he has been a small business owner for 30 years and understands what it's like to be wildly profitable and wildly stressed. Today, Dave and Bill dive right into the surprising connection between profit and health. Dave witnessed a bear come into his camp and attack one of his friends. The aftereffects of stress and fatigue he experienced from the event reminded him of the time he tried to open a second location in his own business. During the first year he spent a couple hundred thousand dollars trying to get this location running, but nothing seemed to be working. When you’re under a severe amount of stress, your adrenals get overworked. Ever wake up at 2am with your mind racing? When you eventually fall back asleep and wake up in the morning, your body already feels fatigued from the lack of sleep from the night before. This starts a vicious cycle. Our bodies crave more energy under stress, so we end up eating around 30% more carbohydrates. What does this do? It drives our blood sugar up, so now our brains aren’t thinking straight! If you keep this up overtime, you’ll develop belly fat, which then brings your self-confidence down. Stress affects our health, and it doesn’t help us handle the stressful event that we’re going through, either. However, when we’re healthy, we can handle stressful events much better and with a clearer head. So, how can we get healthy so we can run our business better? The business and our work environment is just one part of our lives. If we don’t have clarity with where we’re going, then it becomes difficult to run a long-term business. It starts with setting clear goals on what you want out of life, and out of your business. Interview Links: Profityourselfhealthy.com More Resources: ScalingUpBusiness.com: Learn about how growth coaching can help you and and your business see big results. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you Scaling Up. Did you enjoy today's episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. __ Scaling Up 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 and I'm a certified Gazelles business coach. 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

Tim Danley is the Founder of Resource Converting LLC. How do you get to $200 million dollars in projects, with only 3 people? Well, that’s the $200 million dollar question on this week’s episode. Tim touches on the radical change he made in business models, and how he leveraged outsourcing, on the interview. Let’s get started. Tim had been in the printing business for a little over 20 years, and during that time he made every mistake he could under the sun. He’s been an entrepreneur his whole life, but when he went through the Birthing of Giants program (now called Entrepreneurial Masters Program), things really, really began to click for him. Through the experience of going through the Birthing of Giants program, traveling the world, and getting more educated on the subject of entrepreneurship, Tim was ready to get out of the printing business. When he sold the printing business, he went to work looking for the next opportunity. In the BOG program, he learned about licensing and learned why this was a fantastic business model to adopt. An opportunity came his way and he and his business partner made a deal to buy the patent from the inventor and then redistribute commercially to interested buyers. Tim knew that once they acquired the patent, the next big step was to outsource the work to those who were already in the trenches, as it were, and that’s when business really excelled. Tim only had to hire on 3 employees; the rest was outsourced. Interview Links: Resourceconverting.com Eonetwork.org More Resources: ScalingUpBusiness.com: Learn about how growth coaching can help you and and your business see big results. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you Scaling Up. Did you enjoy today's episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts. __ Scaling Up 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 and I'm a certified Gazelles business coach. 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