Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher 077: Bahaa Moukadam - Balancing That Crazy Life of Yours
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.
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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.”
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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).