Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

There is power in meaning, especially in your marketing, and it may be the ticket to achieving the growth that you are seeking.   Pete Steege is the CEO of B2B Clarity. With over 30 years of marketing experience with a wide range of B2B technology and manufacturing businesses, Pete helps companies manage and scale their businesses by using meaning in their marketing to scale their businesses. In the early days of his career, Pete realized that marketing focused on sharing intellectual information while entirely missing the why behind the message. Marketing is supposed to be about relationships, and relationships are built on meaning. Companies grow when clients can clearly see why you can help them reach their goals. Pete shares the factors that create meaning behind these relationships, including authenticity. Tell the truth about why you are here in a transparent and authentic way. Focus on the work that you care about rather than trying to meet the needs of a too-broad spectrum of clients. The trust that you grow with your key clients is the most powerful element to your success. When you lean into, and then highlight, what you care about most, the growth will occur naturally. Interview Links: Pete Steege Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

A great tool for reinforcing your strategy over time and embedding it in your company’s culture is the manifesto. An effective manifesto can be read daily, or at least weekly, shared with your team like a manifestation, and provides the opportunity to reflect on its relevance today. When reflected on often, a manifesto encourages people to apply its truths to their day-to-day actions and goals.   There is a simple formula for developing your manifesto. First, identify the purpose. What is the “why” of the work you are doing? Next, consider your values and brand promises. Then, turn to your BHAG to round out your manifesto. Bill’s manifesto is clear and gives him purpose in the work he does each day. Over time, your manifesto will become deeply ingrained in the decisions that you make and pull everyone on your team toward the company’s core strategy. Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

There are plenty of ways to grow your business, but until you’ve worked out your strategy, it can be really hard to scale. One strategy makes funding growth much easier — franchising.   Joining the show today is Lance Graulich. Known as the “King of Franchising,” Lance is the CEO of ION Franchising, an industry-leading franchise consulting and development group that represents over 800 franchise brands and business opportunities in every imaginable category. He’s also the host of the Eye on Franchising Podcast. Lance has helped over 1,000 people go from “Wannabe” Entrepreneurs to Franchise owners with his work and has helped Franchises such as TGI Fridays grow to over $225 million in revenue. Franchises, and optimized businesses in general, aren’t about the business, they’re about the people. Successful leaders look for the people who know how to get the job done and build a great business up from there. From the bald guy who owns hair salons to the garage door franchisee who just exited for $98 million, franchises provide a perfect opportunity to develop an empire without having any specialized knowledge of the business. Lance has insights into avoiding failure as well. In any franchise selection process, there are people to meet and questions to ask to determine whether it’s the right fit for you. He also covers scaling tactics, innovation strategies, and the power of choosing a franchise over the slow, organic growth of the traditional stand-alone company. Interview Links: Lance Graulich Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Discover the power of a one-phrase strategy for business success. Learn how to distill your competitive advantage and achieve profitability. Explore examples from top companies like IKEA and Apple to inspire your own strategy development.

Every company wants to grow faster, but what is the point of scaling up if you can’t retain the employees and customers you’ve already got? You have to deliver exceptional customer experience so that the growth you’re working on actually matters.   Ali Cudby is the Founder and CEO of Alignmint Growth Strategies, which delivers consulting and training so you and your team know what to do to prevent customer churn before it starts. Ali knows customer experience is not a department — it’s cross-functional. She is the author of the #1 best-selling book on customer retention, Keep Your Customers. Straight out of business school, Ali was staffed on a project with the call center at the New York Times. She saw firsthand that the company was not engaging with its call center employees in a way that aligned with its global brand. She quickly learned that the way you engage with your team has a huge impact on the way that they engage with your customers, and that means the customer experience really matters. The action steps to creating a culture that targets the customer experiences are simple. Make employees feel valued. Pay them an attractive wage. Give them swag or company merchandise so they feel like they are part of the team. Consider your customers. Do you give as much love to your existing customers as you do to your brand-new customers? Do you provide a higher tier of customer support to your higher-tier customers? Do you spend as much time maintaining long-term relationships as you do onboarding new customers? Ali’s experiences — from bra fitting to lingerie consulting to the work that she does now with Alignmint — all underscore the same message. When you focus on the customer experience, you are fostering long-term loyalty and the potential for the kind of scaling up that lasts. Interview Links: Ali Cudby Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Profit per X is a strategic KPI that indicates the potential of the unit of measure that is most constrained in your business.   As an independent coach, Bill’s most constrained thing is the number of days that he can work or profit per day. A laundry delivery service may deal with profit per truck or profit per stop. When you identify and optimize the number of profit per your X, it may be per customer, per product, per transaction, or per job, but whatever it may be, if you can optimize it, you can make a meaningful difference in your growth. Consider the pros and cons of optimizing your per X, and then focus on the one that will lead to the greatest growth. Strategic decisions about how you lead, grow, and scale will come more easily as a result. Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Nothing significant happens when you’re working alone. If you want to do anything big, you’re going to need a powerhouse team.   Return podcast guest Mike Michalowicz founded and sold two multi-million dollar businesses by his 35th birthday. He is the bestselling author of Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan, Clockwork, and Fix This Next. He has built two additional multimillion-dollar companies and has become one of the world’s most popular speakers on small business topics. His new book is All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams. The vision you may have for your business is not necessarily the same vision for the entirety of your team. Leaders often work in their own self-interest, but powerful leaders work to help their team realize their dreams as well. As you as a leader prioritize their vision, they will begin to prioritize the vision of the company. What do your people want? Why should they perform to the best of their ability? Effective leaders prioritize recognition, create traditions in the workplace, and foster a workplace culture that celebrates the dreams and accomplishments of every team member. Mike wants leaders to treat people as human beings rather than human resources. He highlights the transformation that the right captain was able to inspire on the worst-performing ship in the Navy. It takes a team to be successful, and that team needs 100% commitment from every single member. When the team is all in, the success is unstoppable. Interview Links: Mike Michalowicz Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Your X-factor is the thing that gives you an advantage in your marketplace. It is your secret sauce to being better and standing out from your competition. It’s the key to growing faster than anyone else.   It’s not easy to figure out your X-factor, and when you do, you have to keep it a secret that you can use for as long as you can because it doesn’t last forever. A truly great X-factor will expire as it is figured out by other people. You can figure out your X-factor by determining if your obstacle to growth is more about supply or demand. Identify the key barriers to meeting those supply or demand needs, and then figure out which one you are going to solve in a unique, innovative, or sexy way. That is your X-factor. Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Safety is at the core of the culture of every business. Sometimes it’s in direct ways, sometimes in indirect ways, but safety is always at the core of the work people do.   Apolonia Rockwell is the Founder and CEO of True Safety Services, a company that specializes in on-site safety consulting and in helping employers with Safety/CDL Training local to Colorado, as well as nationwide. With a front-row seat to the dangers and harsh realities of hazards in the workplace in her childhood, adult Apolonia was fascinated and relieved to learn about federally mandated safety requirements. She now works to bridge the gap between a company’s safety director and the employees they work to protect. As a strong female in a male-dominated field, Apolonia has taken an effective approach to getting employee buy-in, connecting with the unspoken leaders, and using curiosity to invoke respect. Safety is often disregarded or minimized, but effective safety practices always start with leadership. Effective cultural change can only happen when leaders exhibit the behavior they want to see in their team. Apolonia shares a variety of incidents, insights, and experiences she has had over the years, and the ultimate safety that leaders in every field need to focus on — the mental and emotional health of their employees. Interview Links: Apolonia Rockwell Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

If you asked people to pick three or four words to describe you and your business, what would they say? Would your customers and partners recognize your clear identity, or would they stumble?   The words that you want to own in the future are the words that you invest in over time, starting now. Bill wants to be known as The Scaling Coach, and he has focused years and hours of effort on making that a reality. The key to identifying the words that you want to own is by talking to other people about their perception of you. Try Googling your business and asking your peers. Invest in the marketing that will secure your identity in the way you want to be known. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for you to own those words. Resources: Growth Navigator Coaching Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup) Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth. We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.