Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

How do you build a billion-dollar brand? It rarely starts with a billion dollars, that much is certain.   Brian Smith has charted his own course to become one of the great entrepreneurial success stories of our time. In 1978, he imported six pairs of sheepskin boots from Australia, with a dream to build a business where every American would eventually be wearing the product.   That is how one of the world’s most recognizable brands began, and sales of UGG products have exceeded a billion dollars in each of the past six years.   It was a chilly day in California when inspiration struck, but it wasn’t long before Brian learned that his entrepreneurial idea wasn’t going to amount to anything without a profound amount of work.   Brian’s book Birth of a Brand highlights the most fundamental truth of any entrepreneurial idea — just as you don’t give birth to an adult, your fledgling idea won’t immediately appear as a successful, profitable, fully-functioning business either. Breakthrough-breakdown is the cycle that every growing business has to navigate, and Brian has serious wisdom about the growth and branding that took Uggs from tadpole to billion-dollar success.   Despite the moments when Brian thought he had failed, he never gave up. You’re never really defeated until you give up on yourself. Brian shares the experiences he had that taught him what it takes to stay in the game until you’ve changed the world.   Interview Links: Brian Smith Spend a Day With Brian   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups 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.  

When mindfulness, creativity, and innovation come together, the result is powerful leadership and impactful inventions that can change the world.   Faisal Hoque is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, and other companies that focus on enabling sustainable and transformational changes. Throughout his career, he has developed over 20 commercial business and technology platforms and worked with public and private sector giants.   His bestselling book, Everything Connects: Cultivating Mindfulness, Creativity, & Innovation for Long-Term Value (Fast Company), is currently #2 on Wall Street Journal and USA Today.   Faisal grew up in Bangladesh and his world travel has inspired him to write several books with a focus on individual and organizational leadership, creating long-term value, and resilience.   Deep, daily mindfulness about our intentions and actions is essential. Faisal highlights the example of Leonardo DaVinci — he was constantly striving to determine who he was as an artist, sculptor, engineer, and entrepreneur, and then apply it to his real life. Mindfulness about your value-add is absolutely essential as you work to make meaningful contributions in the world.   Generically, mindfulness applies to awareness of where our mind lands, but more specifically it applies to our self-awareness and acting intentionally rather than merely in reaction to external forces. Mindfulness impacts not only you but every relationship you are in.   Faisal calls empathy the foundation of transformational leadership. Leaders are self-aware, they are influential, and they are looking for ways to recognize and utilize the talents of others. Without effective mindfulness of the self, leaders can’t expect to be effective in leading or inspiring others.   Interview Links: Faisal Hoque   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups 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.  

US-based entrepreneurs often underestimate the potential of expanding to other countries, but scaling globally requires an understanding of both company knowledge and local culture. Klaus Wehage and Aaron McDaniel are the co-authors of Global Class: How the World’s Fastest Growing Companies Scale Globally. They have seen first-hand the challenges that entrepreneurs face in translating their local success into international markets. Global companies are expected to localize their products and services to each country they are present in, as well as compete with both local and global competition. Language is the first level of how you operate and manage within a company, followed by pricing and marketing. But like an iceberg, there is so much under the surface that is required to operate legally and successfully in each different country. Global-class companies consider how their values resonate with the culture of each country, the importance or offense of offering feedback, and how technologies can be either a help or hindrance to scaling. The examples of Walmart and DocuSign illustrate that what works in one country might be the reason a company doesn’t succeed in another. The most difficult and most important effective part of expansion is the team. An overlap of local knowledge and company knowledge is ideal and requires hiring the right people to get the job done. There are spoken and unspoken rules in every country, and understanding these rules is key to successful global scaling.   Interview Links: Klaus Wehage Aaron McDaniel   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups 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.

Companies that are scaling well can be faced with hiring large numbers of people at once, but often don’t have the systems in place that train, teach, and keep that new talent in place for long. Allan Boyle is the founder of Saltwater Consulting, where he helps companies scale well. He gained his “special ops” training at Amazon, and has since focused on leading organizations through transformation, particularly leveraging cloud-based disruptive technologies. Allan focuses on working with technology companies, which isn’t everyone’s strength. But his product market fit angle can be applied to anyone. There is a good chance that you have a vision for the way you can change the world, but any real effort must include the ability to lead people. To really scale, you have to get good at developing leaders and leaders of leaders. Too often, scaling companies hire a lot of people quickly, but then fail to fully train their new hires. Typically on Day 1, the new hire is given their laptop and a general overview of the responsibilities, and on Day 2 the hiring manager goes out of town for two weeks, leaving the new hire alone and wondering what they are supposed to do next. With an effective launch plan, the hiring manager has a clear training schedule that can be reported back to HR after a few months. By doing this, a company can accurately determine how well a new hire has been onboarded. When scaling fast, Allan warns, don’t just focus on acquiring soft talent. Find the right people to help with hiring, and then focus on the new hires for their first three to four months for a more effective hiring process that will help to minimize turnovers. Allan offers his recommendations for developing a more effective onboarding process, creating an environment where new hires are properly trained, envisioning what the company will look like in the future, and then working toward making that a reality.   Interview Links: Allan Boyle Saltwater Consulting   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups 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.

We all have the same 24 hours in the day, but leaders know how to use their time more effectively and generally find more happiness along the way.   Cassie Holmes is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, where she is an award-winning teacher and researcher. Holmes’s work on the intersection of time and happiness has been widely published in lead academic journals and featured in such outlets as NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and more. Happier Hour is her first book.   A few years ago Cassie found herself so exhausted and overwhelmed that she wondered if she would ever catch up with the pressures of life. She found herself wishing for more hours in her day, but quickly realized that increased discretionary time in her day does not always result in increased happiness.   It’s not about becoming time rich, it’s about making your time spent more rich. We can feel fulfilled and satisfied at the end of each day by investing our time more carefully. The perfect balance is found somewhere between having too much and too little to do. Being time-poor can have just as detrimental an effect on our happiness as not having enough to fill our days up. There was a time when Cassie thought that finding two hours of discretionary time in her day was a dream she would never be able to achieve. While scrolling on TikTok for two hours will never bring satisfaction, that same amount of time spent with children or on a passion project can be the most important hours that we spend in the day.   Cassie shares the research, examples, and cautionary tales that will push you to think about how you are living, and how you want to be remembered. Her message will inspire you to spend your hours well, because they add up to your days, your years, and ultimately, your life.   Interview Links: Cassie Holmes Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube   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.

When your team and your clients feel engaged and connected, great things happen. In this new episode of The Scaling Up Podcast, we have panelists Oklahoma Consultant and Woman of the Year Stacey Eads and Growth Institute Co-founder and CEO Daniel Marcos for a conversation about company culture.   One additional sentence in every email can free up a significant portion of the time that you spend sorting through your inbox. By simply stating whether an email request is a high priority or low priority, or offering a few options for people to reply with, you are clearly stating your request and making it easy for others to respond.   The newest trend in the workplace is “quiet quitting,” and it means different things for different people. Some people are looking for greater work/life balance, while others are quietly disengaging with their jobs as a preliminary move before quitting altogether. This is not a great move considering CEOs have just gotten comfortable with the idea of more remote work, but it’s not good for you or the company to exit in this way. Bill questions the leaders who are either intentionally or unintentionally driving employees away, and offers his advice for a more effective way to engage and retain top talent.   When you are doing good work and making a profit from it, everyone involved feels better about the company. Stacey highlights companies that have demonstrated an alignment of passion, purpose, and products, and Daniel addresses what it means to be engaged in the work that you are passionate about. No matter your position or your focus, the impact that your work has on your team, your clients, and the world at large matters.   Interview Links: Stacey Eads Daniel Marcos   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube   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.  

Great experiences enhance your creativity, help you rest and recover, and restore your soul. Similarly, creating great experiences for the people that you work with, whether it be customers or employees, can be a powerful way to scale up.   Shane Mahoney has propelled luxury travel planning from a service to an art form. As the CEO and creative brain behind Lugos Travel, Shane puts together custom, luxury adventures, and meaningful experiences that are out-of-the-ordinary, thrilling, and a guaranteed delight to his clients.   So much travel now is planned by way of apps and websites, but when Shane learned about the opportunities available to him as a tour operator, he knew he had found the work he always wanted to do (even before he knew it existed).   Shane highlights what luxury travel looks like, how Lugos has pinpointed their travel destinations, and what their customers can expect from their experience. Their goal is to solve problems before their clients even know there is a problem at all.   Now operating in 17 countries, Lugo’s Travel is heavily focused on scaling up. They have identified ways to create a next-level, luxury experience for their customers. From professional photography to local, customized room gifts in upgraded hotel suites, they aim to delight and truly care for their customers.   The world is full of incredible offerings — what could you do for yourself or your team to enhance your efforts, your creativity, and your commitment to creating unbelievable experiences?   Interview Links: Shane Mahoney 360 Lugos Travel   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube   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.  

What’s changed with hiring and recruiting? The short answer is everything. Today’s guest is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Recruiter.com, an on-demand recruiting platform providing flexible talent acquisition solutions that scale from startups to the Fortune 100, and he has great insights into the future of hiring.   Evan Sohn is a frequent contributor to CNBC and Yahoo! Finance and demonstrates expertise in a diverse set of industries, including Wi-Fi, Instant Messaging, data security, customer relationship management (CRM), and much more.   The state of hiring can be broken down into three parts: what was happening pre-pandemic, what is happening currently, and what the future of hiring looks like. Wage inflation means across the board, people are worth more than they were two years ago. Zoom interviews make it easy to connect with your potential new boss, and employees aren’t expected to stay at a job nearly as long as they once were. Every micro-change that has affected the job market over the last few years will never again return to the “normal” way it once was.   It’s predicted that in 2022, the U.S. will spend $50 billion more on hiring and retaining than was spent in 2019. More people are quitting as a result of the Great Resignation, but more people are getting hired as well. In many cases, the firing and hiring are simply a reflection of right-sizing teams.   So what metrics should HR and employees be held to? There needs to be more to the hiring process than just understanding compensation. Employees need to understand what they will be able to do at the end of the job, as well as what the career benefits are within the position.   If employees are willing to walk for a few more dollars, then something needs to change. Companies that have a unique culture, a clear advancement path, and a flexible environment are the companies that are going to be able to hire — and retain — the kind of employees that are going to stick around.   Interview Links: Evan Sohn   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube   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.  

Shailee Basnet scaled Mt. Everest in 2008. She then led a historic “Seven Summits Women Team,” which became the world’s first group to scale the highest peak in each continent. She currently leads, “Female Leadership Academy” in Nepal to help train young female survivors of human trafficking.   Growing up with Mt. Everest in her backyard, Shailee saw climbing the mountain as her ticket to adventure. She took on climbing as a way to figure out what her body was capable of doing, and has since worked to lead teams across the 7 Summits.   It takes incredible self-awareness to recognize when something is missing from your life and then take the action to do something about it. As a nearly five-foot-tall woman who started her journey having never trekked before in her life, Shailee had to work extra hard and she earned every single ability that she needed to climb Everest.   Even when Shailee woke up paralyzed, she kept working toward her goals. She recognized that failure is just another emotion that has to be processed and worked through. She reflects on the presence of hospitality in the climbing industry and the differences between men and women in teamwork. As she says, “the clarity to stick together” as a team has been key to overcoming any challenge.   Just as each summit she conquered presented its own unique set of challenges, each challenge you face in your life has to be addressed and handled in its own way. For Shailee, it was a simple pair of mittens; for you, it could be something as simple as a sales call that can go completely awry if you don’t give it the full attention that it deserves. Every challenge you face requires your full attention and just may become your next great conquest.   Interview Links: Shailee Basnet   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube   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.  

What are the core things you are forgetting in your scaling-up journey? Too often entrepreneurs get distracted by their passion projects and forget the essential principles of success.   Sean Castrina is the founder of The Weekend MBA, a serial entrepreneur, having started more than 20 companies over the last 20 years, and still seeks to launch a new venture annually.   He is the author of four bestselling business books including 8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success, The Greatest Entrepreneur in the World, Developing The Entrepreneur Within and World’s Greatest Business Plan.   Sean’s entrepreneurial journey began when his first dream job told him they were “going in a different direction.” As a result, he looked around for a need and founded a very unsexy car wash business that made $30,000 in the first year. He has since repeated his simple startup formula again and again for over 30 years and has no problem building companies that he doesn’t feel passionate about.   Entrepreneurs don’t have to be passionate about the business they start, they just have to be willing to be objective about the business opportunities that are presented to them.   A desire to be passionate about your business is the first mistake entrepreneurs make in what Sean calls the Bermuda Triangle of business-building. The second mistake is hiring friends and family, which often leads to mediocrity from the start, and the third problem is with the personality of the founder themselves. Unlike Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, most founders need to have a winning personality in order to win in their business objective.   Finding a problem and figuring out how to solve it — in a way that’s better than anyone else — is the key to startup success. Sean shares several examples of his startups that did something different that worked, from an onsite car wash service to handyman work and digital marketing.   If you know what to look for, you can always find an opportunity for a successful startup business. The right business proposition combined with the willingness to take risks and bet on the right people to work with just might be all it takes to achieve next-level success.   Interview Links: Sean Castrina 8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube   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.