Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

Who do you need to be to achieve the performance you want to see in each area of your life, business, or otherwise? Today’s show is all about how to invent yourself and to show up at a high caliber, no matter what stage you’re on.   Eric Partaker is the Co-Founder and CEO of Chilango, a chain of Mexican restaurants based in the UK. Eric has worked with and led high-performing teams at McKinsey and Skype. And he is one out of 300 people worldwide certified as a High Performance Coach, by the High Performance Institute.   When did Eric’s obsession with high performance first begin? Eric wanted to be a high-level athlete, and with that came insane discipline to wake up at 5:30 a.m. every day and play basketball. After about 15 months of this, Eric went from not knowing how to play basketball at all to make it on the varsity team.   At McKinsey, Eric remembers days where he’d work two to three days straight with very little sleep. He would frequently put in 100- to 120-hour work weeks. This hustle mindset, however, will eventually catch up to you, and kill you. So, how can you lead at high performance without sacrificing the basics like sleep and proper nutrition? Eric has been obsessed with high-level performance for about 20 years, but after several stints with the doctor and even a heart attack, Eric had to reconsider what it really meant to perform at a high level.   Interview Links: Ericpartaker.com Chilango.co.uk Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, by Matthew Walker, Ph.D.   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube  

Growing and scaling your business is tough work! You have your team to manage but then you also have your family life too. Raising a family, relationship issues; it can all start to compound itself. Today’s show is all about reconnecting with yourself so that you can show up 100% in each area of your life.   Stacy Bare is a veteran of the Iraq war and is the Founder of Bare LLC, a consulting firm working to grow healthy organizations, people, and places through health and adventure. He is also the Founder of Adventure Not War, which aims to climb, ski, and adventure in places veterans have fought in.   People in all walks of life are going through some tough challenges. Leaders are having mental breaks, relationships are falling apart, and some even choose to end their life. Sometimes, leaders feel like they can’t always share what they’re going through.   When Stacy got home from Iraq, he went to graduate school and thought he was going to get a great job and live in a trendy apartment in a hip neighborhood. However, it was 2009 and he was unable to find a job. He was depressed and now realizes he was also suffering from PTSD at the time. A friend of Stacy’s got him outdoors and into rock climbing while he was still job searching, and it changed everything for him. In 2012, Stacy began to think of how he could make Adventure Not War a reality. He wanted to go back to places he’s served to take control of his narrative and to heal.   Interview Links: Adventurenotwar.com Stacy on LinkedIn Halotrust.org   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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