Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

When you’ve achieved a certain level of success, what’s the point of it all? What are your plans at 80, 90, or even 100 years old? What keeps you going? Today’s episode is all about creating a conscious and fulfilling future.   John Anderson became the first-ever Scale Up coach back in 1999 and has worked closely with Verne Harnish throughout his career. John is the Founder of the Detroit chapter of EO and he has also recently authored his very first book, Replace Retirement: Living Your Legacy in the Exponential Age.   Peter Diamandis, a fellow friend and Entrepreneur to John, has a saying that you’re either going to be disrupted or you’re going to be a disruptor. John thought about the various industries that would be disrupted like the automotive industry, but couldn't exactly see how his industry would change all that much.   After further thinking, he realized that Peter was right. John could one day be disrupted through artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The way we coach today will change, so how can he be a disruptor in it? Well, at 61 years old, retirement is fast approaching, but John doesn’t believe that it’s for him, and he knows he isn’t the only one who thinks this way.   The concept of retirement that we have today is not sustainable based on the population pace we are on. Every day, 10,000 people turn 65 years old and that pace will continue for 20 years. This means that half of the world’s population will soon be over 50 years old. John believes it’s not healthy to finish work life by 65.   Throughout John’s career, he developed a success map, where he essentially takes content from the Rockefeller Habits and creates a one-page personal plan for his clients. However, as his clients grew older, they became less and less interested in success and more interested in creating a legacy. So, he switched his success map into a legacy map, where instead of the accumulation of wealth, it had a strong focus on what would you like to leave behind.   Interview Links: Theceoadvantage.com Replace Retirement: Living Your Legacy in the Exponential Age, by John Anderson A360.digital   Resources: Scaling Up Workshop: Interested in attending one of our workshops? We have a few $100 discounts for our loyal podcast listeners! 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 all want better results. We want to accomplish things yet we have limitations. But, what if we could shift it all and achieve new heights without these limitations? What if the limitations you have aren’t as real as you thought they were? Today’s guest has some insight.   Nick Egan is a performance coach and the author of the new book, Shift: The Art of Transforming Limitations. He is an award-winning leader and an Executive Coach for Level52. He also has a background in positive psychology and Tibetian Buddhist culture.   When it comes to our limitations, most of the time our view on the world has been filtered through our own story about it. Funny enough, not a lot of people realize this. Once you’re aware of this story, then the door opens and you can choose which story you’d like to follow. The problem is, you first have to get there.   Nick and his friend were once in Western Tibet and a flash rain caused a baby yak to get stuck in the deep and porous mud. Their taxi driver was adamant that it was impossible to save this yak. It was completely illogical to even try. However, to test it, Nick and his friend went out to save the yak. It took about an hour between him, his friend, and nomadic yak herders to save the baby… but they were able to do it.   The lesson here is that the taxi driver is correct in that between one or two people, no, you couldn’t save the yak, but with a team, you can. In coaching it is similar. There is a point where you just can’t do this on your own. So, who are the allies you’re going to call on to help you through your struggles and break out of your limitations?   Interview Links: Level52.ca Nick on LinkedIn Nickeganphd.com   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  

As your company gets bigger, business owners discover a tough problem — you become less and less in touch with what your employees are doing and you don’t know if you’re on track with your goals. And if you do regular quarterly meetings, another problem that arises is that your actions are not tightly aligned to your goals between the day-to-day. Today’s guest has some answers on how to become more involved and aware of where your company is going.   Doug Walner is the CEO of Align Technologies Corp, a growth management tool to help develop, track, and measure your progress. He has over 25 years of technology business management and his background includes human capital management, consumer production, aviation, and media.   When Doug was in the process of selling one of his companies, the diligence and amount of paperwork involved to show buyers and investors his company and his staff were on track with their goals were extensive and tedious. When Align came along, things really changed for so many entrepreneurs, especially when it came time to sell.   One of the amazing features about Align is that employees can now see what everyone in the business is in charge of doing, and how they’re doing. It creates transparency and accountability within the company. Due to its interface, buyers and investors can also quickly log into Align and see progress reports, priorities, and have historical data for the business in an instant.   It’s just good business to track as much as you can about the company. This opens you up for so much more when you’re ready to sell or get more financing. When businesses rely on the founder to ‘keep things going,’ it becomes very difficult for an investor to fund you when they cannot realistically see if your business is even scalable.   Interview Links: Aligntoday.com   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  

Business owners are always looking for ways to improve their company value. They might want to sell the company later down the road or even get more financing, and their company has to have the numbers to justify it. However, there are three big mistakes companies make when it comes to improving their company value, which today’s guest will dive into!   Jennifer Peek is a Value Advisor for Peek Advisory and is a CPA, CVA, venture investor, and so much more! She has worked with small businesses all the way up to billion-dollar companies on increasing their overall value and preparing them for their next business stage.   Jennifer worked for a public accounting firm for about five years; it was there where she saw her family-owned business clients really struggle with a transition. A lot of them were the 3rd or 4th generation in the business but were seeing problems when the 5th generation no longer wanted to be part of the family business.   Fast forward a few years later, Jennifer was working in Mergers and Acquisitions for a large company who was considering selling some of their smaller companies off to a competitor and buying up other smaller businesses in the region. It was here where Jennifer got hands-on and insider experience as to what companies look for before they buy and before they sell.   When it comes to common mistakes business owners make, reducing your taxes is the biggest one that comes to mind. It’s natural for business owners to want to pay less in taxes while they are starting their business. Because of this, they work diligently with their tax advisors to bring their liabilities down.   However, this can actually affect your company value if you’re looking for a successful exit. Jennifer worked with a client where his company evaluation was about half of what he was expecting, but through a little bit of work and tweaking, he was able to get his numbers where he needed to be for a successful exit within a year.   Interview Links: Peekadvisory.com Jennifer 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  

Culture is who you are inside the company and brand is who you are out to the world. When the two are aligned, there’s a real power in your organization, but when they’re misaligned, that’s when the disconnect happens. Today’s show is all about how to get the two things in sync.   Denise Lee Yohn is a speaker, brand expert, and the author of What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest. Today, Denise will be talking about her latest book, Fusion: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies on this week’s episode!   What’s the difference between brand image vs. brand identity? Your brand is not what you say it is, it is what you do and how you do it. A disconnect between your brand and your culture of any kind can lead you to not fulfilling your promises. If your internal message is disconnected from your external message, it’s going to create a problem down the line.   For example, Wells Fargo used to have a very wholesome brand image, but over the last few years, that image has been tarnished by bad internal practices. Employees felt pressured to fudge the numbers and open up fake accounts due to a misaligned company objective. However, when you’re aligned with how your organization thinks and acts on the inside, you’re creating a value between both your customers and your employees that is very difficult for competitors to undercut.   The truth is, customers are very skeptical and cynical. And in our modern age, it’s very easy to tell if what you’re saying on the outside is actually true for what your company believes on the inside. When you have an alignment in your company culture, you are able to recruit and retain people who believe in your cause.   Interview Links: Deniseleeyohn.com Denise 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 main challenge for Bill and his clients is finding talented people. There is a big shortage of qualified people all over the world and on top of that, it’s difficult to retain good talent. This episode features a ‘best of’ episode from Jeff Hoffman, who is excellent at attracting and connecting with people!   Jeff Hoffman is a successful entrepreneur and the Founder of Priceline, UBid, and ColorJar. Jeff has worked alongside celebrities like Elton John, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. He knows a thing or two about what it takes to engage people and on today’s show, he shares his expertise in team-building practices that bring good people together!   One of the most important lessons Jeff learned about scaling up is the value of teams. As a founder, you are used to doing everything and anything in the beginning. The problem with this, though, is that if your company does well, you start to think you’re pretty good at all of this.   Once founders hit a later stage in their company, they find themselves overwhelmed. They are working harder than ever before and putting in more hours than they’ve ever done before, yet, despite this, they’ve stopped growing. The truth is, you’re never going to do anything massive or at scale by yourself.   Jeff was not smart enough to understand this in the beginning, but through his mistakes, he’s learned that the day you start taking some of your time to delegate your tasks and to find people that are smarter than you to run the company, is the day you can finally work less and be less stressed.   Jeff had to make an active effort to find talented people. Sending out an ad doesn’t work. The best people in your market aren’t looking for a job, so schedule the time to scout them. The second part of running a successful team is getting out of their way. Let the people who are smarter than you do their jobs!   Your real job as a founder is to build a workplace environment and culture that people love to go to, where the best people in the industry all want to work for you and never want to leave. Your job is to take care of the people who work for you. When you’ve achieved this, you never have to worry about the growth of your company.   Interview Links: Jeffhoffman.com Jeff 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

Some of our best and most valuable business comes from a referral, but how do you cultivate it and, most importantly, repeat it? Today’s show is all about how to create scalable and repeatable referrals through systems.   Stacey Brown Randall is a three-time Entrepreneur, author of Generating Business Referrals Without Asking, and the host of the Roadmap to Grow Your Business podcast! Stacey has taught her ‘no-asking’ referral strategy to hundreds of clients and audiences all over the world.   When Stacey gave her notice to leave Corporate America to work with a husband & wife team, she did not realize she was four weeks pregnant at the time. After working with them for about 8-9 months, her client actually encouraged her to start her own business. And, she did it! But after five years, she was mentally exhausted and had to throw in the towel.   How can you apply a strong referral strategy in your business without being promotional and ‘gimmicky’? When Stacey goes into companies of all sizes, she actually has to undo a lot of old myths about networking and referrals. A lot of companies provide an incentivized referral program, but in a lot of cases, that just doesn’t work. When Stacey works with companies, she has them go through an exercise where they craft their own referral plan. In this, you identify who your referral sources are, you create a plan on how to build meaningful and memorable connections with your referral sources, and most importantly, you thank and acknowledge your customers for their referral!   Interview Links: Staceybrownrandall.com   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  

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