Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

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

Did you know that 83% of small businesses around the world are not profitable? Business owners are living month-to-month and are desperately struggling. Today’s episode dives into how to never live paycheck-to-paycheck again.   Mike Michalowicz is the author of several books including The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, Surge, and Profit First. He is also the Owner of Profit First Professionals, his third million-dollar venture.   Why did Mike decide to write Profit First? Mike had grown his companies to multi-million dollar businesses but was not profitable at all. He had refinanced his house multiple times and was not making ends meet.   He thought if he could run the business long enough, they’d eventually hit their ‘big break’ and become profitable. After selling his businesses, he decided to become an angel investor with this mindset and — guess what — the 10 businesses he invested in all tanked. Within two years, he lost every penny that he had ever made.   After he told his family that he had failed them, he went through two years of ‘functional’ depression. It was not a proud moment in his life. Through this journey, he was able to ask himself some hard questions and those hard questions lend to a lightbulb moment. How can I make my businesses profitable, always?   Keep in mind, it’s also a lifestyle problem for many entrepreneurs as well. As they’re trying to live a good life and create a profitable company, in the back of their mind they’re worried about whether or not they can afford their car or their home tomorrow. The amount of stress this puts on someone makes it very hard to see the bigger picture.   Mike’s accountant was trying to help him by showing him the real numbers, by showing him the metrics, and Mike would brush him off and not listen to his advice. If Mike saw he had money in the bank, then he had money in the bank! But it isn’t always so simple.   Mike knew that he had to change somehow, but changing your behavior right off the bat is a very difficult thing to do. So, what he did was he decided to put a percentage of his money into a ‘profit’ bank account and run his business on the remaining cash. By making this simple shift, he was able to see things from a bigger perspective and he was forced to reverse engineer his business so it would survive on the remaining cash no matter what.   Interview Links: Profit First Book mikemichalowicz.com: For access to Mike’s Wallstreet journal articles, book excerpts, and entrepreneurial tips.   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 see CEOs and leaders make a lot of the same mistakes and today’s show highlights a frequent mistake that occurs: inattention to results and cash. This is episode has two high-level coaches to chime in on the subject!   Ethan Martin is the Founder & President of PFD Group, Inc. and a Rockefeller Habits Certified Coach. Ethan has a passion for helping mission-driven CEOs build their companies. Prior to this, he has always been a serial entrepreneur and was an EO member for seven years.   Dale Meador is the Founder of Finanza Coach and has been a Rockefeller Habits Certified Coach for the last two years. Prior to this, he ran his own CPA firm and helped his clients implement systems of strategic planning and financial controls into their business.   Today’s subject is about the inattention to results and cash. As in, not having dashboards or having too many metrics, or not paying attention to the data that’s in front of you! We also dive into some of the common struggles people are faced with when trying to implement the Scaling Up framework.   Ethan shares an example of a CEO that was pursuing different business strategies for his distribution company and didn’t have a clear purpose on cash flow or profitability by customer. Ethan and his team came in and used the Scaling Up framework to help guide this CEO into understanding his strategy and what the main priority should be.   Dale believes one of the things that’s critical for when a team comes together is to really get a clear definition of what is ‘winning’ for them. Dale shares an example of how there was a disconnect between leadership and the owner on what a successful, thriving company looked like, and thus, why it was hard for them to retain a positive cash flow.   In some teams, the financial team might guard their financial numbers so close to the vest that the rest of the leadership team end up being blind or unaware of how successful or unsuccessful the numbers are. And for good reason too, sometimes when it is revealed how much money the company is making, everyone wants raises even though it is simply not feasible.   In cases like these, Ethan recommends the leadership team have a clear dashboard where anyone can look up the numbers and the health of the company within a matter of 15 minutes. For things like this, it’s important to get the core numbers right so that the entire team can take the correct steps to ensure the company has a positive cash flow.   Interview Links: Pfd-group.com Finanzacoach.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   TWEETABLES:   “What got you to this stage of growth won’t get you to the next stage of growth.”   “If there’s not clarity on that one thing, that one number, especially financial, it really holds the team back.”   “Make sure the leadership team has a very simple and clear dashboard on these critical things like cash that anyone can look at in a matter of 15 minutes.”   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).  

With a breakthrough strategy, you can actually out-think your competition and do something bold – but how do you get there? Today’s show dives into a repeatable process you can implement in your company and culture to naturally create those “aha” moments. Kaihan Krippendorff is the founder of Outthinker, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, and has written four books on business, strategy, growth, and transformation. Kaihan is committed to helping organizations and individuals thrive in today’s era of fast-paced disruptive technology change. Kaihan has always been fascinated by strategy. When you think about it, good strategy comes down to being a disruptor. How can a group of people come together and create a strategy that will disrupt, rather than be disrupted? How does someone create ‘The Fourth Option,’ as Kaihan likes to call it? There are always great ideas that pop up within a company, but for some reason or another, they do not get pursued. Most of these reasons were not based in fact or strategy, or even in analysis. Great ideas were getting shot down through naysaying from someone on the team or even from the founder. To be a disruptor, it means you hold a belief that is inconsistent with the way business is run in your industry. If you’ve been in your industry long enough, you start developing these rules and beliefs of what will and won’t work. And, people will always choose to hold onto their beliefs, even if it’s to the detriment of the company. This is where the fourth option comes into play. It is really a metaphor and it means that there’s a point in the process where people stop looking for options. What a disruptor does is recognize that their competition has stopped looking — stopped thinking — and looks for a fourth option that will surprise people. Kaihan lays out a simple process on the show to help you easily pinpoint and discover what that fourth option is. Interview Links: Kaihan.net Outthinker.com Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Register now for our next workshop on Scaling Up! 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). Check out this episode!