Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

Are you getting better every day? Kaizen is a rough translation of ‘change for the better’ and today’s show is all about what it is, how it’s different from other models such as Lean, and how you can achieve Kaizen!   Hilary Corna is the former Senior Executive Office for Toyota in Asia, where she managed a team of people across fourteen different countries as a Change Leader for all of the dealerships in Asia. Hilary is also the author of One White Face, a memoir of her time abroad working for the company.   Hilary studied in Japan and secured a job at Toyota Motors in Singapore after college. She then transferred into a more managerial role in Indonesia where she ran a pilot program with the end-goal of rolling it out throughout all of Toyota Asia’s facilities when it became successful. This is where Hilary learned that it’s important to start small and test and test before scaling up.   Hilary sees first hand how business owners get ‘shiny object syndrome’ with technology. People are constantly looking for bigger and better tools when the simplest tool you can use is pen and paper, or a free technology system, which is what the staff at Toyota use until they can prove results.   Kaizen is about trying to find the root cause or problem within a process as early in the process as possible to prevent it from becoming a bigger problem in the future. Most problems are just problems of problems of problems and Kaizen kills that right from the beginning.   Through Kaizen, it looks directly at the process and takes a real look at why did the process fail in such a way that the team member couldn’t complete the job, not the other way around. So many times upper management puts blame on the employees, when really, they might have just been working with a broken and unrealistic system all along.   Kaizen helps shift the mindset of putting blame on others or pointing fingers at those who are responsible and puts a focus on where did the process break down and how can the team fix it so that everyone succeeds.   Interview Links: Hilarycorna.com Hilary on LinkedIn   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko

How do you fund your business? Is it with investors? Loans from the bank? Or something else entirely? Today’s guest will share the various ways you can fund your business and what option is right for you!   Ami Kassar is the founder and CEO of MultiFunding and a bestselling author of The Growth Dilemma. Ami specializes in helping people develop creative cost-effective alternatives to navigate the (very expensive) needs of a business.   Ami shares an example of how entrepreneurs should be thinking about their businesses. If all of your dreams came true, what would your business look like three years from now? And, what’s holding you back?   In Ami’s example, what was holding the entrepreneur back from growth was because she was still managing payroll and admin when her talent was really in consulting and leading the consulting teams. In order for her to switch her focus, Ami asked her, “How much would that cost you and how long would that take to start paying for itself?” Her answer was 350K.   So, the question was, could she afford the switch? She couldn’t. She runs her business the way many small business owners do, on a hustled budget, which means they don’t feel like they can spend more than what they can bring in.   Ami opened her eyes to the different loan options she could afford based on her situation. She qualified for a Small Business Loan, which means she could borrow 350k without putting a lien on her house. She would have a monthly payment of $4,300, which was around 12-13% of her cash flow and it would allow her to successfully make the switch in the least painful way.   This is the perfect example of how you can responsibly use leverage to scale up and grow without putting too many financial risks and burdens onto you and your personal household. If everything works according to plan, the entrepreneur would have paid the loan off in 2.2 years and she would triple her bottom line.   Interview Links: Multifunding.com Ami on LinkedIn   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube Scaling Up Podcast — Brian Scudamore Scaling Up Podcast — Shannon Susko  

Is it possible to grow a business worth over a million dollars with just one person? Yes, it is! Today’s guest shows you why this question is relevant for companies who aspire to grow its worth into the several hundred million dollar mark.   Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist who specializes in small business, entrepreneurship, and careers. She is the author of the Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, which takes a look at how entrepreneurs are hitting seven-figure revenue in businesses where they are the only employees.   Elaine is a contributor for Forbes and writes frequently for them about solopreneurs, also known as the one-person business. While researching for her next new piece, Elaine stumbled upon a treasure trove of data about the one-person businesses who were making over a million dollars in revenue. How were they able to achieve such success, solo? This sparked the idea for the book.   Elaine shares some of the common traits these one-person businesses have in common. They automated things right away! They also hired freelancers to help them with small tasks like designs, templates, and more. These solopreneurs were also quick to outsource certain tasks to bigger companies who were experts in that particular task or field.   By being able to outsource tedious tasks to the experts, these solopreneurs could spend more time where it matters; cultivating relationships with their best customers and finding new business.   A lot of these solopreneurs make an active effort to step away from the business so that they’d not tied to the phones or the computers. Instead, they’re attending business events and they hire coaches to help them get to the next level. They’re constantly surrounding themselves with high-level ideas.   When it comes to automation and if you’re not feeling 100% secure about hiring a freelancer just yet, Elaine recommends making a detailed inventory of what types of things you’re spending your time on in your business. See if there’s anything you can outsource based on that data that would free you up to do something more beneficial and useful.   Interview Links: Elainepofeldt.com Elainepofeldt.com/new-book   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

Will AI machines destroy humanity as we know it? Actually, quite the contrary. AI matters to the everyday business owner more than they might know. There’s a lot to be learned in prediction technology and today’s guest shares advice on how you can use this knowledge to grow your marketing and sales potential.   Avi Goldfarb is the Ellison Professor of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, Senior Editor at Marketing Science, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Avi is also the author of Prediction Machines, which he will be discussing on today’s show!   In 2012, there were only a couple of companies at the time that were calling themselves AI companies. However, that slowly grew and by 2015, Avi had seen a huge increase of at least 50 companies being created a year. Avi and his co-authors decided to investigate and research what this technology meant for our modern society.   The Mosaic web browser made the internet accessible to the general population, but it took us about a decade to figure out how to really commercialize it. Avi believes the same will hold true with AI. We are going to see businesses use AI tools in various ways to solve key problems.   Although AI will not improve the general intelligence of your company, prediction is still really, really valuable. Why? Because it cuts down on all the unknown variables in your decision-making process when you are faced with uncertainty. Through prediction, you can be much more confident (and you have the data to prove it) on what’s the correct direction to take your business in.   Interview Links: Avigoldfarb.com Creativedestructionlab.com   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

Today’s podcast is all about reaching beyond your comfort zone. You’re never really finished doing good work, but with that, come some tests to your limits. How can you go above and beyond while also being comfortable with the uncomfortable? Today’s guest has the answers!   Andy Molinsky is a Professor at Brandeis University’s International Business School, with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. Andy received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and M.A. in Psychology from Harvard University. Andy’s extensive knowledge helps people develop the courage to act outside of their personal and cultural comfort zones while doing important work.   One of Bill’s company values is ‘Never Being Finished’ and it’s the idea of always working on your growth and development. In order to truly improve, you must push yourself and get a bit uncomfortable, kind of like exercise. Andy agrees. In Andy’s work and while researching for his book, Reach, he has studied a wide variety of people throughout a number of professions to better understand why is it so hard to step out of our comfort zones.   Why can’t we just be comfortable? Why do we need to force ourselves to be uncomfortable? Andy doesn’t recommend to always strive to be uncomfortable but to strategically pick a couple of high-leverage and important situations that are key to your growth and development.   The types of challenges people face while stepping out of their comfort zones vary. People can experience a crisis with their authenticity or identity, “I’m not the kind of person that fires people.” The second challenge people experience is likability, “This person will hate me if I fire them.” And there’s also confidence issues, “What if I’m bad at this?”   Combine confidence issues with authenticity issues, it’s no wonder so many people suffer from imposter syndrome. They often think, “This doesn’t feel like me, I’m bad at this, and people can tell I am bad at this.”   Our lives are often organized in such a way where we can remain comfortable. We have developed elaborate strategies to purposely avoid discomfort, and it makes sense from a survival perspective. It helps us avoid pain and loss, but it also helps us avoid growth, which can mean death for business owners.   Interview Links: Andymolinsky.com Andymolinsky.com/books   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube   TWEETABLES:   “In any professional and personal phrases, stepping outside of your comfort zone is a key skill.”   “You want to pick a couple of high-leverage, important, relevant situations that are key to your growth and development.”   “Our lives are well-organized around avoiding discomfort.”   Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts.   Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, 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 business coach with Gazelles.   We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).  

The process of scaling up really begins and ends with the leadership. If you’re a leader, then you must face yourself in the mirror and take care of yourself. There are many great ways a leader can develop themselves and today’s guest discusses how leaders can thrive under tough pressure.   Kevin Lawrence is an international strategic advisor and has coached hundreds of clients across a wide range of industries. His work as a coach for the last 20+ years inspired him to write the book, Your Oxygen Mask First. The book discusses the dark side of leadership dichotomy, and offers 17 practical steps to triumph in business, without being trampled in life.   High-performing CEOs and executives have to push themselves in such a way where they get stronger and better, without burning themselves out. This is a hard thing to do for any passionate leader as the world of business is so vast (and exciting) that it can take everything out of you if you’re not careful.   With Kevin’s extensive work with high-level achievers, he’s heard it all. The powerful CEOs you see in magazines are overwhelmed and they’re beginning to doubt their ability. Just the other day, a CEO was having a panic attack just before his flight was taking off. When a CEO begins to unravel, addictions start to kick in to escape the stress and their physical and mental health suffers.   The good news, however, is that it’s all fixable. If you want to play the bigger game, you just need better tools, and Kevin’s book has all the tools a CEO could ever need. You can learn techniques to help you gain your confidence back and you can build from a place where your new leadership position is not overwhelming you or forcing you to handle new thresholds of stress.   Interview Links: Lawrenceandco.com Kevin on LinkedIn Episode 25 with Kevin Lawrence   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube

Carl Gould is an entrepreneur and business growth expert. Carl has built three multi-million dollar businesses by the age of 40, has mentored the launch of over 5,000 businesses and has trained and certified over 7,000 business coaches in 35 countries.   Why should you be ‘obnoxious’? To give you a little bit of a background, Carl became very, very good at listening to customer complaints about the industry he was in. He also leveraged himself in such a way where he was constantly adding value (by doing the exact opposite of what his customers hated), and his pricing reflected that.   In fact, his pricing was obnoxious. It was so obnoxious that a potential client vented to him about how ridiculous his pricing was… and then he handed him a check. Carl was confused at first, but after thinking about it, the client wasn’t actually mad at Carl.   The client was mad at all of the other contractors who had failed to meet his expectations and he was hoping Carl was different. The client was willing to pay what he paid (although he wasn’t happy about it) because of Carl’s high-quality services. Carl listened to his client and was able to address his most painful concerns right away. He added obnoxious value, and with that came an obnoxious price.   In your obnoxious offers/services, you also want to establish a nonlinear benefit for your clients. Ask yourself, “What can I bring to my clientele that has nothing to do with my service?” Create a path for your company so that your best clients can actually be treated like your best clients.   Interview Links: 7stageadvisors.com Carl on LinkedIn   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube   TWEETABLES:   “My fundamental premise is to get as obnoxious as possible, not just in price, but also in value.”   “The reason why I was hired was I addressed the top-of-mind concerns of the client.”   “Have you, as a company, created a path for your best clients to really be your best clients?”   Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts.   Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, 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 business coach with Gazelles.   We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).

Roland Siebelink is a serial entrepreneur, a certified Scaling Up coach, and the author of Scaling Silicon Valley Style. Roland grew up in the Netherlands, but he has started businesses in Belgium, Switzerland, and now in California. Currently, he helps founders and startups in Silicon Valley scale their businesses and avoid tricky pitfalls with their investors.   Running a startup is very, very different compared to running a traditional business. This is one of the reasons why Roland decided to write his book. He wanted to offer a roadmap specifically to startup founders who needed to understand what stage they’re at, what that means for their funding, and how to effectively scale up without destroying it all.   As a startup, your style is forced to evolve as your company gets bigger. Leading a team of 10 is much different than leading a team of 100, and not every startup founder can properly make that shift. The stuff that made you successful in the startup phase is actually completely detrimental to you in the scale-up phase.   Learning how to pivot is a key skill towards making your startup business successful and finding your right target clients. However, once you’ve reached the limits of the startup phrase, pivoting can no longer be the solution to your problems. In fact, pivoting further can damage the company’s integrity and cause internal confusion.   People in Silicon Valley aren’t focusing on change of leadership tactics when they get to a certain phase of their company. Instead, their solution is to just change CEOs and find a more ‘charismatic’ leader for the company.   Unfortunately, this means that the 2nd CEO might not be the best culture fit and it forces an unnecessary disruption in the company when it could have been prevented. Sometimes, providing the first CEO with more awareness/leadership training could have been the solution the founders were looking for all along.   Interview Links: Scalingsiliconvalleystyle.com Roland on LinkedIn   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube   TWEETABLES:   “It’s not just [that] your style has to evolve, your style almost has to diametrically change.”   “The stuff you learned that made you successful is completely detrimental to you in the scale-up phase.”   “In the startup phase, founders learn to pivot and pivot and pivot until they become successful.”   Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iTunes, and leave a review. It helps other entrepreneurs discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast, so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts.   Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...And Why the Rest Don’t, is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, 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 business coach with Gazelles.   We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).  

We often hear the term ‘pivot’ in business. When things aren’t working out, we figure out how to make it work in a different way, whether that be changing business models or switching businesses. However, what about the mini-pivot? This is where you add a small change that helps the business scale up. Stayed tuned to find out more.   Brandon Bruce is the co-founder and COO of Cirrus Insight, an all-in-one sales productivity platform. Since launching in 2011, Cirrus has been listed as #41 on the Inc. 500 list. Brandon has grown Cirrus as a lightly-funded distributed company via scrappy tactics in the same industry as billion-dollar software companies and competitors. Find out more about his story and how those small pivots were key to his success.   Brandon grew up in a very small town and went to a class of two. It was very self-directed learning and he was able to explore his education without being too restricted.   Brandon started his company at a perfect time. When he and his partner created a product that integrated Gmail with Salesforce, both of these platforms were growing exponentially and now he and his team work with over 5,000 different organizations.   He credits a big difference for their growth compared to others in the same space is that they got creative with the use of their bootstrapping methods to succeed. They were able to achieve a lot with a lot less and, through that, they were able to scale up more effectively.   A lot of people think pivots have to be a big shift or change but do not discount the mini-pivots at all. Brandon’s business model was simple, do you use Salesforce? Yes. Do you use Gmail? Yes. Well, then you’re our target market.   As their company grew, Brandon kept hearing from others who wanted their service but weren’t using Salesforce just yet or weren’t using Gmail. This caused Brandon and his team to do a mini-pivot to service those customers.   With 7 years of feedback, Brandon has a good idea of what his customers want and how much they’re willing to pay for it. You don’t have to do a big pivot to improve your business and to scale up. There are lots of opportunities for mini-pivots and growth within your company.   Interview Links: Cirrusinsight.com Brandon on LinkedIn   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

How do you create a business that scales massively but also showcases your purpose and values? How do you build a company you can truly be proud of — a business that can make a huge difference in the world? This week’s guest shares his insightful business expertise and his company’s mission!   David Katz is an inspirational speaker and the Founder and CEO of The Plastic Bank, an internationally recognized solution to stop ocean plastic. The Plastic Bank is a global network of micro recycling markets that empower the poor to transcend poverty by cleaning the environment.   David has been an entrepreneur his entire life and was in charge of executing projects since he was eight years old. He came from a family of immigrants who had to be creative and entrepreneurial to make their mark in Canada.   The Plastic Bank was inspired by David’s life experiences as a youth sailing with his father. David’s father was an early adopter of GPS in the 1980s, which wasn’t readily available at that time or up to the standards of today’s GPS technology. It helped David learn how to map out where he was in the ocean at all times.   Since David grew up on the ocean and had learned about the immense and beautiful power of the sea, he was saddened when he kept seeing waves upon waves of trash float up to the shore.   David has started companies before but he was purposeless. When he came upon this cause, he knew he could create a company that was far bigger than himself. If he could only just showcase how much value each plastic item floating in the water was worth ($20-50), then there would be no more plastic left.   The Plastic Bank is its own ecosystem that reveals value in what was once viewed as waste. Plastic Bank has a chain of stores for the ultra, ultra poor where everything in the store is available to be purchased by using plastic garbage as currency. Plastic Bank is able to offer school tuition, medical insurance, wifi, and cell phone minutes, power, fuel, and food.   Interview Links: Plasticbank.org   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube