Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

This week’s episode is worth a million dollars! That’s right! Your business is a leaky bucket and there are probably more than a million dollars in it that are leaking away and you’re just not aware it. How can you spot those leaks and get them fixed ASAP? You’ll have to listen in to this week’s show!   Howard Shore is the author of Your Business is a Leaky Bucket as well as a Business and Executive Coach. Howard has worked for 3 top Fortune 500 companies and has over 12 years of experience as a coach. He is also a Certified Gazelles Coach. Throughout the years, he has seen clients leak money unnecessarily and this is what inspired him to write his book.   Howard began his career by owning his first business when he was 18 years old. Over the years of working one-on-one with high-level executives and leaders, Howard came to realize something important. We all live our life like Dilbert, the popular comic strip.   It was astonishing to Howard how everybody could be working so, so hard in their industry, yet they were not getting as much traction as they should through this extra hard work. It just seemed counter-productive.   Most people are very good at working in the business but do not know how to work on the business. This is to say, they do not know how to focus on strategy, execution, and people to help save themselves from these big financial leaks and their own personal time.   Howard was hired to help a client in the restoration business improve his profits and bottom line. Just by working with Howard and applying the principles that are in the book, their profit grew by over 80% this year and their top line grew by over 30%. This is highly unusual in an industry like theirs and this was done through all organic means (no acquisitions). Also, their net profit grew by over 50%. The good news is, the general manager and CEO can now take time off and actually enjoy their lives while running a growing and successful business!   You can put any kind of framework in place, but if you don’t have a strong culture of accountability, or even the right accountability systems in place, then fixing the leaky bucket is destined to fail. Howard likes to replace the word execution with the word accountability because, in the end, it takes accountability to create long-lasting and meaningful action.   Interview Links: Your Business is a Leaky Bucket: Learn How to Avoid Losing Millions in Revenue and Profit Annually, by Howard Shore Dilbert.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  

Going through hardship is difficult and can sometimes leave very painful memories. But what if you can take the challenges you’ve gone through and turn them into a powerful story that inspires others? This week’s episode dives into how you can find your story and tell it in a powerful way. JT McCormick is the President and CEO of Book in a Box, a company that will help you tell your story and write your book. JT has personally faced a lot of hardships growing up. By all accounts, he shouldn’t have succeeded, but he worked his way up from scrubbing toilets and is now the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company. Find out his story on today’s show. For the first ten years of JT’s life, all he saw while growing up in the projects were pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, and overall despair. He did not know any better, until one day he and his father drove through a very rich neighborhood and it opened his eyes to the possibility that life has much more to offer. JT’s father was a pimp in the 70s and JT is one of 23 children fathered by him. He is the only child on his mother’s side and she grew up in an orphanage. JT grew up mixed race and faced discrimination from both ethnicities because of it. For the first nine years of his life, he grew up with his mother, who was a single mom on welfare. After that, he lived with his dad and the experience can best be described as ‘chaos.’ A billionaire once told Bill, “One of my main lessons in life was to be thankful for the problems you have.” Your problems are difficult, they’re unpleasant, but at least they’re yours. For this billionaire, he'd rather have his own problems than someone else’s problems.JT’s mother told him to never judge someone because everyone has a story and you don’t always know what their story is. This piece of advice stuck with him and became the inspiration for his business today. Bill has noticed that all of the relationships we hold as people, no matter what position you’re in or whether you’re a young adult or a senior citizen, all of the ways we relate are just extensions of things we learned as children and the way our parents interacted with each other. The thing about is, if you don’t access your story, you close yourself off from relating to other people or from other people relating to you. Everyone has hardships and struggles, whether it’s losing their house or getting a divorce from their spouse. You don’t have to be ‘perfect’ or leave the emotions/stories out of business because no one is perfect and we are all emotional. When you share your story, you also build trust with your peers.   Interview Links: Bookpeople.com What Is the What: A Novel, by Dave Eggers The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni   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: “I can’t change the past. I can’t change I was sexually abused or the parents I was born to. I can change the future.”   “One of my main lessons in life was to be thankful for the problems you have.”   “Never judge people because everyone has a story and you don’t always know what their story is.” 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 a 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).

Are you having trouble scaling your business effectively? Have you ever thought that you might be doing it ‘wrong’? This episode dives into the biggest mistakes we see leaders making in the quest scale up. Our guest for this week is the one and only Verne Harnish. As most of you already know, he is the author of Scaling Up, Founder and CEO of Gazelles. He is also co-founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO). The tools that Verne and our team at Gazelles have put in place have worked for over 40,000 companies, across many industries, and around the world. This is Verne’s 35th year working helping business to scale. In fact, Verne and EO are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the organization and the 25th anniversary of the originating MIT program, the Birthing of Giants. It’s also the 20th anniversary of our Gazelles organization. There is a lot of education for startup founders, but much much less on successfully scaling up. In this show, Verne shares the story of a 76-year old who accidentally became a CEO and was recently named CEO of the year in British Columbia, Canada. With 3 decades of experience as a cancer researcher, he cites Gazelles as what helped him navigate the chaos of growing his company, now approaching a $1 billion valuation. We also look at what people are missing the Strategy area: it’s pricing!  Companies are leaving massive amounts of money on the table. There are two things you want to think about when it comes to pricing. First, adjust your pricing based on the time and/or the season (develop dynamic pricing). And second, there’s psychology behind this. Human beings are not rational decision makers and sometimes need 3 tiers of pricing in order to be convinced that a higher tier is the one for them. In People decisions, this is the best piece of advice Verne ever received: If you want to scale your company by 10x, figure out who are the top 25 influencers in your industry that need to get behind your company. The bigger the names, the faster you will scale. Verne was bold, so he put President Ronald Reagan on his list, along with Steve Jobs. Verne also knew he had to get Inc. Magazine and Venture Magazine involved. He spent an hour every week figuring out how he could get himself in front of these influencers. 3 years later, they were global. Just because Verne aimed for the President at the time doesn’t mean that’s also your only option. In this day and age, there are tons of influencers you can target. Do not ignore bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram stars, etc. Every industry has their lead customer. If you’ve got them onboard, your product will fly off the shelf. Listen to this show for big insights on getting proactive with your Execution habits and managing the Cash decisions of your business model.    Resources: Download our Growth Kit for Scaling Up with instructions, agendas, and worksheets for your leadership team.  Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Website Bill on YouTube

This week’s episode focuses on the 3HAG. As many of you might be familiar with a 10+ year BHAG, the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, our 3HAG is not too far off from this concept. How do you effectively structure your mid-term goals? Today’s expert guest has some tips for you! Shannon Susko has more than 20 years of experience building and leading high-growth technology companies in the financial services industry. She is also a Senior Gazelles Coach and has a ton of experience helping business leaders put strategies in place to achieve their 3HAG and BHAGs! When Shannon was the CEO of her first company, she had to stand in front of her team, her shareholders, and investors to discuss the company’s BHAG. However, you have to do more than just exclaim it, you also have to prove you can do it. This is where the 3HAG comes in and it is how it helped Shannon make the long-term goal achievable and believable. The reason most companies do not even have a 3HAG is due to fear of failure. That’s a lot of pressure for a CEO and nothing good comes from having their three-year goals fall short in the eyes of his or her investors. The BHAG is the first strategic goal, but the 3HAG brings everything together. As Shannon says, it’s like the pivot point. Shannon and her team decided to map out 36 months, 12 quarters, of what the key milestones were going to be in order for them to put the strategy in place. They also studied the current climate of the market throughout these months to ensure they were still on track with their target audience. During this time, the 3HAG helped Shannon and her team stay focused and all the decisions in the company were striving to hit those goals. After about five years of incorporating that framework, the company was able to take a very successful exit. Shannon’s second company experienced similar success, except within a shorter timeframe, due to this framework. Three years and three months to the day, she was able to sell the company and reap the rewards of another huge exit. Interview Links: Shannonsusko.com More 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

Entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders both have a lot to learn from each other. Even though it may seem like they’re working in completely different industries, both worlds have a lot of interesting insight on how to grow, partner, and market to a larger audience. Dr. Ken Thiessen is the Founder of Power of One Consulting, where he focuses on consulting for the social sector and nonprofit organizations. Dr. Ken is also a certified senior Gazelles coach and uses his expertise to help business owners and nonprofit leaders succeed in their industry. By working with both nonprofit and for-profit sectors, Dr. Ken has found some very interesting lessons that we can all learn from, and use, in our business. When Dr. Ken was 18 years old, he decided to buy a restaurant. He had no business plan, and yet the bank gave him a loan for it! However, surprise surprise, two years after he bought his restaurant, Dr. Ken went bankrupt. From Dr. Ken’s failed restaurant attempt, he learned a lot of important lessons at the ripe age of 20. This was a good thing! The lessons he learned, like having a plan, is something a university could never teach him. When Dr. Ken turned 29, he did a major career shift and went back to school. Truth be told, Dr. Ken is surprised he even did this as he wasn’t very good at school in the first place. Dr. Ken decided to become a minister at this time, and he continued to do this for the next 20 years. The shift from for-profit to nonprofit was a major wake-up call. Dr. Ken did consulting work for 45 churches to help them get more organized and make a structured plan for their future. He worked with so many people who meant well, but couldn’t plan beyond that. After 5 years of doing this, Dr. Ken wanted to do more and help others in a bigger way. This is how he got introduced to Gazelles and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Once he adopted Gazelles framework, things changed for him. He began helping a variety of nonprofit organizations. So, between entrepreneurship and nonprofits, what kinds of differences and lessons has Dr. Ken learned so far? In the nonprofit sector, you had people rise up in the ranks (executive director positions, etc), despite not knowing how to read a financial statement or run a team. How did this happen? They got there because they were passionate about the cause and were willing to roll with the punches and learn on the job. A lot of nonprofit leaders will say that they’re not a business, but Dr. Ken tells them that they owe it to the people who fund them to show them that they’re using their resources effectively. This is why it’s so important that you treat a nonprofit like a business. The reality is, you can run a nonprofit like a business and you can do it without compromising the core values and the core reason why you’re helping others. In fact, by treating a nonprofit like a business, you are able to effectively structure your organization in a way that helps more people. Who doesn’t want to do that? Once nonprofit leaders realize this, they actually end up scaling and growing their nonprofit to new heights.   Interview Links: Powerofoneconsulting.ca Ken on Linkedin Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish   More 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  

Have you ever been on the brink of losing hope and losing your business? Today’s episode dives into the nitty-gritty and shares some of the not-so-pleasant hardships many entrepreneurs face. Today’s guest shares some of the key lessons he’s learned while he was trying to start and grow his own business. Tom King is the Founder and CEO of Steviva Foods, one of the largest importers, manufacturers, and distributors of clean-label sweetening systems and natural sweeteners. Thom’s success did not come easy. In fact, Thom had experienced several growth-related hardships in his business before he truly ‘made it.’ On this week’s show, find out why he never gave up on his business even when all the arrows were pointing for him to do so. Thom first discovered Steviva through his friend. Tom’s friend came back from Paraguay looking for a natural supplement for his daughter, who was suffering from a rare disease. When Thom first tried these leaves from Paraguay, he found them to be very sweet and they had no calories. The light bulb went off in Thom’s head and thus began his journey of creating a sugar/sweetener substitute. Thom officially launched his company in 1999. At the time, most of his sales were coming from health food stores due to FDA restrictions on his products. However, in 2008, the FDA allowed Steviva to be sold as a sweetener and his sales began to skyrocket. Thom admits that from 1999 to 2008, it was a real struggle getting his business off the ground.  Thom’s business started from his garage and it was his side hustle. He was working a full-time job on top of trying to convince stores to sell his product. When he decided to move the business from California to Oregon, that’s when he began to run out of capital. When Thom was running out of money in 2007, he made a tough call to his father asking him for a small loan. He couldn’t make his mortgage payments anymore. He had maxed out his credit cards, and banks weren’t loaning money to him. Thankfully, his father said yes and lent him $175,000. Once he received the funds, he put his business plan in place and started to bring on employees. His first 10 hires all focused on the production side of the business and Thom was able to focus strictly on selling. During this financially trying time, what made Thom carry on? Why didn’t he just hang up the jacket and call it quits? Truth be told, Thom really believed in the idea and — here’s the important part — he had the data to back up the product idea. Diabetes and obesity rates were rising and Thom knew he had a product that could do good and help those people. Interview Links: Steviva.com More 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  

Is your company expanding and growing quickly? Usually, when a company grows but does not have the right systems in place, the organization rapidly feels the extra pressure and it often causes serious blocks in the chain. How do you avoid it? Well, this week’s guest is a fellow coach and has seen time and time again the top biggest three pitfalls that occur in a rapidly growing company. Ron Carucci is a consultant with more than 25 years of experience working directly with CEOs and senior executives. He has consulted for a wide range of organizations — everything from Fortune 50s to startups. His consulting has taken him to more than 20 different countries on four continents. On today’s show, Ron discusses the three top biggest constraints a growing company faces. Ron is a recent empty nester, and Bill is just months away from having an empty home as well. As these two parents see their children grow up, there is a common theme that can be directly linked to business — growth and change produce unsettling moments. The old ways of doing things just don’t apply anymore. The reality is, no matter where you are in life, you still have to reinvent and adjust to the new changes that are coming your way. Ron repeatedly sees three very common pitfalls into which organizations have dug themselves. One of them is that they have grown, but they have not scaled. For example, an 80-million-dollar company trapped in the body of a 20-million-dollar organization. No one has ever told these organizations that scaling up requires growing up. As Ron begins his work, he sees companies putting pieces and systems together on a whim and they usually do not have a long-term game plan. All they’re doing is just trying to fix the leaks, and, of course, this method is not sustainable. The company ends up losing identity as well as vision. The first question Ron asks his clients is, “What is your strategy?” Often times, he’ll get handed a mission statement, a value statement, a financial plan, a sales forecast — everything but a strategy. For many of his clients, they are unable to answer why they’re better than their competitors and why customers should choose them over the next guy. If you cannot answer this, then it means you do not know who you are or what your company represents. And, if you do not know who you are and what your company represents, this means that you do not know who is leading the charge. For many clients, they find out that they do not have an identity, do not have a long-term game plan, and do not have strong leadership. However, the good news is that all three of these pitfalls are completely avoidable! You avoid this by setting your identity, your intentions, your strategies, and what clients you will say “no” to, at the very beginning of the organization. This helps you build a strong foundation and you will find yourself not having to struggle to fix those leaks.   Interview Links: Navalent.com Ron on LinkedIn   More 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  

Many business owners have found themselves working on important presentations throughout their careers. However, have you ever worked on one that has fallen flat, or even failed to wow investors or clients? Well, today’s episode breaks down what goes into a successful presentation! Dustin Mathews is the co-founder of Speaking Empire, a company that helps train aspiring speakers into pros. He is also the author of the No B.S. Guide to Powerful Presentations, which is why he makes for an excellent guest on how to develop inspiring presentations that produce results. Dustin never wanted to be front-and-center with an audience. He was always a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, and would constantly run from the idea of standing in front of a crowd. One day, he couldn’t run from it any longer and he had to cover for his boss. When he stood up there and spoke, something interesting happened — it was not as bad as it seemed. He’s been hooked ever since. Dustin ended up doing 3,000 events in a short time frame with his team. Through lots of trial and error, he learned there are five components to an effective presentation: An intro, powerful stories, an offer, the meat of the presentation (the content), and the close. To expand on each of these five components, the intro is what sets the stage. If you look at the most influential people out there, there are always introduced by somebody else. So, when you’re personally about to do a presentation, have someone, or something, introduce you. One of Dustin’s tips is that he has a video to give him the introduction. This gives his audience an idea of what he’s done in the past. The 2nd component is the story. Stories need to be in a presentation. You have to be able to tell a before/after story. A story of why your client’s life was awful, what happened when they found/used the product, and how they’re life is now 10X better now. Now that you’ve told your transformative story, the next step is the offer. This is where you do not make assumptions about the audience. Do not use jargon or expect you’re talking to experts/peers. In your offer, you have to describe why this is a challenge/a real pain for your target audience. When you effectively describe the pain, that’s when you come in with the solution. This naturally leads you into the fourth component, the meat of the content. Here’s where you offer a three-to-five-step process as to why this product will solve their pain point. Do not give them more than five, as this will overwhelm the audience! Be sure to bring out your client case studies as well, to help convince those who are skeptical about your solution.   The last piece of the presentation is the close. In reality, when you’re trying to close, you don’t wait till the very end. In a room, make sure you get clarification that you’re making sense to your audience. You ask your audience questions throughout the entire presentation to get ‘mini closes’ along the way before you go into your big ask. This is key!   Interview Links: Speakingempire.com Nobspresentations.com Dustin on Linkedin   More 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  

Randy Cohen is the Founder & Chief Energizing Officer for TicketCity Management. Randy is also the author of  Secrets of Swagger, a book to help guide business owners and entrepreneurs through the process of understanding, and obtaining, confidence. Do you struggle with getting your swagger on? This week’s guest knows a thing or two about being cool, calm, and confident. Find out how you can obtain these seemingly unattainable traits with guest Randy Cohen on this week’s episode! Randy first started TicketCity 27 years ago. He took his life savings of $1,200 and bought 200 $6 sports tickets, which he later resold for $15 a piece. From there, he slowly built his business up and now he has a $150 million operation. How does Randy cultivate swagger in his life and in his business? It all started when he had an epiphany of what TicketCity was all about. What is your company about and how are you making a difference? When you know these answers, and are passionate about them, you can effectively rally your troops and lead them in the right direction for your company. One of the secrets to swagger is finding your passion in life. That’s just one part of it though. You still have to walk the walk and talk the talk. People respect a leader who gets his hands dirty. Keep in mind, there are different levels of swagger too. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to swagger. You might be brilliant at what you do and have an intelligence swagger about you. You might be highly competitive and have a competitive swagger about you. Richard Branson, Lady Gaga, and George Clooney all have different types of swagger. People with swagger typically have a couple of these  things: Passion, Collaboration, Charisma, Commitment, Courage, Coolness, Competitiveness, Character, and Creativity. How can you obtain some of these things? Well, you certainly should not fake it till you make it. That’s not how you obtain swagger. Walk the talk of something that’s really important to you, something you really care about. You get swagger by working on something truly meaningful to you and showing up, being committed, to that every single day.   Interview Links: Ticketcity.com Secrets of Swagger: How to Own Your Cool in Life and Business, by Randy Cohen   More 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  

Steve Little is the CEO and Managing Partner of Zero Limits Ventures. Steve first started his entrepreneurial career at the young age of 13, and sold his business a few years later for a 6-figure sum. Steve has over 40+ years of experience in entrepreneurship in a wide range of industries, which is why he is the perfect guest for this week’s topic. On the show, Steve discusses some of the important factors you need to consider, to drive value in your business! Steve started just like any other kid on the block, cutting his dad’s lawn. After two years of taking care of his neighbors and clients’ lawns, and having 35 employees under his belt, he sold the contracts he acquired for a little over $200,000. He didn’t realize it at the time, but when he looks back, this was one of the earliest lessons he learned about how to drive value into the business. There are all kinds of value hidden inside the walls of businesses. There’s valuation that’s tied up into constraints, like things that exist in your business that’s keeping it from being valuable; and there are things outside the business, like opportunities in the marketplace that owners are not fully leveraging. Today, when Steve sits down with prospective clients, he asks two questions, “What’s your exit strategy?” and “Do you know what drives the value of your business?” Many people are unable to answer these questions. Steve often cites Amazon buying Zappos as one of the prime examples of high value. Why did Amazon pay a billion dollars to acquire Zappos? It wasn’t for their products. It was for their company culture. And if you talk to the Founder of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, he will tell you he built the Zappos culture for that exact reason; he knew someone would want to buy the culture, not the products. You may not want to sell your business today, and that’s okay, but you really can’t know what your business is worth unless you understand who would buy it, why they’d buy it, and what they’d be willing to pay for it. Interview Links: Zerolimitsventures.com More 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