Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher

John Ratliff first applied The Scaling Up Rockefeller Habits when he was the Founder/CEO of Appletree Answers. He grew it from relatively small company in 1995 to 700 employees, before selling it in 2012. Today, he is the Managing Director of STS Capital Partners, and sits down with Bill to discuss our overall mental health and how to combat depression when you’re sitting at the top. When it comes to mental health, John looks back and reflects that he had been struggling with it since he was a little kid. So, instead of facing it, he did what most people did, he dived into his work, and did not confront what was going on with himself internally. When it comes to mental health, sleep is very important, yet John picked a business where he didn’t get much of it at all. He was working 100 hours a week, and was up at all hours of the night when he first started his answering service. He was so sleep deprived that he doesn’t remember the entire year of 1997. To be completely honest, John kept his life-long battle with depression a complete secret from everyone in his life until now, when he’s finally able to talk about it. It was something he didn’t want anybody to know about. From the outside, he was often the life of the party and a fun guy to be around. Bill reflects on his own personal experience and how many entrepreneurs pretend that it’s all ‘cool,’ when it really is not. Through some reflection, Bill was able to notice, just like John, the various ways we try to hide from the outside world, and to make it look like we’re more than just okay. It seems entrepreneurs have the tendency to overcompensate to try and avoid what’s going on in the inside, which has its pros and its cons.   Interview Links: STSCapital.com John 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  

Jack Daly is a sales coach with over 25 years of experience. Throughout his career, Jack has helped six companies grow to hundreds and hundreds of employees nationwide. Jack is also the Amazon bestselling author of Hyper Sales Growth. On today’s show, Jack discusses what makes a great sales playbook. Jack’s sales playbook has evolved over time. Why did Jack create this sales playbook, in the first place? Well, it goes back to the company that went from four people (Jack and three colleagues) to 750. Jack’s BHAG was to be the #1 mortgage company in Orange County, California. This was back in 1985, and Jack was suddenly faced with Bank of America, Countrywide Funding, Shearson American Express, and Wells Fargo as competitors. Knowing the competitors he faced, he knew he needed a system and processes in place to help roll out his business model to other store locations as quickly as possible. This is how Jack’s sales playbook was first created. Over time, Jack noticed that, for most companies, systems and processes are pretty much non-existent in the sales department, and he slowly began improving his sales playbook to help others. Jack’s largest sales force was 2600 sales people, and he would visit over 100 offices with the same mentality, “Sports teams are run better than most businesses.” There isn’t a coach out there who would put their players on the field without a playbook, yet most companies do not have a sales playbook. No sales playbook? This means each salesperson is making it up as they go and that is dangerous when you begin to scale up.   Interview Links: Jackdaly.net “Good to Great,” by James C. Collins   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  

Tristan White is the Founder & CEO of The Physio Co, a physical therapy clinic based in Australia. Tristan’s company has been ranked #1 of Australia’s best places to work. How did he do it? By creating a winning culture everyone within the company can get behind and support. Tristan explains how he was able to achieve this, on today’s show.   Tristan is an accidental entrepreneur. He began his career as a physical therapist, and although he loved the work he did while he held a traditional job, he knew he could make a bigger impact on his own. Slowly, his business grew and he had to hire employees. Five years later, Tristan found himself with a team of 20 people and didn’t know anything about what company culture was, or how it should look, so naturally, he ran into some serious problems. He was just a physical therapist, after all! So, at the five-year mark, Tristan realized he wasn’t happy, his company did not have structures in place, and it was starting to become utter chaos. He knew something had to change. At the time, Tristan believed he was just meant to be a physical therapist, he didn’t think he was cut out for entrepreneurship, at all. However, Tristan was determined to find a better way, and to make his and his employees’ lives easier within the company. So, he did something that scared the hell out of him. He took a break from the company. He left for 2-3 weeks and left the country to research other companies who had ‘nailed it.’ Through that experience, as well as reading the book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, he came home inspired, and ready to tackle his company culture problem.   Interview Links: Tristanwhite.com.au Thephysioco.com.au Culture Is Everything by, Tristan White 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  

Ronen Gafni is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-Founder of FreshBiz, a training company that infuses fun and smart thinking into organizations. Ronen is also the author of The New Entrepreneurz. On today’s show, Ronen discusses how to make business more playful and exciting for everyone. Ronen started his career as a software programmer in the army. He understood you couldn’t take life too seriously. You win some and you lose some. So, with that mindset in mind, he began trading on the stock market during his free time. He was able to convert his $100-a-month salary into $100,000 just from the stock market. There’s a bit of a game at play when it comes to business, but two things tend to get in our way from enjoying it; our competitive spirit and own feelings about what success looks like. No one wants to be seen as a loser, or just some goofball, this is when the game of business stops becoming so fun. Business is not a win-lose situation. If Ronen makes more money, that doesn’t mean you make less of it. The reason Ronen made money is because he added value, and someone gained positively from it. Business should always be win-win. There is no reason why business should be so competitive.   Interview Links: Freshbizgame.com Ronen on LinkedIn Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube

Melinda Wittstock is the CEO & Founder of Verifeed, a company that helps you grow your audience in an authentic way. We all understand the power of authenticity, but what is it exactly? Melinda sheds some light on how business owners can build an authentic and meaningful company on this week’s episode. Melinda and her team have actually created a program that can measure your authenticity. After looking at millions of social conversations, it becomes easy to detect who’s real, and who’s not. There’s a lot of interest in authenticity, but it often gets confused with sincerity. There’s no secret that authenticity is a bit of a buzzword these days, and that it can mean different things to different people. For example, for Melinda, authenticity is about being true to yourself. It applies that you know yourself. This is often a scary thought because people don’t always want to be seen in such a vulnerable light. We don’t want to be rejected by our community. At the end of the day, authenticity is about being true to yourself, and being brave enough to show it to the world. Brands who hide behind a corporate image tend not to come across as human, and this disconnects them from their customers. Nobody wants to be seen as just a number, and people today see through that facade very quickly.   Interview Links: Verifeed.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

Helen Chang is a journalist, editor, writer, ghostwriter, and video journalist, specializing in business, motivational and lifestyle topics. As the former business editor of San Diego News Network, SDNN.com, she covered topics in tech, venture capital, personal finance, and more. Today’s episode is all about writing your first book and using it to market yourself as an expert. As a business journalist, Helen was able to interview amazing entrepreneurs, and often saw that the most successful entrepreneurs were those who had some kind of a failure, or some kind of despair, before they learned lessons that eventually propelled them to success later on. The first book she ghostwrote was a complete flop at first. The marketing manager told her she had to completely rewrite it because the book was not marketable. This news crushed her, but she saw this as a learning opportunity and took the challenge. However, this early lesson was an important one because to put a good book together, particularly a business or expertise book, it needs to have a personal story that creates an emotional connection with the reader, and it also needs to have useful information that the reader can use and apply in their everyday life. After rewriting that book, the author brought Helen along to some of the bootcamps he was hosting, and readers would come up to her, thanking her for writing something so beautiful. The book had changed their lives! Ever since the author released his book, it led to a new division of his business that is now worth $100 million dollars. A book is a fantastic way to establish yourself as an expert, and grow your business to new heights.   Interview Links: Helenchangwriter.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

Andy Bailey is a serial entrepreneur and author of No Try Only Do. He is also the Founder and Lead Coach of Petra Coach, an entrepreneurial coaching firm. Today’s show is all about the illusion of work-life balance and how we can bridge the gap between those two more seamlessly. Andy and Bill also discuss how language plays an important role on how you show up to others, which is why you should get rid of the word ‘try’ in your vocabulary. How does the concept of ‘no try, only do,’ which was originally said by Yoda, show up in Andy’s life? Andy has always tried to solve problems head on, and ‘There is No Try. Only Do’ has become a core value in his coaching business. When he and his team come into organizations with this mindset, it rapidly sets the standard that you can’t have a victim mentality, or put up excuses, if you truly want to succeed. When you completely remove the word ‘try’ from your vocabulary, it brings a whole new, and real, meaning to what you will say you’ll do. Either you will do something or you won’t. By saying ‘try,’ you’re shifting the responsibility away from yourself and you are possibly wasting everyone’s time. Whether we like it or not, words have power on us. The way we speak and the words we choose do shape the way we act, on both a conscious and subconscious level. This is why it’s so important to speak with conviction and to eliminate excuse words like ‘try.’   Interview Links: Petracoach.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

Rory Vaden is the best selling author of Take the Stairs, and Procrastinate on Purpose. His expertise on improving self-discipline, overcoming procrastination, and enhancing productivity make him the perfect guest for this week’s show. Today, Bill and Rory discuss some of the best ways you can multiply your time and get more things done the smart way! Although Rory does sales consulting for his business, the number one challenge his clients face is managing their time effectively. This propelled Rory into researching how the most successful people think about time. He found that there were two major things that stuck out with how ultra-high achievers think about time vs. everyone else. Rory and his team do extensive polling and national studies for his business, but he experienced a surprisingly big breakthrough from a lesson he learned from a 3-year-old girl. That little girl showed him unintentionally that time management isn’t just logical, it’s emotional, too. If you really look at it, there is no such thing as time management. Time carries on whether you want it to or not. When we talk about time management what we’re really talking about is self-management. Self-management includes managing our emotions, our behaviors, and that’s what this is all about. We have to first grasp that self-management is an emotional issue before we can begin to multiply our time. Interview Links: RoryVaden.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

Mark Green is a Certified Gazelles Coach and Business Growth Expert. Mark is also the Founder and President of Performance Dynamics Group, where he has helped executives and salespeople dramatically increase their performance and their personal results. How did the journey of authenticity start for Mark? Well, it first began during the very early start of Mark’s childhood (although he didn’t realize it at the time); he was always that kid people could easily talk to. Mark became the go-to person for his peers during middle school and high school because he was a good listener and he was very approachable. Fast forward to 2003, Mark tried to start his own business, what is now the Performance Dynamics Group, but at the time he still didn’t quite understand what he was meant to do in this world. He discovered that he was having personal mental blocks about what success looked like for him, and it was preventing him from being authentic. To Mark, it seemed people around him just ‘understood’ what they were meant to do and were fearless, and authentic, about how to get there. So, Mark embarked on a journey to become more authentic and to discover his life’s purpose, only to find that he had the skills to help others all along — dating back to his early middle school days where he helped his peers through tough problems.   Interview Links: Performance-dynamics.net Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube  

Cameron Herold is the Founder of the COO Alliance and the author of the global best seller Double Double. Cameron has over 10 years of experience as an entrepreneurial mentor, and has grown several companies to over $100 million dollars in revenue over the last 25 years. Why did Cameron start the COO Alliance? Cameron had been an EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) member for 6 years, and realized as he was attending some of those events that he no longer fit in. He wasn’t the CEO or the founder anymore, but he was still second in command and played a vital part in the organization. However, people at those events would often brush him to the side and ignore him, because of that title shift. Over the years, Cameron saw that there were a ton of masterminds for the CEO or founder, but there wasn’t a place for COOs to get together and mastermind/enhance their skillsets. Cameron organized a small group of his clients together, who were all COOs, and thus, the COO Alliance was slowly born last May. How is the COO Alliance set up? The COOs attend four times a year in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are currently 40 core members right now. The model is set up in such a way that 30% of the time the COOs mastermind together and help each other solve some difficult problems happening in their industry. Another 30% of the time, the members break off into small groups of 3 or 4, and brainstorm ideas on how they can make their company better, and they bring these ideas back to the bigger group, kind of like a shared brain trust. The remaining 40% of the event contains one guest speaker, Cameron talking on certain subjects related to the COO position, and a quick 5-10 minute presentation from COO members who know about something they have deep experience in.   Interview Links: COOAlliance.com CameronHerold.com Humanisteq Website Scaling Up Website Gazelles Website Bill on YouTube     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, with Humanisteq Coaching, and I’m one of the Gazelles business coaches. 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).