CEO Coaching International Podcast

In her 30+ year career, Cynthia Cleveland has driven significant growth at major companies like Universal Studios, Mattel Toys, and Teleflora. And while these companies all had their unique challenges and opportunities, Cynthia found a recipe for success by focusing on three key drivers that she believes are essential to getting any business BIG. On today’s show, Cynthia discusses her “3 P’s” and how CEOs can master these essentials to build a great business.

The absolute best companies don’t get BIG by accident. They grow fast and achieve meaningful scale because their CEOs are rigorous in their planning, committed to working with top talent, believers in the culture they’ve built, and dedicated to learning and growing every single day. On today’s special episode, we dig into our archives to see what some of our past guests have to say about these four key traits that the CEO Coaching International team helps its clients cultivate.

No, Amazon and the other tech giants have not wiped out family-run businesses. In fact, one third of Sheldon Harris' coaching clients are family-run businesses that feature multiple family members in various roles. And in Sheldon’s experience, that arrangement can be just as complicated as it sounds. “It's hard to find a business that doesn't have challenges,” he says, “and it's hard to find a family that doesn't have challenges. So those things are just amplified in the case where you've got both of those dynamics going on.” On today’s show, Sheldon Harris discusses how family-run businesses can learn to keep their family issues from running the business into the ground.

Entrepreneurial inspiration can strike at any time. In Brian Scudamore’s case, he was sitting in a McDonald’s drive-through, trying to figure out how to pay for college, when he noticed a beat-up old pickup truck with plywood sides built up around the bed. “I looked at the truck and I went, ‘Aha, that's my ticket,’” Brian remembers. “I took a $1,000 investment, $700 into a truck, the rest into flyers and business cards. Within a couple of weeks, I had a business that actually paid for itself. It was ironic because what funded my college education also inspired me to drop out.” On today’s show, Brian Scudamore discusses the 3 key mindsets he used to grow 1-800-GOT-JUNK into the core business of an organization that now generates more than $300 million in annual revenue. We also discuss a really tough and really courageous staffing decision Brian made early on that allowed him to regroup, reorganize, and refocus on making BIG happen.

Jim Bennett’s parents never gave him an allowance, and so from a very young age he was always doing something to earn money. Those early experiences mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, and stringing tennis rackets planted the seeds of an entrepreneurial spirit. “I learned quickly that starting your own business always paid more than just a job,” Jim remembers. After college, that’s what Jim did. He became a Worldwide Express franchisee, and through determination and perseverance, went on to compete with the big boys in global shipping—and win. On today’s show, Jim Bennett discusses how he homed in on the best business for him to grow, the talent he targeted as the best for the job, and the mindset that all CEOs should adopt if they want to get BIG too.

How did Grasshopper grow from a virtual voicemail leader to a $170 million-dollar sale? In no small part, because they hired a superstar COO: Don Schiavone. Don’s SaaS and technology expertise combined with his commitment to rigorous testing and annual planning were instrumental in getting Grasshopper BIG. On today’s show, Don Schiavone, who is now Managing Director of CEO Coaching International, explains how to fine-tune your baseline forecast to create a compounding effect that will accelerate your growth way beyond what companies can accomplish with more traditional top-down planning. If you incorporate Don’s proven best practices into your own upcoming planning sessions, you’ll be well on your way to a BIG 2019.

For the past 25 years, StoneAge has been experimenting with ways to give its employees a stake in the company’s success, a path to personal wealth-building, and more ownership over their individual job performance. What began as a profit-sharing program evolved into a homegrown stock ownership program, and now a federally-regulated Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that could provide a model for other businesses looking for creative ways to build an inclusive, winning, and productive culture. Kerry Siggins has evolved along with StoneAge as well. On today’s show, we discuss her 11-year rise from general manager all the way up to CEO, and why she believes more businesses should consider forming an ESOP to get employees on board with making BIG happen.

Dr. Gill Heart served more than seven years in the Israel Defense Force's most elite and stressful unit. He went undercover behind enemy lines and came face-to-face with life or death situations. After receiving his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College, London University, Dr. Heart moved to the United States and became an entrepreneur. He founded and successfully managed venture-backed medical device startups that were primarily focused on neurological and brain applications. Now Dr. Heart has combined his military training, his study of Jewish mysticism and philosophy, and his business acumen to create a training regimen to help people manage stress in both their personal and professional lives. On today's show, Dr. Gill Heart discusses the mental training that is necessary to deal effectively with extremely stressful situations. CEOs may not be able to control when a cash flow crisis or social media firestorm flares up. But we can control how we react to stressful situations so that both our businesses and our bodies keep executing at a high level.

Why do some of the biggest and best companies in the world work with CEO Coaching International? Because our best practices get real results. At our recent Summit, CEO Mark Moses noted that our clients have achieved $7 billion in revenue, 40% annual CAGR after 4 years, and 210% Median Profit Growth Rate across the board. We’re proud that our clients’ sustained growth and stables of top talent have also attracted serious interest from strategic buyers and private equity firms. On today’s show, Mark Moses discusses how six of our clients have executed 9-figure exits. And we’re not talking theory here. These are real-world philosophies and activities that have led our clients to more scale, more revenue, greater valuations, and dream exit scenarios. In fact, we have more clients following this exact same pipeline who will be achieving similarly BIG results in the very near future.

When we find a great new restaurant, see a great new movie, or upgrade to a great new piece of tech, we tell everyone we know, “I really love this, you gotta check it out!” Smart companies are learning how to cultivate that same kind of reaction in their workplaces. Employees who love where they work promote your business to their social and professional circles, stick with their companies longer, and go above and beyond because they feel like they’re part of making something BIG happen. On today’s show, Keith Alper discusses the importance of culture and employee engagement, and how to inspire your team to go from liking your company to loving it. Keith also shares some key insights from his long entrepreneurial career, including how he managed to maintain a very effective business partnership for more than three decades.