161: Special Episode — Scaling Up Insights — Coach Panel

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatalant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatalent.com Bill G Again, that's doxatalent.com BillG. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out today. This is a special episode of the podcast. It's a panel discussion on the insights.

Of the week from Vern Harnish.

In the world of scaling up, we're going to look at employee policies around pay and compensation, things that you can do to make a difference in retention and engagement of your people to take care of your people as you scale up. We'll also look at the importance of scaling up versus startups and the messaging opportunities for companies there. Then we'll examine the Global 500 list of companies and we'll look at some important insights from that list and who's growing and who's not, where the profit is and where it isn't and what you can do to get your company growing. Along the way, we'll dial into some of the training and education opportunities that we have in the world of scaling.

Up for developing yourself and your team.

We'll look at the role of female CEOs and female leadership on your teams. We'll look at the top sports teams in the world, their values and what they do and that will close out probably a whole bunch of other things and more. Join us as we listen. As we talk with three other coaches, myself and three other coaches from around.

The country listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. This is a first time show for us. Panel discussion of the news of scaling up. What's happening in the world of scaling up. We're going to look through some of the things Vern's alerted us to this week in Scaling Up Insights and the notes out to the coaches. I've invited some fantastic coaches to be in our conversation today. I'm going to take them in no particular order. Right. But joining us from Los Angeles, Judy. Welcome to the show.

Good morning everybody.

Guys, you should know, Judy Is chair of Guido and Associates. She's a member of Verne's advisory board. Where we've gotten closer. Right. And she's also a member of the Green Industry hall of Fame. That's not like the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, is it?

It's bigger.

And then so she's done a successful launch on the New York Stock Exchange with one company. She's done 100. And she's done four consolidations and eight startups. She's just got a huge background.

That was just today, Bill. That was just today.

Just this morning before lunch, she's working her phone non stop like some LA producer. Oh, hopefully it's going to be warmer. I'm in San Francisco today or outside of San Francisco, in the San Francisco Bay area. It's funny, I normally say that because not everybody knows and thinks about Oakland, but I live and work in Oakland. My office in Oakland, my home office in Oakland. This is our studio also in Oakland. Right. So I'm Oakland boy. Golden State Warriors. Go Warriors. They are going across the bay. And to me that's not a huge problem. But to lots of people in Oakland, the Warriors leaving town is like a massive problem. They're pissed off at them. And yet the same people aren't upset about the Raiders leaving to Vegas. Right. They went to la. People love them still.

I don't care.

Anita, short for fanatic.

Yeah, fan or fanatic. The root word. Anita Cabell joins us from Pennsylvania. But Anita is a British three time entrepreneur and business coach since 2007. She's been coaching a while now and she's been a builder of niche business. Her bachelor's in industrial design and she brings a lot of great thinking from that perspective. And also a master's in the neuroscience of leadership. So design and leadership, we always have great conversations. Plus you're all pretty good dancers. As we saw at the last coaches, a critical element, her philosophy. So Anita is always loving to help people grow. Great skill to thoughtful, great workplace culture. She's looking at that whole thing, culture, another one root word. Right, Culture. Culture is looking for this sort of everybody wins approach to the business.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Bill. Yeah, looking forward to great conversation.

And you look like you're like in a total log cabin environment there. Is this the weekend home or is this your regular?

This is my Think week, actually.

Think Week.

I'm just about to kick off the Think Week with great thinkers.

That's really great. One of the benefits of our coaching world, right, is so many of us, we have these intense periods where we're working with clients around the turn of a quarter or the start of the year. And then we have a little bit of more, least relaxed, somewhat relaxed time, depending on how we work and what we're doing, where we can go away and think and read and attend conferences and do a little writing and that kind of thing. I'm excited this month to get to work on my book some more. I've got a lot of time for the month of August, and yet I'm worried about my own work habits.

We're always evolving.

We're always evolving, right, Doug? So Doug Wick was an E. Myth coach for a long time. There's so much background, but we love E Myth. Around the world of gazelles and scaling up a bunch. It's one of the many tools and things that we reference. He's coached companies from 100,000 to 200 million to hundreds of employees. He blogs all of the time, was a sales exec, sales, marketing, leadership, hiring, recruiting, all kinds of things like that. Also did quite a bit of broadcasting. Right. You also worked in radio and oldies, huh?

Oldies station was one the last station that I was part owner of.

So.

Yeah.

Now I noticed oldies is one of those formats that changes nonstop, right?

Yeah, yeah. The quality of it has to vary with the audience as you know, you can be classic rock, you can be oldies. And it was one radio station. I said, I don't ever want to be associated with oldies because I don't want to think I'm ever old, you know.

And so one day you look in the mirror.

Yep, yep.

And I am. So. Yeah, but oldies Today is like 70s music.

Exactly.

Or even 80s.

Yes, that's right.

It's very, very painful. Right. And you're a father of three. Well, I think we're all have families to brag about. Yes. Also Dale Carnegie, grad. You know, it's interesting we didn't share beforehand, but I was both a radio DJ once when I was very young and I did some nightclub stuff too, and then also was an exec with a group of radio stations. We had 14 radio stations around the country and we did a pretty good job of buying distress stations and turning them and building something. It was pretty cool. So when they said start a podcast, when one of my formates said, I said, oh yeah, I should do that. One of my old formates was Jordan Harbinger, host of the Jordan Harbinger Show, a really well rated podcaster. So he's responsible for this mess. So, guys, welcome our first story of the week. Right. Is about time, how we trade time and what happens with time. We had Safwan Shah on this show back in February, I think it was, and he's got a new book out about time and how businesses can save the world, one worker at a time. He's definitely on a mission to improve stuff. And I think that People Matters has been huge for all of our teams. It maybe always is, but in particular with the labor shortage, the last little bit. And the premise of the book and his work, so he has a business around this as well, is that we have people show up to work every day, but then we pay them every couple weeks or so, week, two weeks, even a month in some cases. And that's really hard for a lot of people who live paycheck to paycheck.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you, you know, you listen to some of his talks, the amount of people, about 60% of the population basically live right paycheck, paycheck to check, you know, paycheck. And it's. He refers to it as this kind of third world issue that we have in the United States. And many people, many people don't think, think that way, but it's an enormous problem. I'll share a personal success story with probably about 60% of my businesses in the very broad swath called the grain industry. And for people who work in that industry, particularly on the landscape, the contracting side of the industry, many of the, you know, many of the workforce are field workers. Right. Again, lower wage people. And they play right into that and have had a couple of clients that not only in the summer and the warmer months while they're working, did the day to day, but about 70% of those people who are situated in winter belt coal belts, they also take care of all the snow. People don't think of snow as a business, but it's a huge business.

Huge.

Yeah. And you can imagine if, you know, if it's not removed or removed properly, the liability and you may need to go a workforce of 20 to 250 in a matter of a day or so. And so part of getting those people are the swath of the right people, but the ability, one of the companies that we scaled well were our particularly to keep those businesses flourishing and scaling year round was the ability, whether it was in the warm or in the snow, the snow time, to literally be able to pay people on a daily basis. And that was one of the critical issues that really, from their green to their white side, as we refer to it, that really helped them scale up.

Well, Vern asks and Safwan does says, are you funding the growth on the backs of your people? And I know that his company's done work with major retailers and stuff. You think about a Walmart employee coming to work every day. These are not highly paid people. And highly. This is a basic job. And whether they love it or not, the ability to get paid every day has been solved in the past by people with things like payday loans, very high rate loans, and you borrow against that next check. Safwan's done something that's got a way better value prop for both the company and the employee in there, but it does threaten that other business, the payday loan business.

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. It's just fundamentally wrong that we should be charging a section of society that is giving their guts every day to make everything we do work. What, $160 billion worth of debt fee. I mean, seriously, we have a real responsibility, knowing this, to do something about it in the ecosystems that we work in. And it. And it. I actually called around a few people just, you know, to see how they handled it. Not especially clients. I do have a client story to share, but, you know, to see what happens. So a construction company, how do they handle their payment systems to their clients? And they said sorry to their hourly workers. And they were explaining that, yeah, that thing does happen where their workers come to them and ask them for a loan. They can't make the next check. And one guy describes the kind of micro loan system he has, may or may not get repaid, but the chances are he does. He's got a really high repayment rate. For example, somebody's fridge broke down giving $500 to buy a new one. He takes the old one, he sold it for him, put that against his loan. I mean, these are things that can be done with enough humanity in the leadership system.

Yeah, we've done a number of companies that have large workforces and they have those frontline folks and then they want them to be more engaged and more loyal and show pride in their work. And they can think, well, you can flip that around and reduce some of the stress in their life and feel like you're listening and related to them by changing up the policies in some way. Right. Doug, how does this hit you with your clients?

Yeah, not too many of my clients I think of face this at least right now. But I think it is interesting to recognize we are as a company, you have a company, you're really running your business on the payment that you owe your Employees. I don't have a customer that is faced with this issue. Although I think if they looked at it and realized it, they'd probably analyze some of the people in their organization that, that have this problem and they're not even cognizant of it. Based on this was kind of a revelation to me.

You know, in our world, we spent a lot of time talking about the customer funded business model and rethinking business models to get cash out of our customers and our suppliers. In this case, a key supplier is the people, but they're the folks that you most want to be on your side. Right. We don't spent a lot of time thinking about them.

Exactly. It's almost as if the customer funded business is the employee funded business. When you look at it this way, it's really true.

Yeah.

And I love his point too, when he speaks about so much of getting the best out of people is we generally think through their hands. Right. Whatever your hands do do, whether you're a labor, you know, whether that hand is on a shovel or it's on a keyboard or it's on a scalpel. As a surgeon. Right. So we're so, we're so geared with, you know, people, people as tools like, you know, play the play to their hands. And he took us, you know, two steps back and it's something that I so believe in, seeing him practice all the time. He said, you know, get into their head first to see what's really important to them. Right. And then get into their heart and their hands and then get into their soul and engage them. And you know, that's, you know, you know, no pun intended. That's when you really think about being holistic with a company. But you know, wh o l e take the whole person, take their, you know, what's in their top of mind, their brain, what's in their head, what's in their hands and then what's in their soul and engage them. And I thought that was a wonderful philosophy.

Well, I think that larger thing, a lot of times, I don't know, I think I've heard y' all share variations.

On this, but I'll go into a.

Company and they'll be like, we want more engagement, we want more performance from our people. Why aren't they stepping up and why don't they care? Okay, so what does Bob want and what does Judy want and what matters to them in their life and where are they trying to go and why do they work here? I don't know.

Absolutely.

Oh, you Want answers when it gets.

To the point when, you know, you're talking to potential leader and they separate the company into two parts, hard money and the soft stuff. Our job, I think, is to link the soft stuff to the hard money and make that really visceral for people. Because if you are paying an hourly wage, you tend to look at that like, what do I get for my money? But we don't reverse it enough to say, what is going to make it possible for somebody to earn that minimum wage and come together every single day feeling great about what they do. And, you know, as Safwan says, if one in four workers of hourly wages are caregivers, for example, and you know, they spend however many days a month worried about their financial situation or where they're going to get, you know, food to put in the fridge for their kids that day, then how are they going to show up to work taking care of potentially your loved one, and how is that going to, you know, affect the quality of their work? So it's easy. Do the maths and the behavioral maths. Yeah. So I had a client that did the investigation based on the Container Store model. So what is it, as you said.

What is it that people really uncontainable is the book, the Container Store is the business.

Yeah, absolutely. So the analysis of what do people really want? And in that case, it was health insurance and it was a guaranteed vacation every year, because that is incredibly difficult for a lot of people to imagine. So these are some of the larger issues they tackled immediately and made that absolutely possible, actually, through acquiring a similar business that people could go on vacation to every year and take their families and really enjoy a good rest. And they enjoyed great engagement based on that kind of thinking. And of course, it evolves.

What was the TV show that was about the boss going in, being with.

Boss, Undercover boss, Right?

Yeah. And I think when you look at some of the issues that we're talking about here, I think the leadership perhaps is so far removed from their people, they don't know. Even one of my customers says has created kind of a. I think Collins called it the. We call it the sack, but it's several managers, middle managers, and people at the lower level of the business that we meet with once a month to get their feedback and concerns just so they can get that kind of information. Now, would it be better if they actually not willing. Those people do. They're spending more time in the field going out and, you know, the four leaders of the business that are owners and it just. That's the kind of feedback, that's the kind of interaction. You need to know this kind of situation is occurring and have an empathy and a concern for the people that are working for you.

Yeah. I'm reminded myself that there are days when I show up to work, whether it's to our office here or out to a client, where I've got something going on, where I've had a bad day, where I've had a fight with my spouse, where I've got an issue going on with one of the. My kids are grown now, but there's still issues, or I slept terribly, or I'm not feeling well, I ate something bad. And that impacts the day. And the same is true if I've had a really stressful day at work, then it impacts my home life. I come home and I need an extra glass of wine.

Think about it. Anita mentioned a Great stat, about 25% of people basically being caregivers. Right. But something seems to happen once they leave home and they go to work. There's this transformation that does the care stop happening? And if you think about great leaders, right. And great managers, I mean, what's one of the, you know, the one trait that people say is, you know, is essential. If you. If you look at all the great leaders in the world, it's empathy, right? They. They care. Right. They care about their people. Right. And they're. And their role is really kind of, you know, chief caregiver, if you think about it, whether it's, you know, giving them the tools, the education, the time, the balance in their life to be able to do a wonderful, wonderful job, and yet still, I can't tell you how many times, particularly in service sectors still, and, you know, a lot of times in construction, and I think we got a lot of it out of the green industry. But, you know, when you hear people referred to as, you know, their theme as laborers. Laborers, right. So, you know, we've got to start thinking about our team as, you know, significant members of our community and our. And our family and our team.

I was going to sort of say I'm still locked onto this idea of, you know, how to get leaders to evolve their thinking to get out of the idea that that soft stuff is something you do second, you know, and I think some of the most successful cases, now that I think about it, I mean, you know, we track and measure everything as coaches and businesses, but in the. In the businesses where it's become mandatory to measure the mood of the leadership team and at least one level below you know, what is the quality of your life like now? And we keep that together right there with the financial data. You know, it's. That graph is as important and you know what it links corollary links to the success of the business. You know, we can tell when people are getting burned out. And I think to keep it super pragmatic, it's a fantastic idea to take that all the way through every level of the business and get to the grassroots as well.

I'm reminded what you just said, Anita. There was an emotional intelligence graph of people in the organization. I don't know if anybody else saw it, but it was the highest level of emotional intelligence was just the managers that were managing the frontline people. And it got progressively lower as it got to the top of the organization. And I think that's what Judith is talking about as well. And you are as well. There's this lack of. Yeah, solely Homan there. There you go. That's exactly the book.

Fully Human. Susan Packard.

Yeah, it's a terrific book. The woman who is one of the. Actually the only. You know, we'll be talking about this in a moment but about the number of executives in the C suite, she was one of, well, she was actually the only woman in the founding of HGTV and she was the coo. But just a wonderful book that Doug is referencing.

Yeah, great segue into a reminder to our listeners to register now for the fall Scale Up Summit. Our fall Scale up summit in anaheim, California this 10-15-16. And then we'll have a user conference which is essentially a half day workshop. I think the late news is that Vern himself will be leading that the morning after the summit. So if you're new to the world of scaling up, this is a great place to get started. Of course our summits are two day events with top speakers like Susan Packard, like others that come in and go over their book, lead us through exercises, things, there's Q and A, a chance to meet them and so on, but two really information filled learning days. And we're talking about investing in your people. There's no better way to invest in your people than to train them to think and to get outside of the basics of your industry and your job, especially your leadership team. But we hear time and again from some CEOs that what if I invest in these people and spend all this money on them and then they go somewhere else? Of course the answer to that is well, what if you don't invest them and they stick around? A company full of dummies getting your lunch eaten by somebody else. Some of our best successes in terms of growth rate in profit, profitable companies have come from companies that invested in just this way and sent folks to it. Of course, if you go to scalingup.com, you can register now for the Summit. I strongly suggest people get their hotels booked early, even if you have to change it later because there are some events going on that week in Anaheim and it's really great if you could stay in the same hotel versus having to come over from an Airbnb or that kind of thing. Of course, there's the new Star wars thing at Disney there. It's a good side trip for folks who are fans. We need to do that, right? And we've been having some great parties and things happening, so it's fun as well as deep learning. Our summits are super high energy, really engaged. If you come from the background of EO and YPO or Vistage for that matter, you'll notice that our summits are really deep dive learnings really quickly. There's about 1,1200 people in attendance, so go register there. If you're working with one of us as a coach or another coach, pick your coach's name when you register. Say I have a coach. Pick your coach's name for whatever discount that coach has. You can pick me or one of us as a default if you're not working with someone. And then we'll meet you and say hi and help you get acclimatized or acclimated at the summit. Get the best out of it. Feel welcome there, right?

You want to get the greatest, what I refer to as Roy, Return on.

You, Return on you. Your time.

Roi, it's my favorite metric, which I tell my clients all the time. The other one is rot, which even though the acronym is rot, it still stands for return on team. So you want to get a high roi, a high return on you, and a high return on your team. So it's wonderful.

And ROT the return on time too.

Yes.

If you can't get to Anaheim. Also, we've got Scaling up growth summits or workshops. So we've got workshops from Sydney to San Diego from. I don't know. I need like Grand Rapids, I don't know. I need the north, south, right. East, west, north, south. I need the whole range of it. But we starting next week in Sydney and then going all the way through January of next year in Boston, we've got. I don't know, I'm looking at the screen here a couple Dozen of these growth workshops. I do about three a year here. The next one is San Francisco, September 12th and we've got another one. February. I should know off the top of my head. So September 12th is the next one in San Francisco. Judy, you got any workshops coming up that you're doing?

I'm trying to complete something for December actually here in Westlake we're working on. So that should hopefully be finalized in the next three or four weeks, but hopefully there'll be one here in Westlake, California.

Awesome. Doug and Anita, workshops in your world or other events that you're doing?

Yeah, I don't have one, but I'm considering putting one on. I done it for the last seven, eight years. I skipped last year and looking at possibly early November in the Cedar Rapids area.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, I'll be starting early next year in the Detroit area.

Awesome. So there's time with these guys, but they're all over the place and you don't have to travel that far. I know at the ones that I do in San Francisco I get people come from all over the country because they want to visit us here in San Francisco. The only thing I'll say is mid summer in San Francisco is always like the coldest winter you've ever been.

I think then you should choose Detroit for mid.

We get fog on a daily basis here actually. But by September it's looking beautiful. It's really nice weather usually in September around San Francisco. So great time to come visit us in October in Anaheim will be fantastic. So get that done. A great segue also then to Verne shares with us an IT World Canada article that says enough already with the startups, the attention on startups. Let's get some scale ups going. That economies benefit more from scale ups. That's where we add jobs, where we add GDP and that these are the unsung heroes. That middle place that builds wealth, that builds economy, that. That build jobs for people. Not getting enough of that. I don't know about where you guys live, but the noise around startups is pretty high in the San Francisco area. But it is because they all want to get to that scale up. Right? Everybody around here is trying to be a unicorn and we have probably the highest unicorn breakout density in the world of anywhere. But every place around the world is trying to copy some of that.

And.

That, you know, I'm glad you brought up the unicorn because I think sometimes that's one of the, maybe the biggest blocking point for some people to. When you use the word scale up because that's what they think of, Right. You know, they think of the Ubers, they think of the, you know, the Snapchats, they think of the Twitters. Right. They, you know, go big or go home and yet look out how many incredibly successful scale ups are in that 50 million to 500 million, that middle market. So I think people have got to get past that point. You don't have to be a unicorn to be a very, very successful company. And the one thing that really, really struck out when I was reading this article that provided us was when you looked at the points that they said they felt would really make the scale ups played right into what do we teach all, all along? Right. It's about developing great leadership. Right. Having access to cash. Right. And marketing effectiveness. Right. And then they talk about the innovation. But it's really those three fundamental elements really. Right. Great Mark. I mean great leadership, marketing effectiveness and making sure you've got the capital and the cash to grow your business and then whatever your innovative thing is and your business will take you there. So it's, you know, it really went back to basics for me on what the, you know, what the key elements of scaling an organization are.

Yeah. It's also a great opportunity for PR for your company. Right. Getting the message out that you're scaling and growing. I think most of us have one of these Business Times publications in our markets, at least across the United States and their equivalents in many countries around the world and in metro markets where there's a business newspaper magazine of some kind and these often publish fastest growing lists, biggest firms in different categories and fastest growing. And this is a great opportunity. I know we benefited for years from being on these fast growing lists, highlighting our growth in my past companies and really helpful in attracting talent suppliers. Of course we did get a lot of sales calls from people, but made us more fundable in the process, built our reputation around that. Of course, Vern is always happy to jump on and add some color commentary to talk about your firm as part of friend around scale ups and the focus on that.

Vern's long since said that entrepreneurism is the economic engine of any growth economy. And you know, no more so in, in this case. And I can't help but notice as well that we've got super high concentration of really high level coaches in Canada. So the need is there and there are, you know, a huge amount of scale ups working there. And I wanted to your point, Judy, one of the reasons sometimes scale ups do take as long as they do, you know, that Overnight success being, you know, 20 plus years is that sometimes I think going back to the idea of investing in people, you almost have to home grow the talent you need for tomorrow because it's such a weird combination of core competencies and specific personality traits to do these kinds of unusual jobs that your specific company needs, that it actually takes time. So unless you invest at the grassroots level in your people, you're not going to have what you need tomorrow. It just may not exist.

That's right. It's an excellent point, Anita. Speaking of Canada, my largest client happens to be a Canadian company and they're big, they're over $53 billion global oil company. And here's kind of an interesting twist on a scale up. I mean they already are a big fish in a big industry. But I refer to them as my reverse scaling up client because what this multi billion dollar company did was they're using their pure oils, they're actually the purest oils in the world. And we created a sustainable company, we created a startup within a big company which was really wonderful. So we took, you know, when you think of the oil industry, first thing that does not, you know, is not top of mind is oh, green, right. It's probably one of the last thing we think of. But we were able to take these very, very pure oils that they have and create a very sustainable brand new startup within their organization and use those oils in the agricultural, the Gulf and the turf arena to kill, you know, as natural herbicides and fungicides. So to kill weeds and kill pests and other things. So it's kind of interesting where scale ups can even come from. But here's a case of a big fish going back to a very, very small company and taking what's normally thought of as a dirty industry and starting a very new clean scale up within a large company. So a little bit of a different twist, as I said, a reverse scale up. And this was from the great minds of the people of Canada.

Well, if you're not operating in balance with your communities, your environment, your people, all of those things, if something gets out of whack, right then you're undermining the value of the company and you're not exercising good leadership. Right. You're not being responsible to the organization, the ownership of the business.

Well, absolutely. I mean, you know, the health, even without the word sustainable, you know, being trendy in your organization, the whole sort of health industry is such a vital part of a future economy. I think it's almost, you know, when we're Looking at the sweat strengths, you know, weaknesses and trends, you know, aspect of a business, you almost can't ignore that aspect of, of your business growth. How are you going to respond to the growing knowledge base customers and how they're going to respond to your product? So I think that's a massive, massive.

Well. And speaking of health. Right. I mean, and we talked earlier about the Container Store and health insurance and this is a massive concern, especially in the US Market because our health care is so out of whack, our drug prices are over expensive, our system of insurance is skyrocketing in cost every year. Doug, you're a survivor of cancer and chemotherapy. And I lost a dear friend, a foreign mate this week to a cancer that came on and hit hard and has devastated his family.

Yeah, you know, it's that I was fortunate when I went into the hospital that I had a very good health plan. But you know, probably about three, four years earlier, I didn't have a good health plan. And I was fortunate that my. Because that was the first concern I had when they told me I had acute myeloid leukemia. Was I was so working person in my family and I was afraid that it would bankrupt me. Just three years later, my son had discovered he had rheumatoid arthritis. And the prescription for that was $3,600 a month for Humira. Who could afford that? Who could afford that? Thank God my insurance was able to cover it and I even had a plan for that. But yeah, insurance is really vital when.

We'Ve got it on two sides, right. With the leadership of the companies, the ownership, we've got the costs of it skyrocketing. And then on the other side, we've got people who are more worried about their personal circumstances, their health, their family's health and the impact on their financial well being. They, they sometimes can't get their jobs done. They're distraught. We've seen people come in and burst down in tears when they need to be working and they're dealing with something, right?

Yeah. It goes back to what we talked about earlier, the need for the CEO, the leadership to be in tune with what's going on. Because that's another thing. When I was in the hospital, I was fortunate that I didn't have a lot of pain with the chemotherapy that I had. But if you can imagine coming to work every day in pain and debilitating pain, you've got a lot going on. And then family difficulties, paying for your insurance. It's something that, as Judith, you mentioned, empathy is really important in a leadership team and a leader.

I want to put some numbers to that, Doug as well, because one of my great concerns and possibly one of the reasons I do what I do is the fact that it freaked me out. One in five Americans probably suffer from some kind of mental health disorder. And there's various stats floating around, but it said at least last year was $193 problem in loss. And how many of our irregular schedule workers, as Safwan put it, are included in that number? As you say, the cost of medication and treating it, not preventative. That's just pharmaceutical companies again, cashing in on that particular number. So I think the biggest opportunity we have for impacting that is helping people to have a great workplace experience, giving them a life of meaning and making their lives matter. And that's going to help the economy in a completely different way.

You know, one of the things that's benefited our teams and benefited me personally is mindfulness based stress reduction. And there are these programs around MBSR that helped me through some incredibly stressful personal times. And then I've recommended them to our leadership team as well and they in turn to their things. But a combination of mindfulness practices worked into. I don't know if this is accurate consistently, but about a 10 week program where you meet once a week and then you have some conversation, you do some work from meditation to light yoga to conversation to journaling to whatever. And they bring these practices together and I find I use them again and again over time. But there are times that we go under incredible stress, whether it's because of a personal thing or a funding issue or supplier crisis or some other external event. I know I'll be helping one of our CEOs this weekend deal with an adverse event breakdown and a hack thing that they've got to now deal with from a PR front as well as a customer management kind of thing. So I'll be working in that with people. But these times produce incredible stress and we've got to deal with it. And we don't have robust mental health services in this country now for years, right?

So goes back to that whole concept, right, of the leader and the leadership being kind of, you know, being those chief caregivers, right? And you've got it. You've got to take care of their, right, their head first. I mean, you know, to Doug's point, whether it's you physically or a member of your family who is ill and suffering, I mean, where, where is your head? Right? Your head is there with that, with Your family, right. Or just trying to solve that problem. Trying, you know, people, it's the right. Solve the pain, you know, you know, avoid pain, seek pleasure. The first thing, you know, in anybody, in anybody's business, right. Whether it's the physical or kind of the financial or the operational pain, is take care of that pain. And so when, you know, leaders have really, really focus on empathy as chief caregivers, it's great things happen. And so many wonderful things that you said, Bill, are happening. Literally goes back to that whole holistic approach to employees being able to teach them right. To de stress and be emotionally fit and not just financially or physically fit.

Well, moving around the world to China, where they live with a whole different kind of stress. Right. China now has more companies on the Global 500 list than the US does. 129 versus 121. Anita used to live in China and work there. And you still work there, don't you?

I do, Yep.

Now, total revenue 32.7 trillion. 40% of the global economy for these Global 500 companies. So more concentration. There are rewards for scaling up, I think is one call out from this Global 500 list, but also the profitability of them growing, improving and employing 69.3 million people. But that's less than 1% of the global population. So these companies, where there's wealth accumulating in addition to individuals, we think of the 1%, the global 1%, the 0.1% and so on these slices of stuff, there's more concentration of this happening. How do you get your piece of it scale up? I think one of the really striking things for me here was 471,000, nearly $472,000 of revenue per employee in these companies. The amazing productivity.

Yeah, incredible productivity. Bill, you start out by mentioning we're going to go to China. One of the things that was fascinating to me about that 500 list, it now includes, includes 34 countries, right? I mean, we used to think about contribution to the global economy. America used to put out 60% of that. Now we're down to 26%. But you also take a look at that and say not only China and Asia, but 34 countries now are representing those dollars and that profit. So truly the world, the global economy truly is representing not just the onesie2z powerhouse. And that to me was one of the really, really interesting data points in that article.

We used to worry about Japan too. Now China is shifting. Doug.

That number that you mentioned, the revenue per employee, really helps to give a point. Of emphasis, I think for, for companies to execute at a higher level than what they are because I think a lot of our companies think they're executing extremely well. But there's got to be things, I don't know what your companies do in terms of that revenue per employee, but most of mine are far below that. And it does suggest a very.

High.

Level of opportunity in that area alone for our companies to, to explore and to improve upon.

And another interesting data point. You know, of course I've got, as I shared, I've got clients in other countries and I'm a true global player. But you know, as an American I was really proud to see that Walmart, right, Walmart was number one the revenue and in terms of the profitability that Apple was there. So, you know, so we had those strong American companies represented. But the other thing that I found that was very interesting, if you look at those top 10 companies, six of the top 10 were what oil. And a lot of it was in China. And then of course there was BP so oil represented 60% of those top 10 revenue. And then the other two were car companies which are oil related. So it was almost 80% of those topics. Global companies have something to do with oil. And then of course one of the other ones in China was, was in electric, right in the utility side of it. So you know, you still see no matter how much innovation is needed too, there's, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of the companies that are really growing have to do with what fuels the infrastructure of the rest of the world to keep everybody going.

Well, you know, Saudi Aramco beating out Apple for the most profit there, 110 billion versus just 59 billion in Apple. Saudi Aramco and related things, fuel, not just Saudi but a whole bunch of countries, I mean Dubai and Bahrain are entirely affected by that. And even at current oil prices, Saudi Aramco is doing those kinds of numbers which I think is really interesting and telling. And there's a mindset there that it's not what it once was or could be that the oil ought to be higher priced, but there's still quite a bit of profit there and fueling quite a bit. I do notice now though, because I do some work there that there's an increasing focus on this. So I'll be going and leading an accelerator program in Bahrain for the next couple of years and I helped launch a program in Dubai where they're putting more focus on getting small companies to grow in sectors outside of and they're often Complementary to the driving industry of the region but also now a lot more focus on technology and things that build out of the region as well. So working smarts.

Judith mentioned the Walmart and I've got two of my smaller companies that I work with are, you know, much of their revenue comes from related activities that they do for Walmart. So I think there's a related aspect of Walmart that because for a while they were driving a lot of businesses out of business. And in my case I have two companies that get a lot of their revenue generated from the work that they do as services companies for Walmart. So there's a benefit to Walmart in another area as well. So sorry, Anita.

No, I was actually going to say a similar thing, Doug. A remarkable number of my clients were actually servicing the oil industry or related industries and just aligned their strategies to the, to the entire industry in order to benefit from that too. So you know, we can follow in the wake of the, of the big giants taking a lead from their, from their own strategies.

What do those big companies do? They pick great partners. And some of all those partners aren't big. Some of them are, right. The smaller, you know, the smart startled local startups, right. Or just small business or mid cap businesses. Dig a little bit deeper down into that report too. You start seeing some other trends. Right. Banks, the banking industry was very well represented. The financial. And this really goes back to our pillars of what helps companies scale. You've got to have smart capital partners. So they were represented. And another sector that was really important was the health care which we talked about a lot today. And the health care take care of what the people, the other foundation. Right, People, people grow great companies. So you see how all these things are very, very well intertwined in terms of scaling up companies.

Well, so many of the, so California, right. Huge amount of growth, especially in this part of California with the gold rush. And yet the companies that still survive today, Levi's bank of America, Wells Fargo, there are railroads even built out here as a result of that. And those spring off into other things. I worked with a guy years ago whose family had been owners of Southern Pacific Railroad and that became part of was the SP in Sprint and then it became a major telecom company and today is a largely wireless company. I worked as an executive four years ago. So we go through waves of these things and there's something going on that you could feed off today. I helped one company grow in the Last few years 3x and they work in the Tesla supply chain. I look at all these oil companies still in here. And I'm like, let's get off the. Let's get off the oil company bandwagon. Let's move into new energy and that kind of thing. And some of the biggest investment in solar things all are in the Gulf region, where they see that it won't be forever. And at least some of them. And they're being smart about investing in new energy technologies. Right?

Companies are evolving and branching out. I mean, you look at companies like ge, I mean, they're one of the biggest owners and operators, right, of wind energy and now in solar. So it's really. We mentioned that before in order to scale, too. I mean, you've got to evolve, your strategy's got to evolve, your people have got to evolve because the market is evolving. I mean, that's kind of business one common sense 101. But as my mom always says, there's nothing common about common sense.

And I think at the end of the day, Judy, that comes back to the mindset of your CEO, of your leadership team. You know, how clear, how able are they to have the space, time to think about how they're going to innovate and be relevant, you know, in sometimes five years time, right? It's no time at all. How do you stay relevant in today's world? And all the more reason to have a coach and create that space for yourself because it's no longer an option to have. It's a vital aspect of the life, isn't it?

Are you.

Any of you. I would. I'm assuming you are familiar with the book Red Teaming. No, Say the book again. Red Teaming. It's actually by the author. Maybe you guys have read Alan, the story of Alan Mulally, American icon. He's the same author. And it's a. I just started reading it. My friend, coaching friend Ted Bunnell in.

Australia.

Introduced it to me. And it's all about how he said he must have been watching the movie. Can't remember, it was the one that Brad Pitt was in about the Day of the Dead or something, and they were dead people. But he wasn't watching for that. He was watching something was happening in Israel where the Israelis had figured out that when this had happened, they called something about the 10th man, which is that if nine people in a room agree, it's up to the 10th person to disagree, to look at what possibly they're not catching or what's wrong. And he goes into a long story about how in Iran, when we invaded IRAN in what, 2001 whatever it was 1992, 93, I believe it was. 92, I believe it was how they were when they met with someone from Iraq. The generals were made aware that when he asked them, how long are you going to be here? And they said, a year. And when they asked him, how long should we plan to be here? He said, 60 years, because that's how long it's going to take. And he explained all the things that were going on. The whole concept is to get your team to look at things differently because the tendency is for us to get complacent. Whether it's governance or leadership of teams, we need to look at other aspects that can cause us issues. And this is an approach, a system to do that, that the army first developed and now a lot of companies are putting into place as well, to do exactly what we're talking about here. It's kind of like outthink the competition. Bill, you're probably familiar, or most of us are familiar. It's the same concept of that. When you get complacent, that's when you're most vulnerable. And that's what's happened to a lot of businesses you can look at as a big example, but most countries get that way as well.

Well, that's a great segue. Verne calls out on the list. He's like, look at the whole list. And then notice that although Apple's not at the top of the list, they crush the whole damn list in profit per implant. $451,000 profit per employee. That's nearly the revenue per employee for the list. He says, let's target 3 to 5x profitability to your industry. Stop accepting the status quo. And this is the thing that drives me crazy with some of our scale ups who want to focus on the top line growth. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is real. Cash is a fact. Profit is an opinion. But profit ought to be three to five times your industry. So pick a firm or two off the list, compare your numbers, and figure out what to do. And now Vern says the reason that Apple is profitable there is he talks again and again about what are the trade offs. And he references uncommon service as one of the books or the ideas here. Be willing to really suck at something so you can be the best in the world at something else. And so you could take a small piece of market share, but the lion's share of the profit for your industry, that 770 split where you've maybe got 7% of market share, but 70% of the profits Apple isn't trying to have the most handsets out there in the world, just the most profitable ones, the most wrapped around. And we trade off for the beauty of that product, that whole experience, the completeness. And not everybody's willing to do that. I know I'm fully in the Apple camp, but I know Vern carries an Android handset, IBM computer, right? Some of you, I'm on the full Apple suite. I've joined the hive. But the same thing's true. Like ikea. Look at the dominance of Ikea and what they provide. They're willing to be the best at having stylish, inexpensive furniture, but you have to walk through that damn maze of a store and probably more relationships are ruined by the process of trying to get it on the car and then put it together. And once you put it together, you can't ever move it. It'll fall and crumble on you the moment you try to move it from one room to another, let alone across town. Right? It's that disposable style.

Well, that's why they bought TaskRabbit. Because they don't want other people putting it together. They want somebody else to put it together. Because how many husbands and wives almost, you know, filed for divorce after trying to put some of that furniture together and. Or got hurt doing it? So that was a smart acquisition on IKEA's part to acquire TaskRabbit.

Simple brand synergy there, right? So brand and process matter. And you look at that like the power of the brand. The power be willing to suck at something in order to be best in the world at something else and stop giving it away. I had a client a few years ago that grew really huge in a fairly short by focusing on a segment, but they kept under bidding their projects again and again. Stop doing that. You have places where people really want to work with you, where you're known for being the best at something and charge a premium for that. Stop giving away all the margin. We had a couple clients in this last year that went through pricing exercises and in some cases wanted to hire fancy consultants to do complex analysis and help roll out their pricing. I'm like, it's really simple, actually. Just start raising prices until people stop buying. You found the ideal price point.

A great example is Netflix. Right now. People are stopping buying. It's too high. And now is the time. You better be innovating because of the increased competition you're going to be facing in no time at all.

Right? I can't stop watching till we finish. Queen of the south, though.

Well, it was interesting, though, Anita, because even though in terms of Netflix, they lost, what, a hundred thousand users, but then they put on 2.3 million new ones, too. So. But you're right that, you know that price is critical, but, you know, back to Bill's point, it's that, you know, the fear of being the generalist. Right. And so, number one, you know, if you're. You can't be great at everything, because then you're just almost like a commodity play. And really, you know, Porter's right. Porter's theory of strategy is really be unique at something. Right? Be unique at something. Do it better than anybody else. Right. And so now you're not competing on price, and you're not a commodity player. You're a value added. This is different. Your margins are higher, and you're just deep and strong and always have a strategy to, you know, continue to find, you know, those other things that you can be unique and let everybody else kind of play the generalist model and the commodity model.

So I think one of the keys to making that play, though, is being prepared to fail. And that is an unusual experience for a lot of companies who are really set on that linear line to success, and they think it's a textbook journey. And then how do you learn as an organization to get messy, get muddy, and find the blind alleys and come back again?

If you're a member of the human race, you've had failures, and what's most important is not how many. It's right. What did you learn from them and where did they take.

Did you recover? Yeah.

Right on.

Right on. Grit.

Yes. Grit and perseverance.

Grit. It's not just for toothpaste or Comet.

Yes.

For John Wayne movies.

John Wayne was young.

True Grit.

Right.

That was a classic.

True Grit. That is a classic. Wow. Yeah, I think so. Once you get the brand and the process dialed in, your costs are different, your lock on your employees is different. You can start to get clever about your pricing. Of course, we look to Herman Simon for the world of pricing. We look to the airline industries. We look to coffee. We look to many different segments for lots of different approaches to pricing to start to get smart and not give it away. People. People will pay you handsomely for things, and you don't need to work for stuff. I'd rather sometimes stay home some week than to take a client that isn't willing to pay for the value that we produce. Right.

Bill, you mentioned one of the great ones. And I think almost every talk I use this example of saying to the.

Audience, and.

Let'S pretend I'm doing my pitch to my company and you guys are all investors and you all have whatever, you all have 5,000, 10,000, whatever you want to invest in my company. And I say, first of all, my company is a commodity. Anybody in the audience raise your hand, do you want to invest? And of course, no hands go up and I say, okay, yeah, my company's commodity. All right, if that doesn't get you to invest, how about, you know, I'm going to charge three times more than anybody else charges for my commodity. Any takers in the audience? Of course, no hands come up and I say, okay, this is where I'm going to get you. I'm a commodity. I'm going to charge you three times as much and I'm going to take four times as long to deliver my product. At the busiest time of your day, are you a taker? And of course, no hands go off. And I said, well, I had to invest it in my company, Starbucks, 25 years ago. Most of you, you sitting, you know, sitting on a yacht somewhere and enjoying this, enjoying this discussion. So right there's. And again, you don't even have to go out of your house to have a cup of coffee in the morning, the busiest time. Right. And you could do it for pennies. But yeah, right, Starbucks has built that great. That, you know, that new space, that different space that other people did and, you know, and, and price to commodity, Granted, it may be it's a better quality bean, but there's a great case for a quality discussion.

The Frappuccino alone is a billion dollar category today. The Frappuccino alone is a billion dollar product. Over a billion dollars. Right. I'm not even sure that's coffee. Frozen milkshake with caffeine in it, whatever.

Yeah.

And, right. And what are they. And they've got, right, they've got great names. They're not laborers. Right. They're baristas. Right. They're. They're people.

Right.

They've got a great unique name to them. Right. So that's a great.

They are. But you're paying for the experience. Right. A lot of people will go and work in a cafe all day and they'll sit there, they'll go meet with a friend and sit in a cafe. I like to have meetings with my CEOs. A lot of times when we're going to have a one on one at an upscale hotel, a hotel lobby is my kind of environment. I'm paying not just for the cup of coffee or the little warm nuts they bring you and that thing, but the whole ambiance of an elegant upscale hotel lobby. Right. That's a great place to have a conversation, but it's that whole experience that I'm buying into, not the particular cup of, of coffee.

We did one of the foundation of one of our biggest deals, acquisition at a Starbucks in Los Angeles. 7:30 in the morning. There was six of us where the dialogue started. And I mean, raise your hand. How many heroes have great meetings in Starbucks, right?

Not that often, but sometimes Starbucks is. Yeah, I remember we did business in McDonald's years ago, my wife's company. When I first met her, she was doing business in Eastern Europe. And we would go and we would have to banking and stuff was difficult and so we would carry large amounts of money in traveler's checks and then we would go to banks to turn it into cash and they would exchange goods and things. And it sounds all very illicit, but it was not so much as that, as just the difficulties and things getting stuck places. And I've had that over the years. So we would meet at a McDonald's because it was a clean and sort of safe, well lit place. Yes. In Eastern Europe. Right. Not there anymore. Statute of limitations. The creative things that we do. Also on the rise, but still awfully small. Female CEOs, women in leadership, women on boards. This is something that can make us better and smarter. We got two women on the panel today. I'm grateful, thank you for helping expand our perspective and not just be a couple old white dudes, which is so common. Old white dudes. Enough already. Counting myself in that. But up to 14 now, headed to 15 when Julie Sweet takes the helmet. Accenture, what are you seeing with your companies in terms of women joining the leadership being developed and elevated?

I'll share my experience. I mean, particularly where I kind of cut my roots. I was the only woman in the C suite on the executive management leadership team. Happy to report that that number is going up significantly. When you heard the soon to be CEO, she said in her company, I believe that they were at 42%. I think today more than ever there are more opportunities. I mean there are so many events that are happening both internally and externally to help women advance. We talked about Susan Packard, my friend and colleague and actually one of my coaches who was the only woman in the C suite in hgtv and she actually wrote another great book called Rules of the Game for Women which I've read several times. But between Again, between educational tools, between mentorship programs, between people having internally a focus on growing women. There are so many more opportunities, you know, than 25 years ago when I, when I got started in business, which is wonderful. I'm actually a mentor and do a lot of women peer groups to help them grow. So that's wonderful. The downside is we're still 80 cents on the, you know, on the dollar, which is not good. We're, you know, performing as well as, or better in some cases, but still only being compensated at 80%. But there's a lot more avenues both internally and externally for women to grow and greater networks to happen. So that's the good news.

Yeah, yeah.

I gotta tell you, I'm a little disappointed in the companies I'm working with and it's amazing how the resistance I feel from my leadership teams to that and it's, you know, I think it's two things that traditionally been the leadership team has been only male in one of my companies, they're all partners, so that maybe won't change. And it's, you know, it's a field, it's engineering that tends to have been more, more males than females, but it's it. I was with the beverage company too, the same thing. To get a female included in the leadership team, it's still a bit of a struggle from the standpoint of, I don't know if it's the age of the people or the mindset or what it is. And yet I know from a standpoint that a female in that group would just expand the empathy, the sincerity.

The.

Feelings for employees that is, you know, they're missing something that could really move the company forward. It's too bad that they can't see that for themselves. And they push back when you bring it up too. Unfortunately, not overtly, but it's usually kind of tables.

Anita as a woman coach, leading companies, coaching companies.

I will say one of the reasons I moved to Asia 20 years ago, having left London, was that I had to pretend to be the receptionist in my own company when clients came because they just weren't going to buy from a 22 year old business owner. So I moved to Asia because, you know, it was a, it really was a much more open playing field. If you could do the work, you got the job. And it was, you know, when I became a coach in 2007, I started attending a lot of the growing female trade shows and symposiums, et cetera. And there was always a huge swath of, especially in the female entrepreneur ones there Was a huge sort of wave of VC companies that will come, all male by the way, trying to invest in female led companies in China. And whilst this may be 250 attendees, all business owners in the room, very few of them were legally set up. So it was kind of this homegrown thing that started in my living room and then I've got a factory now but I never bothered to get the licensing and all this kind of thing. So a lot of my work in the early years was taking some of those great ideas and persuading women to actually put the backbone into their business. Get legal, pay taxes, don't live in the gray and actually come forth and be all that you should take your place in the world. So there was some really successful and also get your funding. If you want to grow and play a major game then you have access to all of the capital that you need. So that was an interesting experience and I was a bit saddened yesterday to read in the news. You know, one of the major topics of conversation going on now is, you know, when hiring in any senior position, Chinese companies are, you know, is becoming louder and louder that to hear, you know, we don't want to hire mothers, we don't want to hire people with families and you know, it's been proven over and over again that working mothers are some of the most efficient people in the workforce and certainly the most hungry. So it's a little sad to see that that's happening. But there is progress and we can't deny that. And we have to keep what the.

Hell with dads too. Like dads need to be in their kids lives and go to soccer practice or take the kids to school and take a sick day or do some of the things as well, be home for dinner. Like what we need to put an end to this thing, you know, more than anything else. Especially as the straight white male who worked for many years in male dominated industries and then worked and led a mostly female and female oriented company. I really got schooled in a big way and I would not say I'm at all a master of it. But the principle today that I think comes to mind as a coach is we spend a lot of time having people think first and then contribute ideas, often with things like post it notes or like that. And the conversation comes last. And the benefit of that is we're getting a more diverse range of opinions. So the introverts, the extroverts, the men, the women, the young, the old, that kind of thing. There are some environments where people are not very verbal, it doesn't mean they don't have good ideas. And then there are people like me who are totally verbally dominant. We should take the stage and have a microphone because we love that. But if somebody like me is just doing all the talking, the range of perspective and thinking is not as good. Right. And the same thing's true of our teams. If it's all men of a particular age and ethnicity, we're not going to have the best, most balanced perspective on the world. We need women, we need people of color, we need young and old. We need a range of things in our leadership team if we're going to bring the best thinking to addressing the markets that we address. If your customer base is entirely old white dudes, then have at it. But if you cater to a broad range of people in the world, then start to bring some of those people up through your leadership so that your thinking is unified along that. Right.

I think it comes back to hiring to a large degree, doesn't it? Forgive me if I've got this stat wrong, but I think, isn't it just that 14% of all listed companies have female contributors? And I don't know if that's quite. You can fact check me. It's a low number anyway. So the hiring process is getting a bit desperate, you know, and it's been a land grab for anyone you can get. But actually, I think Mary Barra has a fantastic approach to this. And it's not male or female. It's the best person for the job and she does blind recruiting. I don't know if you know that about gm. A lot of their senior positions, they do, they're not allowed to names or any other personal details on that. They're just literally recruiting. So the senior manager doesn't get to find out whether they're looking at a male, female. You know, they're not even mentally biased to tick the diversity box because they don't know best person for job.

How do you evaluate that? Because then you're just looking at a piece of paper, Right. And I don't really. If I just look at your resume, I have no idea.

Until it gets to the hiring manager.

Until it gets to that later in the process. Yeah, the screen.

And the shortlisting process is quite robust until it gets to that point.

The other thing that's interesting in that same vein is the bias towards names. Names reveal stereotypes around culture and socioeconomic class and ethnicity and that kind of thing as well, and can affect how you're screened in certain Jobs and industries. Right.

There's an interesting development in AI around. There's a company called Seedlink actually out of Shanghai that are focused primarily on looking at success factors and voice activated software that figures out specifically for your company who are your top performers, your top players again, male or female notwithstanding, and then measures a candidate against the inflections and how they give their answers. One of my clients had an 80% success rate hiring people using that AI system. So I think, you know, technology is going to help us moving forward. Does that help the plight of women in leadership? We got to be great, we've got to be as good as, if not better and keep playing our best games.

Speaking of technology, Align today is the official tool for the world of scaling up. There are many systems you could use, but if you're still relying on paper and whiteboards alone, and they are great and essential used by all of us. But having an ongoing system to track the company's performance against quarterly plans, day in and day out, your daily huddles, your weekly team meetings, those kinds of things align today as a purpose built tool where you can build your one page strategic plan. Many of the one page tools that we use in the scaling up process get your team aligned, you can run your daily huddles on that. You can see performance against the top daily priorities, against tracking on quarterly priorities, KPIs, that kind of thing. A great tool for getting folks together. Aligntoday.com go check it out. There's also loads of tutorials, intros on YouTube. If you want to get a picture of Align today you can go get a demo, open a sandbox account there, see how things are done@aligntoday.com and then of course you can go also see some of it on YouTube as well and see how that's alignedtoday.com great promoters of the show and partners in all of this. Part of our official tool set for the scaling up world.

Bill, I want to circle back. We were, you know, regarding women and you know, advancing women and Anita, you're, you were right on your stats. And it's, you know, less than 14% in senior leadership positions and less than 10% actually get any kind of real equity dollars. And I work with a fair number of equity groups and that's one of the things we're trying to bring a lot more women into the private equity companies and then even within the companies that they acquire, raise rates of women. But you know, you look at some other statistics, you know, those are, you know, kind of saddening but, you know, I always take a. Take one of those things. You know, I love a challenge. So, you know, I look at the other side of the statistics. And yet, when it comes to investment stats, women are much better investors. You know, they. In the United States, they continue, you know, consistently outperform men in investing. And one of the reasons is. And it also plays into great leadership roles, is they ask more questions and they ask better questions. Right. And what does Vern talk about all the time? Right. It's not so much that, you know, people don't have the solution. You know, they have the solutions. It's, you know, are they asking the right questions? And that's one of the things that women are wonderful at. You know, women are traditionally too, since, you know, going back to the caveman times are the caregivers, right? So here we go. We go back to being caregivers, right? They're very, very empathetic. They score much better, and employees happen to trust them. And trust is really a key part of leadership and growing people. I mean, nobody's going to take chances. We talked about the fear of failing. Nobody's going to take a chance and put themselves out there and worry, can or can't they fail if they don't have that element of trust? And women are off the charts in all these metrics, too. So I find that very, very interesting. And again, even though the numbers are lower, just in general across the board, they are advancing. And I think it's wonderful, again, that the tools and the network of people that we have to be able to tap into really grow these great women.

Just as a sidebar, it's encouraging to note all that, Judith, because if somebody's really bright, they're going to pick up on that and they're going to hire more women and actually have an advantage in the marketplace if someone's enlightened enough to do that.

Well, all of those things can increase the value and the results of your company by elevating your leadership team, tapping into some people that may or may not be addressed. And all that leads to the exit. So someday, most of us want to exit the business. If you're thinking about selling your business for $40 million or more, you'd like to get more than you thought. Get the white paper. Verne's got a great white paper for you. Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard. Verne will send it to you. Just send A note to verncalingup.com if you're thinking about exiting your company. We're big fans of Strategic exits, getting higher multiples for the company as a result of having really well run companies that do better in profit and cash than their industry that outperform.

And Bill, I will share with you, as I said, you know, in the beginning of the show, having been involved in 104M and AS, I mean, you know, we obviously look at all the financial numbers, but my God, people and the team that is, you know, that comes first because they're either going to make it or not make it. You know, you can always tell people you can have the greatest strategy, you can have the greatest technology, but if you don't have the right people, Sayonara, Sammy. So, so, so important.

Speaking of teams, Vern also shares the Forbes list of the most valuable sports teams in the world. Right? And topping the list, Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona. Verne always roots for them. Having lived in Barcelona for years. I lived there briefly as a kid and the New York Knicks in the top five. I think it's interesting to see how these are valued and what they grow. Even if I'm not a huge team sports fan, what I find interesting about it is that it's about the experience, right? I can buy almost anything I want online today, but the experience of shopping, of seeing something, of holding something, of trying something out is why the Apple stores are huge. Going back to Apple again. In the world of sports, the experience of watching a sport is different than everything else. It's not something you stream and watch later. You want to watch it real time before the event, while the event is happening. And then you don't skip through the commercials and all of the promotional opportunity there. Right.

Engagement, right. Customer X. Right. The experience and the, in the engagement. And yeah, but you know, it's interesting, but they are using those, all those teams that you just noted are doing great jobs utilizing technology to get, to get their, their base, their fans, you know, revved up and psyched up even more before the game, again during the game and after the game while, you know, while they're at where they're, whether it is being streamed or whether somebody's watching it on TV or you're actually in a stadium or at a field watching it. So the evolution of sports is incredible. And you look at some of the teams that have done well, as a matter of fact, on my drive over to the office this morning on Bloomberg Radio, which is one of our friends and colleagues scaling up, they had a great, they had a great interview with some of the, over in England, the soccer teams that have really turned teams around and what they've done. And it's really to grow people, to really develop a very, very smart strategy and to make sure they connected all the dots with the back end, the field experience, and the technology side of sports today. So every industry that you look at, the companies that are really successful are those companies that are evolving and again, are focusing on the people, the strategy, the technology, and getting those infusion of cash. So it's not just about traditional business, but obviously sports is a multi, multi billion dollar industry and growing. And that one stat was right. There's not an NFL team that's less than a billion dollars and growing. So it's big, big business today.

Yeah.

And I just have to add that I'm a proud owner of one of those teams. I'm a shareholder of the Green Bay packers, which means nothing.

Of course.

That's what it means.

Yeah. Well, I think it does tie back, though, to all of us in the notion of brand loyalty as well. Right. We opened the show, I was talking about being from Oakland and the people upset about the Golden State warriors moving across the the bay and not really owning their Oakland roots, but yet being totally passionate about the Raiders, even though they come and they go from cities at will, chasing profits and better stadium deals. But that trust is critical. And when you break the trust, then all things are off and you lose that brand power and that brand affinity again and again. There's something there about getting that. I used to watch the Tour de France rabidly and have loved road cycling forever. And I really just. The trust was broken first with the doping scandal with Lance and then expanded as we've seen doping with others. And I just. I'm like, who cares anymore? There's motors in the damn thing. So I just bought an electric bike and I'm gonna ride up the hill.

Two years back at the summit, Bill, we had coach Woden, John Woden, come to speak. And I always remember he said, sports don't build character, they reveal it. And I believe that's one of the keys for the sporting brand, isn't it? You reveal an awful lot about your personal characteristics. So it's intensely personal for those brands.

Yeah. And if you have a breakdown of something, you've really got to go way out of your way to deal with and restore the trust, and you've got to work at it over time. For me, the magic was lost. And now, of course, we've got the Tour de France on this week in the middle of the Tour, and I'm barely aware of who's in the lead and what's going on. And, like, I saw it in a bar the other night and I'm like, yeah, it's cool. It makes me want to get out and ride. But I don't watch anymore. Like, I used to wake up in the morning and watch right away for three weeks.

Well, I gotta tell you, I've lived in California almost 18 years, but I was born and raised on the east coast in Connecticut. So I was right on that line between being a Yankees fan or a Red Sox fan. And our family chose Yankees. So I've been a Yankee fan my whole life. And I remember going to my first game when the Yankees were playing in California, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, I'm gonna be. I'm gonna have to be quiet because I'm a New York fan and I'm in Los Angeles now. And one of my friends who was from Brooklyn, grew up in Brooklyn, who lives here, she said to me, she's like, judy, you're gonna be very surprised when you go to the game. And I'll tell you, being in the parking lot, I ran into more Yankee fans, you know, than I did LA fans. And, you know, eventually, you know, the Californians overtook us, but it was just amazing how many in Southern California, how many. How many Yankee fans there are. We travel all over. So a fan is a fan, is a fan for life.

Well, if a big sporting event is not your thing or a big Scaling up summit is not your kind of thing, you're looking for something a little more intimate and connected. Vern and John Ratliff host CEO boot camps on a regular basis at a beautiful location where my firm will be doing their retreat this year in Marathon, Florida. It's just an outstanding location. So they get together with a very handful of CEOs, about six other CEOs in a retreat setting, and go through and work on the basics of Scaling up, but the constraints holding you back as a CEO and as a company. Their August event is sold out now, but they have events in January, a couple events in January and in March that you can sign up to send a note to. I would send a note to verncalingup.com if you are interested in those CEO boot camps, and tell them you heard it from us here on the Scaling up podcast. I think that brings us to about all of our. I think we're about tacked out for the week. Yeah.

Wow. It went fast.

Thank you guys for being on our first ever panel show. And going through all of that last shout out. If you'd like content like video content like this or audio content, you can also go to the Growth Institute where they have lots of short things. We give Growth Institute courses to our leadership teams as part of are working with them when they need to learn something. But they also have longer master courses where they go deep into some different topics out there, whether it's top grading or exponential scaling or I don't know what am I forgetting some of the others that they have there Negotiating. Yeah. And they put all of that together in a Master of Business Dynamics. So different than an MBA and an online MBD for scale ups and scale up leaders, whether you're the CEO or in the leadership for one of the scale ups. The Master of Business Dynamics at The Growth Institute, growthinstitute.com would be the other place if you want more stuff like this. Of course, we're here every week with another show on scaling up. All things to do with scaling up, other coaches, CEOs, authors, whatever, lover of all things scaling. You'll find that in our whole back catalog of these shows@scalingcoach.com where you can also download the tools, the show notes, get the links, that kind of thing. And I'll even give you a book, a scaling up book for free if you pay the shipping and handling. Just go to scalingcoach.com Judy in no place in order. What's your website? What's your give us a shout out.

Www.Guido that's my last name. G U I D O A S S O C. It's going through little bit of a reconstruction but you can, you can get to me and anybody wants to email me, it's@judyidoassoc.com and Anita.

I am www.leadingedgebusinesscoaching.com it's long, but you won't forget it.

Leadingedgebusinesscoaching.com say that five times fast.

Doug, I'll direct you to my blog. It's strategic discipline discipline.positioningsystems.com and that's a.

Real say that again. We'll put it in the put it in the show notes. But strategic discipline.positioningsystems.com yes, sir.

Thanks, Bill. Thanks for having us.

Thank you so much, guys. We'll talk to everybody again next week.

Thanks everybody. Have a great weekend.

You too.

Well, extra special thanks as always to the original growth guru, Verne Harnish. Also, this week's show and the discussion topics were centered around Vern Harnish's weekly insights. If you don't get it, go to scalingup.com right now and subscribe to Verne's Weekly insights on Scaling Out. This show is produced by Lucy Summers. Audio production is done at Potfly Productions and the audio editing by Albert Burge. The show notes are compiled by Ayn Kadina and proofread by by Tim McGowan. If you got any value out of our show today, please share it.

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Go to YouTube, iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts and like it and subscribe there. We'd love you to take a minute to review us, give us your thumbs up your five stars and tell us what parts you loved. We'd also love to hear back from you. If you would like to hear more of anything more of this kind of show or any other other or if you've got any feedback for us at all, drop us a Note info scaling coach.com info scaling coach.com thanks again for listening. Thanks again for watching. Keep Scaling Up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals and your in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time align today. That's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.