216: Scaling Up Insights — Coach Panel with Bruce Eckfeldt and Anita Cabell

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Welcome to the show. Welcome to our listeners and viewers now and later. This is the Scaling Up Business podcast. Despite all appearances to the contrary. Welcome to the show. Bruce Eckvelt, Anita Kabell. Bruce is outside the New York area.

Yeah, Fort Lee.

Anita today is in Pennsylvania, but normally works in and around the Detroit area. Welcome to the show, Anita.

Thank you, Bill. Great to be here.

So we've had you guys on before, but why don't you introduce yourselves again. These guys are both great coaches in our world and tell folks a little bit about before we get into today's top and about how people are scaling forward and what matters. So Bruce.

Yeah, so thanks again for having me on, Bill. Yes. I'm based out of the New York area. I was CEO, ran a tech company for many years focusing on lean agile. So kind of my bent along a lot of these things tends to do with thinking, lean thinking, limiting constraints and how to build out sort of continuous improvement inside businesses. I work in a variety of industries. My kind of claim to fame is I run two podcasts, one called Scaling Up Services, focus on service based businesses and the other one called Thinking Outside the Bud, which is all about cannabis. So I do a lot of work in the cannabis space, which is I think as many people know, a growing industry and so fascinating kind of dynamics going on there. And it'd be interesting here because a lot of my clients in the cannabis industry, I don't know if they're doing well, but they're doing, they are claimed as essential services. So their businesses are actually kind of running. But we can get into the details. But it's an interesting space.

I heard from a friend that people are nervous about inhaling things right now, lung stuff, so that other categories there's a whole.

Yeah, we can get into the Whole shift in product purchases and customer behavior and the storing. There was a mad rush on the dispensaries. Everyone went and made sure they had their supply of pot available to them over the coming pandemic months. But yeah, some interesting dynamics going on in the space.

I feel like we need to have Seth Rogen on for that show. Anita, welcome. Tell us about your background. Anita is a rock star international coach also. So talk to us about it.

Thank you so much. So I spent the biggest part of my career, actually 20 years of it, in China. I am a three time entrepreneur myself and bringing the skill scaling up, scaling forward process to China has been my life for about the last 12 years and I've worked with around 50 companies helping them get where they want to go. Recently moved to Michigan and now having a great time working in the Detroit, Michigan metropolitan area.

So most of our coaches are like you guys, right? There's 200 coaches in the world of scaling up and many of us are recovering entrepreneurs. I had four companies and was partnering two others. I did random like from zero up through a lot. The biggest business unit I did was over 500 million. But then I've also had some colossal failures and I think actually both of them are valuable and I'm happy to talk about both extremes. And we bring a show like this every week. I think we're about 220some episodes in now. So we've been doing it for a couple of years. But there's literally shows on every topic you could imagine in the world of people. Strategy, execution, cash and leadership. Like what is it about the person in the mirror who's trying to lead the company through scaling? So all of that and more@scalingcoach.com and although I can't coach everyone even if I wanted to, I'm happy to help you find a coach in your area or who suits your particular challenge or need. Just drop us a note or go to infocalingcoach.com, send an email there or go to scalingcoach.com and find all of our websites. In addition, I'll give you a copy of the book Scaling up for free if you just pay the shipping and handling. So today's topic is really all about scaling forward. A lot of people are not yet scaling up. I'm excited to say that most of our clients have adapted and many have begun the pivot. A couple have have already seen accelerating growth. A couple have added funding this quarter, one adding millions of dollars in multiples of the other adding smaller million plus. So We've seen growth and things happen. In fact, this quarter's been really surprising, and we're going to talk all about the four P's of scaling up. We're going to go into each of the areas and some of the things that we've seen going on. What are you guys seeing in terms of growth of your clients and in general?

Right.

Before we get into some of the.

Specifics, Nita, you want to tackle this first?

Yeah, I mean, I've been kind of.

Fortunate about that big old gentleman.

I'm still working globally. So the first thing is it's conquering. Bill and I, we've talked about ad infinitum, but conquering the virtual gene, not being afraid of that. I mean, I've been doing that now for several years since I'd already moved out of Asia but still had clients there. So I feel like we got a jump start, you know, in not being afraid of working virtually. That's been a, you know, a really. A really powerful, you know, scale forward. Also, having had Asian clients as well, we were able to kind of bring a lot of those lessons back to the U.S. you know, Asia went first, had a lot of tools and techniques for us to be able to learn from. So I feel like we got a bit of a head start in many cases. So.

Yeah. Yeah, Bruce.

You know, I think for me, there's kind of two big axes or two big kind of things that determine, I have found, how companies are responding. One is, you know, the business itself, like, what is the market? What is the business? How is it impacted logistically? You know, whether it's because of the shutdown, whether it's work at home, whether it's disruption in their supply chain or their channels. And the other one is the mindset of the entrepreneur, right, or the CEO, whoever is kind of running the business. And I find that those that have been through these kind of things before just kind of like, okay, this is just another challenge, right? And they have got to deal with it, but they immediately go into, okay, how do we gather some information? How do we really figure out what's going on? What's the future going to look like? How do we develop some strategies, regardless of the industry they're in? I've seen them react either way. I've seen some CEOs kind of take a real, okay, let's get down to work. Let's figure out what's going on. What do we need to cut, what do we need to keep? What's the strategy going to be? And I'VE seen other ones that kind of curl up in the corner and suck their thumb. And like, hopefully this. If I ignore this, this is all gonna go away and things will go back to normal. They're kind of, well, I'm just gonna wait for this to go back to normal. And so for me, like, the conversations that I started having or when I started having conversations with folks, as this started to play out, the first thing I needed to do is just assess, like, where are you mentally? Because, like, it doesn't matter what we talk about in the business. If you're in a, you know, a real kind of head space of fear and I'm just kind of denial, then we kind of have to address that first until we can. Until we address that, we can't really talk about the business. But, yeah, I've seen some really interesting pivots. I've seen some opportunities. There's definitely been some phases. You know, as you know, in the beginning, there was certain reactions and there's kind of like level setting. Having worked with a lot of CEOs in New York, there was a lot of comparisons to 9 11, right? A lot of people like, oh, this is. At some level, this is kind of like 9 11. At the other hand, it wasn't because 911 was. There's an event and then it's recovery, and you can kind of plan the recovery. In this case, it's like, we haven't even. Hasn't even happened yet. It's this pending, this pending thing that's coming at us. We don't know exactly when, so. Well, on some hand, there was a lot of kind of, okay, this is bringing back memories of how we dealt with these other things. On the other hand, it was different. So we had to kind of figure out what's the strategy going to be.

Well, you could see like a collective trauma, right? And we're all going to compare it always to the collective trauma. I know I started. I started at the beginning of our shutdown, right where I came off international trip. I spoke to different groups. I was all over the place. I came back. I'm like, wow, I'm glad I didn't get it. And here I am. And the shutdown. My first thought was, oh, crap, I'm going to have to retire early. I'm going to have to dig into that things and not. And I'm not going to be busy. I'm going to have nothing to do, and I'm going to have to live off my retirement now. Like, I didn't want to do that. Right. Like, for lots of reasons, both productivity, busyness, and financial. I didn't want to do that. So immediately I busied myself. I said, although I think people will cancel and cut back on all expenditures, including their coach, and they shouldn't, then I'll just give it away. So I started initially, like, I'll coach anyone for free if you're in a crisis, right. And pay what you can, pay what you will. And I was surprised at how many people paid something. A few people took me up who really needed the free free. And I got really, really busy. And then we did go down, like, revenues, coaching revenues and workshops, and things went down more than half. But since then, we've rebounded. I've added more clients than ever before as a coach. In a quarter, we're busier than ever. Revenues are up before what they are, but I'm working with more people now, and I think that kind of goes to our first topic. So. Right. Vern's been Talking about the four Ps of scaling forward, and I thought it'd be useful to structure our conversation around the news and the developments that we see both with our clients and Vern's insights. But the first one is people, right? And Vern talks about the ability to hire people. And that's one of the things that's really dramatically changed already. But then there's also, like, the quality of people. So there's ability to hire people, a change in the tone, availability. But then there's also the quality, quality of work, and the need to take time off. I thought it was really interesting. The first thing that Vern cited recently and his insights was this need to take a couple minutes off and start to find new ways to take time off. Did you guys read that or how are you seeing that both for yourself and for the companies you work with?

I think for me personally, I think a lot of the CEOs that I work with, really the dynamic is this whole work at home. You know, now that we're kind of in this new work at home thing, there's a lot of time available, right? I mean, you're not commuting, you're not running around between meetings. And the people that I've seen really kind of leverage this have figured out new routines to integrate into the daily schedule. And I certainly have. I mean, I've always had a pretty strong morning routine, but I had to fairly quickly reestablish that. Even funny things like, you know, the gym in my building is shut down. Right. So I had to figure out, okay, where am I going to work out? Right. So there's a park across the street. And I figured out how to change my routines, but that is now part of my daily ritual. And I think people that have figured out how to adopt that and leverage that extra time they have as kind of a self care, you know, focus on really kind of what do you need to do, what habits do you need to build to for your physical and mental kind of health. Then you can hit the rest of the day and have the calls and deal with all the issues and all the kind of drama that's going on. I think that's one of the biggest things that I've seen people adjust is just take that time and make use of it.

Yeah. And well, Anita, there you are with the log cabin background. I think you've got the idea, right? Work from anywhere.

Exactly. Yeah.

I've had clients working from their cottages. But, you know, you want to make sure that you're also getting some actual time off there as well, right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I've been doing a lot of research into results only work, you know, looking at different models of, you know, how, how you actually deliver your work. And, you know, there's arguments for and against. But I think where I've netted out is not to be too dominated by any one doctrinal, as you said, Bruce, you know, mindset, give everything a try. And then, you know, revisiting the culture of the organization, even as you said, Bill, what we're doing and how we're doing it, experimenting and, you know, having that organizational trust in yourself and the people you're working with makes a huge difference in, you know, what kind of results you're going to get. So, yeah, I used to think this drive down to the cabin for five and a half hours was long. Now it seems like the best thing on earth. I get to talk to my kids, I can finish my calls. I can, you know, be far more productive than I, than I ever was. And I think the major impact for me was connectivity. You know, I studied neuroscience for my being a young leader. I was always challenged by how people thought of me and whether they took me seriously in my own business. So I ended up going back to school not to do a, an MBA or anything, but actually to study neuroscience. How we do, why we do what we do. And one of the key learnings that came out of that was, you know, why do, why did we develop the way we did? And one of the things that I remember most clearly was the Theory that we were maybe put or given the facilities, we have to idle, actually. And when we idle, we make more neural connect. Neural connections than ever before. But we can't see it, we can't feel it, so we don't value it. However, it's true, you know, when you take time off, you often come up with that moment of insight, oh, you know what, maybe I'll put that back together that way or give this a try. So there's more value in it than we can perceive. But we know it's true. Whether we'll commit to it, it's a very different thing.

Well, my number one Gallup strength talent theme is ideation. And I wake up with ideas. And I have ideas all day long. And I have. But the two times of the day that I have the most are the beginning and the end of the day. At the end of the day, as I'm winding down, I have these like, oh, aha. And sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake up with an idea or an insight. And first thing in the morning as I wake up, as I'm showering, I have an abundance of ideas. And then in the day I'm responding to a lot of stuff. And sometimes I have. Well, I for sure have ideas all the time. Always, period.

Idea making machines.

Yeah, yeah. And I've learned to let them go. But I think there's something to that. There's value in that rest and recovery. So I've added in like in my own day, longer planned breaks where between calls, video sessions, client things, I go outside, I get some fresh air or some rain on my face or whatever the weather's doing. Right. And I move around a little bit. I try not to just sit or stand here to get some breaks in the day. And then I've been trying to shut down more on the weekends and make sure I do some. Just different kinds of things to get that break in. Right.

Absolutely.

Which I think is useful. I noted the news this morning that slack has day of week time settings now, so you could essentially turn off your slack notifications on the weekends. And the more like. That's one of the problems with working from home. I mean, Bruce, you've got a two year old who's learned to turn off your router.

Yes. So if I disappear, that is why.

Which could be a little disruptive and problematic.

The kind of disruption you want. Yeah.

I've had CEOs with kids come and jump on their laps in the middle of our sessions. Right. And they're like. And you could see that on some days they're really losing their cool with it. Right. But that need to figure out how to give yourself some time off. So the article by Sabina Nawaz, the HBR article talks about the need to take at least half day breaks in addition to weekends and says it talks about kind of six reminders. So giving clarity to people around what's okay. A lot of people don't feel like it's okay to take breaks and they're worried about their job security, redefining vacations, giving people room for staycations. And I think that the need to protect that time if you're at home and not be like, well, it's the weekend, but I could still take a call because here I am demonstrating that you care. Modeling the behaviors yourself by taking some time off, sharing about how you're dealing with what you're dealing with. Right. I notice just talking about taking breaks and some of the things and then modeling that when I'm working with clients, because I don't know about you guys, but I will do six to eight hour sessions with clients and people come on, they're like, oh my God, this is going to be horrifying. I'm like, you're going to be surprised by the end of the day. It's not going to be like your other zoom meetings because it's going to be engaging, interactive. Right. I think people are seeing some of that and we'll introduce props and things like that when it's time to move on. I bring Elmo in one more celebrating things. I have cowbell. Like it's kind of schmaltzy, Chachi, whatever. But like it makes some difference. Changing the idea of durations and then engaging the team to support people so that it's not all on Bruce or Anita to carry that you really can feel like you can get away and the team's got your back doing that. I don't know, are you guys, what, what are you seeing with your folks in the same sense?

Yeah, well, certainly, I mean, the transition to virtual. I mean, I've been running virtual sessions with, with teams for a long time. So for me it really, there was no, there was, there was no issue with doing it virtually. But I had several clients who had never really done this and it took a little while and we had to kind of. There was almost like training them on how to do this first before we really dug into the meteor stuff because yeah, otherwise the newness, the unfamiliarity with how to conduct an effective virtual session was getting in the way of actually doing the work, we actually spent some time and I have a whole thing where I set up two monitors and I have them put them on gallery view and everything. So they've got a working space, they've got visual connection. So we kind of getting them logistically trained up. But yeah, once they have that system set up and once they get familiar with that pace and that rhythm of a virtual session, it's been really productive. I mean, I hate to say it, I think, I think it's actually even more productive at some levels than in person meeting, at least for certain teams. But yeah, it took a little while and you've got to kind of. You have a strategy around it. You can't just run it like a regular session.

So. Interesting. Yeah, I've had a lot of success as well, I think, you know, working virtual. I've been working on Zoom and various platforms for a long time. But actually adding in the collaboration whiteboards has been a major game changer. Not just for the meetings I'm facilitating, but what they do with it after that, and the creativity that's come into the picture and how they've engaged people way, way down the organizational structure, it's been absolutely amazing. They felt more in control of their own meetings. They're not worried about warehouses across the other side of the country or Asia or whatever. Distance is really the whole point. Perception has changed and I think the power and the control that they feel over that has really, really been exciting. And maybe they were just ready for, you know, some novelty in their lives. We've been doing things the same way for so long.

We're actually just about to do our first two in person sessions again, which is the weird thing. We're doing them outdoors but with a hybrid of technology. But I find even now, because the predominant amount of office work is being done remotely, we're still talking about like adapting to this and learning to take some time off and give people quality of life. So we'll talk about not only introducing brakes and movement and things like that, and the props and music in between and segues and backgrounds, but then we'll also do things like humanizing. So I encourage people, although not everybody does it, to not use virtual backgrounds and not turn on that cheesy thing, but really show us your home. And it's not always perfect because some people are really, really self conscious about it. But a simple white background, right? Like Bruce, you're on a white background, it's clean and like, good. There you are, it works. And not everybody has like a, you know, I've got an office set up with lighting and things like that. But being smart about it, like getting lit and that kind of thing and then introducing humanizing touches. So letting a little people into your world. We've been having people share something funny, something embarrassing, something meaningful and they'll do like a quick scavenger hunt. We've had people get up and do dance breaks and then getting used to the online working like one of the things I noticed is some people. So we use Mural primarily today for our online collaboration space, but I've used the Google Suite, we've used the Jamboard, we've used Stormboard, we've used Miro, that's probably all of them. And Mural's the main one that we're doing because we've got all of our tools and worksheets and things templatized now. But I have been noticing it's really important to get people in there before and let them play with some basics because you just never know who's going to be embarrassed by their inability to work like quickly in real time in the interface. And it's not necessarily technology background that does it. I have like PhD engineering computer engineers who are like, they struggle with some of the tools and interfaces, so they might be great at writing some kind of code, but they like basic kinds of things that your teenager would get there.

It's interesting. I've actually been shooting lots of little five minute videos for things like that, like how to use this tool or how to run this or why we run this part of the session that way. And I just create these little libraries and I just give them to folks so that they can say, look, we're going into this meeting next week. Here are a bunch of things that might be helpful for you. And some of them watch it, some of them don't. But again, it's another kind of tool to get them familiar with things so they can come into the meeting not.

Quite as come in warmed up. And that kind of thing I think makes a difference. So people, right. We're obviously still in the business of coaching people. We have over 200 coaches. If you need a coach, you can reach out. Bruce and Anita will give their info, but you can drop us a note, infocalingcoach.com, we'll connect you with Bruce and Anita as well. If you forget that or help you find a coach in your neighborhood, very happy to help. There is no way that we can, that I can personally coach or our team can coach everybody. So that's why we have 200 coaches around the world. And most of us will do some kind of, like, assessment, test drive, some kind of thing to get you started for a small charge or in some cases for nothing at all, depending on what's involved. But we've got loads of people and we've coached now over the years, over 40,000 organizations over the last 30 years between all of us. And I think that's one of the things that makes our coaching world so great, is that we are collaborative like this. We work with so many different companies. We'll post about stuff. Anita had something just the other day. Bruce has posted in the past to our coaching discussion boards. And then we have internal conversations like this one happens to be public.

We won't talk about the private things. We talk about.

Yeah, you're bad clients. Well, so taking care of yourself, right. And being like, mentally great helps to do the kind of work. But then there's this whole thing. The other post in there was about running your business, so you'll never need layoffs. The other way of doing it, of course, it would be great if you did all your cash management stuff beforehand, but then even if you didn't do that, how are you dealing with it now? And the way you engage people can make a difference. Vern talks about Gravity Payments, a company from our world. Dan price. Their CEOs had a ton of press and who's kind of in my left side of the country, went to all of their team and asked, shared with what people had. And people gave a variety of pay cuts. But then they all started to work together to find ways to deal and adapt. Right. I think is really, have your teams had to take pay cuts and have they done. Have some of them come back yet?

Yeah. So the initial conversations that I had with, you know, leaders that were kind of figuring out, what do we do with expenses, how do we kind of, right, size things a little bit. The first question for me has always been strategy. It's like, well, where do you think your business is going to be in 12 to 24 months? Right? Because you don't want to. You don't want to cut off your legs and then realizing you have to run a marathon. Right? So you have to kind of at some level, make some assumptions about what are the key resources, assets, capabilities you're going to need to have inside the business to kind of recover or to function in the world 12, 24 months out, and then you can start making some priorities. And for those areas that you realize you do have key assets but you're not going to be able to pay them fully. Yeah, you start having some conversations. And I think most of the groups that I've worked with, there has been some kind of blend of pay cut, pay deferral, deferrals of compensation at some level. Some of them have bonuses on the other side, they'll make out for it, plus 10% or something. And I think, yes, as a leader, you needed to make some hard decisions on where do we want to invest and where do we not want to invest or where do we need to actually make some hard cuts. But then within that, having some open conversations, particularly with senior management, you know, proved to be reasonably effective. And it, and it got the conversation going really about where are we, why do we need to make these cuts? You know, what is this really going to allow us to do then in the future? And if that, you know, by having that and having a good sounding kind of basis for that, then it was much easier to make those decisions.

Yeah, right on. I use two examples when I'm talking to my clients, and one was Gravity Payments. You know, how we do it. Right. You know, whatever decisions we're going to make, we're going to work on this together. We'll figure it out. And yeah, absolutely. You know, is the market going to be there in 12 to 24 months? Was our strategy. Right. But yes, it was. So therefore, let's not cut off our noses to spite our face and jump too quickly. I do remember actually, side story in 2008 during the economic crisis in Asia, how most of the multinationals overnight repatriated all of their international people, you know, just, just ripped that cost right out of the business and sitting there thinking, wow, how are you going to function tomorrow if those people were key to your success today? So, you know, we learned a lot through those times, didn't we? But, you know, and then, you know, of course, how not to do things. You know, the bird scooter story, you're. I don't know if we've talked about that here already, but yeah, Bird scooter.

Laid all their people off in a phone call or a zoom call.

Right.

It was a recorded message. It was a two minute recorded message. 320 people invited to a call to, you know, no context whatsoever and laid off on this by a recording. Yeah. So, you know, we have the.

They didn't even get George Clooney, some.

Unknown person, not even a member of the leadership team or executive team.

Right.

Yeah.

The movie.

Jeez.

I think that first phase, right, that first phase was about adapt and survive. And I think we saw people like I had clients call me up, current and former clients call me up and go, all our customers are shut down. So we're shut down, effectively, even if we can come in. And so it's game over for us. And so our first thing was about, okay, how do we get through to whatever comes next, how do we create some breathing room? And that was that first phase of getting people. And as we saw and cited.

In.

The HBR article and Vern's insights, companies like Gravity Payments and others, and some of our clients went to their team to share the burden so that layoffs were zero to minimal. And then in some cases, like some of our clients, their employee count and debt was low, Southwest low debt. And so they didn't have to do any. And the impacts were low. So the less that you're carrying debt, the more cash reserves you have, the better position you are and the more you can get people to share the load, then there's less pain. So that first piece was about that. And then there's like, now we got to adapt and find opportunities and now we're beginning to see investment acquisition. The companies that are failing are often leaving behind some interesting assets or people or customers or that kind of thing. That, yeah, very much.

I mean, go ahead, go ahead first. And I was just going to say, you know, we're not going to gloss over the subject of cash, are we? Because any self respecting business coach is going to make sure their clients have, you know, six to 12 months of money in the bank as soon as we start work. That's a given that we're going to create choice with our clients. And so I will say that again, I think our clients have had an advantage at this point. You know, during this phase, during that initial shocking phase, how are we going to cope? There was breathing room built into the model.

It's really. So I think one of the sort of funny dynamics I've spent a lot of time in now in the last couple months is in the cannabis industry because it's been such a growth industry that many companies have been fueling their growth with cash, right? They've been, they've been taking on significant investment, they're gobbling up market share, they're trying to get into open new licenses, trying to get into new counties and things like that. And honestly, ones that didn't, ones that hoarded too much cash were at a disadvantage because they weren't getting the opportunity they weren't taking advantage of the opportunities. When Covid hit, it's put an interesting spin on things because those that don't have a great balance sheet, heavy on debt, while the businesses are still running to some extent, I mean, they're still processing, they're still growing, they're still processing, they're still dispensing at some level, at least with delivery and curbside pickup and things like that, the business is operating. But there's so much pressure on now on the investment side to be cash positive that there's now assets on the market. Right. There's companies that are not in great situations. However, because cannabis is federally legal, A you can't use bankruptcy, you cannot use standard bank federal bankruptcy laws, right, because you're an illegal business, so you can't protect yourselves from creditors on that side. And two, because of all the restrictions about licensing, holding, there's a lot of rules around. You have to be a resident of the state or you can only hold so many license and things like that. These assets are not super transferable. So the whole kind of natural M and a process that would happen in many industries is a bit stilted in cannabis. And we're still kind of seeing how some of this stuff plays out. And it is kind of a whipsaw that has happened where there's been it's sort of this growth, growth, growth. Now Covid hits, they haven't kind of re rejigger their plans to be more cash positive. And the ones that can do it are going to do really, really well. The ones that can't. I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen with some of these assets, because even the assets themselves, I mean, the real estate, the machinery and things like that are not super transferable.

So we see good lessons from the very large companies that are outside the scale that we coach at. The companies that have done stock buybacks and squandered, not held cash reserve are not in as good a position today. And in our world, of course, in the world of cash, the thing that we're talking about now is about the opportunity to get more creative in pricing. And I've seen a variety of things and we've even done some things so good, better, best pricing is one of the fantastic things you can do to raise pricing. And if you haven't tried that yet, that's one of the kinds of things that you could try now. And creating reference points to try to change the psychology. Years ago, we introduced good, better, best in a prior company to try to as part of all of our work to 10x the business. And it was really effective at 10xing, our buy in, our commitment, all of that kind of thing. Very quickly we've seen clients do some of the same things, but it could be that you need a different approach. Right. There's not one fix for everything. One of the things that we did as Covid hit is we introduced flexible pricing. So instead like let's look at your problem and let's look at what you have and not try to pigeonhole you into three levels, but figure out what. And our clients have been doing the same kind of thing. So bundling, unbundling, being flexible, creating tiers. Right. What are the things that you could do? Because any price improvement drops right to the bottom line, drops right to your cash position if you collect it right.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing I've seen is, is really more about payment terms is where the pricing may stay the same but coming up with a more strategic offset cash flow for the business. Because as much as I've seen businesses that have great potential and they're making great pivots and things like that, they're just stuck with cash or cash is so tight or such a resource right now for the next say six months that I mean, I'm probably making more over time because we're deferring, you know, we're deferring a lot of the rates or a lot of the payment, but we're taking upside on the, on the later payments so that the total cost is actually increased. But as an offset, it's okay, it's going to be paid out over time or it's going to be paid on, you know, sometime installment or weighted towards the end of the period. And I've seen a lot of clients doing that too. It's like, look, we can, we've got the time particularly for something, you know, for like us as coaches, any kind of service based business. I always say it's like the problem is you can't not work three weeks and then work the 240 hours one week to make up for it. Our time is our time and once it's gone, it's gone. If I can put in the time and do the work and earn the credit even if I'm not getting paid right now, a service based company needs to earn the revenue every week to be successful, even if they're not going to get the cash flow in that time period. Because if you're sitting around, if you're sitting around doing nothing for four or five weeks, you're not going to get paid.

Back in 2009-10. That was the first move we did, was to improve cash by getting paid up front and by getting extended terms from suppliers who were in this together with us. And then the next pieces were to keep some of the cash improvements of payment, but then to layer in the pricing packages to reset where people bought in.

Yeah, never waste a good crisis, huh? Winston Churchill.

I feel like that next one is the pricing kind of thing. And we see a little bit of this with some of the other examples. So in the HBR article, Adams Beasley Associates, ABA asked all their people for ideas, and they came up with 100 ideas. Well, in the aftermath of 2001, I couldn't figure out how to get us the business through the next bit of it, but my employees, the whole team together created the programs and the initiatives that got us through. Looking back on it, it seemed clear, but looking forward, we wouldn't have said that those things would work in that way, but together we did that. And then he cites some other things, like a restaurant that started in the fine dining restaurant, that started doing breakfast, takeout, burgers, takeaway at lunch, and then fine dining in a takeaway style, but done very creatively. And I think that was interesting to see companies adapting and iterating and trying new things. Right. That's kind of like we see more in technology than we see in restaurants. Yeah, in restaurants. Right. Vern's idea. Yeah, tell me.

Yeah, no. There's a juice chain around Detroit. They've got 14 stores, and they've done a fantastic business model flip. Their average juice was probably seven to eight dollars, something like that. They really struggled, of course, at first, and then they figured out the delivery gene and started selling kits. So they moved from 6 to $8 to kits being literally from $12 to $125. Then they started. Yeah, really amazing. And inside, the kits are amazing. Their supply chain wasn't terribly interrupted because it was local produce. So they figured, well, okay, how do we create value? How do we create a new value proposition in a time like this? What do people most need? Groceries. What did they run out of? Fast food. Fresh food. What are they most afraid to go out for? Fresh food. So they started delivering their kits, but also fresh produce as well, expanding what they would normally serve. So they've got this fantastic new business model going. They're experimenting with all kinds of stuff. Charcuterie plates, really expensive gourmet cheeses, and all kinds of things. And they're a juice bar and they're now looking further out into the future to figure out their franchising model. So, you know, they've covered their short term. They have. Oh, I mean, the culture of that company is just mind blowing. They're just so happy with themselves. They were terrified at first. Great example, you know, that collaborative experimentation, taking risks, being on purpose as well. You know, they're. They're really genuinely just like Gravity Payments. You know, they're values led, purpose led businesses. And that is, that's where the profit is. And it's so hard to make that connection sometimes, isn't it? Because everyone thinks that's a soft thing and nice to have. But let's get to the money. And here you have it, clearly stated and on your balance sheet.

Well, Verne cites the story of Wolfgang Puck leading on his restaurants and the diversity of it. So they have a range of restaurants and products and that kind of thing and the speed at which they've done. So they started doing takeout and they started changing the menu right away. And then they started doing online sales, selling products. And what was the product they sold? Yeah, it was like a cooking item or something.

Oh, it was a cookery class. It was a class, wasn't it? $175.

Right. And I coach and have coached in the last few years. I mean, our core is kind of technology companies and, and software SaaS businesses, but events, party rentals, event design and production, travel and tourism, a lot of things like that that are just hammered right now. And in every case, now these are beginning to adapt. And one of the things that we've seen is like hybrid events where like the other day we had delivered here wine and meal kits. And then we went online with a hybrid event like this with Zoom. And then there was mute Live and there were talks and there were breakout rooms where we could visit with like a couple other couples. And then we all made our food and we were all eating the same thing because it had all come delivered that afternoon. And we've started to see these kinds of events that are really great. And now we're seeing some that are beginning to be outdoors and they're starting to do stuff with a little bit of distance. Definitely. These are not deniers, right, of what's happening, but people adapting ways to it. I think that's really interesting.

Well, just there's some of these, I find, are kind of interim strategies. It's like, how do we get by? And then some of them are permanent pivots. I mean, some of these are going to be, hey, look, this is actually better than our original business. Let's just keep doing this and then some of this because the world's going to change. I mean, we're going to have lasting kind of changes to logistics and psychology around some of these industries and what people are willing and not willing to do. And there's going to be markets for some of this stuff. But yeah, it's interesting to see kind of the which ones are just kind of, hey, this gets us by. And then they're like, hey, these are new business models.

Right.

I think what I love about Wolfpen. I'm sorry, what I was going to say about the Wolfgang Pop story was that they treated each restaurant individually. It's got a totally different client base and a totally different metropolitan area and you know, they sliced and diced their clients and delivered what was needed to them as opposed to one brand trying to generalize.

Yeah, yeah, because they've got their licensed brands, they've got their product sales, they added the cooking classes, they've got their takeaway, they've got restaurants like Chinois in Santa Monica, they've got Spago, they've got a whole range of things and different. I mean you wouldn't go from one to the other. They're separated too far in LA to do that kind of thing. But they're each catering to their own area, which is interesting, A great thing. Now complementing all of this is online education and we use online lessons to complement stuff. So when we're talking about any one of the books or tools in the world of Scaling up, in the book of Scaling up, but we'll use the online video lessons. We've got these chunks from 45 minutes to an hour and a half long that we'll assign out to client teams to watch and give them access. And then we've got private implementations where you can go through and do a lot of the work of getting started scaling up using those online courses, both the regular ones and the long form ones at growth institute. So growthinstitute.com where they've got private employees implementations, which is a hybrid of our private coaching with online learning. It's very, very low cost. They've got the full master Business Dynamics where you can do something like an MBA like for scaling up and do it all online now. So all that range of online learning that complements. I think many of us use this in different ways with our clients@growthinstitute.com so let's talk about process, right? If people are what are going to get you through the crisis. And needing to take care of and recruit and retain the best people right now is critical. And then we're going to begin to pivot and adapt the ideas. And who helps us to pivot are some of the people in our teams. Then the next thing is to tighten up the processes. And some of that's been about adapting. But then what about the efficiencies and creating new room for growth? And what are you seeing happening and what kind of work are you doing with clients now in that area?

Anita, do you want to. You want to take this one?

Sure. Yeah. I'll start us off. I know it's your wheelhouse, but I'm loving this piece myself because, you know, working with a theory of constraints is, I think, a business's best friend. You know, that being able to bring a really complex piece of machinery down to a few key. Framing that question and then giving it to a bunch of smart people whom you retained because you are smart, you know, and having them solve those problems solves a lot of other problems at the same time. You're not only, you know, inviting somebody's brain into the process, but you will solve it. You will find the solution because you're already in the learning loop. So I think companies that were already, you know, learning organizations, any kind of ours is, you know, and we're already sort of opening their minds to all kinds of other ideas, are doing great. So framing the questions, working with the theory of constraints, being able to innovate, having a diverse organization, all of those things become really, really important right now. And it starts to be a lot of fun. Now you're over the shock, and now you're in that new place of how's the world going to look tomorrow?

Yeah, yeah. I start a lot of my sessions with the. The drunk man looking for his keys. I don't know if you know the story, but a gentleman comes down the street and he finds a man clearly drunk, looking for his keys at night. He says, can I help you? He says, yeah, I'm looking for my keys. Where do you lose them? He said, well, I lost him by my car down the street there. And he's like, well, why are you looking here? And he says, well, the light is better, right? And I find a lot of teams end up focusing on problems that are easy to see, that are easy to solve, that they like to solve because they want to solve problems.

Right.

But they're not focusing on the real problem that's at hand. And so I think a lot of my job as a coach is just getting them to really figure out what is that limiting constraint, what is the thing that they really need to focus on to move the needle on the business. The other one is my go to is value stream analysis. So that comes right out of lean and it focuses on the delivery of value to a customer. So two things end up happening. One, you have to define your customer who gets to decide what value while the customer gets the desired value. And then you really have to question every single step of your process. How is it adding value to the customer? And we're looking at the seven types of ways, the seven muda in a process of things that I can take out of the process that are not value add. And in times like this, what is really interesting is that customer needs shift, right? Like if you have a core customer while the world has changed for them and you really have to start asking how has this impacted their needs and how does my process deliver on that value and what did I do before that is no longer a value, what am I not doing now that I could do that would add a lot of value? And it's one of the I think cleanest ways to really kind of do process design and process assessment is every step asking, well, does this add value to this new customer situation or not? And we've seen a lot of changes in that. I mean everything like a restaurant obviously is hugely different, right?

That's such a fundamental point. And we're going to talk more about process. But I think the perspective that you point to is really interesting because not just in process, but in our marketing messaging, in our human interactions, we don't spend nearly enough time wondering what the hell is going on with the other person. What's going on in the minds of our customers and our business partners, what is it that they need now? And we're too much in our own world about what we're dealing with and how we're surviving and what we want to promote. And we're not enough thinking in one on one interactions and in our offerings in all of these things, getting over in the other person's world, whether it's a customer or some other kind of partner, and trying to think about what do they think about this, what are they dealing with? How can I help them? Changes the game fundamentally. Get over in somebody else's world.

Most of the challenges, particularly when it comes to like sales and things like that, I run with a lot of these tech organizations, like, oh, we've got this brilliant product that has all these features, that does all this great stuff. You know, we don't understand why they're not going to buy because you don't understand what your customer's thinking. Right. You don't understand their needs, you don't understand how it's being framed for them. And until you do that, you're just, you're going to be wasting time. And honestly, it's a lesson in life too. I think relationships work that way too.

So we've got some deep process coming up with a client this weekend who's going to be looking at how do we better serve, how do we better serve our clients, how do we better fill our jobs and complete our orders and that kind of thing. And they noticed that some of the ways that they're working are really challenged. There's more urgency, there's a scarcity of supply in their world where you think it should be okay, but it's not. And so we'll be spending a lot of time looking at where do things go wrong, where do things break down, what do they need, what do their clients need, how could we reimagine stuff? So after we do a little discovery on what the real issues are, we'll map the existing process and then tweak it. Right. And come up with a few tweaks on how we might do things differently. Rather than trying to redesign completely clean sheet, we're going to look for some iteration because I find it's really hard to do these full re engineering of things, especially in a high demand time in an operating business. Right.

One thing I found really useful at this point point relating to that is to get very granular about the customer segmentation. So, you know, whereas before you might have been organized in product base, sort of revenue stream line items, instead of that, now looking at each different customer base, what's it worth to you? Which is really profitable, which is not, and how are you speaking to them and then getting to a level of conversation with which is far more personal. So rather than having to, you know, just relying on your sales calls or whatever, how are you communicating? How are you connected to them? Is it slack? Is it, sorry, is it WhatsApp? Is it, you know, however. But the more social media contact that's being used and the faster the results, we can even do it in meetings, you know, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? So we're able to talk to specific groups of customers in a very specific way and you know, start to deliver in a very granular Fashion before you even look at sharewallet and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, that's been really helpful in terms of getting back to the process. Sorry.

The other one that's come up I think for several of my clients is that the segmentation parameters have shifted and a lot of them are geographic. Is your industry open or not? What state are you in? And that immediately starts to change the segmentation in terms of well, okay, how am I going to deal with this customer versus this customer is now going to be quite different because these people are actually open, these people are not. Regardless of the size of the company, the situation they're in becomes a big factor in deciding how I'm going to do business with them. I think that taking that customer segmentation route or looking at my customers and saying okay, how do I need to organize them in this new world or in this current situation and start designing process and designing the offering and how I'm going to deliver that based on is going to be much more effective or it's going to give you much better kind of strategic targeting to that than if I just keep using my same segmentation because they're just headspace is going to be quite different.

That's right. It's kind of curious, isn't it? I mean maybe you never thought about them in terms of gender or as you say geography or all kinds of different ways you can start to look at how you're servicing them and, and then playing with tools like I love cash flow story. I'm so addicted to it. You can model anything. You can see the outcome of something can play with that is of course you got to do the work for you. But you know, it just gives you some idea at the touch of a button in seconds what levers you can pull and how you might look at things. It's just, you know that you just feel a lot more confident to try new ideas and to work things backwards into your process when you can and see how the outcome's gonna melee.

So we just did the other day we loaded in a newer client's three years financials into the cash flow story plus six months preliminary year to date. And then we looked at the seven big variables in there and what we came up with was that both impact on cash and, and profit. A lot of them weren't that useful, but there were three that were really, really useful. One was getting paid a little faster. So there's a gap in this company tends to bill only monthly because they do longer, bigger projects. Like if you'd start billing every two weeks instead of monthly or even every week. If you want to be ambitious, you could add a great deal to your cash position, you could improve things greatly. So they beefed that up and then they eliminated the delays. So they, like many of our companies, they had various reasons why something might sit out an invoice round and not get invoiced because it was waiting on some support or there was some question to be resolved. So they eliminated their tolerance for that and they improved the frequency of it. And the next thing that they noticed is that there was probably, even though they'd done some base cost cutting, they probably could do another pass through and find a few percent more on their operating expenses. And we gave them some hacks on how to do that. And then the biggest one that was very eye opening was the opportunity for some price increases. And if they could just squeak out a 5% price increase by blending it into different things in a variety of ways, that would be worth massive to them over the course of the year, both in profit and cash, and end up honing in on those three things. And they were each held by different people. So the ops had some opportunity to go look through and find some things on the operating expenses. The invoice receivables person who worked very closely with that person could tackle getting the frequency of that up. Then the sales marketing team could focus on the blend of things that would. And even actually the service people could contribute to the price increase to finding opportunities to nudge things up a little bit and give them way more room to navigate through to the other side.

Yeah, I like to tell a story. In my tech business, one of the things that we did, we went from monthly to billing every two weeks. And it certainly, I mean, it helped just because of the frequency. But the other thing we realized is that because the invoices were smaller, they actually ended up going through a different approval process. And we got paid faster because they were under $100,000. So it could go through this. It so and so didn't need to approve it. So all of a sudden, not only we were getting paid more frequently, but it went from like, it usually took two weeks, it got down. We were getting paid in like five days just because the size was small. So there's all these unintended consequences of being more frequent about that.

All of that is about tightening up in a business. And you notice when things are growing and business is good, when demand is high, we get sloppy with all those kinds of things. And then there's a crisis and it exposes the weaknesses and kills a lot of businesses. And going to that we're all now doing. In addition to coaching online and doing these kinds of things online, we're doing lots of workshops online. We have a half day scaling up workshop online. You can do it from anywhere. It'll be July 29, the end of the month and you could do it from anywhere. It's San Francisco based and we'll use zoom and we'll use slides and we use our online collaborative spaces and we use breakout rooms. We do a variety of things to begin the process. So if you're new to scaling up or if you have a new team member who hasn't yet sort of gone through some of the basics, get them in that workshop. Do you guys have workshops, webinars, that kind of thing coming up to talk about?

Yeah, I do. Well, I do workshops, roundtables. Yeah, I don't, I don't have dates for my next workshop, but I do, I do a one day, six hour intensive. I try to time it so I can do east and west coast. But yeah, same same ideas. Basically introduction to the four decisions and kind of walking through an assessment of the company. And I do it as individuals and as teams. So you do either way.

I think it makes a difference. And we'll do them privately for companies as well. But having a public one makes it inexpensive and easy to get in a few people. Anita, you what's coming up?

Same thing? Yeah, I've been doing sort of groups of six companies. I just find it's a lot more intimate, a lot more productive for them. So I'm happily, you know, recruiting those groups of six. If you want to be one, I'll share my details and you're welcome to join. Mine are 2 1/2 hours.

2 1/2 hours. You know, the other thing I notice in the world of scaling up is the need and in particular in processes, the need to bring visibility with dashboards and many companies who relied on like whiteboard dashboards and now everybody's working in a either entirely from home or in a blended home and office kind of thing. The visibility to the information is not the same anymore. Which is why we have our scaling up scoreboard that now has integrations with Slack and Salesforce. Do you guys have that? Are they using other tools? I know I also have clients using Monday and so on. But the scaling up scoreboard is probably the thing that we recommend the most.

Yeah, I insist that all my clients have something if they have something. They can choose it, but, you know, I just. I need something that creates a virtual data repository, data visualization tool that helps them see what's going on.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a prerequisite for sure. Whatever works for them and whatever they've been using. And we'll just, we'll work with that and try to improve it.

I noticed before, I've always been a huge advocate of the white whiteboard solution, and I've worked with companies through hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue at high growth rates and used extensive whiteboards in addition to some online tools. But now almost none of them are relying on the whiteboards anymore because they are not all in the same place to see the whiteboards, with two exceptions. One, there's one keeper of the whiteboard. I forget who it is now. And they will put a camera on it. Yeah. And then another of my teams has people working face to face and they wear. Well, actually a couple teams are face to face, but the one that I'm thinking of, they wear goggles and hair nets and masks and booties and smocks, and there's quite a bit of stuff. So using the whiteboards are just fine for them because they're already pretty suited up and working not like, you know.

Not like this, so appropriate distance.

So it still works. But having something that adapts in that way, I think makes a difference, actually.

Typically start them on, you know, some kind of Excel or Google sheet or something like that, just to model it. Because I think that one thing I find is that if people go to a complex tool too quickly, they kind of get overwhelmed by the tool or they get too focused on making the tool work rather than figuring out what is the information they need to display and what frequency and what is the data and what are the calculations they want to have on it. So I'll. Even though it's a little bit more work, I'll have them do it using some simple technical tool to begin with, either a sheet or a Excel. Use that for a quarter or two. And then once we've really kind of ironed out what that needs to look like, then they bake it into some kind of, you know, platform that can do that more automatically.

Well, in the old days I was using. Yeah, I was just using whiteboards and where everyone could see them. But now we've switched to mural. Mural has been a lot more effective because it's just got that creative component. You could switch it up anytime you like. But I think the ownership has increased a lot since we've used the virtual whiteboard as opposed to the physical one.

We're doing all of our planning sessions on Mural now and we'll even be doing that when we're mixed in person. The distance Our new hybrid outdoor planning sessions. So we've got Mural for that and then one or two teams are using Mural as their dashboard who haven't migrated to a formal one. Then we have some people on the Scaling up scoreboard formerly aligned today and then using a mix of the other things. But I think whatever you like, get anything going and then keep like tweaking on it, right? Leveling up before we run out of time, I want to give thanks to our founder and original growth guru, Vern Harnish and to Lucy Summers, who pulls us together and distributes the topic notes for everyone. Our audio is produced and edited by podflight Productions. The audio itself is edited by Albert Burge. Our show notes will be compiled by Ein Codena and proofread by Tim McGowan. If you want to give us some feedback, send us an email to infocalingcoach.com infocalingcoach.com if we can help you with anything or connect you to somebody here or something that we mentioned. Happy to do that. We get notes all the time from folks like it. Subscribe, pass it along. We do shows like this every week so there's always something new and coming out and you'll find that whole back catalog@scalingcoach.com along with the free book offer and downloads of our tool. Before we go to our closing thoughts, Anita, where do folks find out more about you and get your.

Yeah, thank you. I am at leadingedge business coaching.com leadingedgebusinesscoaching.com.

Anita Kabell and Bruce, you it's just.

Bruceckfelt.Com just throw a little at symbol and a.com on there and you'll get me ekfelt.com, bruce@awesome.

Thank you guys. Final thoughts for our listeners and viewers now on what's top of mind for you and scaling forward and next steps. Most important or your insights from today's conversation.

I think for me, I think the biggest thing is mindset. It's just that as long as getting into a creative positive frame of mind will allow you to see opportunities, process information, you know, make good decisions, I think that's probably the best thing you can do right now as a leader is just take care of your mental health and making sure that you're setting yourself up for success here. All the other things will become much easier if you do that?

Yeah, yeah. I would say being on purpose, living your values and you know, absolutely, completely agree with you. Bruce. Get into experimentation. Don't be afraid to try stuff and change quickly when it doesn't work and that will build your culture for you. If you are on purpose and living your values.

For me, I think it's the value of this, of coming together and connecting with people, talking through, sharing ideas, thinking, innovating. But we're doing it with other people in conversation. It doesn't happen in your own head. And there's value, of course in reading books and watching videos and things like that. It's part of our world. Right. But getting live conversation is the compliment and where we integrate and resolve things and figure out how to apply them to our business I think is really key. I want to thank everyone for listening again and we'll talk to you again next week.

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