237: Scaling Up Insights — Coach Panel with Herb Cogliano, Roberto Erario, Liat Lazar, and Anita Cabell

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Hello, hello, hello everyone.

Everyone. Hi.

Oh and hey to all our viewers and listeners. Right now I want to welcome you all to the show. We're going to be talking about some really, really, really important things, especially for the holiday season, about scaling your company, but also about leadership and about dealing with the real human aspects of getting through challenges and that kind of thing. I want to wel our guests, guest panelists, esteemed coaches, rock stars in our world of nearly 200 coaches in the world of scaling up around the world. Herb Cogliano outside of Boston. Right, Herb?

Yeah. Thank you, Bill. Such a pleasure to be here especially this time of year with the holidays and hopefully scaling up the holidays with all of you today with a great, great conversation.

And thank you, Anne Roberto in Vancouver.

Yes, Vancouver, Canada. And today is a sunny day. So kind of enjoying. But thank you for having us here today.

Sunny also here where I am in San Francisco right now. Lovely Herb and some of the others dealing with some snow.

We have our first nor' east Easter today and I think we're scheduled for a foot of snow. So anybody wants to go skiing, come right on by.

Except it's flat.

You know, for me it doesn't matter. You know, in Israel you barely see snow just in one place. So it's Buddha will come anyway to find the right flight and I'm there.

I've skied a couple days at Mount Hermon.

Okay.

Lucky you.

Yeah, it wasn't a big place. Nia, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Bill. Great to be here and see some familiar faces. It is also freezing here in Michigan. However, we'll also be skiing soon and we have a couple of hills so we'll be taking advantage of that. Yeah.

Do you go to the Upper Peninsula there and you get that far away or do you stay closer?

Listen if we're going to go that far, we'll jump on a plane usually. But who knows? This year, you know, we're right around Thanksgiving. We're just giving thanks for whatever comes and however we can do it.

Things are different this year.

We'll roll with it.

All right. We actually have a stay at home order that starts tomorrow. As I'm speaking now, by the time this comes on itunes for the audio listeners, it'll be already well in place. But through the new year holiday, it continues. Stay at home. Lia, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Having me. I'm very, very pleased to be here. And snow is not one of the strongest, strongest things in Israel. Sun is our strength. It's not the case this day and the next. After we have some rain. It's good.

It's morning where I am here. I'll put that out. You can see outside my office windows there. The sun is kind of beginning to come up, but evening where you are. So our time zones are pretty great. We scale up all over the world with all kinds of companies. Hello, everyone, and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. We bring a couple shows to you every week on everything to do with the world of scaling up and the leadership required to get there. Four decisions and then my favorite topic, the fifth decision, what kind of leader you'd like to become. So we're talking today through a world of with the other coaches, the world of scaling up and some of the news and developments that have been going on in our world. Most of the items drawn from Vern's email insights each week and just giving you some additional insight with coaches who have tremendous experience working with dozens and dozens of companies continually. And I love these conversations every month where we get to go a deeper dive and just grapple with a range of topics. I want to remind our listeners that we've got four years of shows now on all of the topics and subtopics. So if there's something in particular that you're listening for in the world of people, strategy, execution or cash, we probably have a show with one of the thought leaders in our back catalog there. So go look for more than 235 episodes at this point. Scalingcoach.com iTunes, YouTube, wherever you get your stuff, we put it out pretty much everywhere. So. And then at our website, scalingcoach.com you will also find the downloads in the show notes for all these folks. So if you can't remember that brilliant thing that Herb said or that cool tool that Roberto Talked about it'll be listed in the show there, that kind of thing. Of course, we're going to give you their links and info before we get too far into things. So I think. I don't know about you guys, but I am slammed right now, right. Annual planning season, which always includes some extra days for all of our regular clients. Plus we've got things like a summit coming up. We'll talk more about that in a little bit this next week from the live stream video session. And we have hundreds, well over 500 registered for that event now. But. So it's a busy, busy time, right? And we go crazy in this time of annual planning and reflection and that kind of thing. On top of that, we have one of the weirdest years of my lifetime, right? The year of COVID and yours. Some great quotes to start us off. Jack Welch, rest in peace. Managers can waste a lot of time at the outlet of a crisis denying that something went wrong. And Jack advises us to skip that step.

When I read that quote, the first thing, I really like Jack Welch, and I like many things that they did on the business side, but I got a little bit disappointed with that quote, to be honest. When I, when I read, like, skip that step, felt me like, okay, it would be easy to kind of skip all the steps we don't like at the same time. You know, you need to go through stages where you actually look back or you actually tend to deny. And there are many stages in recovery, and the first one is actually denying you actually go through a shock. But I think that more than skipping that step, that seems almost unrealistic to do is just be aware that you're going to start with a denial stage. So go through it as fast as possible. Just know that you're gonna. You're gonna face that denial because it's in our nature. The first thing is like, no, that. That didn't happen now. I. It's not possible, right? And something. I didn't do anything wrong or. And then you go over that and you say, okay, now what's next? So the more you can accelerate that getting into politics. But yeah, I mean, it's. It's really important to acknowledge.

So, Roberto, I think what happens, though, and I don't know if this is what Jack meant, but when I hear it, I think people can get stuck like a deer in headlights when there's a crisis. And I think what he's urging us to do is leaders need to orient really quickly. In a crisis, you don't have time to have A prolonged stop. See your environment, see the crisis. Then people are depending on you for direction in action. So I think in its purest firm, that's what we'd all agree and all want our clients to do.

Sure enough.

Sure enough.

You know, I mean, tools like the OODA Loop and, you know, resilient organizations where you can get the brutal facts on the table faster. You know, we. Ideally, that's where we want to be, isn't it? Where we can. Yeah. Vulnerability is our strength. Kindness is a strength, too.

I think that one of the things that we need to struggle with is just to take every rock and try to put it aside and even look at the things that, for example, that are very obvious to the organization and try to touch them. Last week I have. If I'm taking the very simple paste chart, it's the functionality, accountability, the very basic things. You know, we are talking about doing the high level, the working for 2021. But sometimes I see myself struggling on. Let's look at the basic. Let's see what are the basic of the organization before jumping into those plans before. Sometimes it can stack you when you don't know exactly what are those rocks that are in the middle. And sometimes we as coaches, because the organization is giving us some feeling that everything is working very well and we are reluctant to touch those things. So I also like to look at the high level, but also to start and drill down into the small things that may stop the big things from happening.

I think there's something that you all speak to and Robert, I think, brought a lot of wisdom to this notion that in the world of leadership, there is confronting reality and there's no denying reality. And one of the things that's really real is we're human, right? And we have fears and we have shortcomings and we have both generosity and selfishness, right? We have the good and the evil in all of us, the virtuous and the vain altogether all the time. I think it's really real. Top of our news is the tragedy of Tony Hsieh's passing. A lot of folks in the scaleup world have watched and learned from Tony Hsieh's brilliant building of the Zappos brand and the acquisition and. And were surprised and stunned. I know on the west coast, many of the entrepreneurs I know here in the YPO and EO worlds and that kind of thing, have visited Zappos or heard him speak and that kind of thing. So I've had a little closer connection. I worked on a project with a Company that got put to the side when the holocracy, when he declared that started with that. So a lot of shock that. But now news that that is was known was not so secret. Becoming much more public that he struggled with depression and addiction and that there were factors complicating his passing, that it was a true tragedy. And I. Yeah, now I was just.

Going to say, I think what's really profound is that he struggled with that addiction and that's just really a. A challenge for many people out there. But he was so focused on bringing happiness to everyone else.

Right.

And that was his mantra, you know. So although he struggled, he made sure his gift to others was happiness. And that's a beautiful legacy for all of us that he left behind.

I read his book four years ago and it, you know, it was one. It's. It was like a bible for me because I remembered three, three things that. The first thing is that it puts employees as number one in the company. And until then the main stakeholders were the one that have the company's. Exactly. So for me it was something that was astonishing from this point of view. The second thing that I liked in his book that the secretaries, the admin has the ability to look at the people that came for interviews and give inputs because we see so many people that they interview, they are very polite and very generous and they are not generous to the frontline first line employees. And the third thing is the thing that he did with his sales, the customer service, give them delegation with no limitation. It's really amazing.

The thing that I notice again and again with so many of our CEOs and the whole C suite is that there are two things that we love to lie about or hide or cover up or paper over or put a smile on. And one of them is cash. Unless the coach comes from a CFO or CPA type background, we'll find our clients often want to sort of not necessarily look at all of the hard numbers and facts. And I think the other one is our feelings. And when we're struggling with depression, exhaustion, overwhelm. I don't know that that's always discussed. I have had numerous episodes in our client companies of people kind of having some kind of a meltdown within the business. And I had one CEO go through a full scale like emotional break and do all sorts of tragic things within the company. And because I have seen enough entrepreneurs and CEOs who tend to be stronger personalities and have more of these issues than the average person, I was able to call it out. Quicker to the team. But I don't know what kinds of things you deal with and how you talk to the folks on your teams, but I'm always talking to them about making sure that you're getting your rest. The idea of putting on your own oxygen mask first. Right. We've covered that topic before on a show. Are you taking care of yourself? Are you really being open and honest about stuff that is leadership too, right?

Absolutely. This is a bit of a deep subject for me, Bill. It's actually the reason I started my practice, because I've struggled with depression. I'm sure many of us have. And I figured that if one third of the world that we know about is depressed, and Even in the US alone, it's something like a $3 trillion problem, you know, that we're not actually, we're looking at the. Not that, you know, the symptoms, not the cause, then perhaps a great place to start is, you know, how do we affect leadership? How can we, you know, how can one leader exponentially affect other people's lives so that they have a life worth, you know, a life of meaning and a life of purpose? So I thought that was the fastest way to make impact. And it's no surprise at all that I seem to attract leaders that are, you know, CEOs and business owners that are in that place and really want some help digging out of it. And I would say, you know, 95% of the work is psychological and support and mindset and, you know, and then everything else can follow.

Yeah.

Anita, I think for me too, as a scaling up CEO, I was trying to scale up my personal time. I was so invested in the company. I had several young kids, wonderful marriage, but I just wasn't balanced. And that imbalance made me a lesser leader. And it wasn't relatable to the people. And so using things like the one page personal plan, going through and finding those most important relationships in work and outside of work, and finding that balance was really key. But I think a challenge for all of us leaders is how do we do that for our people on our team. But like in a plane, you got to put your oxygen mask on first before you can help others. And that's one thing I found was very important as a leader. And I echo what you said the.

Prior episode is with Kevin Lawrence. He wrote a book, put your own oxygen mask first about self care. Roberto.

Yeah, so I think that there are different levels also. We want to consider in this, right? There is a depression that can come from, like Anita was saying, lack of purpose or getting disconnected with your purpose so you can make lots of money or you can get into the trenches and get so caught up into the today operation that you forget even why you wake up in the morning and what excites you, what difference are you making in the world? And sometimes just, and I know this with my clients as well, like when they get reconnected to the, to the bigger picture, they kind of zoom out, leave the operations to somebody else in the company and they do what they are best at doing. That is looking at strategy, looking at the long term goals, looking at the impact, looking at how can they make a difference for their company as well as for the community that they operate in. There is a different energy that comes into their life, into their work and that many times helps them and prevent burnout. And then there is more like a physiological element or dysfunction where you actually have an unbalanced or more state. So you actually need some medicines, you actually need some care. And that's not just a psychological exercise. It becomes more like you need some drugs, you need some treatments that are much deeper, right? Not those type of drugs.

Don't self medicate. You're not the right one to diagnose yourself.

That's a good point because otherwise it's going to be nice.

We text it, look, a guy like Tony Zappos makes his life about creating happiness and the people happy and the customers happy and that kind of thing and puts a lot of focus on that and is hungry for that himself and is grappling with some underlying issue. And then self medicates is a classic thing that we see and many of us do at different degrees for ourselves, right? We all do things and some of it's healthy and some of it's not healthy. And I think bringing, it's interesting not just with the mental health well being, but with all things. Self awareness is such power. If we bring self awareness first to ourselves, then to our company. So how am I doing? How do I care for others? What's going on with me? How do I feel in my body today? How am I feeling mentally? Like all of that kind of mindfulness is the term and self awareness is the greater body of that can actually be applied to the company too. So there's like oh, we're the best at this and we're the best at that. I'm like really? Have you asked your customers, do they agree? Are you in fact credible in those things that you say? And very often we find that our differentiators, our unique abilities are not the way that we see them is not the way the customers see them personally and within the organization.

Right?

Absolutely.

Bill.

One of the things that we did is that we'd use a software like a TinyPulse or a 15 5, and every week on the hundreds of employees that we had, it would ask them that one simple question. How are you feeling this week?

Right.

And we knew that anybody that was under a 4, a 1 through 3, that was like Seal Team 6 coming in to kind of, you know, not overwhelm, but just make sure we're there, we're present, we're visual, we're supportive. And I think now more than ever, where we're virtual, things like that are very important to keep that well being.

When you are in the pic, you are usually lonely. This is some of the things that are very common to be in this position. So you need to take care of, to put around you people that you can trust and not trust in the meaning, you know, that I can trust them, do the job, and that I can trust them, that I can share my feelings. Feelings. And sometimes a good coach is also a good solution for this. But I think that exactly here I am the one to take. So this. I think that not to be alone is one of the things that are the key. The key. The key to succeed, to make sure that you have your friends, the people that you consult in the company, outside the company.

You know, one thing that I'm noticing, Bill, sorry to stop you on your track there, but one thing that I noticed, especially in the last 10 months or nine months, whatever it is, since COVID kicked in and changed our life, is that we had to give up our distractions. And giving up distractions means that now you're in contact with yourself. And many things that, in a way or another, like as you said, some things were very helpful, like maybe going for a walk or exercising or being in a class. Very helpful to recharge. But at the same time, many times they were used as a distraction to get away from your problems. And as you said, the key word here is mindfulness. There is something that we need to own regardless of the distractions, positive or negative distractions or neutral distractions, they are still distractions. We're still going to come back to ourself, to our issues, to our challenges, to our. Our dynamics. So working on ourselves through mindfulness, through meditation, or just slow down and just be with yourself right now is more important than ever because it just kind of allows you to be where you are without Anybody helping you most of the times because they can't and because you can't get access to many levels of help and be okay with your thoughts, you know, that's meditating. It's a great way to do, to get there. Doesn't have to be esoteric or anything like that. It's just sit with, with your thoughts, look at your, follow your breath and just, just with, go with that for 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day. I have a company, one of my clients that they gave an app at Space. It's one of the most famous app and that meditation world. And to all the employees, they give a free app because obviously in 10 minutes a day they notice that actually employees are more present, are more relaxed and the burnout that they were going towards has been slowed down, hopefully avoided altogether. We'll see in the next few months. But I think that's, that's a key part. Instructions.

One of the other things I've seen companies do is sometimes when you're home, your spouse, your kids don't always know and can't relate to work the way you do because they're not in it. So I see a lot of peer coaching going on in companies where you're not talking to your boss or maybe you're not as comfortable to be as vulnerable as you may like. But a peer coach has been a great way for people to open up, get direction, be heard and then be able to move forward. So your ideas, some of the other ideas taking a pulse, I think are really good steps to help leaders.

Yeah, I think a couple of things that came up for me with the Tony story and first of all, you know how amazing it is that almost every one of us who'd had any contact or read the book or felt as though they knew him personally, like he was able to really connect with so many of us on so many levels. But he was actually on a digital detox when, you know, he was at his most addictive recently. And so, you know, the idea of surrounding yourself with healthy people and keeping, you know, really keep. And you may not always know that for yourself. Right. So I think your own strategic counsel right now is so important because we're isolated, we see each other less. We don't have that kind of immediate peer, you know, response to bounce back from, to keep people safe.

Let's take a quick poll around this group. What are the mindfulness, well being kinds of practices that you guys use? What do you do regularly for yourselves?

No, for me it's daily prayer in A daily bike ride. If I don't do those two things, my head's not right, and it just starts the entire day off well.

And when you go out on the bike ride, about how long does it take you? Do you feel. Till you get like some. Some value out of it. Right. There's probably a point in there.

Yeah.

I think the first 10 minutes, almost like the weekly huddle, it takes you 10 or 12 minutes for your brain to kind of just unfree up from all the clutter. Yeah, it's about. Yeah, 10 to 15 minutes, the brain kind of just shuts off, and now I'm just silent. And then beautiful things start to flow in. But you need to warm up.

Yeah. Nice. Roberto.

I do daily meditation between 20 minutes to one hour, and that helps a lot. And in addition to that, what I do is I have a couple of podcasts that I really enjoy. One is actually the same guy from Headspace that has also radio Headspace. It's six minutes a day, but I listen to that on my way back. I. I walk 25 minutes in the morning to go to the office and 25 minutes back home. So when on my way back is my way to kind of disengage from my meditation.

And some.

And some podcasts that are very focused on mindfulness.

Anita.

I have started to practice gratitude before I go to sleep. So when I got my head on the pillow, I try and prime myself for how I want to feel when I wake up. And then when I wake up, I don't immediately chuck myself out of bed anymore, as you said, Herb, I really focus on intentions. And then I will take my walk to Roberto. I go make sure I'm in nature as often as I can when the weather allows, and, you know, have my spirituality commune then. And that seems to be a great practice.

Leah, what are the things you do to take care of yourself?

I'm practicing the positive psychology. Every. Every day before I'm going to sleep, I'm saying three things, positive things for myself that I did at that day. Even small, small things.

So not a recurring affirmation, but something fresh and topical.

Yeah. Like it. It's. It's. It can be personal. Having a coffee with a friend, you know, getting a compliment or accomplishing something, or even did my exercise even though I was very, very tired.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. So I do. I start and end my day with a bit of gratitude and awe. I try to be awed by the things that I see around me and then grateful for stuff. And I have a reminder for that, I'll do breathing work and body scan kinds of meditations. I used to. As a kid, I was given a mantra and taught the TM approach, but I rarely, rarely use that. But breathing work and body scans I'll definitely use a lot. Sometimes I'll follow that with guided visualization if I'm trying to work through things. I used to do a lot of running and biking. I don't do hardly any cardio anymore, but I noticed on those after maybe more like 20 minutes. And the first few minutes were just like, I'm in something different. I've run away from the problems. But then after about that, they would all kind of come back. And then the emotional space, you know, that, that cardio high, that buzz that you can get at times would kind of come floating in and I might cry or laugh or whatever, like be a huge range of emotion. Then for the next hour and a half or however long I was going out. And I definitely try to get into nature, like do something out as often as possible. I mean, I'll take. I live in a very wooded area, so I'll take walks around the neighborhood at times or I'll go surfing this week. Things like that, where I get out, feel connected to something different than my problems.

So you invest a lot of time in, you know, your well being. It's not going like this actually a lot of time.

Then the other thing that I do is like an evolution of mirror work. And so I'm always inspecting the guy in the mirror. Not like, oh, what's wrong with you? And why do your face still look like that? And you know, that. Not so much a self critique, but, but like, what's going on with you? Like, are you okay? What do you need right now? Like, like a check in kind of thing.

I love that. Yeah. Or mirror work.

Yeah.

Nice.

And I, I'm like. And sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm pissed off right now. Or. Or I'm. I'm feeling a little anxious or afraid or, you know, or I just, I'm fired up today. You know, I crank the music up. Oh, there's another thing that is a huge thing for us. A few years ago we started adding these Sonos speakers. These are like WI Fi house network speakers. I think I have 11 now around the house. My house isn't that big, but like there's like music all the time around and, and you know, and, and it's all genres. And I'm always trying to like tap into my mood and then, and then move through it. So that then I might like dance in the shower, the bathroom as I'm getting ready and just kind of feel how it is. But then there are other times when like a passing of a friend hit me and I found myself with a certain music, just swaying and sobbing as I took my morning shower. Right. Like letting all of that. I think movement helps a great deal. Whether it's the biking or the running or that kind of thing.

That, yeah.

Getting into the body feelings of it.

You know, what was helpful in the office is that, you know, doing that daily meeting where you're standing up so you can, can get that kind of movement. And then we'd always do like a gratitude reset, the beginning of every meeting. If you've done any work with Dan Sullivan, we did a positive focus.

Yeah.

And for some reason everybody was racing to the meeting in a different mindset. Maybe an irate customer, maybe an employee issue, maybe something at home. And just doing that three minute reset of gratitude. One thing as we go around the table, it takes no more than a minute. Just sets the stage for a really productive, energized conversation. And we can all do that with our family. I did it when I got home from work before we ate dinner. All right, troop, give me one great thing as you're looking at, you know, tonight. Well, they thought I was a nut. They thought I was a nut. But all these principles apply. And so I, you know, bring those into the company too, because mindness and wellness is important.

Nice. So I think we've, I think we've covered this in a lot. There's, there's not only value in your well being, but also in dealing with and scaling your company if you'll actually get real about where you are. I like to tell people that if you wanted to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles and you put those things in some kind of navigation device that you were in fact in Sacramento, you'd end up in the water. Right. And. Or in the mountains or somewhere else. Right. So if you don't know the starting point, like how you are in the world, then you're going to end up doing some weird stuff. And it's really hard to see ourselves. Which is why I think a coach is so valuable as a coach. I know that I'm really, really valuable to people. Not to be too boastful, but I know that I'm valuable not because I'm so brilliant and I do think I'm smart, but because I bring a fresh perspective. I'm not living in your world. I'm not dealing with your problems. I'm not 20 years in your industry probably and I think a coach any of us with a little bit of background and experience and that kind of thing and we all bring a different range of CEO and related type experiences and deep skill in the scaling up tools but we can see the world from outside your thing and help you get through it because we're not in the business the way that you are. So if you need a coach we we've got about 200 of us all over the world right right here, Tel Aviv, Detroit, Boston, Canada, Western Canada. So all over. And I'm working with two coaches now in India and I think we have three there now. So we've got coaches literally all over the world. If you'd like help to find one, you can contact any of these folks here. I'll put up their info again at the end of the show. But they'd all love to talk to you if they're style feels right to you and they're in your neighborhood or your time zone or whatever works for you. But with over 200 if we can help match you with someone, we're happy to do that. Drop us A note to infocalingcoach.com we're glad to help you find the right coach for your particular challenge goals and the style or the vibe of coach that you need. Moving on. Next thing, Elon Musk. Elon Musk doesn't seem like always the nicest guy in the world, kind of obnoxious in many cases, but definitely someone to pay attention to. Definitely someone who's doing something different. Right? Elon's quote in Vergen Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is a disaster and Elon's gone through like a lot of things and changing things, addressing not only the world but their own company and that kind of thing. When they have an event they just get right back in it and lean into the change. I don't know what did you guys get from the notes and comments from Elon?

When you feel I'm not going to the disaster part I'm before. Once you feel very comfortable in your position and in the stage that you are, it means that you need to do the change. Something. Something. It means that something is wrong and you need to feel it from yourself or to get, or to get to start to get feedback because you can't be in your, in your way that you, you feel too, too comfortable. This is, this is my motive.

Well, a Payment company, a rocket company, a car company, a solar business, a battery business, a turtle business, a flamethrower.

It's a neuralink company as well, right?

The neuralink thing. Yeah. It gets his hands in all these different things. Right. Elon says, how does he become an expert in things? He reads books. You can tell we like books. I actually don't read nearly as many books as you might think I do. I try to get through a few a month, but not as nearly as many. But I consume information voraciously. So whether it's books or online articles or things like that, I'm looking for that. How do you guys do this and what do you get your leaders doing?

I think the biggest thing that scaling up is doing is not really scaling up companies. I think our job as a coach is scaling up the leaders who ultimately scale up their company. And one of the things I'll often say to the CEO is you're talking about change and development of your people, but you have to become the change that you want to see in your company first.

Cowbell on that comment, man. If you're not willing to work on yourself, you're screwed. You will bring the company right back down to the level that you were at before. If you don't also work on yourself and the process.

Well, you have to. It's part of scaling up, isn't it? If you are not scalable, if you're not healthy, if you're not in the right place, you can't possibly build on that foundation or it's a mess if you do. And you know, one of the reasons I think we have to encourage our leaders to, to lean in and learn and grow is that they have to think big. And you know, back to Elon, did anybody, you know, all of our visionaries that we quote constantly, they think huge and, you know, the ability to project themselves into the future, believe it's possible. And then that future back thinking, I would say, you know, the voracious appetite for learning and the future back thinking is something that all of those visionaries have in common and we, you know, encourage our leaders to learn from them too.

Is Elon big area? Audacious goals are not 420ft, five years ahead, therefore, five, five years ahead. And the. And he accomplished them very easily. So he's a very unique in. In this aspect.

Well, the other thing I love about Elon too is a perfect textbook example of an X factor, right? How you solve an X factor. So thinking big, how do you solve some of the world's biggest problems. And he wakes up terrified that, you know, we're not going to have a planet tomorrow so therefore we better move to Mars. He's you know, driven by that fear and how do you sol that problem and working backwards and you know, it becomes possible for a non auto person or a non aeronautical person to, to accomplish these things because they're solving problems, not thinking, you know, where am I today versus who's in the market? It's how, how am I going to develop a battery that goes from five hours to, you know, 500 miles? And how do you solve the consumer reluctance by you've got to supply everything yourself because it just doesn't exist.

Getting at those questions and figuring out why is it so expensive to get to space? Oh, maybe one of the reasons is because we throw away the rocket every time and then you go, well, maybe we should figure out how to reuse the rocket. But that's such an outsider kind of a question that's really, really hard to do for most of us. But if you really probe and question the fundamental assumptions of your world, your industry, that lets you start to possibly reinvent things, right?

And people find that X factor so hard to find. But that's exactly how you go about it. What are you willing to solve that others can or won't?

This is part of our strategy session in scaling up. This is exactly what we are trying to, to define your uniqueness, your what are you different? What can you do different?

Think about some of the companies that we talk a lot about. Some of them very, very large now. So you've got SpaceX who's actually reusing rockets. We have Southwest who operates in such a different way from all the other airlines out there. You've got Costco that charges a membership fee to shop at their stores. Time and again we keep going back to these companies that do things a little differently than most of the industry does. And in the difference lies a great deal of profit and opportunity. Not necessarily the biggest though, right? Like Ikea is a very small percentage of the whole furniture industry, but dominates that little category of flat pack furniture and is a truly powerful global brand as a result of.

Of it right in the most profitable.

Yeah, so you have to walk through that horrible maze of a store which for some of us is. I'd rather stab myself in the eye. My wife kind of loves it though because she's like, oh, it's discovery. So it's a whole activity of looking for things and like, oh, I could do this or do that. There and then you have to strap it to your roof, your car, and then take it home. You have to build it and your marriage has to survive that whole, whole day of activity. And then the first time you try to move that bookcase, it'll completely fall apart.

Never a true word. Dare to be bad. Dare to be bad, to be great.

You know, Elon, just to compliment what you are saying, Bill, is that he solved all these big problems. But then when you look at what he did and how he did it, and also what he paid attention that other companies did not pay attention to, was the experience. It's like I just listened to one of the most recent interviews that he did in Berlin, where he's opening actually now a new gigafactory. And it's all about fun. That's what really is always fascinating when I read this book. His biography was interesting that it's all about giving an experience of excitement, giving an experience of style, giving an experience of enjoyment. That's why cars are way different than the Nissan Leaf that opened the market, but, you know, had a very small niche market. When Tesla, you look at Tesla, you said, this is a piece of art, right? And there is so much that he went into that, so much intention that was not just like, hey, let's try to sell as many cars as possible. It was more like, let's create something that people will enjoy driving. Let's create an experience. And even if you look at SpaceX, even the suits, right, the spacesuits that they use, they are cool. Like this guy, really, you look at.

Him and say, wow, a level of design to it. You know, I even forgot Starlink, right? Starlink now starting to get the first beta users. It's gonna be a huge deal in places like Canada, where if you want to spend time in your cottage, you want that Starlink terminal because you're going to get $99 a month, you're going to get super high speed, fairly low latency satellite connection, right? It's going to make all kinds of interesting things possible. Listen, if you want to learn and add new perspective to alter your thinking to get outside that realm, another way to do it is to participate in some of our education. And at least with the live stream going on right now, in this next week, if you're watching this fairly immediately in the video, we have a masterclass in scaling up the Vern's leading December 8th and 10th or 8th through the 10th. On the first day, we've got Horst Schultz, Ritz Carlton CEO, author of Excellence wins talking Sharing some experience that's completely free. You can go to scalingapp.com, register for that and hear that talk on Tuesday, then Wednesday, Thursday. Verna lead a few hour session each day with some guest speakers on subject matter. We've got people like Ron Lovett and others coming in that will deep dive on people, strategy, execution, cash, all the scaling at basics. And I have the distinct honor of being Vern's co host for that event. So I'll be there to back him up and help pepper in some fun and music and help run the exercises. So I'm super excited about that. You can go register in that. There are team rates for that. Just go to scalingup.com Register for the masterclass December 8 through 10, including the keynote opening on the first day with Horst Schultz. You could just do that one for free if you want, or you can do the whole thing. But I think it's a great opportunity to kind of expand that stuff. And unless you've been working deeply with a coach for a long time, this is a great idea and a great value. So if you've been working with Anita or Roberto or Liad or Herb or any of us for like a year or more, the whole thing would give you some new perspective. But if you've been kind of on the periphery and you haven't worked in, I highly recommend this for that. And that first part is free. Like I said, that's 12:30 to 1:15 Eastern Time on the 8th with Horse Schultz. So I don't know, do you guys have. Are you Horst fans? I know I've been a Ritz Carlton fan over the years.

You know, I love some of the systems they put in place to empower their people. Giving them a certain amount of authority with a certain budget to do whatever it takes and permeates the entire company. Their daily huddles are cascaded throughout the entire across the globe. A great example of a scaling up master practitioner.

Yeah, employee empowerment. Cascading huddles on a global basis. People are like, oh, we can't do the huddles. I'm like, well, yeah, Ritz Carlton seems to do fine with it.

They have two wonderful practices, actually two great stories. So one is the practice of complimenting the team each day. So, you know, they take notes and notice if somebody's just helped an old lady with their groceries or whatever and they put it into a hat each day and somebody gets voted for, you know, extra, extra service, which is just a beautiful practice, I think. And so somebody goes home each day Feeling great. And everyone else hopes that they can be that guy tomorrow. Love it.

Yeah.

The other thing they take very seriously is this idea of the orientation, the onboarding, the welcome. Right. Making that a really powerful experience at the beginning of the company. Really starts on a good foot. I know that I've done that well and at other times I've done that in a really mediocre fashion in different companies.

Bill, we saw our company. A lot of orientations are hr, your immediate boss, your immediate team. But they've had some creative things they say to socialize to the employee, to as much of the entire company up front. And they do these really creative scavenger hunts company wide.

Oh yeah.

Go to different departments.

Did that.

Yeah.

Gamification. This is one of the things that is very popular now to do it, to plate it is the orientation process.

And I find it's a great fueling energizing for the current employees because they see new blood, new personalities, new energy coming into the company. It actually works both ways.

I think also Tony Shea, just to name him again, had a very good way to onboard people. Right. They had this process after the crazy selection that went through in Zappos. Actually I read a stat that it was easier for somebody to be admitted at Harvard Business School, then get a job at Zap was the percentage of acceptance was so low. And still after you got selected, you went through the interview process. You had one month in every single department. You kind of experience actual work in the warehouse. Even if you were an executive, you spent like three, four days at the warehouse. Three, four days answering the phone, three, four days at the front desk. So kind of got full experience. And after one month of all of this, he would put all together in a room, all the new hire in the room and offer a check. Initially was $1,000. Then he went up to $2,000 to leave the company. Yeah.

Paid.

That's the power of onboarding. And also getting that check. About 4% of people actually took the check and left the company. So that makes you think like why somebody built such a very successful. How was culture so successful? Is also because there was so much, so much thinking, so much process into the hiring, into the. Into the selecting part. And even like preventing after the first experience that somebody would get stuck in a company where they didn't want to work and pay them to leave the company. I think it's fantastic, right. That speaks loud about his ability to really invest in the culture company.

One example from Tony as well, that I think was absolutely incredible and I haven't seen it happen anywhere else yet. Was the. Was how he solved that problem of promotion, you know, so everybody wants to be something else tomorrow and you get hired in this position and you know, you really want to, you know, you want to leave if you don't get the promotion you want. And how he solved that problem was so elegant. I thought that he said, okay, if you want to get promoted, absolutely go for it. And he had this sort of internal university of all the different steps it would take to get to the next level. And he'd say you can do that as fast as you can do that. But actually the courses are timed so that it could be probably a minimum of six or eight months. So you would absolutely have almost like a university where you'd have to pass each level of each course and then when you finally got to that stage, you'd forgotten about the, the fact that you wanted to be that, you know, that title tomorrow and you really know your stuff. And then you get rewarded when you get to that stage. And it was just such a great way of removing the pressure from the organization and putting it back onto the employee and making sure they've got the right drive and skills to get to that next level.

Speaking of this development, are any of you guys leading workshops coming up in the next couple months? Yeah. All right, tell us about it. Shout it out, Anita.

Oh, I've got a workshop, Annual planning workshop, virtual, using as many novel tools as I can. I've got lots of inspiration from you, Bill, about that, including music and dance, because, you know, it's just such a great level and you are the only person I know that can dance at 9am and I love you for that.

What about your. Yeah, I have a public workshop coming up on the 9th actually, so burn actually changed.

So if you're watching this immediately, we just had another somebody pop on. Roberto Arari has got a workshop coming up this week on the 9th.

On the 9th in the morning from 8:30 until 1:00 Pacific time. So we're depending where you are in the time zone. You can find information on the website and from the website to the Eventbrite.

Page right now I'll also. I'm putting on the crawl as we go. Herb, any workshops or events to promote or talk about?

Yeah, so, you know, it's really interesting. I get to do the training for the master Scaling up course at the Growth Institute and we have a great new cohort coming up in March. Yes, we normally have almost 300 people from around the world that take advantage of that program. So absolutely. Check out Vern next week and in addition to next week, come back in March and bring your whole team with you.

Awesome.

And Liotte, I'm in the stage that scaling up. I'm the first scaling up coach in Israel, so I'm in the same stage of doing a lot of marketing activities. And on Monday I have a presentation to one of the VCs, local VCs, to present them the scaling up method. And this is my priority for the few weeks to start and do those sales and marketing and marketing calls because, you know, I'm only one and I'm a boutique and I want to pick up my, my good, my good partners that can. Would like to commit and scale. So this is my focus right now.

You know, shout out to our listeners here and in Israel. Israel is really well known for startups and we really want to develop more scale up. So I'm very excited that you're there. Some of our listeners and my friends know that I lived in Israel for a time, I went to a technical school in Israel and, and I have a lot of love for it. My Hebrew's not so good today, but I still understand a lot. But anyway, in the beginning stages of this, doing a little private workshop, even if it's a half day or something like that, get in touch with Liat, she will break it down and make it appropriate and deliver to you in Hebrew.

Exactly.

Which makes everything easier to, to get it localized in that way. So it's really great. You know, I've done work literally all over the world and in more than 26 countries now doing scaling up work and working with people. But getting people local can really help to make a difference as well. Not just getting that, you know, Silicon Valley.

Bill, just one last point. Come to the workshops, come to the class. But if you were like 25 days away from the New year, you need a new plan, strategic facilitation, somebody to help guide your team through that. The timing couldn't be better. And all of us can help you if you have the need.

Yes. So, and, and you know, all the coaches have a different availability and that kind of thing. We're out of days between now and the New year, but starting in January, we start to have some more days. I'm leading a workshop January 21st. It'll be online and our last one was attended with people from India, Asia, Europe. Like I had people from all over. And these workshops the coaches do individually are smaller. The one with Vern next week has over 572 registered at this point. But we will. The ones that we will do individually will be much more intimate. You'll only have a couple of companies in some of these. And except for Roberto.

Who is a.

Huge draw every time. And the vast.

I always cap them. I mean this one has less than 20 people. It should be about six companies, seven companies.

But you've been packing them now, right? Yeah, I think it's great. So you can get a little more intimate, a little more connected.

Yeah, yeah. I like to.

I do about five companies per workshop.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I like four. I like four. Yeah. Just my.

How many different conversations and ideas and perspectives? Just one is then totally customized and tailored. But when you have a few more and you attend with, not only do you reduce your cost, but you get some different perspectives. You're like, oh, that's what happens in a staffing company. That's what is happening with a software service company. And so you can hear some outside ideas that I think are really useful. You'll find all of the master list of workshops@scalingup.com or at any of the addresses that we've been running in the crawl and we'll show again at the end. Vern reminds us, as does an HBR article, that one of the most important KPIs is time with people, time with customers, time with your teams, time with influencers. And that's gotten more challenging now as there's been more social distancing and virtual connection, that kind of thing. But I've noticed quite a few are doing things like virtual coffees and virtual happy hours and things like that where folks have. Coming up, one of our scaling up success stories, Steel Case has definitely elevated that put focus on that added bicycles to their campuses so that they can get around to folks and connect with people and trying to make email a last resort. I truly, truly hate the amount of email I get and the nonsense that comes through. How are you guys dealing with this? How in this time are you enhancing connection and talk time for people?

I think for a lot of our companies, we're doubling the daily huddle. We're finding one part communication is not enough because people are so isolated. So we're doing them in the morning short and then doing them at the end of the day as a recap. Yeah, but it's giving them more opportunity to connect more often.

100% usually avoid email unless you know email is for long for if you get. If you would like to get the answer in a few days, you know it's not a really communication tool, which immediate communication tool.

Right.

Call someone. WhatsApp someone.

Yeah, I like that. I like to hear the voice and sometimes seeing them online. There's so much zoom now and people are self conscious that I don't necessarily need to. We're going to have a certain amount of it anyway now. But I've been enjoying having more phone calls and I can put in my earbuds and just take a walk or pace around. And there's something intimate about the audio only.

Certainly new skill. I am just loving WhatsApp. I mean, of course we have our execution software to keep on track and everything, but WhatsApp I find just breaks down all the barriers to conversing with somebody and you get an immediate answer. It's just two seconds. And it was amazing to me actually after living in Asia for so long how few people use social media for a community communication platform. But it's getting more popular of course now this year and yeah, I find it just breaks down all the barriers for, you know, should I make that call or whatever. You're just so, you know, kind of intimate really already.

Yeah. So a couple other shout outs, I think that'll make a difference. Herb talked about the online courses. So if you want to do things at your own pace and do a certain amount of self implementation, if you like online learning, we have fantastic stuff at the Growth Institute and then you can combine it with some coaching sessions either by zoom or phone or that kind of thing. I'm doing that now. Herb's leading a cohort with the Growth Institute. So there's a huge range of courses. In addition, we put a lot of them together with some longer form ones in a Master of Business Dynamics, kind of like an mba. But for scale ups in actually getting that, we've got the Scale Up Master Business course, we've got the Exponential course with my old friend Salima Smail. We've got top grading. So there's quite a bit of material in there. And then one of the other things that's been super displaced right now is visibility. Rockefeller habit number 10. The company's plans and performance are visible to everyone in the company and where they may have been before when you were all in the office. If all of you are not in the office anymore or you have a mixture of in and out, that situation, room and dashboards may not be working in the same way anymore. So we have a purpose built software tool, the Scaling Up Scoreboard, also known as Align today that I have a number of companies in and using and it's now integrated with Salesforce Slack and you can use Zapier to connect it with lots of other things. So it's becoming much more flexible and powerful. Any of us would be happy to give you a tour of that. You can find links to that in our show notes and beyond. Let me give a shout out to our guests and hosts, co hosts for today. Big thanks to Herb Cogliano, Anita Roberto, Hrario, Liott, Lazar. I'll let you guys shout out your stuff in just a second as well. If our show helped you, please share it with somebody else. Of course, if you like it and subscribe, you'll get them all the time. If you give us a great review that really helps us out to get visibility in the world. If you'd like to comment or question anything, send an email to infocalingcoach.com of course, as I said before, all the back catalog of shows is@scalingcoach.com coaches, final stuff from you.

I was just going to say pay it forward. I think we've all got taller standing on the shoulders of others and we've been very blessed with this community of Scaling up and the coaches and all the CEOs and their teams and everyone stay healthy.

Thank you, Roberto.

Yeah, my first thing would be stay centered. Just keep, keep safe, keep yourself safe and, and stay centered and then help others to do the same. And that's what we're doing in our community as well. So I'm pretty sure that if you need any help, just reach out. We all for the first time happy to help you with no cost whatsoever. So it's always good to hear different perspectives and different help.

Pretty much all of us will talk to you. Yeah, absolutely. And help you even if we aren't your coach ongoingly. We'll get you started thinking about something.

Liat, as a fresh joine, I'm very happy to be part of it and very happy to launch Scaling up in Israel. Looking forward.

Thank you. Welcome to you to all the scale ups in Israel and around the country. Tel Aviv and around the country. Anita.

I think after everything that's happened this week, it's really about being healthy, having the right people around you. Take as much external help as you can get and give as much as you can get and be kind.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Yeah. I want to give special thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework in the original Rockefeller Habits this show. Our show is produced by Lucy Summers. The audio is edited each week by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions and our show notes are written up by Ein Kodina and proofread by Tim McGowan. Thanks everyone for joining us and keep scaling up. We'll talk to you again as a panel next month and with one of our guests next week.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you.

Bill.

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