241: The Best of Scaling Up 2020

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out today. Hello everyone and welcome again to another episode, another best of episode, recapping all of our great guests and great conversations from the last year. This has been an incredible and deeply challenging year for so many and and we've had some great guests on sharing their wisdom on how to make the best of your life and your business in the world of scaling up this year. So listen in as we hear some great moments from some of the best shows of the last year. Central to scaling up in any time, but especially at this time, is the need or importance to get your processes nailed down right, to execute and consistently, relentlessly, again and again. If you've got team members who are asking the same questions to you over and over again, and you wish there was some way to direct them to help themselves on their own so they could get their work done without burdening you with answering those same questions or doing things in an inconsistent fashion, well, there is a way to do that, and that way is our thanks to our sponsor Suite Process. Suite Process is a software tool that helps companies centralize the place for all their procedures, processes and policies for the business. It makes it easy for the managers and the leadership of the team and all levels of employees to collaborate together not only to create the procedures and policies and processes, but to then refine those and make it easy to follow those on a continuous basis. So create them, improve them and use them. So there are a couple things that you want to get right. We want to get everybody using the same kinds of things on a regular basis so we get that relentless repeat. And then when a process, a procedure or policy isn't working right, we want to refine it and we want to have a central place where everybody can do that in a collaborative fashion. That's Suite Process. Suite Process is the one source of truth that your company can use to get itself handled and create that kind of relentless repeatability and get that monkey off your back with having to run every little aspect of the business all the time. So it'll make it easy as well to train new and existing employees in order to assign them tasks and give them things that you want done in the same way on a regular basis and to make sure that that's being done in the most current way possible. By default, Suite process offers a 14 day trial, but using our dedicated signup link for the Scaling Coach and the Scaling Up Business podcast, you'll get an extended 28 day free trial nearly a month to work through the Suite process tool. Get used to it, throw up a couple processes and start to feel like it's there for you. There's no credit card required for this signup, so just go to HTTPs://www.sweet process.com scaling up all one word lowercase so sweet process.com sweet process.com if you're in Canada Scaling up having a little fun with our Canadians, the link there is your dedicated signup link to get the special offer of this ad because we want to help all of our Scaling up listeners get great access to this and get yourself executing more consistently and reliably. Good luck. Sweetprocess.com scalingup. Hello everyone. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show. This show is all about everything to do with growing and scaling your business, no matter what the economy is doing or what industry you're in or what part of the world you're from. You can find hundreds of episodes now on our website with things to do to help you grow your business, to improve your people situation, to improve the strategy, to improve your execution, or to improve the cash, or even to level yourself up as a leader. What I like to call the Fifth Decision, which is all about leadership. You'll find all of these episodes and more@scalingcoach.com where you can also subscribe and get a weekly announcement and recap of the show, the points and the links and that kind of thing in your email every week. Of course, all that back catalog of shows is available@scalingcoach.com you can read the recap of the shows, get the downloads and the special offers that our guests have for you. And of course we'll give you a copy of the book Scaling up for free if you just pay the shipping and handling. All that and more@scalingcoach.com all right, listen in now as into this great episode on the show with me today is a friend of friends, fantastic speaker, Kailyn Ellsberry.

So I didn't believe that I was the kind of person that somebody would want in their corner, fighting for them and helping them get that breakthrough to grow their business. And everyone kept saying, you know, oh, you're so inspirational. Which I thought was code for, you know, like, so women, we do this thing where we say, you're so pretty, or, she's nice. Well, we're saying you're nice and pretty because you have no substance. And so I thought inspirational was code for me not having enough intellect and substance. So I just had to say things like, you can do it. Which was never me to begin with. So that was the big fear is who am I to have a vision that I have, and if I go for it, if it doesn't work, then I was right about how low my self esteem was.

So what actually happened? What did you do? Like, less conceptual. There you are, you're doing the one job and you start the new business. Can you share a little bit more about that experience?

Yeah. My fiance told me, write down every time somebody says you're inspirational. And I did that as a challenge. It's so stupid, but, like, literally, transformation in an instant. And I had like 16 pages of compliments that I would get in a course of a couple of weeks, and I just filled it out, and I was like, okay, maybe this is a blind spot, because you can't see through your own blind spots. And that really hit. And then, of course, I started going to some of these seminars of personal growth and development, and I remembered sitting in one of them, and I was like, I'm so bored. I've already known this. I've been working with my friends on this. And it was just so instinctual. Like the life in the hospital. You learn a lot about how the mind works when you're attached to an IV pole for 15 days in a row. And so a lot of it was second nature through my upbringing. And I remember very clearly where I was at. I was on a plane and I was coming from Chicago to San Diego, and I was about to get back into the recruiting Monday, the next day. You know, the whole fear that we entrepreneurs have, like, oh, Monday, Sunday, scaries are horrible. And I remember thinking of, oh, gosh, I'm gonna get emotional. Bill, why are you doing this? And I remember this thought came to me, and this thought changed everything. And it said, who's going to suffer because you weren't brave enough to work at your Potential. And that, that was game over. I quit my recruiting company that day. Told everyone if they, you know, if I have any openings in the new company, they're welcome to join me. Yeah. Who's gonna suffer because I didn't believe in myself.

Mm.

And I couldn't have that.

So what are you moved by there? What is that?

There's just this undying desire to serve and I may never have an eight figure company. That's not even my shtick. I don't care. Even low seven figures, whatever. Who knows what my potential revenue is. What I measure the most is the lives that I transform in a year. And I am very blessed that the money's come. A lot of people just give donations and then I put the work towards helping others. But it's this undoubtedly I can't even comprehend how to not serve people. And that's. That's where it comes. Because I know what it's like to not know if you get another day. And when there's somebody at the end of their rope, like that desire to be the person that shows them a new path, I can't shake it. I cannot.

So, yeah, I hear also somebody who's very clear about the purpose of their life.

Thank you. Yes. Yeah. I have something called my master vision plan. This was formulated and helped by my good friend and mentor, Jack Daly. And he. Yeah, I mean, he's such a stand up guy and he taught me the genie.

He's a former podcast guest, friend of the show, friend of scaling up. Yeah.

Friend of everything. And he took me under his wing the way I'd like to think I take others under mine and showed me the power of having a extremely ambitious vision plan. And I've done it every year since the day I met him. And it's transformed everything. So I'm very clear.

On the show with me today is Les Lent. Tell us about the SAS company.

Oh, the SAS company. Actually, it's a SAS professional services company and very similar story. You know, they've got a process where for building out again, based in Southern California, just coincidentally, they have a process for building out an application that rides on top of Salesforce. It's world class product, industry leader, not a lot of competition. And when somebody signs on the dotted line and says, yeah, I want this application and I want it configured in such a manner, they know exactly how to get that done. They can tell you how many man hours it's going to take. They'll build out the business process. They'll even make suggestions to their clients. On best practices around how their workflow automation should go. Again, in doing some discovery with them, come to find out they didn't have a real sales process for, you know, they, they followed the old Bant method. Right. A lot of your listeners probably familiar with band, it was an IBM thing. It's an acronym that stands for budget, authority, need and timeline. So you go through the questions of making sure they have the budget or can they afford it? Do they have the authority? Am I talking to a decision maker? Do they have a need? Do they actually need what it is that I'm selling and do they need it in a timeline that's consistent with what I'm looking to get done? And if they check all those boxes, then they'll start in the scoping and the qualifying sector. Not scoping or qualifying, but just the scoping, understanding the real needs so they can build out a proposal and get them to sign on the dotted line that particular company. We were able to take that Bant process and we didn't abandon it. And I'm not saying that anybody should abandon Bant. I just think that there's a much better way of getting that information conversationally by asking much better questions.

Well, you know, if you've been on the other end of that, sometimes it feels like you're being judged and evaluated. Right. Well, do you have any money for this? Okay, well, when are you going to do it?

Do we have time for an anecdote about that?

Yeah, sure.

I was shopping for a CR system for my business a couple of years ago and I, I'm not going to name the company because it would just be embarrassment, but I filled out an online form. I was interested in those one and I, I wanted to talk to them, so I filled out an online form. Here's the information I gave them online. I gave them my name, Les Lent. I gave them my email address. Les, les lent.com. i gave them my URL. Les lent.com. i gave them my title owner and I gave him my cell phone number. And as soon as I hit submit, two minutes later, my phone is ringing, which is what I expected.

Nice integration.

Yeah, very nice. Well done. They're probably using their own software, which I thought was kind of cool.

Yeah.

I get a phone call and I said, hi, can I speak with Les?

Speaking.

And the gentleman said, hey, this is Bob from ABC company. You just filled out an online form and I'd love to chat with you about your CRM needs. I said, terrific, I've been expecting your call. And he says, well, before we get started, can you tell me a little bit about your business? And I said well here's my website, you can take a quick look at it. And he says oh we did, and said just it looks like you're do sales training and things of that nature. I said yeah, I do. And he says well tell me, for a new CRM system, what kind of budget do you have right out of the gate? And I said well right now I'm not paying anything for what I'm using, so can we start there? He didn't think that was funny. I thought it was funny. And a couple seconds later we're talking about something. He says, well tell me who else in your organization. Organization is going to be part of this decision making process and do you have the final authority now you have the same information he does. My name, my website, my title, the whole. But he's following a script that's been.

Following a script and not thinking.

And not thinking at all. So we went through, you know, budget authority. I won't bore you with the rest of the story about meat and timeline, but it was kind of embarrassing. Not just for him, but it was embarrassing for me.

So anyway, like why, why, why doesn't somebody say, but of course you want to ask in a more conversation, well, what's the process going to be like in picking this thing or whatever. But especially when somebody asks out the gate, do you have any budget for this thing? I'm like oh yeah, I've set aside a million dollars and I'd like to give it all to you right now.

Exactly.

It's so obnoxious. Yeah. Oh I'm going to name like a really big price, right?

Yeah. And nobody.

How much have you budgeted for this?

Yeah, that was what they asked. And the reason I share that story is because my client, the one we were just talking about, the SaaS company, they had a similar type product, similar type sale, high ticket, it could be up to six figures for a project. And they weren't asking it that directly, but that was the crux of what they were doing is they were just following the Bant. And if they could get Bant, they would say, okay, let's throw all the resources we have at scoping this project out and building out a proposal and it just wasn't working. And their sales cycle when I got there was in excess of 120 days. They had deals in their pipeline that were over a year old, a lot of them. So when we started digging in and we cleaned out the Pipeline. Because if you got something in your pipeline that's that old, it's probably more like a pipe dream. But we got all that sorted out and we took that BAM process and didn't abandon it. But we started asking much better questions and we, we took the sales cycle and put it into a process where we were able to get all the information we needed without alienating the customers and really quickly deciding whether or not we were even a good fit for the customer versus what we were doing before. As long as they had a pulse and a budget, we were going to try and sell them something. So the end result of building that process out was we were able to reduce our sales cycle from, from 120 plus days down to the last time I looked, it was under 60. I want to say the average for the last six months was 54 day sales cycle for a fairly complex product. And our conversion rate went up, you know, went up from the high 20s into the mid-30s as a result. So it's all about having a duplicable process as it relates to sales instead of it just being that like I said earlier, this mysterious thing that's like let me build some rapport and see if I can get them laughing at my bad jokes and, and that'll increase my odds of a successfully closed deal.

All right, well, I'm joined now by a farm boy from Minnesota. Warren Rustand is familiar to some of our listeners.

I think sometimes we want to be and our ego allows us to be. Sometimes we want to be the fount of knowledge. We want to be the all knowing person.

Right.

And that can oftentimes be very difficult in a situation like this where things are moving so rapidly. We have to draw upon all of our colleagues and what they know and most of all how are they feeling about what's going on and then create something that works for the greatest number of people. And I think I'm very much a consensus based collaborative leader and I think there's great wisdom in the room. I don't think it resides just in one person, but there's great wisdom in the room.

When I think about some of the crises that I've either had to lead through or been a leader, a contributing leader in or even just been part of a community. This function of this notion of we're going to work on this together, not the leader, has the answer and is your all knowing guru, but brings to you, says rallies the team together, works through the process, understands that the right ideas will emerge collectively in the room, is really powerful.

I agree with you. I think it's really important. And your colleagues will really appreciate that those with whom you work every day will respect you for including them in the decision making process and listening to what they have to say. And that when you come out the other end of the tunnel after the crisis, there will be an even deeper, better culture in your organization as a result of that. As opposed to you simply waving the magic wand, directing people, telling them what to do without regard to their feelings.

Or to engaging them.

Yeah, without engaging them. So. And in my lifetime, Bill, I've been down through 13 downturns in the economy, a couple of really serious recessions.

Right.

And you know, we're sort of headed in that direction right now. If we're watching the markets, we don't know exactly where that's going to turn out yet. But the poll that I saw this morning says there's an 80 to 90% chance of a serious recession in the next few months. So we need to be thinking, well, what do we do? Well, you know, as a business leader, if we're just talking about business separate, apart from family, the first is protect cash. Cash is really important during this period of time. If we're going to go for a while, months with a decline in our business or disruption to a business, then cash becomes really critical. The next is to really think about what liquid assets do we have available to us in times of crisis and emergency. Are those liquid assets truly liquid or are they not? And could we use them if we had to? Right. And then there's the notion of how do we move our workforce to a new way of working. Many people who come to work every day are now working virtually. Are we prepared and are we set up to work virtually as an organization for business continuation? Right. And then you limit meetings, limit face to face contact. I mean, all the normal and necessary things about what we know of this thing called the coronavirus. Right. And I think we have to be very thoughtful. Most of all, and I think highest on the totem pole is our people and our human resources. How do we treat them? How do we calm them, how do we assist them in their own crisis? Because not only are they worried about their jobs and what's going on in the the business as we are, they also have to worry about their family, just like we do, and their extended family and the threats to them and so forth. So in times of high stress, there are things that we can do to mitigate that stress. And there are three things. Jenny Evans, who's Written books on this, on stress is an amazing lady. And talking with her over the last few days, she said there are sort of three things we have to do. First, we need to work out regularly, physically exhaust ourselves, work out. And one of the first things people do in crisis is they quit their routines. Yeah, we need to stay with our routines. We need to work out on a regular basis. So Dr. Fred Roby, who did a lot of research in this field of stress, said there's really only one thing that relieves stress in the end. It's rigorous physical exercise. So this notion of getting exercise. The second is nutrition. Sometimes during periods of stress, we tend to take the first thing available and it's chocolate and it's soft drinks and it's stuff we're feeding our faces and stuff. And that disrupts our bodies and hurts us in times of stress. So we need to be very diligent and disciplined about eating well, giving our body what it needs. And then the third step, which is really critical is getting adequate sleep. And that's sometimes difficult during periods of stress, but we need to really develop a regular routine of how we go to bed each night, turn off our. Turn off our cell phones and our computers and our TVs, have a quiet period, read some books, listen to soft music, meditate, and then prepare our minds and our bodies to actually enter our sleeping area and sleep. And we need to work on that routine more diligently. So discipline, working out food and sleep during a crisis become even more critical and important.

All right, I'm joined now by Robert Glaser. So our sun is exceedingly bright and a little bit anxious. And while we're in Greece, which would have been like the end of February, third week of February, and he's like, well, you really need to go and order all these supplies and equipment now. Not a ventilator machine, but like home oxygen machine and things like that and lots of medicines and supplies. So we're reluctant, but he's like, well, if you don't do it, I'm going to order it all and send it to you. Not a small amount of money going out to this stuff, which felt really silly. And I felt. And yet I did it. And now I'm like, oh, it's really good.

I have that.

Well, it's an interesting point. I haven't talked to anyone who regretted acting too early. In fact, it was probably about a month ago when we started to see some of the. I was watching Asia and then Italy and starting to see some of the projections and we could just see, like, we just froze hiring, stopped traveling, canceled all our conferences. And I know a lot of the people on our team are like, why are we doing this? Like, this seems pretty. Pretty rash. And at the time, my rationale was like, look, these things are all like, actually, had we not moved all those conferences and canceled that stuff? And this was. Remember I said, we're moving logarithmically. So like, one of those conferences supposed to be today. And a month ago, it seemed like crazy to cancel a conference, right? And I was like, look, we can get our deposits back now. We can move the dates.

What I'm.

When, as I play this out, I don't want to get stuck in London. I don't want people to cancel last minute, and then that'll really destroy the conference. So. And people like, why are we freezing hiring? I was like, because we should do that for three weeks until we see, like, what's going on here in terms of traveling and bringing people in. And. Yeah, and so, yeah, I think I scared some people early, but I don't regret anything, not anymore, that we did early.

Yeah.

Because in these environments, and I think I've stressed this to my team, there's two things I stress a lot. One's like, the risk of being, you know, short is. Is. Is.

Is.

Is much worse than the risk of being long. You know, we had a point last year where we were like 10 people understaffed and people were really stressed. And I said, I get it. And we're working on it, but. But this is. We've had record years of no recession. Like, real stress is not enough work to do, and you're worrying about your job. Like, real stress is not. We have more work to do than people. I understand that it's stressful, but that's a solvable problem. So, yeah, it's been interesting.

Well, we got back and we started to self isolate and distance about March 8th on return. And I would suppose on our trip, we were already not handshaking anymore and no cheek kissing in Europe and that kind of thing. So we were doing that. Then we come back, we start to do that. Then on the Friday of that week, we're like, yeah, we're just gonna self isolate at home. Now we're done. And then on the Monday, they issued the order for the Bay Area in California, Northern California, to stay at home. We're like, oh, well, that helps us because it's like, encourages everyone else as well to do it. And over that week, things had started to cancel. But I Woke up feeling like, okay, everything just changed. I have to do something to contribute and be helpful. So I got really, really busy and my wife was kind of like, well, what am I doing? What am I doing? And then one of our friends, Ayelet Waldman, chimed in, like, we need to help local restaurants and help the ER and everybody needs to contribute. So she started this East Bay Feed ER and then Lori joined her. And so they're as today, by the time this airs, I don't know what it'll be at. But today I think they're feeding 250er personnel with meals from local restaurants and paid for by, you know, people in the area. And East Bay Feed ER is the website in the group. And they've now joined a national group that's doing these kinds of programs. It's pivoted to helping connect local restaurants who are dying to stay alive. Right. And who often aren't operating with a huge surplus anyway. And then giving people a way to contribute and then helping the ER staff who are, of course, on the front lines taking care of people right now. It's really great to find ways to deal with things, isn't it?

Yeah. And take your focus to other people and how you can uplift. Yeah. We all have our talent. I would, you know, if you put me or any of my family near a hospital, we would injure more people than anywhere. So, you know, what I'm good at is marketing and getting supply and demand and helping people figure out the right message. So I think the thing, you know, we're all trying to contribute with our gift. So that's where I've been trying to offer my time. Like, helping businesses think about how to pivot what they can do. Get their marketing online. Yeah. Save their business because they have no revenue. So, you know, we don't all help in different ways. But even business leader, I think you need a purpose in terms of, you know, I've narrowed my purpose during this time to, like, how do we keep the most people working? Like, how do we keep our clients working? How do we keep our team working? How do we use our business model, you know, to do that? Because, you know, you need that. Like, it's not. It's not pretty. Like, if you look at the news, if you stuff.

No, there's no shit sugarcoating it. Right.

It's not going to feel good. So I think we need to understand, like, what's the enduring thing to get through and.

Yeah.

And how do we keep focused on something that is not the death count.

Every day on the show with me today, Ashley Goodall.

If you're a leader in an organization, you're trying to help your team serve your customer. If you just serve your customer by yourself and your team is excluded from that, there's only, you can't scale very much because there's only one of you. And then the other thing you see is of course the product of all of this is, is sound, is noise, is music, and the conductor isn't making any. And you, so, so then you go, okay, well what's, what is the point of this person with his back to the consumer not making the product? Why do you need that? And of course the answer is you need that in a, in a simplistic way to go from the noise of tuning up to the noise of the music where it all happens together. But perhaps in a slightly more precise way, you need that because there's an important role in human endeavor to the person who makes space for other people to do what they do. And so there's this idea of leadership as space making for others that I think is super, super powerful and gets us out of. The leader has to be a sort of superhero and the leader has to have every trait that we could possibly imagine an ideal human to have. And instead it makes it a little more humble but very, very specific and actually very challenging. Your job as a leader is to help others do what they do with a degree of synchronicity so that everything comes together. That's a good challenge to spend a lot of time thinking about.

Well, we're starting to lean into the next thing, but I want to underscore something for our scaling leaders right now, because if you think about the symphony, the conductor there is cueing people with motions and eye contact and things like that, calling forth, emphasizing, helping to keep them together and creating that space. But it's not really needed in a jazz trio. And when you start your company and you've got three guys with an idea or guys and gals and you're working on something together and even you get a little bit above that, you still like a five piece rock band doesn't need a conductor. I mentioned jazz because there's kind of a theme in the background and then in many cases there's room to sort of riff, but they still stay in sync listening to each other. But as the, as the size of the group grows and suddenly you've got an orchestra, you really need a conductor.

Well, I mean, you're exactly right. When I was, when I was doing my job designing concert halls. I got to spend a couple of days on stage with the Philadelphia Orchestra figuring out the spacing of the platform in the concert hall that we were designing for them. And it was back when Wolfgang Svalish was the conductor of the, of the orchestra down in Philadelphia. And we were always trying to get everybody closer together on the stage. And we were trying to get to the point where you would, you were very, very close, but you had just enough room to play your instrument. And the musicians would sometimes want to spread out a little bit more. And then we'd wait for a break and we'd sneak all the chairs a little closer together and. And of course what we were trying to do was to make a symphony orchestra feel like a jazz trio. We were trying to decrease the distances because you're exactly right. The reason at some point you need a conductor or you need in the world of work a leader or you need, you know, a leader of leaders is that one side can't hear the other side. And if you want to act in real time and have some degree of synchronicity, you have to have some mechanism that people can sort of follow a cue and understand, okay, this is my space to do this thing. And while I'm doing my thing over here, you're going to do your thing over here. It's a lovely metaphor because as an organization grows, the distance between its component parts grow. And that's why you need somebody not to say interestingly, do this now, but to say, go do your do your thing now. You do your. You interpret. Now. I'm not going to tell you how to interpret, but I'm going to tell you that if you interpret now and these people over here interpret now, then it'll happen at the same time and then it'll be in synchronicity.

So on the show with me today is Darius Murshazadeh.

I was always an entrepreneur and when I was 25 was when I started my first high growth company. It was in San Francisco. And I started a company called Twin Capital Mortgage with my twin brother. And it was a crazy success. We went from myself and an assistant and to about 150 employees in just under 36 months. And that business was crazy. We were number 40 in Inc. 500 and I was totally out of my league. I had no idea what I was doing. And ironically enough, the solution for that was this program that I found was one Friday night. Fridays I was always ruined because I just worked 80 hours and I had to work on Saturdays Because I was trying to figure out how to run this fast growing business. And I was, I think I was on like either looking at Inc. Magazine or on ink.com and I saw this program they were advertising called Birthing of Giants. And this guy named Vern Harnish was putting it on and had been going on for a while. And so I applied. It turned out I missed. This is 2005, excuse me. I had missed the deadline to apply. So I filled out the whole application. I got introduced to the scaling up thing. I was like, wow, this looks really interesting. This seems like this would solve all my problems. And so I held on to the application and the minute they released for 2006, I applied through Inc. To be a part of Birthing of Giants. And I got in. I was one of, I think there's 60 of us in the class. And that is now the entrepreneurial master's program eo. And it was a life changing event for me. It really changed my life in ways that will never, ever be the same and sent me on this path that I never would have guessed when I applied to that program. And so I went to the program and Vern was still teaching it then, and he, you know, started talking about how your company's got core values. And we're learning all about the one page strategic plan and all these best practices for high growth companies. And it's a room full of, you know, entrepreneurs under the age of 40. And my mind was blown. I went back and I mean, it's a three year program. Every year I'd go back, my team would be wanting to kill me because I come back with all these things to do. But the first thing I did was I was, I brought back core values and I wrote them up. I wrote them up myself. There was no discovery process. It was six core values, 76 words. And I came back the next year and was feeling all hot and hot stuff that I rolled these things out and went back the next year and tried to bring them to life. And I remember one of the guys that at Birthing Giants said, well, if you want to bring them life, you got to, you know, have like a, have a session with your team where you got to like talk about them. So I got everyone on a call and I said, let's read the core values together. And in the middle of me reading the core values out loud, one of the salespeople had not muted their phone. And the woman said, this is such bullshit and.

So entertaining.

Yeah, I was so mad. I was so upset. I mean, like, this was me rolling out the core values properly to the team. But she was right. You know, the company had tons of problems still, and it was.

There was.

We were.

Just had not built it for scale, but we had grown way too fast. And so the next year I went back. It was year three. We went to graduate, and the night after we finished, we did a peer to peer workshop and Ken simultaneously, and John DeHart from Nurse Next Door, their case study and scaling up book, asked us all to stand up if we had core values in our company. So all 60 of us stand up. And Ken says, stay standing if you can say your core values off the top of your head without looking at them on a piece of paper. And half of the room. Half of the room sits down, Bill. And guess if I was in that group or not. Yeah, I was in that group. I. I was. I was part of the half of the room that sat down. Then John said, stay standing. If your employees know the core values without having to look them up, half of the remaining half sits down. And then Ken says, stay standing if your customers know your core value, everyone sits down. And I'm sitting there just dumbfounded. I mean, we've been through three years of this program and the whole room sitting down, with the exception of John and Ken.

And.

That changed my life that moment. That was the moment.

That was an eye opening for sure.

Yeah, it literally changed my life. And from that night forward, core values got me that day. And it's never been the same.

I'm in the Oakland Hills today, and I'm joined by Gary Hamill, who is across the bay.

So we work to make our organizations as structured, as disciplined, as aligned, as controlled as possible. And that's not all bad. But we ended up building structures that were very brittle, that didn't get the best out of people. And so we said, gee, how is it. How is it that every organization in the world is working to reinvent their business model, and yet we all just kind of blindly are stuck with that century and a half old management model? And, you know, it was. It was. It was a product of its time. Bureaucracy is a product of its time. If you go back to the late 19th century, the average employee was illiterate. They needed managers to tell them what to do. Information was very expensive to move, and the best way of doing that was, you know, have 10 people report up to a manager and they'd consolidate those inputs and then, you know, report up again, up through the chain of command. That was how you managed Information. And in that world, it really was the people at the top, they were the only ones who had the big picture. Well, that's not true anymore. We have well educated employees now. We can move information almost instantly. And yet kind of unthinkingly, we're still running with that old management model. And we just know it wedges people in narrow roles. It values conformance over originality. It tends to be insular, conservative, just is no longer fit for the time. So that was the evolution, just seeing again and again. Because we do a lot of work in organizations, Bill and I have to say we've created billions of dollars of market value. It's not theoretical work, but what I could see. So often we'd come into an organization, we help them innovate, we build out their pipeline, we get this huge spurt of growth and we come back in a couple of years and it was all gone. It was like the status quo was back again. And I started to feel, you know, I guess the analogy was I felt I was like trying to train a dog to walk on its hind legs. And you'd go in, you'd get a project team, you'd get them all excited, you get a budget, you choose the best people, you give them some training, you know, do all this exciting work. And it was kind of like, you know, if you get a dog and you get its attention and you get a biscuit and hold it up, you can get that dog to take a few steps. But when you turn your back and walk away, the dog doesn't like, keep walking. It doesn't say like, holy crap, this is so cool. Like, thank you. Who knew? The dog is back on all fours. It goes like, well, you're kind of an idiot, right? What was that all about? And so it was just clear that we have a DNA level problem that needs to be fixed. And that means radically rethinking how we lead, manage and organize in a way that is as. It's different from the managerial status quo, as Netflix or YouTube is from the old television status quo. So that was the thinking, that was the logic behind it.

Well, I hear two things immediately in that. And what comes to mind are some of the conversations with our CEOs and leaderships of the scaling companies. The first one I hear is the history of a military structure. In addition to the bureaucracy, we have to control people. So. And we can only manage so many people at one time. So you develop those layers because I'm only going to manage 10 or 12 people and you're going to manage. So then I need 10 people of the organization. You just get these massive layers of stuff. And then the manager's job then within that is just to fight the change, fight the innovation, shut up and do your job and let me write out my career. And that kind of thing stifles all of that. But it is about control and we still see that in government bureaucracy. And then I also think about scaling businesses. If you think about like, I'm sure you, you know the story, at least if you haven't seen the movie the Founder, right, About the development of, and scaling of McDonald's and, and their speedy service system and. Right. So much of our stuff, I mean, we are interested in, in developing processes and leaning them out and, and making them so that they're repeatable so that any moron could do them. But then of course, it leads you to hiring any moron and, and even if you didn't hire anymore, on treating everyone like they're a moron rather than having people create. And, and I know you're going to share about new core and you're going to share about hire and some of the stories we'll get into in just a minute. But the like, we build these systems, then we put people and we even hire consultants to fix them. Never so much engaging our people to create and refine the system that they're using, the processes and so on. So it's like rather than having those two things work together, they work at odds with each other. That's the thing that I hear most.

Now, there is paradox at the heart of this because obviously if you're running any business, you need to be able to do some difficult things over and over again with pretty much perfect replicability. One of my favorite examples, if you look at the next iPhone coming out probably next month, the 12 that's going to be built, the system on the chip inside it, I think it's going to be the A14 chip, I can't remember. But that chip bill is going to be built at 5 nanometer tolerances by TSMC. 5 nanometers is what your fingernails will grow in the next 5 seconds. So you want to ask how much control do you need over how many variables to do something with that level of precision? Right. I have no problem with control, but what I would do is I would make a distinction between control and compliance and perhaps a couple of distinctions. First is you need to distinguish between where you really need that kind of precision and control and where you don't, you don't need it. Everywhere. One of the examples I relate in the book, our listeners, they'll remember, I think it was a couple of years ago, United Airlines had this PR disaster when they drugged some passenger off the plane and bloodied him up. And it was all over social media. So they did their after action review. And, you know, and what was clear is the people at the gate that day, the United staff there did not have the freedom to come up with a creative solution.

Right.

They couldn't offer people.

They.

Maybe they offered them $800 to take a later flight. They couldn't offer them $1,000. They couldn't. You know, so what was very interesting, a couple months later, the CEO Oscar Muniz was being interviewed, and somebody said, oscar, what went wrong? How did this happen? And what he said was so telling, I'll paraphrase it, I think with about 90% accuracy. He said, we realized we hadn't given people the procedures, the manuals, the instructions, the standards so they could exercise their judgment. I went, wait, no, no, no. Rules, manuals, procedures. That's the opposite of using people's judgment. So the United employee manual is 60 pages. The one for Southwest is five. Right. And so I think for many. And so, yes, there are times you need absolute, you know, something has to be done the right way. There's only, you know, you got to get the information and the safing briefing out. Right? That's just like a legal requirement. But I think so often, you know, this, this, this ideology of controlism, it kind of slips the moorings of common sense. And then you have. You end up with an organization where an employee can't buy a $300 office chair without getting somebody's permission or has to go through a travel department to book a $500 trip. I mean, just, you know, it's. It's kind of nonsense. And so it's not about. It's not about chaos. It's not saying, you know, we don't need a lot of precision alignment control, but it's being very careful and making sure that. That that's only happening where we need it. And as you said, right filly Bill, not, not seeing the goal as trying to deskill work to the point that any moron could do it. You know, the companies that we profile in the book, all of them pay their employees above industry average, everyone. And they do it not because they're generous. They do it because those people are creating extraordinary value, because they're enthusiastic. They feel like entrepreneurs. They're bringing their best thinking to work every day. They're experimenting, they're trying new things, and so they're constantly leveling up the organization. You simply don't. You know, all of us in our own lives, we, you know, we've probably been in a job or we've been in a relationship where you know what it's like to feel like an instrument, right? When somebody's treating you, if you're married or spouse, partner, significant other, and they look at you as really the person that washes the car, gets the groceries, picks the kids up after school, whatever it is, that's not going to be a very healthy relationship. And you're not going to bring your best, right? And yet, so often at work, that's how we see people. And it's betrayed in phrases like human resources or human capital, which I think is pretty dangerous.

Central to scaling up in any time, but especially at this time, is the need or importance to get your processes nailed down right, to execute consistently, relentlessly, again and again. If you've got team members who are asking the same questions to you over and over again, and you wish there was some way to direct them to help themselves on their own so they could get their work done without burdening you with answering those same questions or doing things in an inconsistent fashion, well, there is a way to do that, and that way is our thanks to our sponsor Suite process. Suite process is a software tool that helps companies centralize the place for all their procedures, processes, and policies for the business. It makes it easy for the managers and the leadership of the team and all levels of employees to collaborate together, not only to create the procedures and policies and processes, but to then refine those and make it easy to follow those on a continuous basis. So create them, improve them, and use them. So there are a couple things that you want to get right. We want to get everybody using the same kinds of things on a regular basis. So we get that relentless repeatability. And then when a process, a procedure or policy isn't working right, we want to refine it, and we want to have a central place where everybody can do that in a collaborative fashion. That Suite process. Suite Process is the one source of truth that your company can use to get itself handled and create that kind of relentless repeatability and get that monkey off your back with having to run every little aspect of the business all the time. So it'll make it easy as well to train new and existing employees in order to assign them tasks and give them things that you want done in the same way on a regular basis and to make sure that that that's being done in the most current way possible. By default, Suite process offers a 14 day trial, but using our dedicated signup link for the Scaling Coach and the Scaling Up Business podcast, you'll get an extended 28 day free trial nearly a month to work through the Suite Process tool. Get used to it, throw up a couple processes and start to feel like it's there for you. There's no credit card required for this sign up, so just go to HTTPs://www.suiteprocess.com scaling up all one word lowercase so sweet process.com sweet process.com if you're in Canada/scaling up having a little fun with our Canadians. The link there is your dedicated sign up link to get the special offer of this ad because we want to help all of our Scaling up listeners get great access to this great tool and get yourself executing more consistently and reliably. Good luck. Sweetprocess.com scalingup Patrick Galvin, how long did you work in cultivating relationships and coaching and teaching and doing that before you made this your business?

Well, I was in the family business up until about 2001 and then in, in 2001 we started a business that was really focused on relationships that companies had with the media so the media would tell their story. We started as a PR company. So we began as a classic PR company and did that for about 10 years. And then PR changed. The social media came on the scene. More of our clients said, hey, can you help us with our messaging? Could you help us tell our story in social media? Can you help us frame our story in our the websites and our electronic communication? So we really started doing that and it was fun. But it's really, I love working with the individual. So my book the Connector's Way took me into the market of helping people think about relationships. And we're not hired by individuals, we're hired by companies to help their teams develop deeper and stronger connections with people.

Interesting. And so you've been working at this for a while, evolving from PR to messaging to relationship.

Exactly.

Focus. And so talk to us about, well, I don't know, why don't we start with some of the stories and like that kind of thing. So maybe the landscape company is a good place to talk to. I know you shared a story as we were getting ready for the show.

Well, you know, it doesn't matter how small or large a business is, it's all about connection. So a recent client of ours, big well known landscaping company in Portland, they do $100,000 hardscaping, soft landscaping jobs and people's backyards, front yards. It's very easy to just focus in on doing great work, and they do excellent work, but they're not necessarily reaching out and connecting with neighbors. They're not necessarily developing a reputation in neighborhoods. So, you know, with our encouragement, the folks on that team are making sure that people, when they have these beautiful backyards that have been created by this company, that they're holding social events that the company pays for and encourages them to invite as many people as possible. This is pre Covid that we were working with. It would be a little bit different right now. So it's really developing a reputation not based on what, how great they say they are, but they know if they sponsor a party in someone's backyard that has been transformed, those people are going to be so ecstatic to share their story and how they did it. And obviously they did it with the help of a company that's more. More powerful than any form of marketing. So it's something that they've offered up to their landscape designers and to their project teams, but no one was really taking advantage of it. And when we started working with them and coaching their people, explaining the importance of developing rapport and connection beyond just a sale, thinking beyond that transaction and that job done to how do you leverage that to give it more exposure in the neighborhood? Well, it really changed things for them. So that's a very grounded in the dirt example of relationship building.

That's cool. And you could see it right within the neighborhood. And lots of us live in neighborhoods where we don't necessarily know all of our neighbors. Some people, like, they know everybody around them, and other people know a couple. My wife's like, I don't even know those guys across the street. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't know those guys, but I do know those guys, and I know that guy. And yeah, yeah. Like, it's a mixed bag of things. What do you know what that company is doing now or what do you have any examples of how people are dealing now in light of COVID Well.

You know, right now that company's doing some interesting things, so they're actually doing video now, which they did it before when they complete a job. The designers who did that job now are doing a video, and they can get a video testimonial from one of their clients saying, easy to work with great people. Right now we're in the age where people don't necessarily want to read and a Video you can do. It's socially distance friendly and everyone's walking around with a great camera now and their smartphone. Yeah, exactly. I think video is a really cool thing that they never did before. So now their project teams, when they're done, are going out and if they can get an interview with a customer, I encourage them to do that. More often than not, it's just showing the beautiful landscape and posting it up, saying, hey, this is my most recent project. It was really fun. You know, here were the challenges, here's how we address them. And that's a lot more interesting than just a written case study.

All right, we're about to talk with Cameron Harold. So Gallup Strikes Finder will take your 34 talent themes and then when looking at as a leader, they'll break them into four groups. And it's execution, it's influence and relationship building, management, and then strategy and like disc or Myers Briggs or other kinds of things. You may notice that you are a little dominant in one or two and weaker in a couple. And I am all about influence and strategy. But are we weak in the relationship category? And your first two are structural kinds of practices that I will definitely use from here out. I wouldn't have ever guessed that about you. I would have thought you were stronger in the relationship area than I am. No, for real, because every time I meet you, you're gregarious, you're outgoing, I'm immediately attracted and talk to you. It's like, easy to have those conversations. You're a guy that I think about, hey, come and join us for dinners. Like, it's a very easy. It's very easy discussion. So. Yeah. In fact, didn't I drag you to the French Laundry one night for dinner? Fabulous. Yeah, because you're a good guy. Here we go. This is a little memento here at the clothespin on the menu. It's just one of a couple of good knickknacks around the office. So I'm actually pretty introverted, like many public speakers. Very comfortable when I have a specific role to go talk about and that kind of thing. Just being part of the group, like, I'm a little uncomfortable. That's me. Yeah, that's true, by the way, of most speakers. Most speakers would rather stand on a stage than show up at a cocktail party of 15 people they don't know. So the night before the speaking event is a great time to reach out to speakers. If let's say that the speaker is speaking tomorrow at your conference, drop them a text or a LinkedIn message or something and say, hey, I'm not sure what you're doing the night before your event. Do you want to grab a bite? They're gonna say yes, because otherwise they're sitting in their hotel by themselves. And it's amazing the amount of really big high name speakers I've met just by offering to go for dinner with them. Yeah, that's so great.

And I.

And I think that some. I remember a guy who blanking on his name right now. Anyway, I booked a series of workshops over a couple of years and I went to this group and one guy would always come pick me up at the airport and take me to lunch.

Great.

Right, Right. And he got a couple hours of my time and attention, and I sort of enjoyed, like, it made it nicer. But he got a ton of free coaching. I got a mutual friend of ours who offered to run my marathon with me to pace me to my marathon time. And we're in the middle of the marathon. I'm like, it's so good that you're doing this. He goes, dude, I get four hours of free coaching from you. And it was Chris Kaplan. He's like, I get to hang out with you for four hours. He goes, I'll run a marathon with you whenever you want. I'm like, God, you're so smart. Yeah, he's smart in that regard. So thinking about that, that's kind of how. And you see different people. Like, I became friends with Tom Peters because I saw him in a mixer and, you know, I just, I knew that I'd go talk to him for a second, so I just said something. And I think that, like, I interview for that relationship, and I have one. There's probably a few things that I will say and ask, but one in particular, Lucy will smile. She's in the background watching and managing us. But I ask, what does it look like when you leave a party? And describe it for me. And I know that there's a striking difference between how I leave a party and how my wife leaves the party. Right. And you know, Laurie as well. But Laurie says, okay, it's time to go, kind of to you, reluctantly, if she's talking to us and then she goes around to all the other people who are friends or that she's talked to tonight and says goodbye to each of them in turn, and then proceeds to end up having another little conversation with each. So it takes a good hour to leave a party or gathering of some kind. And in turn, she really doesn't want to leave. She would Just stay until the last few people are there and have one more drink and then go to the after party or the next thing or whatever. It. It'll never stop. She's so sustained by that interaction, which of course, you know, creates some issues for us. Sometimes when I, like, want to go or. And she wants to stay and like. But. But that's a useful thing. So I will just ask what does it look like? And I know that person will manage the relationships differently and I will tend to. I value them and I am there for the people, but differently. And I will kind of take them for granted. I will assume them.

Oh, wow.

I'm very similar to Laurie that I'm always one of the last ones to go and I'm always feeling bad. I've spoken at the EMP program at the EO and MIT hold. I've spoken there 14 out of the last 16 years. And every time I'm leaving the EMP program, I almost feel like my heart's being ripped out because I've built these relationships with these people and now I don't know if I'm going to see them again. And I always feel bad. It's a really weird feeling that I have.

Andre Norman in the house with Bill.

I think it's really useful. Notice the prison that you're in. Right. Whether it's the real one or the invented one. Notice the place you've gotten comfortable. I think it's really useful for any of us at any time. There's always some place that we've gotten comfortable. We've become blind to that. We don't even see anymore. Let's see if we can show that now. So I'm going to switch here. Let's see. Share Screen SCDC confirms that shocking new video obtained by WIS shows an inmate at the Lee Correctional Institution attacking a guard with a makeshift weapon. You see one of your own getting assaulted. It's very concerning. But as the attack continues, you see another inmate step in and intervene, saving the lieutenant's life. Screaming, you know, begging and pleading for the guy to stop.

Job, you know, let him go.

He wasn't.

So I had to.

I had to physically grab and pull him off. That inmate, whose identity is being protected is a member of the Academy of Hope. WiS interviewed him back when the program.

Was launched in 2019.

The beauty about the Academy of Hope, when it came easy for me, I.

Mean, a position where I can teach and help other people. The Academy of Hope is a program that aims to bring about positive leadership from the System's most influential inmates. We're taking the gang members at SCBC. We're putting them in a dorm together, about 50 of them, which is kind of unheard of. And we're teaching them how to work out their differences. Not with their fists, not with knives, not with guns, but with their mind.

The lieutenant was able to escape, but.

His attacker then turned his attention to his fellow inmate.

So now he turned.

All that anger was mean.

They wanted to kill me.

According to scdc, both the guard and the inmate who intervened were stabbed multiple times, but are expected to be okay. And because of that, Director Brian Sterling says he believes the Academy of Hope program has served its purpose in a big way. Can't think of a bigger deal than saving someone's life. I mean, literally, this is a different.

Conversation if it's not for the Academy.

Of Hope and not for that offender. Drew Unst, Wisconsin News 10.

As for the inmate accused of attacking the lieutenant, SCDC has not released his name, but say the case is being investigated and charges are expected.

That's our program in South Carolina.

Someone intervening. And this is your program, Academy of Hope.

Two years ago, there was a riot in South Carolina, and seven men were murdered. They brought us in to bring about change. And we took all the top gang leaders and top influences and put them one unit. And we started teaching them how to be better people, how to. How to be one with themselves, how to look beyond themselves, how to be givers, not takers. And two weeks ago, there was a lieutenant in another unit, not our unit, being attacked with the intent of being murdered. And one of our guys put his own life on the line to save this man. Because it's no longer us versus you, staff versus inmate. It's what's right. What's what? Am I supposed to do this right? And is it right to watch this man die in this fashion? And the answer was no. And that inmate was doing a life sentence, so he is serving life. So he's not getting out. But he was still willing to die to save somebody. And this is somebody that society deemed was unfathomable, unreachable, unworthy. But when given the right environment and given the right inputs and the right instruction, they can rise. He rolls to a level that was unexpected of anybody else other than us. We expect him to do that. We expect others to do that. And that's what you get with good coaching and good training and people who believe in you. You create better people.

I think this also applies to the people on our teams. When you're working with people on their teams and they're doing weird things. People can change. People can do extraordinary things. It may or may not be your particular role as the leader. And if somebody isn't ready and doesn't want to change, it's going to be tough. But there are. When somebody's open and interested and, and a lot can happen, which I think is a great segue. Talk to us about your. Your own mentor coach. Who did you get? How did they help you?

What's.

Talk to us about that.

Okay. My first mentor is a guy named. Is a guy named Natan Schaefer. He was actually the Jewish rabbi chaplain at, at the prison. And I met him by chance. And when we met, we just sat and started studying together. I would go to his service every week. It wasn't me to become Jewish, I'm gonna become black. He was just a great teacher. So I went every week and I studied with Natan. And he taught me some things that I never learned before. Humanity, respect, forgiveness, giving, accountability. He taught me how to be human. All I'd ever been taught since I was little was how to attack, crush, kill, destroyed. How to be tough, don't cry, run through a brick wall, suck it up, take it. And then he taught me, no, it's okay to cry. It's okay to be human. It's okay to help people. It's okay to care. So Natan was my was and my first number one mentor. And when I came home, there's a guy named Keith Alper who was an EO member who wanted originally. That's my. If you read my book, you will see Keith in there. Love Keith. He's my number one mentor on the planet. Then you can go to Rusty Keeley, a ypo or Dave Spence, ypo. Joe Pollard, Genius Network. I was just on with him yesterday for the annual event. Vern has chipped in John Ratliff. I can go down the list. Jules Garfield from London Business School. I mean, I have hundreds. I collect mentors. I collect mentors because when I see somebody who can help me be a better person, I latch on and I go at them with all because I know it's going to make me better. And that man you saw who risked his life is a byproduct of people pouring into me. That wasn't Andre. That was Andre Joe Vern, Keith Natan and a thousand other people. Cameron Herold, every John, ruling John o'. Leary. Everybody who's ever poured into me was poured into that man. And that's the result we get when we pay it forward.

Well, before we end this show, I want to give some special thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework and the original Rockefeller Habits. Our show is produced by Lucy Summers and the audio is edited by Albert Burge at podfly Productions. Our shownotes are compiled by Ayn Kadina and proofread by Tim McGowan. If our show helped you in some way, you can help us out by giving us a full review and rating on wherever you get your podcast and sharing it with somebody else that you like. You can of course like it and subscribe to it as well, but by subscribing it you'll get them automatically in your feed or your email every week. If you'd like to drop us a line, send us a Note to info scalingcoach.com Drop us an email info scalingcoach.com if we can help you in any way. If you'd like help finding a coach in your area with your particular specialty or whatever you need to help your company get Scaling Up. Thanks again for listening. Keep Scaling Up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by alignment, it's the official software for Scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app. You can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our Scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.