249: Scaling Up Insights — Coach Panel with Judy Guido, Daniel Marcos, and Doug Walner

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Hey.

Or good afternoon, evening whenever you're listening, right. If you're listening live, while we're live streaming, they're recording the show. It's morning where I am. So it's midday on the east coast where Daniel and Doug are Eastern time zone us. Judith is also with me on the West Coast. Judith, Daniel, Doug joining me. We're talking about some emerging trends, how to get faster cash in the business, some places and ways to remove bottlenecks in the business, hybridizing work environments, the emerging changing work environment that's coming up and then acquisition as a growth strategy and not last, but love and leadership. So some of the topics that we've got coming up on the show today, the quote from one of our topics today, Monte Moran, former co CEO of Chipotle Management is about getting people to do something for you. Leadership is about getting people to do something for themselves. I love the quote. So hi everyone. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, host of the show. Our show is all about how to scale and grow your business no matter what's happening in the world or the economy. Me, what part of the world you're in, what industry you're in or what's going on. You can find all our episodes and much more hundreds and Hundreds now@scalingcoach.com YouTube, Spotify, where iTunes, anywhere that you could think of. SoundCloud, I think McDonald's. McDonald's, yeah.

No, I figure McDonald's has everything.

Yeah. So anyway, lots of that stuff there. Scalingcoach.com so listen in now as we talk with Judy, Daniel, Doug about what the latest in the world of scaling up and all of that. Welcome to the show, guys. Hello, hello, welcome and gal.

Thanks for the invitation.

Bill, Dni, Bill, we use, I use guys sometimes to greet A group of women generically, without even thinking. And of course it is a bias in our language.

But I like folks. I like folks.

We could be speaking Spanish and then everything would have a gender, of course. Okay, so Judith, say hi. Tell folks a little bit about you and where you're from.

Well, I'm from Connecticut. I live in California almost 20 years now. So I'm on the west coast with you and I've got my own practice. I went the route of being a former C suite and some very large companies taking companies publicly on the New York Stock Exchange, doing some big roll ups. My specialty is really strategy, developing business models, working with the sales and marketing team to build, build brands. And you know, I say mine's all about growing people, profits and evaluations. That's really what I focus on.

Nice, nice, nice. And Doug, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. So I am actually from the tri state area around New York City originally, but I now live in New Orleans, Louisiana and I run a company by the name of Alan Technologies and we develop SAS software to essentially implement Scaling up. And we also develop the Scaling up scoreboard software on behalf of scaling up organizations. So we do the SaaS software that helps people implement the Rockefeller habits and the scaling up methodology. So got a team of people focused on that.

I love having you on the show because you can talk about the implementation side of things, the things you hear from people that they grapple with and then try to integrate with the software that so many of our clients are using. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Hey Bill, thank you for the invitation, Daniel.

That sounds like quite the Toronto accent.

Originally from Mexico, lived in the U.S. for many, many years. Now I live in Toronto for the last three years and moving back to Austin in a month or two.

To.

Be back in Austin. We miss Austin. It's been a great town. And I don't have to go out and clean the snow from my driveway every morning.

Oh, but you do if you watch the news last week and all of a sudden, yes you did.

And frozen pipes, you know, they were 77 degrees or 80 degrees on Thursday.

Yeah.

So I was, I was having a call with someone in my team and they were in their, their backyard in T shirts. I was like, what are you doing in the T shirt? I said like, it's 80 degrees. So I'm outside.

What a difference a week makes.

Yeah, in, in Austin, the typical saying. And I, I, many people have heard that if you don't like the weather, don't worry, it's going to Change very soon. I need like that. Except hot on summer, it doesn't change. I remember my last summer in Austin. We were over 100 days that we go to over 100 degrees every day. 100 days straight crazy hot. So we'll see.

Yeah, there's something about that. Right? And. And to riff on the old lyric, you don't know what you've lost till you're gone.

Joni Mitchell.

I see the reality when you move to Toronto.

Well, if you move to Toronto in the summer, spring, it's not too bad and even the fall is kind of nice. And then it gets just like.

I had a discussion with Salim Israel before moving to Toronto. He lives here and he said, yes, your winters are tough, but they compensate with amazing summers and falls. And he's right. The summer here is just amazing. The fall of the and the spring are super good. So you have a couple of months are tough.

But like I work with a lot of companies both in Toronto and Austin and I'm hoping to get back to both come June as they start to do more in person. Hopefully by then you'll be able to fly in and out of Canada, but I'm not that sure. By the way. Yeah.

We'Ve been very surprised if you come to Canada today from the US or anywhere in the world.

Yeah.

You have to go. You have to bring a test 24 hours before your flight. Yeah. Then you have to be quarantined. Everyone coming international after quarantine for a week, you have to pay $2,000 to the government for the process.

Wow.

And they do another PCs test, so.

They'Re disincentivizing, discouraging it as much as possible. So you can't fly in and out like you once did?

I can fly in and out, but if I come back, it will cost me $2,000 on a week in a hotel, no matter what.

Can you go home to quarantine or no? In a hotel before.

Yes. Not today. Today you have to part time in one of the approved hotels, government hotels.

That seems to make some sense because then they know what your contacts are. They know. I mean, if you're trying to control something, it makes sense.

They know you're in the US And I came back, Doug, I saw you in January in Florida. And after that I had to do PCs test, come in and then I was able to be quarantined in my house with an app in my phone that track wherever I went. I had to report myself every morning at 6am If I had symptoms like.

A correctional what about vaccination? Does it make a difference?

So even though Canada order like enough for vaccinate two countries full, the roll up has been much less than in the US There's a really big government controversy. They have vaccinated very few people.

These policies have quarantined. If you have a card, I don't.

Know if it has. I understand very few have arrived to the country. But also the deployment has been very, very bad.

I was just going to say these policies are having huge implications. If you look at my son just got into McGill and in Montreal and we can't go visit. We, I mean even to pull off a quick college visit, you know, is he going to decide to go there if he can't visit? So you look at the implication it's having just on. I know it's a public university there but. But still the, the economic impact it has across the country. You know, obviously you got to do what you got to do and track people, but it's having these sort of broad implications across all kinds of industries that just affect business, you know, they do.

And yet you. We work with companies all over the world and I have last week was working with a client in New Zealand and they just have regular old meetings in life with no masking nothing because they don't have any freaking Covid.

Well, they kind of did it right from the beginning and they are smaller. Yeah. Easier to control an island nation like that.

And woman leadership.

Yes, you're right.

Great leadership. It really was great leadership.

So we have a lot to talk about today. I want to get right into first news item. One of our clients. We've been trying to feature some more client successes along with the big companies. This company in Wichita, Kansas based Altite, talking about pivoting. So first they pivot, right? They go from doing some kind of equipment calibration, certification stuff to wear bolt tightening for the wind energy industry. Right. So you have these big wind turbines generate and stuff and they need their bolts tightened. And that's like a vendor, that's a special thing, right. They double the employees, they start to double the revenue of the company. And in the middle of that they also slash their cash conversion cycle. The days that they're actually collecting money on the tail end of things and inventory loss through that evolution and then tighten up and true up to an updated BHAG and all that. I don't know, I love the different touches that that fit and it did feel like a lot of our clients are doing that kind of thing this year where They've done either significant or mini pivots. Pivots in operation or pivots in whole market served and that kind of thing.

And Bill, look at some of the things they did. You know, brilliant moves, but not rocket science. Right? And that's what I always talk about in business. People think when you pivot or do new things, it's gotta be this something, you know, the phenomenal big idea, right? The moonshot kind of concept. Quite often it's not. What these folks did were really common sense, right? And I think every time I'm on this show with you, I like, you know, I just go back to the Right. There's nothing common about common sense. What did they do? Right? So they saw that, you know, their business, it was difficult for them to get into the, you know, the places where they needed to, you know, repair and replace, you know, these, this industrial equipment. And so they. What did they do? They looked around and said, what other industries can utilize the same kind of skill sets that we have and what. The same equipment that we use? So. Right. So that was the first thing like, how can we use what we already have rather than building, you know, building something new. Right. Common sense, right? And number two, they went to. Okay, what? Well, which industries are smart and healthy and growing renewable energy. Common sense. Great question. Then they actually went to the renewable energy people and their salespeople, God bless them, went to them and said, what other kind of help could you guys use? Right? Not rocket science. The number one basic question, what other kind of help can you use? And they said, you know, what? If truth be told, this bull testing and. Right. Repairing we need it. Well, not only did that, you know, those handful of companies that went. Needed it, everybody needed it, right? And so what did they do? They said, great, we got the tools, we got the skill sets to do this. Everybody's doing it, nobody else is doing it. And they did that, you know, they did that pivot. And then what they, the other thing they did was they had a, they had their BHAG, which was to have like 50 or 500 vans on the street. And they said, what we're going to do is we're so busy, we just doubled. We've got to go back to our plan, right? And we got to kind of change our bhag and say, we're going to go to this. We want like 10,000 visits a week or whatever it was. Right. And they pivoted and it was very manageable. And they got. Right, they got the input from everybody to Work on the plan, change, change a couple of processes and boom. But I mean, to me that was one of the, you know, and they got right the jack stacks game of business to help understand the numbers or cash conversion. Everybody, you know, realized that they affected cash either in a positive, mediocre or negative way every day, regardless of what they did in the company. Right. And they rewarded people. Right. And for those that, you know, were sucking cash, you know, how do we all fix it collectively as a team? I mean, all beautiful, graceful, orchestrated moves, but not moonshot and doubled their business. And now they've got this great new hybrid model and you know, now they kind of are on a moonshot trajectory of growth. So I thought that was a fantastic story.

Yeah, I like it as well. And I think one of the things that you said there is really interesting. And within that these interesting pivots are not like they didn't go just brainstorm out in the world. There are these little threads like you're doing something over here with some client somewhere, somebody asked for something that's a little out of the norm and you don't notice it at first. And then you realize there's a big opportunity like a thread that you could pull on there and revealing a whole lot more tapestry.

Right. You just keep kind of pulling that tapestry apart. Apart.

What I like about the story and Julie, everything you mentioned, I thought it was great. But most importantly, people really don't understand that growth sucks cash. If you really want to be able to scale, you need to have cash in the bank and generate positive cash flow. What happens when you make your cycle sufficient, your cash sufficient, then that generates an excess of cash and use usually that cash to scale. We really believe there's an excessive opportunity in the world. The problem is a lack of cash and execution to be able to do it right. And what I love about that story is they focus on executing, right. The cash cycles so they have the.

Cash to scale and got their salespeople very involved. Right? The sales, the controller, everybody. Right. It was a full court press on that.

And that's one more thing that I believe. Scaling up fixes. Usually departments work in silos. Whenever you work with scaling up, I have priorities that go through departments or cross departmental functions. That's when you get everyone aligned with the same priority. That's why I love scaling up. It really breaks all the silos and make the team work more efficiently. Working efficiently, they were able to get cash efficiently and then be able to scale.

One of our clients just had raised some additional Cash. And I was surprised by what they'd done. Lots of people have done PPP money in the last year, but just looking at the 15 approximate companies that I've done private coaching with in the last year, We've raised nearly $150 million between all these companies in the last 12 months in this period for acquisition for. But a lot of it comes because they were smart with the cash they already had. They tuned up, they optimized things, they looked financeable, they were being smart about evolving their strategies. Right. They were doing a lot of things like that. That's a big treasure chest across 15 companies. Right. Unfortunately, it's not evenly distributed. There's one company that, that leads the pack there. But so.

There'S a lot of capital out in the market right now, and I think you're obviously seeing that with your client companies, but, you know, all different kinds of capital. This is, it seems. It seems pretty flush out there, even all the way down to angel capital, to be honest with you. There's just lots of people that have cash, the market's been doing well, and there's all kinds of access to it right now.

I think that's the hidden message. People are like, oh, the economy's hard, business impacted, things have shifted, and some people and some companies have been really hurt. But if you play the shift right, if you find the wave, if you move, if you're flexible, there's a lot of opportunity in any time, in any shift. Right? And I think that's the thing that's so sad. I have a dear friend whose business failed in the last year. And if I look honestly about. I'm going to be very careful what I say here. But as I assess, they just didn't want to change, they didn't want to adapt. Because other people in the same sector, in the same area, in the same whatever, are still operating and in fact now acquiring other companies. And this person just. They were done mentally, emotionally, like, whatever. They were like, oh, but, but the first conversation was, it's impossible. Like, oh, you can't do what we do. Bullshit. Use a technical term. Maybe not in the way that you did it, but you could always do something a little bit different.

Bill. I think that reflects probably about 70, 75% of business in general. I mean, that whole status quo don't change, right? We always talk about, you know, are, are you in it to win it or not to lose? And a lot of. A lot of leadership. They're in it just not to lose. Right. They kind of have this we're just gonna. Right? We're just, we're just gonna not lose. We're. We really don't want to win, which is, you know, why, you know why those winners and those leaders are the ones that kind of suck. All the media and people get jealous. It's like you're, you're part of the vanilla crowd over here. You know, there's really not something, anything sexy about vanilla. You got, you got to spice up your vanilla. These people are the ones that, you know, took calculated risks and thought differently. I read a. It's a. I believe it was a German philosopher. I can't remember his name. If anybody knows, help me. But the. But the. But it was talking about people and how people grow great companies. And basically it was that talent. Talent are those who can hit a target that most people cannot.

Genius.

Is hitting a target that no one else can see. And I love that. To me, that's kind of the way I think about business. And those are really the difference between, between winners and losers. And it doesn't have to be this, you know, this new planet out in the universe that they're saying it could be that, right? It could be that bolt tightening business and bolt inspection business and the renewable energy. Right. Was something that nobody else saw. So I think that really resonates with a lot of people.

You know, two words come to mind with regard to that quote, insight versus execution, right? Hitting that target. Well, is the talent, is the execution applied? But the finding and seeing the target is the insight and that's self reflection, self awareness, right. At a company, at a personal level, that makes all the difference. One of the practices that makes such a difference for so many of our teams is daily huddles. And another one, the companies that we know and love, fans of the framework actually from the EO Edmonton chapter connected there a Mosaic Home Services implemented the daily Huddle. They talk about it in a Forbes article and this is one of the ones that we find again and again transfer to transformational and so important in. Especially in the last. I mean anytime, but especially over the last year, getting on the same page when you're not necessarily in the same room. The huddles have made such a difference and yet so many companies struggle with it. The Forbes article outlines their agenda and some of the rules and things like that, how they've made a daily practice of it. But how are huddles going for your teams? Who's struggling with them, getting new teams started on them? What do you got to share on that?

So, yes, we're just going to jump.

In and I, you know, we obviously are right at the core of that. Right. We have a product that has the ability to do huddles in it. I think one of the things that we've seen over this last year is people just didn't have great cadences prior to this pandemic. And when they went into this work from home environment, they were struggling. What we saw with our customer base is they at least had the framework in place in the software to conduct these meetings and house the data. You know, not everybody could be on every daily huddle, not everybody could be in every meeting. And so we've, we've spent the last year really sort of digging into the meeting side and sort of building out the functionality and expanding the functionality of this concept of a meeting. This, this pandemic has really heightened the importance of having tools to allow for effective meetings. And I think, you know, used to get a meeting and go into a room and everybody would talk and take notes on a piece of paper and bring it back to their desk and, you know, but now sort of bringing data. And how does data come into a meeting like that? When you have people so distributed, it's really important to have some sort of, you know, tool to pull it all together. And look, we've seen a lot of our client companies just really thriving with the daily huddle. You do need to tech enable it, obviously, using things like Zoom, bring the faces together. But it's not just the faces and the talk. It's, it's making sure while you're having that meeting that you have the right data in front of you, the priorities that you're working on, the critical numbers that you're tracking in the business. So everybody's aware at all times. And look, we've had a lot of aligned companies and scoreboard customers who are just thriving with the Huddle tool. We're building out great new enhancements and flexibility into it and we're going to continue to do, we're doubling down on the meeting tool because it's been such a, for us, it's a, it's a little bit of a shift in a pivot for us just to spend more time on that meeting piece.

The thing that I like in particular about the aligned software for the scaling up scoreboard for the huddle is that one of the key failings of the huddle is people not preparing and having a structure that has people stop, reflect on their day, pick their number one thing, et cetera, enter a metric, call out stocks. That personal reflection before they walked into the huddle makes for such a better huddle. And a structure certainly encourages that. Of course, they have to remember to do it. Put it in their calendar or whatever, like, develop the habit around. But. But the structure definitely forwards that.

Yeah, it sure does.

And I think to both of your points, I mean, Doug said something really important, right? I mean, you know, in yours, like, there's only three steps of it, so it's pretty simple. So every day you come at the same time, you're gonna do this. You know, the same three things. I noticed the things that, you know, with some of my clients, especially in the beginning, it's almost. It takes them a couple of weeks, and, you know, they're like, you know, they're either not prepared or they're thinking about it. And it's like, guys and gals, folks, it's the same. It's the same three things. It's like. It's the same agenda. You don't have to rethink. Rethink the agenda, right? So just kind of get it committed to memory, you know, Memory, you know, you kind of worry about somebody takes, you know, two weeks to figure out what three things. So it is. It's, you know, it's three simple things. And then, as Doug said, it's the data, one of those key points, you know, the metrics. So the companies that I found that it works great with, they had. First of all, they had critical numbers, right? Not only did they, you know, they knew what they were supposed to be, but they had the information. Some knew what they were supposed to be, right? Like whether it was safety or revenue or EBITDA or whatever their key metric was, right. You know, they knew what it was, but they didn't have the data. So, you know, you know, the ones that work well are the ones who agree on. And again, there's. There's credibility and relevance to those numbers because some people have metrics and, you know, I'll go and I'm like, why? Why is that such an important number? What don't I know about that? Because it doesn't seem like it's very important. Then you kind of pull away, you know, pull away the onion peel, and it's not important, but they can hit it all the time. So what? Get rid of it. We're talking about ones that are aligned, right. With that bhag, right. That are aligned with those quarterly goals. You know, the ones that are really relevant and impactful. So I think that's so important is where did the numbers come from? What's the impact and the relevance to it? And again, and do you have the real data? And once you do that, I mean, I mean, you know, I don't know and I'd love your opinion. I don't know anybody. The only people who seem to really complain about the daily huddles are people who are consistently not making their numbers. And they're usually those B and C players because it's like, oh crap, I gotta kind of expose myself again today where like the A players and the doers, they love it, right? So it's a great invest, you know, great investment of 15 minutes every day.

I always tell people, you want to make your company faster, you have to pulse faster. I really believe the daily hurdle is the pulse of the company. Indeed. When March happened last year with COVID Growth Institute, the first couple of weeks, the last two weeks of March were significantly affected. We got scared and we had a lot of discussions what to do and what change to do. By the way, April was our best month in history. It was a huge return. But those two weeks, like from the 11th to the end of the month, was very scary. And interestingly, we said we have to double down on the daily huddle. We had two daily huddles, 8:07 in the morning and 4:47 in the afternoon, Easter time. And we all got aligned, exactly what needed to happen at the beginning and at the end, and told me that at the end we had a tough day on the day and he was, you know what, we're all tired. We were all having a really bad day and we just stayed talking as friends and supporting each other and that was huge. Usually the mornings are way more right, right. And they told me at the end in June, July, when we were doing much, much better. They said, hey, Daniel, just to be able to see your face and see your tone twice a day was huge for the team because we've had friends that they didn't spoke with their boss in two or three months. They just got emails from the people working from home and they had no idea what was going on. He said, getting data and seeing you, hearing you every day for two times a day, it just gave us a lot of peace and confidence that things that we're doing were working. So it's a must. The daily huddle and the way they describe it on this article that Bill you shared, I loved. He said, hey, we celebrate the good things and all that. We make sure everyone's aligned in what we have to do. What are the top three priorities you could get so much accomplished in 15 minutes. That's why they call it the most profitable 15 minutes in the company or more.

Yeah. They report a 10x return on time. So every minute spent in the huddle return 10 or more minutes back in, say, productivity. Why? Because you've already. You, like, got on the same page. You didn't need as many side meetings and things like that because everybody kind of knows and you're working in a more coordinated fashion, you know, the daily huddle is such a simple thing and yet a struggle for so many. And we'll hear again and again, especially people who don't have a coach saying, well, we tried that thing, but that's not really for us. You don't understand our business.

Yeah, yeah.

I tell them you don't understand. Course.

Yeah, exactly.

Just get down to the core of who we are.

Yes. Such a difference. And it's simple but not easy, which is why we think it's so useful to get a coach. Whether you work with one of the 200 scaling up coaches around the world or somebody else helping someone outside your world to give you some feedback, you're like, okay, the huddle didn't work. Oh, well, let's take a look at it. Right? You wouldn't. I'm going to go out and later today and do my latest sport, wing foiling. And so this is a thing where you're riding a surfboard, a hydrofoil surfboard, so you come up out of the water and then you're using a wing to propel you along. Not like a mounted mat. Anyway, it's elegant but also challenging. And I wouldn't like. The first time out was miserable and I, like, did terribly, and I needed somebody to say, okay, we'll stand like this and hold it like that and give me some feedback on it. But I didn't give up on it. I didn't say, well, that wing foiling is not for me because I didn't get it the first time. Think about the most important things that we've done in life. Our business, our key relationships, our hobbies. They didn't like. You didn't just wake up already able to do them. They take a little work and some feedback, some coaching. If you don't have a coach right now, our guests tend to be coaches on the show or directly connected to coaches. Doug runs the software business that works with all of our stuff. And Doug, you guys get coached as well, don't you?

Yes, we do.

Yep.

And you know, it's Something I imagine we'll always get coached. I just, I can't imagine not having a coach. It's just such a useful, you know, tool in my business and just having the resource for my team. We're our whole company is involved in our coaching relationship. So we do the annual planning, quarterly planning, I do the monthly check ins but it's extremely useful and for us it's sort of dual. For us we need to a just sort of be coached to run our own business well. But we also need to know how coaches coach so that we're making our tool better for the coaches. So we're getting a lot of dual purpose out of that experience. But look, there's no doubt the coach companies on our platform perform better. We have the data to prove it. It's just the way it is. And any way you can look at the data 10 different ways, it all says that getting the coach companies perform better.

So to that end, if you don't have a coach Now I know I've been full pretty much for the last 12 months. As soon as a client ended up another couple clients were waiting in the wings to get started with coaching. So we've stayed very full. But we have 200 coaches. So if we can help you find a coach, send us an email. Info scalingcoach.com there's also many levels of coaching from a mix of sort of self paced self learning. We'll talk more about the Growth Institute thing in a bit, but you can combine the online learning, self paced stuff with coaching to the full private coaching that is kind of the core of our work to our workshops. We'll talk about all that as we go through but drop us a note. Info scalingcoaching if we can help you find a coach in your area or to fit your style. Of course areas mattered less these days. I've always coached all over the world, but in particular now it's gotten even easier. But maybe it's a particular style or an emphasis or focus area that you're looking for somebody particularly great with execution or somebody who's a strategy whiz. Or maybe you want somebody who's really financial driven because you're about to do some tune ups in that realm or you need some collaborative stuff. We can help you. InfoScalingCoach.com will hook you up. Next up, Love is Free Guac is extra new book from the co CEO Monte Moran of Chipotle who helped grow Chipotle from 8 to 2000 restaurants and a huge $23 billion market cap he talks about love, vulnerability, and truth. We shared the quote at the opening of the. Of the conversation. And I think there's a lot there to leadership. I noticed for the last little bit, I've been focusing more and more on leadership. So we've got all these scaling up tools, but then who are you in the middle of all of that as you're growing your business?

Yeah, we were all fortunate to have a. We had a session with him this week, so it was wonderful to be able to talk and listen to him. And it's gonna sound corny, but I absolutely loved his talk. And again, some great words of wisdom. He talked about being an attorney and getting thrown into a completely new area of a restaurant. And first question, what did he ask him himself is, you know, what can I do to help these people? And all of a sudden, here's this really smart guy who loved this successful law firm, and he's like, I don't know this industry. I can't do anything. But all of a sudden, you know, he started talking to everybody and he was like, you know, it came down to that question, like, what can I do to help you?

Right?

It was just like, what can I. This whole thing was, what can I do to help you? And then in the essence, you know, in the end, he figured out the best thing he could do was to, you know, give these people all the tools and resources that they could possibly do to empower, to be empowered. And he said it wasn't about me, right, being the leader and using my power. It was about giving them the resource, like turning my power, any of my power I had. And the one power he did have was to get access and tools to give them power. And that's what he did. He said, I took everything about me being the lead and being the powerful, and I just, you know, inundated these people with great listening and great tools to empower themselves. And, you know, when you can get the best out of anybody, right, that's the greatest thing you could do. And, you know, he said, people, you know, you said, you know, you just have to know. Daniel, I think it was you we were talking about, you know, do you understand business? She said, you just need to understand people. And what did Monty say? He's like, people just want to be seen and heard and understood and loved. And so he just asked them, what do you need? Where are you struggling? What's going to make you. What's going to help you? Right Again, not rocket science, not moonshot thinking. And that's what he did, right. He gave these people all the tools to make the best of themselves, right? To empower them. And I thought it was wonderful.

Sorry, the name of the book, I thought it was, it was Love is Free and it's true. Love is Free and. And that's what he did. He just listened to people and care about them. Walk is extra. You want walking your in your burrito, great. You pay extra. But I thought it was a brilliant name. So first time I heard, I was like, what? That's the craziest name ever. And then after you hear him stalk talk, he said like, wow, this guy really gets it. He really understood the business and he just applied where he was free, that he was just caring about people, asking them what was important for them. Indeed, the first story that he told. And by the way, this presentation is free, Bill. I don't know how you want people to ask you for it. Or we could put a link.

It's free.

They could, they could ask. We have a growth institute for free to anyone. But the first story, I thought it was, send me the link.

We'll add it to this. You can chat me the link. I'll throw it up on the screen and I'll throw it into the show.

Notes also I'll ask my team now. I'll get to you. But here's what I thought. It was great. So the first story, history. They invite him to be the CEO. And he said, hey, before I become the CEO, I want to be like a mystery shopper. So he goes into this 60 day training for managers and there were all new people coming into the organization be trained as managers. And while he goes through the process, he realized that they have no idea about the culture and what Chipotle is. And he learned everything from the frontline employees. So as soon as he joins as a CEO, he cancels the program and just grow the people from the front line to be managers. And he was just hearing and he said no other CEO could have figured that out if they haven't gone two months or 60 days through the training of a manager. And because no one knew about me and I was a lawyer, I was not from the industry. I just went from being the CEO of a law firm to be a trainee on a manager training program at Chipotle. And that was the best thing I could have ever done because I really was trained and realized how much knowledge my frontline employees had. And that significantly changed the way Chipotle works. And by the way, the impact on the stock from less than a dollar to over $750 stock.

Substantial challenges along the way, right? They've had some.

Yeah, but that's what doing the right thing is. And the Growth Institute. Let me just start. Sorry, Jodi, I know you want to talk now, but let me just. We've been at the Growth Institute. We work a lot with CEOs, helping them scale. And recently we're looking for kind of understanding of the impact you could have as a CEO. And we found the chart of Microsoft. And by the way, I am a big, big, big Mac fan. Like the computer, I'm recording, iPad, I do everything Mac. But reality is the new CEO of Microsoft. I love the guy. So, quick story. Bill Gates gets a company from zero, starts a company and gets them to a pretty decent level, gives the company to Steve Ballmer in 2000. Steve Ballmer is the CEO for 14 years. And when he departs 14 years after, the stock is 30% less valuable than when he started. So in 14 years as a CEO, he destroyed 30% of the value. And then you get Saja Nadella, the new CEO. By the way, Microsoft just has had three CEOs ever in history. And the third one grew from the ranks from the inside of the company. Brilliant guy, super simple. And he has grown the company six times in five years. That's growth. Hey, Microsoft has, I think, 208,000 employees, and they're able just to change one and grew five or six times valuation in five years just by changing one out of the 280,000 people. That's the impact of a CEO. And that's why I love the story about Monty. He said, I came as a completely outsider. I was a lawyer. I came in knowing nothing about the restaurant industry. I just heard my employees Applied Love care about them. And we change the stock from 1 to 750 in the process.

And what were the two things that both the men, Monty and the CEO of Microsoft have that are aligned? Culture. They focus on the people and the culture. I mean, Microsoft is. You think of technology and yes, it is. It's a great technology company, but it's got, you know, just an incredible culture. Well, you know, they say, you know, if you, if you give somebody a paycheck and you hire for. Right. And you hire for talent, they'll get, you know, they'll, they'll perform those tasks that they're being paid for, Right. If you hire for somebody because they believe in the same thing that you believe in, right. They'll. They'll go to the moon for you. And that's that kind of culture that Microsoft, that he's really built, that, you know, that they've got such a purpose and a vision that they believe, believe in these things. And those people are really like, they're kind of like, right. You know, profits, if you will. I mean, it's just this wonderful, wonderful, wonderful energy. You know, getting back to, you know, to Monty, the one thing that I, the word I forgot to say was, you know, he said that people want to be seen and heard, but valued, right? And that's really important, right, that word value, right? People want to know, like, you know, when they go somewhere, you know, beginning of the, the day, the end of the day when they, when they leave, right, that they made some kind of imprint, right, that they're, you know, they're, you know, you know, 12 or eight or nine hours of their day, you know, wasn't meant for. Not that they really contributed something. And I thought that was really, really important. And I love when he talked about, he said so many, you know, CEOs are both, you know, they're, they're leaders, are impatient in their ambition. And he's like, I just kind of purge myself of that impatience. And he said, I really took, you know, you know, he said, I just kind of drew on the power of the team and their collective intelligence and energy to, to really, really grow the company. And, and, and he was also, he was a great question asker. And I always say, you know, some of the smartest people in the world are alcoholics, right? They ask these great smart questions. And he did. And he heard him. And remember that story, you know, Daniel, you're talking about that when he was doing that kind of secret, you know, he was at secret boss, managerial program even, he said at one point, he said, I'm listening. And he goes, one of the things that stuck out, you know, was one of the women that I, the woman who was training me, and he said, you know, well, we were talking and he said, well, you know, you know, is there anything you don't like about your role or could be different? He's like, she said, remember, I just want to go home and not smell like chicken. Remember? She said, I want it. She's like, I want to get in a position where I just don't have to go home and smell like chicken, right? Because she felt like being there. That's kind of what she equated her job to him. He was like, wow, okay. So, you know, again, being, being, you know, being a person and asking great questions and listening about, you know, walking in other people's shoes and being, you know, having that empathy is, is so important. And that's where the, when you really listen to somebody, you know, I can imagine when he went back and said, hey, you know, you saying that not wanting to go home, you know, and smelling like chicken really made an impression on me. And here's this really smart guy and the CEO saying that one line, I heard you. And this is what I'm doing as a result of that. You know, it's really an impactful statement for anybody in everybody's organization.

Here's a leadership thing to underscore here, right? Daniel points out the leader matters. We're going to talk about the next leader in just a minute. Stan, this leadership topic, but the leader does matter and makes a difference. And if you are either the ultimate leader or any level of leader in the organization, you need to know that what you say, how you do, like it matters. And the other thing for the leader to remember is that you won't ever do anything significant, significant like huge on your own, even if you're very, very visible. It's going to take a whole team of people around you. And by far the hardest part of business is the people side because people are not rational. People are, people are wackadoo, also beautiful, also powerful, but, but definitely. So you got to get good at dealing with people. You got to figure out how to empower people. That's very different than what early stage leaders do. Early stage leaders are generally technical experts in their field. They know something about this piece of software or this industry. And so the whole early stage of our leadership is about solving people's problems. People come into our office or they catch us in the business and they throw their problems at us and then we start like trying to solve them. And sometimes that's appreciated, but it keeps people small and sometimes it's really irritating because they just want to be heard and appreciated. But in neither case is it actually useful in forwarding the team and making it stronger. So you got to get good at people to do something big. You're going to need a lot of people around you to have bigger and bigger impact. You've got to get better and better at people. And the coolest thing is you just really have to listen to them, love them, appreciate them, empower them. The coaching skills are way more important than the technical, technical skills of, and problem solving and you know, strategic mindset stuff.

Well, that's the age old question, right? Nope. You know, how many people want to be managed versus how many people want to be coached.

Right.

So.

The whole show and Bill, I.

Was going to say it's probably a good reminder everybody, the other thing that Monty shared with us, remember, he's going to have and I think it starts this week on pbs, a six part series that's coming up. Monte Moran, so kind of stay tuned, check your dial if you will for that PBS special that's coming up at the Growth Institute.

We recorded Kevin Oaks, that was the third speaker in the summit. We record him his master course on Thursday and Friday after the summit and he Talked about the 18 things you have to do to renovate your culture. And a lot of the stories were about Microsoft. He's been a coach at Microsoft, has worked for Microsoft as a consultant and has seen all the changes Saga Nadella has done and there were a lot of them included on the course. So we look forward to launch that around the middle of the year. And that's exactly what you were talking about, Julie. The importance of culture, people, everything and how has become today the center of a business. You could have a great strategy, have a lot of money. You don't have great people and great culture. There's nothing that's right.

So talk about Tom Brady and a new book about the leadership lessons in just a minute. Before we do that, I want to just say like personal plug. I've been working for a long time on what I like to call the fifth decision, the kind of leader that you'll be right if you have to get people, strategy, execution, cash right. Then the fifth thing that we begin to reflect on is what kind of leader have I been and what kind do I need to become over time And I'll be doing a course with the Growth Institute on that. And I have developmental four month long intensives with people right now kicking off if that's of interest to you or any of the leaders in your company. Seems very popular with some of the C suite and middle management rising this thing. So in this we invent ourselves as a new kind of leader in the fifth Decision program and we invent ourselves as a new future based kind of leader. And then we start to work on the four key disciplines in the leadership flywheel of becoming more inspiring, engaging people, better a future based planning and the coaching skills required to keep that going over time. So if that's of interest to you, send us a note to info scalingcoach.com you could be part of one of those four month intensives, the pilots that are kicking off this month. Let's Talk about Tom Brady and Saturday Live covered him in a funny skit recently that he was one of the only things that was really working in the country. And our friend Kevin D. With Anne Marie Ciminelli have written a book about the leadership lessons distilled from Tom Brady's career. Of course, he's had a little bit of positive attention mostly lately, and they highlight in it a few things. I mean, there were a lot of 12 leadership lessons. I thought a few were, were more interesting than others for me, but attention to detail, the mindset and the attitude, the use of planning and playbooks and then, and then this empowerment, accountability, like creating that culture that wraps around. What did you guys call out from that? What are you noticing in, in this area?

I, you know, I, I was born and raised in New England, so it was kind of one of those weird people. I would, I, I was a huge Giants fan because we knew one of the, the players. But I just. Because being a New Englander, I always loved the Patriots.

Right?

So Tom Brady was, you know, for years they were awful. And then all. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, most of the time it was like, people like, you know, the question you get, you'd be like, new England has a team. It's like, yeah, we actually do. They're called the Patriots kind of thing. And, you know, and then of course, you know, they almost became like the Dallas Cowboys were in my earlier childhood. But, you know, he, you know, as a person or as politics, whatever, aside, I mean, as a, you know, as a quarterback and, you know, a team leader, he is a phenomenal guy. And I agree with you, there are some that really resonated more with me. To me was very much that empowerment. Much like we were just talking about Monty, right. He has this ability to really get the best out of people. You know, he also is, you know, when he is with his team, he's not the celebrity, he's member of the team. He's a, you know, he's a top line on a fraction, you know, the bottom being the team. He's just another number on the line. And I think, you know, whenever you hear any kind of interviews or read anything about his, you know, his co players, that's what they say. He kind of comes, he's part of the team and he's going to be, he's tough, he's demanding and he, he has a really, you know, high bar for himself.

Right.

And I mean, everything from his, you know, what he eats and how he exercises and how he studies. I Mean, he is really a student of, you know, a football, you know, and at this point, you know, he's kind of a PhD, you know, a professor of football. And so he studies so much, and he sets such a high bar, and he. He brings that every day. You know, he sets an example. But then he, you know, he asks a lot of questions. He's always, you know, why are you doing that? Why? You know, why. Why are you holding the ball that way? I'm curious what he, you know, what do you do that I noticed when you. You know, when he was talking to some receivers, you know, I notice when you get to the. You know, when you get over to the sideline, you do this. Why are you doing that kind of thing? So, you know, he puts him on evil in an even level. He's not, you know, he's not the boss. He's one of the players. He's a leader, but he's not the boss. And he asks smart questions. He gives us feedback. He empowers other people. I mean, he's got a very, very positive mindset. And he has a plan. I mean, he has a plan for everything he does from, you know, what time he wakes every day, right. To what he puts in his body and how he does his exercise. And, you know, and that. That plan goes into that playbook. And I think that's wonderful is he's not asking anybody on his team to do something any different. Like, you know, he's not the exception to the rule. He's just expecting everybody to kind of be, you know, play on the same field. Right. Every pun intended. And I think that those are some of the great things that I got out of that book.

Yeah, I'd agree. I think, you know, just holding other people, you know, he holds himself accountable. And when people see him holding himself accountable so publicly and how he approaches the game, you know, it just translates to what he expects from the people around him who are, you said, like you said, equals. And, you know, even in the instance, I think, you know, he figured out how to bring, you know, somebody who was having issues in the league, couldn't get a job. You know, they brought in Antonio Brown, and he figured out how to get the most out of Antonio Brown. And I think that is, if you look at that, I don't, you know, you could say that was the coach, but I think Tom Brady had probably more to do with that. From what I've read and what I've. What I've assessed from that situation that, you know, he figured out how to get the most out of that player. And I think, you know, he probably had a lot of conversations about, hey, look, this is what I'm doing. I need you to do this. And Antonio Brown performed for them. He was really a key addition to that team as they went through their playoff run. And so, yeah, great. They have great coach. They have a great coach there as well. But, you know, I think. I think Brady is. He's just a leader. And, you know, you know, if you. If you. If you do the things that you espouse, you know, people will respect that and play up to that. And I think that's just a great lesson for any leader and all of.

Us, you know, so I'm not an expert on football, and I were watching some games in January and I had no idea. Like, I enjoy the game. I'm just not an expert like Doug is. But for me, the leadership thing. So imagine this guy, like, he has nothing to prove to anyone. He has done great in his career. Being very late on his career, he said, I'm going to leave my team, go to another team to prove that it's me who did that. Like how? Like how. First you have to be very, very blunt about it or have a pretty big ego to do that. But the risk that he took to prove that he was so powerful, like, he's such a good player, I thought that was very, very risky. And at the end, he just proved all of us right that he was the one that made the team and all of that. So I. My hat on the leadership and the risk he took. I really believe, as another leader, be able to see what he did. I thought it was extremely risky, and it paid off perfectly.

Interestingly enough, there's an article that just recently came out about that, and a little bit of it was competitive, right? I mean, he's the super competitor, right? And it turns out what he. What really inspired him or what he really wanted to prove was that Peyton Manning wasn't the only one who could do that. And he took that as a competitive. He liked the idea of trying to go to another team like Peyton did and winning a championship again. And he did it faster than. Took Peyton four years to do it. He did it in less than. I mean, it's really remarkable. And. But that's the competitiveness. So I think there's also another lesson in there. Even when you reach the pinnacle of your career, there's always somebody you want to be competitive with and do something against. I think that's what drove him and he proved you could do it. That's the most amazing thing, is to not just want to do it, but then just be able to go and do it.

And that goes back to what Doug just said, right, about being competitive. That goes back to all we said in the beginning, right? A big difference is, right, Are you playing to win or you're playing just not to lose, right? Professional. I'm like, you know, if I own a team, like, I want every guy and G on my team to be super competitive because it's about winning, right? I mean, that's, you know, that's, it's to be fair and play a great game. But I mean, right? There's a scoreboard, right? And so, you know, the, the goal, right, Is, you know, when football is to win the super bowl, right? If I'm, if I own a baseball team, it's to world win the World Series. It's not just not to lose the World Series, it's the World Series. So that's, you know, that goes back to that whole thing. Big difference between, between winners and lose, losers. And brave even got one of his buddies, right? All their successful players to come out, come out of retirement, right? He was having a great life and doing a lot of fun things. Got him out of retirement too, to say, hey, want to go do this again? Because, you know, and that wasn't his plan. He's like, okay, you know, got back into the game, practice and, you know, between the two of them and certainly the rest of their team, they showed that, right? If you are competitive, if you have a plan, if you set the bar, right, if you're going to work hard at it, you've got a good chance and have a vision, right? And you know what you need to do, you're going to win. And they went in there that day and they played to win and. And they won.

Hey, our friend Connor Neal chimes in, asks if anybody saw the McKinsey News this week. And I have to confess, I did not.

No. So Connor, come in, jump, come to.

The.

Chime in on it. Connor Felicity says perhaps an example, the opposite of Tom Brady. Maybe he'll add a little more on that. But I didn't see that.

I didn't see it either.

Yeah, so we'll come back on that. Maybe it'll be make the next one. Or if he chimes in here, if.

You could put a link, I would love to read the article, throw a.

Link in the comments. That would be helpful for us. So just one other thing to point out. We're doing besides the fifth decision, ongoing leadership intensive and live program. We've got workshops coming up all the time. You can find them@scalingup.com Our next workshop will be towards the end of May and we'll be doing instead of our regular like half day thing, we're going to do four sessions going deep dive on each of the four decision areas. So if you want info on that particular workshop go to info scalingcoach.com just say I forget what we're calling it. Mastermind or something like that. Tell us about the deep dive, the advanced course. So this will be four separate sessions, one deep dive on each decision area. We do much deeper work than we do in the half day workshops. It'll be listed as well there and good to do with your whole team. Do you guys have any workshops or anything to talk about before we move on?

Originally mine was going to be in March but due to a big project one of my clients needed it's timely. Mine's probably going to be the second week of April. April and it'll be a virtual. It'll be a virtual workshop, a half day. So news to come.

So the Growth Institute we have a scaling up class that we're going to take around 100 companies together implementing scaling up in one of the master courses with scaling up starting March 15th or 16th I think. And here's the uniqueness about it. It's a three month intensive that you get. Videos would run directly coaching and everything and people said hey the videos were amazing, the coaching was great. But just go through it with another hundred companies with the same issues going through the same process that usually it's amazing. So if you want to go through an implementation of scaling up together with other 100 companies, this will be a great option. And starts March 16th. And we'll have Bill Gallagher recent in the near future as a faculty on.

The Growth Institute and we're going to put together a intro or short version of this fifth decision work. Connor chimes in I think it's a really useful comment. This article McKinsey suffers from collective self delusion. The smuggest guys in the room is the quote of the headline Managing Partner removed by the partners. There is a real danger in thinking you're Super Superman or Superwoman in thinking you're the smartest in like that the smugness can, can and hubris can bite you in the ass. Right?

I will make this comment. I have a criteria list of how I work with clients because I'm fortunate I get to say A lot of no's to a few yeses and you know, each year keep one or two openings for some new clients. But one of my litmus tests is basically I kind of look at the leadership team, in particular the CEO, because, you know, let's face it, the bottleneck does start at the top. And you know, I really look at that is, you know, is that E in the CEO? Is that guy or gal? Is he or she the chief empowerment officer or is he or she the chief ego officer? And if the E. If the E stands for. And I can sniff out ego narcissism pretty easily if the E stands for right, ego, I don't. I'm not even going to put my work there because that's one of my disqualifiers and, and off times, you know, and there's ways you can kind of say that, you know, tell that to people, you know, in a nice way without using those words. But that's just one of my sniff tests. Is the CEO, is it really. Is that guy or gal, Is that E for empowerment or ego? And that's a cancer. That's because you're not going to change those people at that age. That's kind of hardwired to their DNA or you could, but it's like, I'm not getting paid for that by the time you turn that around. Right. There's a lot of. There's a lot of corpse and strife and everything else. So that, you know, Connor's point is really, really well taken. But that's my CEO, so sniff test.

Yeah. With respect to an opposite of Tom Brady, what was interesting, like I just mentioned, Antonio Brown was probably the smuggest guy on every. In the room, on every one of his teams. And somehow, again, whether it was the coach or Brady, they corralled his ego to perform. There were a lot. There are a lot of great players, you know, including Brady in Tampa Bay. Right. And so how do you sort of corral that? They manage to do it, but it does need to be corralled, that's for sure. It can also be a detriment to the organization having that giant ego. I've seen it on teams that I've been on in CEOs that I've worked for in the past. So it can be a poison inside a business. I've seen it destroy a company in my career.

You know, one of the proudest moments of my career is one of my teams at one point in time was really instrumental in pulling us back from a very difficult thing like A near failure of the business and then, and then doubling the business in a short period of time. And when I look at the players on that team, like from a resume standpoint point, you wouldn't hold those up and go, these are a players. In fact, from that sort of resume thing, it's very much like a lot of people with a lot of wacky, disconnected things. But that occurred like, and even now with the benefit of hindsight, like a highly performing a player team. Why? Because everybody was working together in a consistent way for a long period of time, pulling together, playing their unique roles against common things for a long. And I was so, so proud of them and then, and proud of myself for helping to align that. But, but it was about focus, it was about alignment, it was about empowerment, right? And working through that period from crisis to triumph. And those people were all a players during that period. But it is always situational, right? An a player in this company, in this role at this time is not in another.

That's right. Right, exactly. What, what kind of bar has the leadership set? Right? Because that's what everybody's looking to. That's kind of the line. That's the bar.

So let's talk about where things are going, right? So the, the new workplace is going to be hybridized and that's going to introduce all kinds of inequities. And then there are a lot of trends emerging now as people, as the world moves in. Where's the the puck going? Is our conversation. The first up is this HBS article that we'll put a link for making the hybrid workplace fair. Is technology equal? Are people equally competent in the new tools and approaches and practices? Do they have access to things? What are the practices around balance in their life? The distractions. I know some of my people seem to be fine on the teams that I work with and others the kids are continually interrupting them and coming in. And there's no quiet ever in their environments. Like, you know, it's not easy or necessarily fair in the same way things are disrupted. What are you guys seeing in how the workplace is changing and how the habits are evolving?

So I would like to talk about something I've been saying for many years. The Internet broke the geography of money. So a dollar, it's worth very, very different in very different parts of the world. In Japan, if you're in Tokyo, a dollar is worth very little. If you're in New York, a dollar is worth very little. You're in a small town in Mexico called Ix Miquil, Panidalgo, that it's a very, very poor small town. In Mexico, a dollar buys you a meal for two. Now you're going to be working. You could have someone in XV Kilbaniago working, competing with someone, York by the hour, giving your services. It's crazy what that's going to change.

In the world, especially if you have Internet, right? Like if you have a Starlink connection or whatever in some remote place.

But here's a number we've been using. I'm publishing my book in the summer and talking about the importance of the CEO and the leader in the company. But then you always have to understand the complexity of the companies depending on the amount of users, not the amount of revenue. And my main explanation of this is that a dollar is very different depending on what part of the world you're at. As an example, in the US a small to mid sized service firm has a revenue of around $120,000 revenue per employee. In the US it's around 120. In Mexico it's around $40,000 revenue per employee in a service firm mid market. In India it's $18,000. So now you could have someone in India doing exactly the same work that speaks English with someone in York or someone in Austin or wherever you want in the US and before we still had these rules about geography. The last year just broke every rule of geography that we have. And the amount of outsourcing or near sourcing of people, it's just blowing up all over the world. So that plus all the gig economy, I really believe the organizations that are able to work with a lot of outsourced people and pay by results, they're just going to go crazy big. I found this software company in Mexico, in the north. And they're really good, like brilliantly good. And they've done apps for ESPN and stuff. They do, they do apps. And I asked the CEO, hey, why I've never heard of you? If I'm from Mexico, I'm in the technology work. I've never heard of you. And the guy said, because we just don't sell to Mexican companies. I said what do you mean? We just sell to American, British, European or Japanese companies from Mexico, from north, in a very, very small town. He has an amazing capacity team and works for there. And then last story.

Some years ago.

I worked in, I was living in Austin and I did a website with a guy from India and the guy said I'm hiring my nephews in India. So he was kind of the project manager. I ordered the website to him and he subcontracted his nephews in India and the project was a disaster. It was really, really complicated. And I stopped seeing the guy. But I liked the guy. He was a very, very nice guy. I saw him like two years ago in Austin and the guy told me like, my business is just rocking. And I was like, hey, no disrespect to me. Was a terrible experience working with you. What change? And the guy, he's from India and he said, I don't work with Indians anymore. It's too complicated. And I was like, what do you mean? No, I just work with Mexicans. I was like, what do you mean? He said, I have a technology department in Guadalajara, Mexico, 300 programmers. I have a group of technology Indian work guys in Austin that work as project managers. If you're an Indian executive or Indian national and you go and sell technology in the U.S. people buy technology from you, but they go and subcontract and work with 300 programmers in Latin America and they do all the programming. So I really believe we had all these preconceptions that this last year with COVID were broken. So Bill, as an example, the office, we will not require an office for a full week. We're probably going to go and hire an office for a day and say, I want to rent this space for Mondays and on Monday everyone's going to go to the office, we're going to work there. People are going to leave an hour, two hours away, or as soon as you want, we go to the office for one day a week or one day every couple of weeks and that's it. The rest you're going to go home. I really believe we need some contact and meetings and laugh with each other and have a coffee. And I think that's really important. I don't think we're going to go fully remote, but you're going to do that in one day, two days a week or one a month, or once a quarter and that's it. And the rest are going to be remote. And I really believe the most intelligent companies are the ones that know how to work with people remote. I reread the book the Spider and the the Starfish and the Spider. I reread it over the weekend. It's just a brilliant book that the most decentralized organizations are the ones that are really conquering the world. If you go to see Salim Israel book, the expansion organization talks a lot about that. But before, as human beings, we were not ready for it. And then Covid pushed us to figure that out. And figure out how to work with people all over the world and don't go to the office and things like that. So I really believe that's going to open a lot of new doors in the world and the ones that adapt the fastest to these new trends are going to do really, really good.

Well, shout out maybe to one of my private coaching clients. One of the companies I coach is a company called Impixion. They're a indoor intelligence company, public company, and they provide indoor intel traffic patterns, access, location booking, all kinds of things to do with where people are and moving and what's going on in indoor spaces or defined spaces in general. So they pictionize is their verb for that. But anyway, lots of great tools for that. Shout out to one of the companies that I work with, Judy, the emerging workplace. Doug, what are you guys seeing? I'll jump in.

Obviously, you know, this has been an interesting year for us because we do a tool that sort of ties people together and you know, it's, you know, allowed us, as I mentioned, to sort of double down on the meeting part. But you know, the critical thing that I think is coming up and that I've noticed just in managing is, you know, look, I've onboarded new employees in this environment. It's very hard to develop this culture piece with onboarded employees, employees onto Zoom. And you know, I, we had probably our first in person. We tried to do virtual happy hours every week at the same time on Thursdays and you know, we finally did an in person one for the employees that were local. Here we have some remote employees as well. We've always had that and they've always been dialing into our Zoom huddles every day. But it was nice to see people and we've finally saw some people who've gotten onboarded and we hadn't seen in purpose in person. And you know, someone made the comment is, wow, everybody's a lot taller than I thought. You know, it's, it's amazing. You don't know how tall people are in Zoom and it's kind of crazy that this is how it's been. But that culture piece is, you know, we're looking at that. We've just, you know, we're, we have employee Net Promoter Score tool inside our software and we've just, so we're about to just relaunch the importance of that tool. We're highlighting it, putting it in its own menu and we've enhanced it with some more features to include not just the employees who are on the align Product have a user license on the aligned product. But all the employees that might be in your organization that you didn't put on the Align product, you'll be able to take the temperature of now as well. But that culture piece and our focus on culture is growing because of this new, what we think is going to be a permanently hybrid environment. You know, we're going to be permanently hybrid people coming into the office and working from home regularly. I think that's going to be the case. But this culture piece is going to be really, really key in how you sort of manage that and how you maintain and develop culture with this remote workforce. And so, you know, we're really sort of keened in on what are the things you can do from a culture perspective and what can we do with the tool that kind of drives everybody together. You know, this category of, you know, we, you know, we've been helping scaling businesses, you know, with the software. But I think this pandemic has created an environment where the, where the, you know, the addressable market for a solution like ours or a software tool like ours is actually expanded in that it really is more work management and yes, scaling, but it's also just managing the work in this distributed environment and so making sure the priorities are shared across an organization, holding everybody accountable to see that where everybody is on the priorities, what are the core values of the organization, making that transparent for everybody in a single tool. All these things get to the culture. You want a culture of execution, you want a culture that follows the core values, and you want to continuously measure that and provide the metrics against that. So we're seeing opportunity to really be a tool that can tie all that together and then sort of play in the culture space as well. So you'll see that from us. But I think that's big opportunity for companies. If you're looking at greenfield areas to get into, how do you address this culture piece in these. What, what will be a very, you know, you have companies that have just said, look, we're going fully remote in major major tech companies, you know, major, you know, consumer goods companies that are just going full remote. There's tons of opportunity in there for, for, for businesses like Align and, but for businesses in general, how do we, you know, what are the services you can provide to sort of onboard employees, you know, package company, you know, gift companies that new employee gets onboarded with. We'll handle your full, you know, ship a box, get them everything they need branded. You know, all these different opportunities are out there, and I Think that culture piece is a big one. So we're focused on it and I think a lot of people should be.

Yeah. And you know, I'm listening to everything everybody's saying. You know, we're, you know, I'm hearing diversification, I'm hearing tools. Right. And Bill, your opening question was, you know, what do you, what do you, what do you guys think? Right, well, this, you know, what's going on, what do you guys are experiencing? The experiences are, are as diverse as Daniel shared that the people are, right? I mean, you know, the, you know, the dollar in Mexico that buys two meal and you know, what a person's life is there versus 18,000, you know, you know, productivity in India versus 120,000 in America. You know, I look at my client bases, like in any given one, you know, zoom meeting, I remember thinking like, and knowing kind of the background stories, like, you know, there's some pretty wealthy people in this, you know, this one woman who's really kind of a, an up and comer. You know, she's a single mom with three kids, one with a learning disability, who lives in a two bedroom apartment. Like her life couldn't have been, you know, as I each said, look at each tile, like every tile, you know, because as I said, I got to really know these people. You know, they weren't a tile, but in a sense they were with a completely different story, right? And so when you say, you know, some people just can't get it together and you hear, well, you know, she's one of those people, but it's like, what do you know? She's got a kid with a really tough disability, right? A single mom in a two bedroom apartment, that's her struggle. You know, I live in a big house, there's three of us. We each have our own separate worms and all the tech, technology that we want, you know, it's very different from her life, right? And even though we have a dog who you may hear occasionally, we have all these tools and resources, like to keep your dog quiet, you know, if you want. Even then he kind of comes in and sneaks in. So that's one of the things you have to understand. Like there's a story behind every single one of those people. So that's one, right? Like, do they have the big house? Are they living in a one bedroom apartment in a high rise and you know, in New York City that they don't make a lot of money. That's, you know, so first of all, their office right now, their, their, their Home space can be very different. The other thing is, right, what are the tools that they have? Right? And we assume that everybody has a computer, right? Whether it's at school or whether it's in the office or, you know, that they have. That they have a laptop, they have access to connectivity. It's like, no, sir.

Right.

So when you're talking to people about the school, about schooling, it's like, why, I can't believe that school is not doing that yet. It's like, you know, a third of those kids in that school don't even have computers or Internet connectivity. So, I mean, the world is a very diverse situation. And because, you know, to Daniel's point, you know, that connectivity with the Internet made the whole world, like, everybody, you think they're on the same playing level, but they're still not. So, you know, when we get to that point where everybody can be connected, everybody can have some kind of tool that can connect to that, that can hear and respond, whether it's sending a document or listening to a person or being able to type a response back, you know, then the world will be, you know, them will be a lot more on a level playing field, but it's still not. And it's trying to figure out whatever ecosystem or environment you're working on. You know, that's one of the things that I know that I go and help and let's talk about everybody, right? You know, to try to get that culture what, you know, what is your team like, what do they have access to, what they don't have access to, and to make sure, you know, you know, make sure that everybody, you know, pretty much has equal resources so they are all on the same playing field. And if not, what do we do? You know, what do we do to get them, though? So it's, you know, it's not an easy question and it is a very, very diverse. But I agree with everybody. I mean, you know, I've been on, you know, zoom and video conferencing for the last 12 years in my life, and I've always thought it was a valuable tool. Does it displace that one on one? Absolutely not. Right? I mean, there's nothing like that face.

To face contact in that group be overused, right?

Like, absolutely.

Maybe you should just go to the phone sometimes and give people a break on the video.

And that's, you know, Bill, that's a great point. You know, two people this past week, they're like, can we set up a zoom? And I finally send people I know, like, you know what, do you mind if we don't. I'm like, I'm kind of zoomed out. Because you really do. Like, even as we're sitting here, right? Like, you kind of have to. It's like watching a show. You're really, you know, you kind of like your eyes and stuff, you're really drawn and, you know, and it's not that it's physically, you know, exhausting, but you just have to have that kind of mental energy focus. And I said to him, I'm like, do you mind if we just have a call? Because I kind of, you know, even like what you're wearing. I'm kind of thinking, like, I just want to relax. You know, my hair is kind of crazy today and I don't want to go and do stuff with it, whatever. It's like you do have that zoom fatigue and, you know, it's being honest to be able to, you know, to answer that.

So let me share a little bit of our technology and then. And talk about that and then let you guys chime in on some stuff and we'll give a shout out to the tools that we use. So during this year, right, I'm sitting. This is my main desk now, but it's like a little mini TV studio. There's multiple lights, like video lights on me. There's a very high quality camera coming in now with that kind of thing. So it's. That's well upgraded. Among just a better camera than is built into your laptop or desktop. I've got two big monitors in front of me. I've got obviously a pretty fancy microphone, audio mixing tools. The background is lit in a particular way and, you know, so all that. But. But you don't necessarily have to do all of that to create more quality. And because of that, I don't always want to sit at my desk every day, all day, like the main sort of primary because I'm like on camera here. I feel like I'm in a TV studio now when I sit and work in this place sometimes. And, you know, I'm using in ear monitors to hear the mic better and that kind of thing and yet look good on camera versus, you know, the headphones that you might use if you were just podcasting audio. So, you know, all of that comes together and it's nice. But there are some basic things. So one, and this is some obvious stuff, but put the light sources in front of you, not behind you. Got a window behind you that's very bright or whatever. Turn around. Doug's Got a bright window behind him, but of course it's not. He's got a fake background there. But you get the light on your face. So just pivot around. And then if you need to clean up the background a little bit or hang a sheet or do something to make it look good when you are on camera like you know, do that a little bit. Upgrade the mic maybe can make a big difference and not necessarily coming off of the whatever. But they're inexpensive mics. This is one I talk about all the time with people. Really inexpensive but high quality thing. This is the Audio Technica 2005 like 60, 70 bucks on Amazon or wherever. But is a much better sounding mic than some of the computer mics. It has both the USB and an XLR output and you can plug in your headphones so you can kind of hear how you sound and control your thing back then. And then we use a number of software tools. So most of our clients or as many as we can we get in the purpose built scaling up software scoreboard. And you can find this, the Align software tool that Doug leads Purpose built for doing scaling up the plans, the huddles like everything, the metrics, the dashboards, all in there. Scalingup.com software is the main sort of place that you, you can link to it or aligntoday.com right work, tell them that you want. You're a fan of the show. We love to get the credit and the kudos in our world, but this is the best place. A purpose built tool is heads and shoulders above anything else. And then when we're doing planning with our clients, many of the coaches and I use a tool called Mural. This is an online whiteboard tool. There's a one built into Zoom that you can use. It's not ideal. There's Google Jamboard. There are other kinds of like open whiteboard spaces where you can do planning and that kind of thing. We use a set of templates in Mural to do that that we then bring the results into the aligned software. Of course we're using Zoom for the vast majority. It easily outperforms teams and some of the other. And the Google whatever it's being called this day easily outperforms those in terms of reliability and that kind of thing and better for collaboration than things like Skype. But there's times that we'll go to others and then let's see what else do we have. We then collect input from our teams using a set of templates in Google forms. So we ask questions to survey widely. Teams and get input that then goes into the mural, that then goes into the Align tool and then we update these things in Zoom session. So on what am I not thinking of and shouting out to people?

I just want to make one point that's kind of cool that's coming out from us. And I mentioned the meeting tool and you mentioned Zoom. We are working on a version of the Huddle tool that will essentially just put the Zoom multi user video conference right in the middle of the huddle where all your data is around. It's. So we're pretty excited about that. That's coming out probably in Q2. We'll have it out, but we're already working on that. And you'll be able to pull up your huddle and the Zoom will be right in the middle of it. So all your data. Yeah, we're pretty excited about that. We think it's going to be a major win for meetings and Huddles. What other tools do we use?

This is one of the big missed things. I don't know if they're working on this, but I can't believe that Zoom hasn't built a kind of a plugin architect. The murals, the other things could go aside from screen sharing, which is clumsy, but they do.

They've just exposed their, their developer kit.

A little bit more.

They've. They've broadened out their API so that you can do more with it. That's what's allowing us to now put it in. I think their original strategy was, was not as open and that sort of since this has, you know, they've, they, their whole business model shifted and I think they realize now that they could be way more open and have people building around their tool, which is what is affording us the opportunity to do that. I think the other thing that's been really important, we use a product from Atlassian called Confluence. That's a really important tool for us, which is, it's the corporate knowledge. It's just where do you store all your corporate knowledge and everything? And we found that to be really useful. Just amount of tools that we're using internally.

So. And Atlassian is a big scaling up success story.

They are actually.

Yeah, yeah. Daniel, Judy, any other tools that you guys are using?

I was gonna say we talk about just in the book. I got them on Amazon, just the simple soundproofing pads you can get. You know, they're like 30 bucks or depending on, you know, how many you need, they usually come in squares of 6 to 12. It's something that's Very, very inexpensive. You already talked about. Well, I told you, I'm in the middle. I'm three weeks away. I'm sitting in my remodeled, my remodeled office. We've got the bookshelves, everything are coming. Yeah, three weeks away from. We unfortunately one of the, you know, covet hit and one of the contractors got it as well. But we're three weeks away. So we're, you know, we're 85 done. So three weeks of this hope will all be completed and I can't wait.

Slack has been a pretty, another indispensable tool for us.

Many teams love Slack.

Yeah, we've got obviously the integration so you could do your huddles in Slack and it comes right into the platform. We've got feeds that come out of our product that go into Slack so we've integrated that. But Slack just in general has been a really, really useful tool for us during this time. Just to sort of that real time, quick communication. Are you there? Can you get on, even if it's. Can you get on a Zoom or something like that with me?

Yeah. First my team uses Slack and by the way, interestingly they want to use Slack and they have not allowed me to join Slack. So everyone's in the company except me. So that's the only space we have without Daniel and that's the one they want to keep it. When I said, hey, I'm going to go in and said like no, no way out. They really do a lot of things and they said, hey, whenever you come in, sometimes you ask for all this data and stuff like that. We don't want you in here. So I thought that was interesting. Fine, one less inbox for me because there's too many inbox now. And one thing that I strongly recommend today and now we're working a lot in our desk. A standing up desk or a treadmill desk. Have a treadmill desk. It makes all the change in the world. I have in my another place here that have a treadmill desk and I have a lot of my meetings standing up and walking. That's hugely important today that you could like if we're sitting down for eight or whatever hours a day in a chair is not going to be good for the body. We strongly need to move more. And at least if you're standing for four hours a day instead of eight sitting down, four hours sitting, four hours standing, it'll be a huge change in your body.

So, you know, the thing is though, when you're standing I think it's great and you will move More so in a show like this, I usually sit this. I put my desk just now in the standing position. And you'll see me move around. But that's also because I'm standing on a skateboard, which rolls back and forth under my desk.

Hey, your body makes exercise moves. It's really important.

And you know, and then I'll get fidgety. Like now I'm balancing on one wheel or on two wheels. So anyway, some other trends to think about. We're seeing a surge even as there's. Oh, did you say something else, Daniel?

One of the things that I'm most excited, it's blockchain. I really believe if you read the book, by the way, the book Pendulum, we go from me to we cycles. We're in the corner of the we cycle and we need all these tools that we've been talking, like that dog said and all these other tools. But I really believe that all the human, most of humanity, or most of you all around the world, we're not very happy with the control of the government and we want to change government. And we've seen it all over the world with elections and obvious prescience and the rest. And I really believe something like blockchain will give a lot of power to the masses, to the people, and we will be able to do decentralized banking, decentralized elections and stuff like that. I'm really excited about that. If you ask me what technology of AI and everything, I think AI is going to be hugely important, but one that I'm very excited for, it's blockchain because of all the social changes you will create when use it correctly.

Well, so that goes. It was in our next thing some of these trends. Right? In some of these trends and developments from Pitchbook, we'll put the link in the show notes. But Bitcoin, Ethereum in particular, having a moment. And also social networks. So there's definitely been a lot of backlash about some of the use of the social networks, in particular Facebook, but then a ride on some others. Look at the impact that Reddit had on the market recently and the attention. Look at the rise of Bumble. Everybody and their brother is now in Clubhouse. It's not such an insider thing anymore. By the way, I'm Il Gao on Clubhouse. So if you want to follow me or find me there, invite me to your conversations. TikTok shows no sign of letting up and people are now even breaking up using celebrity appearances on cameo.

Yeah, how pathetic is that? Can you imagine? They're like adding Insult to injury.

Well, I think the idea is let's make it soften the blow. So, Judy, I'm going to send your favorite hunk a breakup message. If I'm breaking up from them instead.

Of George Clooney tells me I'm history and I'm supposed to feel better about it.

Yeah, right. Who would you. If I'm gonna break up with you, who would you like me to have as your celebrity? I'm like, oh, that's a hard one. I don't know what would soften from.

Connor regarding the last discussion, seeing if we use Slack HubSpot, what system do you guys use for Sana Trello? Google Docs stuff. We use Asana internally at Growth Institute and everything is in Google Docs. Everything we do is in Google Docs. So all the knowledge of the company stays in Google Docs. Doug, Judith or Bill?

Well, I was saying we use Confluence for corporate knowledge. We use Google Docs as our drive for sharing stuff. Obviously we're bigger users of the Align platform. That's the tool for managing all your priorities. And you know, he mentions Asana and Trello and I just to be clear, you know, there's a big difference between what we do with Align and what those project management tools do. Those project management tools are for the details and you know, they're for the little things of every project. And what I would suggest clients do is look at the scaling up scoreboard or the Align software. It's one of the same, just different names. But what I would use those for the big priorities, the things above the line that are working on your business instead of working in your business where project management allows you to manage the details. Something like Scoreboard or Align allows you to manage the big priorities, the big initiatives, and track and measure that progress. So those are the things that we're using and Slack, obviously that's what we're sort of standardizing and on internally.

Yeah, and again, very similar tools, not to repeat. And I'm trying to remember one of my clients were really trying to get a lot of their graphical, their big digital assets. And I think it was a, I think it was Corsana. It was one of the digital asset management tools we were looking at, but that was one of the ones just because it's a very graphic rich client. So. But same tools that were just mentioned here.

I have teams using Asana and I have teams using a variety of Atlassian tools. I often recommend Trello for unstructured project management or loosely structured project management where they want A little less technical, cumbersome thing, easier acceptance. I like that. I used to use it a lot. I don't use it as much anymore. We do have a lot of teams doing quite a bit in Google Docs and we use the Google forms for collecting data. But. But I strongly recommend against running your meetings and keeping your dashboard in like Google Slides. That is a terrible crappy thing. I see some teams who are really insistent on doing that kind of thing. Well, we're just going to keep doing that. I'm like, that is like presentational meeting. It's not collaborative meeting. It's not smart. It has no constraints, it's not purpose. It's I think a terrible idea.

I'd invite Connor to check out the scoreboard software or the Align software by visiting scalingup.com software or aligntoday.com and just check it out and get a demo. It's worth seeing how you manage sort of the important priorities in your business and the planning part of it and down to the execution.

Before we run our audience into the ground and we've been going through a lot of things, let me hit a couple other ones. We talked at the head about scaling through acquisition. I think this is a really great time if you've built any kind of war chest now to start looking to doing that much more than being acquired and then having all of a great framework and a culture and a set of values, that kind of thing can make it easier to then digest the other companies. But there are a lot of people like the anonymous business I shared earlier that just didn't have the heart to go whose assets could be acquired now and that you could use to accelerate your business. They cite one of the companies, what was the company? Plastic extrusion business that has grown really substantially by starting to buy up some other companies and knowing what your values are, the purpose, the brand promises starting to center and that can make not only targeting the acquisition smart, but also then the execution, the absorption. Right? Yeah, yeah.

Bill, as you know, I've been involved, you know, over 103 mergers and acquisitions in my life and again including an IPO where we acquired a lot of companies even to create that company, to take it public on the New York Stock Exchange. And when I work with my clients, whether they're two people or billion dollar companies, I say the same thing. You always have to think about your company with the end in mind, right? Like you're going to work, work, work you're going to do. There's going to be so much of Your, you know, blood, sweat and tears and financial equity that you're putting into this business, you want it to be worth something, you know, when it's all over. So think about what the end, you know, in what the end game is and if you build your company and what we do as coaches and what we do is scale up coaches, you know, with our, with our other experience is, you know, if your company is, is always a healthy company, no matter what the economic situation, good and great companies are always, they always have the opportunity. You always want to be able to make two decisions in your business to say yes, you can buy me or here's how much we want to buy you, right? Always be in that you want to be bought, be able to buy or be bought. And if you structure your company as that, no matter where you are, whether you, you're a startup or whether you're 20 years into your business, once you start focusing on that, the world change. And that's what I said. You know, my, my line has always been right, I, you know, I build, you know, people profits and company valuation. That's what all three of those things, you know, come hand in hand and they have the decision if they want to buy or be bought. And you know, we may, we, I don't know if we're going to talk a little bit about the, you know, the SPACs, kind of the new things, things that are, that are coming in as well, right. The, the special purpose acquisition companies that are going on that aren't actually new, right. They've been around for 40 or 50 years. It's just there's a new like, you know, mostly started by the, by media companies. But you know, there are so many opportunities to, you know, always be in a good position. And that's also, you know, part of that too is you know, one being unique, right. Having something different, not being in the pond with everybody else and playing on price. I would say you want to be a, right, you want to be unique and you want to be in a pond of one. So by virtue you are the best in that pond because you're the only one in that pond. But really understanding who, knowing who the other people in your industry are, right. Really developing those really strong relationships with not only somebody you view as your competitor, but that value chain, right? Who are those key suppliers from, you know, kind of the ideation of what your project is to going to market. Those are the really strong relationships that you need to understand and build and have in order to be in that position as well. You know, if you either want to buy somebody or be bought. But, and I think it was Doug that mentioned it earlier, you know, there's always been money on the table for those, you know, companies. But, you know, the pandemic just, you know, because things have been a little bit, you know, in some areas have been a little bit quiet. I've never seen more money. I mean, I probably get at least six, you know, four to six calls every month from some source. Whether it's private equity or, you know, or a venture capital or an angel or just an independently wealthy, you know, person who's got a lot of money, who's got a lot of money to spend on a space, whether it's a product or a service, there's a lot of money out there. And so people, you know, so the people think this is great, you know, I can get, you know, I, you know, I can sell anything. It's like, no, you still have to have a good company. You still have that unique model. You've had to read the market. You have to have the opportunity. These people are just going to give you money. You know, there may be a little bit of stupid money on the street, meaning people are willing to. There's always stupid money. Just like there's always a. To say, there's always stupid people, right? Who will, you know, who'll pay that. But most people, the money on the street that I'm talking is about the smart money. It's no, you still have to have that playbook. You've got to have the right people. You have to show them. Have you read the market? You have to show them how you're going to get that return. But there has never been no, stupid.

Money is not always a smart move. Like stupid money in your business. And then you have to talk to a stupid person.

Oh, I've heard people, I said, you know, be careful before you accept money, right? Because, you know, this is not free right there, you know, there are consequences to saying yes, right? So that's, that's a. We can have a whole show just on that side of it. But, you know, there's a lot of money. There's a lot of great money. There's a of lot, a lot of different formats even to get that money. Even the Internet, right? I mean, before it used to, used to be more face to face, right? You can go on with a great plan and several Internet and digital sites and start getting funding today, but you still have to have that great plan.

Talking about SPACs and some of that so Joby Archer and a SPAC and United Airlines and others are coming together. I saw this video recently. Go look at the new flying taxi coming from Joby and Archer on YouTube. Maybe we'll put a link in it. I'll go find it. But the. So the CEO of this company starts announcing this thing and then while he's announcing this thing lights up its rotors and takes off behind him. It is so quiet that he can keep talking in a low voice while this thing takes off. A low noise, quadcopter type. It's actually convert. I think there's six rotors on this thing, all electric. Can take off vertically and then rotate like the, like the Osprey 22 and fly vertically at higher speed. Unbelievably transformational will hit us. And that thing is flying now at scale. This is happening now before you know it. It'll probably be really expensive to begin with and it'll be like the very priciest Uber. So you'll see it going from major centers like D.C. to Dulles or Manhattan, out to Kennedy or like that kind of thing. You'll probably see those things in peak areas in LA and so on. But it's going to be a big deal when this starts to come. It's going to happen fast.

Thinking about changing my last name to Jetson. Remember Jim Jetson?

Yes, George Elroy.

Yeah.

What was the dog?

Astro? Retro Rat?

George?

No, I think, Yeah, I think it United. They put in, didn't they put in like an order for 200 of these already? I mean, they already, already, already in talks and not, not only, not only in, you know, in the airline or look at, you know, look at vehicles, right? Whether it's, you know, whether it's, you know, cars or trucks, right? Look at some of, right, the hydrogen, you know, places where they're building these enormous buses and just major, you know, major trucks to, you know, do transport, right. They're, they're doing things there, there. What's the other group is the. Oh my God, the, the great looking truck.

Rivian.

Rivian. Rivian. And now they have. What is it called? The R1s. They have this really cool, you know, SUV that they just came out with that's absolutely, you know, gorgeous and goes 300 miles. So I mean, there's just all sorts of new things and funding, you know, again, whether it's, you know, elon Musk and SpaceX or truck or cars or flying taxis, you know, no pun intended. The sky's the limit, right?

Changing really, really fast. And dramatically in our lifetimes. When I think about the connected, powerful computer camera, everything that is my iPhone today and then what I grew up with. I remember when I held an early Texas Instruments handheld calculator, and my great grandmother, who I was close to, looked at that thing and was just amazed by that. It had the little like led, bright red and the clicky keys and that kind of thing. The advancement is just amazing. And she was just like, isn't amazing? We've landed a man on the moon and you've got that thing in your hand and, you know, and we used to wash our dishes, our laundry on a board.

Don't you remember when, when the fax was like a David Copperfield moment. Like, you know, the fact that what I put this paper here and you're in Japan and you get a copy of it.

Right.

I mean, that was, that was rocket science.

Back, on the other hand, the people we work with today is so dating myself, but I was talking to somebody else about whatever and. And it emerged in this time frame that they were born in 84. I'm like, let me tell you what I was doing before. It's really different. Humbling, humbling. Well, so much more to say, but let's. We're gonna lose more people. Daniel Marcos is head of Growth Institute. We've been talking about it throughout, but Growth Institute has a whole range of short courses in their online executive education program. So you can do it in your own pace or with teams and work groups. I frequently will ask like a whole team to watch stuff. And we give our clients access to the Growth Institute and then recommend specific mini lessons to them. Of course they have the more comprehensive the Master Business Dynamics and the Scaling Up Business course. If you want to do the basics of scaling up with Vern at your own pace, it's about 10 hours of video content plus worksheets and that kind of thing. You can get it from growthinstitute.com or you can get it from us with a package of coaching. We're starting to offer that now. You can do the basic course and then we'll do some live coaching sessions to give you feedback on the work that you're doing in that. And of course, you can implement all of that in the Align software tool, the scaling up scoreboard, where you can build out that we can observe it and give you real time feedback on. Oh, well, let's refine that brand promise a little bit or, you know, let's tighten up on some of these things. Anything else to say about that that I didn't catch. Daniel.

Nope. Thank you very much. And all our Scaling up classes use the Align dashboards. So when students go through the three month intensive they all get into Align so they could put all their work and use Align there.

Why don't we give shout outs to all of your company stuff? So we've got growthinstitute.com and then scalingup.com software or aligntoday.com right for that tool. Judy Guido and associates or Associates.

Guido and Associates.

Yeah.

For you. I so appreciate getting everyone on. Let me remind our listeners and viewers that if the show helped you share it with somebody else when you like it and give a review, it helps us a great deal when you pass it along or share helps a lot more people. And if you subscribe either wherever you watch the show or on our website@scalingcoach.com, you'll get them every week sent out to you. We do three shows a week now. We do a quick tip show on Tuesdays. We do a deep dive typically on a Wednesday or a panel conversation and then we have getting real conversations every Sunday with CEOs about how their leadership has evolved over time. So all of that scalingcoach.com, youTube, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, wherever you get your stuff. I want to give big thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework. Our show is produced by Lucy Summers who gets everybody scheduled and prepared and ready to go. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions and our shownotes are written up and compiled by Einfodina with proofreading by Tim McGowan. Thanks again everyone for listening watching. Keep Scaling Up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for Scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals 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 one more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.