This content was created by Bill Gallagher. This content was uploaded by Bill Gallagher. This is a podcast episode titled "It's important to have a coach at every stage of your business" (PODCAST, recorded November 15, 2024) featuring Bill Gallagher as the sole speaker. The excerpt consists of promotional and advisory monologues: short endorsements for Doxa Talent, a personal narrative about his 2010 experience scaling a company and the lessons learned about needing a business coach, and a promotional segment for Scoreboard by Align (aligntoday.com) and scalingcoach.com. The content combines marketing spots with practical coaching advice for growing companies (roughly in the 1–100 employee / $1–20M range).
Chapters
Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing? But you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think Doxa Talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to docs of talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatalent.com Bill G Again, that's doxatalent.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today.
Middle 2010, my business was taking off. The company I was running at the time had gone through a really rough patch in 2008, nine but now had bounced back with some key moves in our strategy and some innovative products. And so anyway, so 2010 we're taking off and I knew that, that I needed a coach. I'd had lots of coaches at different points about different areas of my life and I didn't have a business coach that was appropriate for the scaling work that I was trying to do at the time. Anyway, so I called an old friend who knew a lot about scaling companies and scaling coaches and that kind of thing. And I said, listen, actually I was riding my bike home from work at the end of the day. I would often commute on the bike to get a little fitness in at the same time. So I'm riding my bike home, I'm thinking about the thing and I call this old friend on the phone while I'm paddling up the hill and I'm huffing and puffing. I live above sea level and my office was down at sea level. So I'm pedaling up the hill and I'm thinking about my problems and I call this guy and I say, hey, listen, I think it's really time for me to get a scaling coach. And so I described the situation and what was going on and the growth and all that that we were dealing with at the time. And he said, well, how big's your revenue? How big's your team? That kind of thing. I relayed where we were at that moment, which wasn't very big. And you know, I had less than 100 people in the corporate staff, less than 50 in our main office, and I had several factories going and some things like that. And I was growing at a fast clip and I had all kinds of new problems, problems with financing and problems with systems and, and problems with staffing and people. And our strategy would need to continue to evolve even though we'd produced the kind of the core strategic breakthrough and had upgraded some more things. So I called with that and he's like, well, listen, we don't really have anything, I'm not aware of anything that fits your situation at the time. And so I think you should keep focusing on this. So do you have a daily huddle? I was already doing a lot of the scaling up things at the surface level. I had metrics and dashboards and I did a quarterly plan and I had annual strategy and you know, I had all kinds of things like that that I was already doing. But I knew like fundamentally I needed a coach because I was starting to hit new areas and things like that that I hadn't done with this particular company before. And so I reached out and they just wasn't anything for me. In the next little bit, I would go on to make a number of like, fundamental mistakes that as a coach today, I know that I could have helped someone like me prevent. We had metrics that weren't balanced, so we put too much emphasis on one thing and we had problems in another area and we weren't paying attention to where things were out of balance. And that created an issue. We had issues where key processes weren't being updated and the process and the functions weren't well covered. I needed an operations person, but I didn't know who and how to develop within the. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of problems around people and around execution and around our metrics and the funding, even with some of the basic strategy in place. And I really wish that I had that at the time. You know, we went through several periods of growth in that time, but multimillion dollar mistakes were made by me because I didn't have a coach. Anyway, that lesson, that experience has been really helpful and at a number of times in as a coach now, I've worked on making the work that we do available to companies at different sizes. So I've been particularly focused on innovating our approaches to delivering, scaling up. So it's not just for big companies, but even for companies, say 10 to 100 employees like we were then and like you might be, and you know, 1 or 2 to 20 million, that kind of range that is not often typical. Usually people are often above that. So anyway, that's kind of the approach and I think, you know, whether you work with someone like us or someone else. I think it's really critical that in every area of life at every time that you have coaches, advisors, people that can help you continue to navigate and level up because the things that got you here might not get you to the next place in time. So anyway, I hope that's helpful. I hope it gives you some pause to reflect and think about what kind of a coach would make a difference right now. What kinds of things? If you want to know about ours, go to scalingcoach.com We've got programs that meet as often as every week, helping you to grow and scale your business from every price point to suit kind of things. We've packaged our engagements in lots of different ways. Hope that's helpful. Talk to you again soon.
Keep Scaling 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 Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.
