Radically Adaptable Buffett’s Protégé #1 Leader Job; Prediction Rules Being Less Wrong

Oh.

So I missed the warning and we didn't go exactly live in time. We missed our Facebook post. Well, we can repost it later. Good morning, everyone. Hello and welcome again. Good afternoon. Good morning. Wherever you're listening, watching, whenever you're listening and watching, we're talking today about being radically adaptable. Lessons learned from Buffett's protege. Friendship rules. A little yoga for the mind. What, what is the number one job of a leader? Prediction, rules and being less wrong. All that and more with our guest today on the Scaling Up Business podcast. Hi, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, host of this show. Our show is all about how to scale and grow the business, no matter what's happening in the world, the industry, what part of the world, any of that. We're interested in all things to do with growing your business, of helping you realize your vision for a better world. You can find all our episodes and more at our website, scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com is where all that stuff, links, downloads, all the kinds of things that we talk about. Alfred Monopart reminds us that all lasting businesses build on friendship. And I'm joined by fellow coaches and friends now. Neil Lewis.

Hi.

Down there. Over there, Stacey Eads.

Hello.

And Judy Gaido. So we're San Francisco, Southern California, Oklahoma and London. All over the place and back. Lots of time zones, that kind of thing. Guys, welcome to the show. So we've got a lot to talk about today. I'm glad. Oh, Stacy's moving.

No, it's real life. Sometimes there's a dog and he wants to be let out.

That's life.

That's so funny.

Everybody's dealing with it these days.

Yeah, well, I don't know. Like, I think now we're in this right in the, in the, in 20, in the middle of 2020, we had everybody at home and on zoom non stop and you'd get kids running in and on camera while you're talking to people. And we had more of that kind of thing. But today, even now, you get dogs and delivery people and tradesmen and things like that showing up at the house. And now we've got the mixed things. Sometimes we're in the office, sometimes we're in person, sometimes we're not. Neil, how about you today? It's late there where you are outside of London.

Yes. The good news is the dogs have been walked and they are done walked, fed and hopefully in asleep now. So there will be too many interruptions from our dogs. But yeah, all good here on this side of the Pond. Nice.

And Judy, you are down in Southern California. Has the sun come out and the wind picked up where you are like it did for us yesterday?

Yeah, the sun is out, but again, everything is relative. Right. Going to be a little colder here. So. Meaning it's going to be in the 50s today. So people are, people are bundling up. Right, in the 50s. But it is actually, it's a, it's a nice sunny day here.

Yeah, well, it's. I, well, I don't know what it is in places like Detroit today, but it's not. So we've all. And many of the coaches and many of our clients were on with Keith Farazi recently. Best selling author Keith Farazi, he's got a new book out, competing in the New World of Work. You guys were all on that, weren't you?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. And he talks in there in his session in the book about getting the team right, getting that, that mix, but also about adapting to things. I don't know, what were your takeaways? What did you guys notice in, in that that applied to your clients and work?

I, well, first of all, I love anything that Keith does, so. Right. So he's an incredible author and speaker and just thought leader and he just, his delivery is fantastic. So the, so the event was great. But to me there were so many things that were adaptable and you know, basically what he, he was talking about, you know, you know, the bill, you teed it up nicely was what the world's been like for the last three years. Right. We've been kind of in these, you know, hunkered down in our own home bunkers and other places to work out of. And you know, he used the term, he said now people are coming out of the rubble, coming out of the ashes and you know, they're using the terms, you know, we're going, we're going back to work. And he said, I don't want you to think about going back to work. Because he's like, right, like that backwardness is not where we're going. I want you to think about going forward to work. Right. And how work has changed and things have changed. You know, he mentioned things that, you know, he said three of the most important things are about understanding because of what happened. Right. Not only the pandemic, but politically and just emotionally. You know, it was, it's been a really heavy period. He said the things that are really important for the teams that were most successful is that being vulnerable is okay. Right. Saying this stuff is, you know, has played on My mind has played on my kids, have played on my, you know, my. My clients. It's been tough, right. People are, you know, having little breakdowns, if you will, and, you know, they're not as strong, maybe, and they need to talk more. So he talked about the value and the importance of being vulnerable. Right. And about wellness.

Renee Brown has been talking about that for a long time and, of course, many others. But it took a global common event like the pandemic to have us all kind of get real and open up about things. It's not a normal trait, but it's so powerful.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that for me, what was interesting when I was watching the show, Verne told everybody, Verne Harnish said that page 153 just immediately go to Keith's page 153, where he starts to talk about the Jedi task forces. Now, myself, I'm a little bit more of a Star Trekkie kind of girl than I am with Star wars, but I still really enjoyed the Jedi Task Force because I have some clients who use kind of the. The tiger teams. Yes, I saw that. Live long and prosper. So tiger teams is something that has been around for a long time, right? The ability to kind of pull together a group of leaders and say, okay, this is your project, right. Go out there and update us every single week as to where you're at and what you're doing, but let's really give ownership to them. And I just felt like he did a great job of making sure that people understood the two keys to making something like a former word, tiger teams, new word, Jedi task force, really function. He was talking about make sure that the team is really clear on what the job is that they have to get done, and then make sure that you're including a lot of voices. So is the team filled with outsiders, insiders, influences, vocal people, quiet skeptics, making sure that you've really got the good representation in there? I thought that was really important.

You know, it's funny, we talk about with our teams a lot in both using the Gallup strengths tools and in things like functional accountability. That same idea. It's kind of an a team mindset. If you remember the Cheeseball TV show. Right. Each person had sort of a different job. And, you know, I'm going to be the technical expert, and I'm going to be the pilot, and I'm going to be the, you know, whatever, and bullets will fly, but nobody will ever be shot. Right. The hilariousness of that. But that idea of having A lot of different voices and respecting the range of it. Neil, you were going to say something now.

I was just going to pick up on what Judith was saying. This whole notion of going forward to work, I've used a lot with clients certainly in the last year and this old adage, how are we going to cope when we go back to work again? A lot of our team have been working from home or just not come back to the office adage of going forward to work, holding on to a lot of new, new disciplines or not any behaviors that serve very well. And I think one of the challenges certainly in the UK is getting the balance right to organizations who are able to get people coming back to work and being productive, but also recognizing that they may have very different views on what's important in their lives. Now you may have very different views in terms of the like of not having to travel an hour and a half each each direction and being on a crowded train and having all the angst that goes with that to actually say I, I quite like working from home. So I think holding on to what went well in those organizations, being able to give people the freedom to work and be at their very best, but couple that with the degree of accountability that's required. How do you get the right conditions in place to be productive? I think that's going to be a real challenge. A lot of leaders now are recognizing that can we be productive where people you're working in a hybrid environment. So I think there's a lot of things we'll be as coaches is helping guide our clients in terms of getting the right balance between giving people the opportunity to have the flexibility in their lives, being able to have the wellness do things when they want to do it on their terms, but at the same time being productive and delivering what they need to.

You know, I noticed a couple of my clients are all in person now. A couple and, and a couple, to be honest, were all in person all the way through the pandemic because of the way they work. Our meeting like our their work, our work with them and a couple are entirely on zoom and but now more than half are using a blend of the two. Some of our meetings with them are in person, some are in zoom, like the annual, the mid year in person, a couple of quarters on zoom and to be honest, the productivity like being able to check off the boxes and get a plan done, we can do it faster on zoom, at least in my world. But we miss all of the unplanned side conversations and the building of the human connection and the things that we didn't put on the agenda. You know, they don't get dealt with much in doing zoom meetings and zoom work in the same way that when we get together and we have a little dinner and that kind of thing.

The other thing is I was with an organization that you probably recognize in the us Hallmark Cards. Yes. With their team in the uk they are heavily creative, and I think they've really missed that interaction with their creative teams where they can collide with new ideas, get inspiration from one another, find it incredibly difficult to do that down a zoom camera. So I think they will come to this, what we're coaching last week, where they'll create two days a week where people will come into the office, get creative. No emails. They will just get creative, get into opportunities to brainstorm, have those creative collisions, and then structure it in a way when they need to get to work on emails or the other meetings that will do that for the other two days or three.

You know, in my world, that that vulnerability made such a difference last year and actually bringing creativity. The meetings we had CEOs who were like, oh, my team's really stressed out. And, you know, on and on like that. I'm like, maybe you should tell them you're stressed out. You know, just like. And like, getting real in a lot of the teams made gave access to more creativity and less structured. I mean, we do funny, silly little things like this in our sessions. Right. When I want a conversation to move on, Elmo makes an appearance. Elmo standing for enough. Let's move on. So, you know, that's a thing I learned from one of the other coaches, Rich Manders. But. But like, bringing in that kind of, like, silliness has brought some creativity back to some of our online teams where they were so used to it in the. In the physical world before. Right.

Bill, I just wanted to pick up on something actually, you know, you just said in a word you use, you use the word authentic as well as Stacy and. And Neil. And those were, you know, the other two key things that. That Keith really stressed was about authenticity and honesty. Right. And then when you are vulnerable, right, it's all about being your. Your real self. When you're giving them your permission, people feel safe and trusted where you can be yourself. And one of the tools he. He talked about was. And I think Stacy, you know, was. Was picking up on some of this was, you know, using a tool. Right? Using a tool. Whether it's a, you know, whether it's a Report, right? And he always says, you know, you get the read backs on the reports. He said, taking those reports or the things that you're challenged with. And he said, whether it's in zoom or whether it's in person. And I can think where I just recently did this on zoom and then where I also did it in the two day with one of my clients where it was on a big whiteboard, right? So one of the tools was, you know, they wrote, we wrote stuff down on the whiteboard and everybody went to it. And you know, on the zoom it was the report being held up. But you know, we all looked at that and we did what Keith said was we said, you know, look at everybody, just we want you to be completely honest. Looking at this tool, looking at this what whiteboard, like, you know, what problems, you know, what issues and challenges, you know that, you know, that, you know, we're looking at a document, but what are some of the problems that we're not seeing in this? What are some of the challenges that we might have if we go forward with this? Right? What are some of the questions about this document we're not asking, right? What are some of the innovations that aren't mentioned here that maybe you haven't thought about? And so it was really allowing people to be very, very authentic and honest and saying, I'm looking at this document but I don't see this, or I'm looking at this assessment of our team and I'm going to be really honest. You're looking at people there you want me to be. And like Keith always says, it's like, you know, bullshit. Just be honest. Like I want you to be, you know, I like, I remember hearing him talk once and it was one of the best things he had ever said. He's like, you know, so often he said, you know, I work with these high level people and you know, one of the first things they said to me is, okay, hey, can we be confidential? Like I want to talk to you, but can we be confidential? And he responds, yes, you can, but why, like, why can't you share that with anybody else? Why do you not feel that you can be honest and authentic about that? Because that's how we're going to get stuff done. And so, you know, this one guy just kind of went through this list of these were independent sales reps on all my clients. He's like, I'm looking at a list of 20 and he's like, I'll be honest. He's like, there are five that I Would keep. Right. And just went through each person really, really candidly. And all of a sudden other people started jumping in. Right. And it was like, I'll tell you why I don't think this individual should be on our team. Right. Or conversely, I'll tell you what, you know, a great experience. So, you know, when you do put that information out there and you tell people and let them know, you know, and it's got to be proven time and time again. Be authentic, be honest, and also be prepared to be vulnerable because people are going to potentially counter what you have. And one of the key thing is, you know, say to yourself, you know, is what I'm going to say, you know, do I feel good that even though it may, you know, put me at risk and put this project at risk, do I feel okay about saying that? And I thought that really was a great, you know, great tools in terms of people being able to be vulnerable, authentic and yet honest.

Yeah, you know, the. That being vulnerable, Right. You want others to be open and honest, you've got to be open and honest with them. You want to get trust, you have to give trust. Right. But in truth, we're not all the time ready to deal with all that. We have things we wish weren't true about us, things we wish we hadn't done or said. And until you ready to talk about that, there's some limit then to the leadership. That limit is that. That. That barrier boundary of what's okay and what's not okay.

It's an interesting one as well about vulnerability. And I think, I don't know if it's just the uk, but there's often been a perspective that to show any sort of weakness or vulnerability is a sign of weakness. And being able to actually say, no, no, it's not a sign of weakness. Actually be vulnerable as a leader is a real strength. So helping people to understand that is. Is often helping getting the breakthrough. But one of the tools I've been using an awful lot in the last.

Wait, wait, hold on. Tell us the tool. One second. Let me just underscore that for people because it's so useful and so powerful. It takes strength, it takes courage to open up about something you've screwed up about a weakness. Right. That's why it's not actually weakness. To talk about a weakness, yes, there's a weakness, but talking about a weakness actually is a strength. Definitely making a mistake is a mistake. Talking about the mistake isn't one of.

The tools we've been using. We've all used it is the five dysfunctions, the teeth and building and I think helping teams to rebuild trust over two years of real hardship and using that exercise in trust of really get people to be vulnerable with one another and coming up with stories about when they screwed up or things in their lives that no one ever knew about. You know, some. And it gets really, really raw sometimes when they actually are able to bunt up that they've had maybe an abused in previous lives or they had some issues about bullying or they've had things and their co workers. Are you kidding me? I never knew that about you or you know, they got. And it's been extraordinary that there's some of the breakthrough that you've got. You have to be quite confident that as a coach that things don't go too far, that, that you know, that the session about getting really raw or vulnerable doesn't, doesn't get too, too raw for one of a better word. But I think that's, that's certainly served a lot of teams I work with very, very well.

Well, managing the range of the depth is a useful thing just to, to manage a facility. And then also remembering that while we want to open up, while we want to represent ourselves as whole people and there isn't a clear distinction, there is a distinction between work and home. And there are things that may have happened or happening to me in my personal life that I maybe don't want to talk about. And I may just want to say, look, I'm going through an extraordinarily difficult time at home right now and I kind of don't want to go into it, but you guys should just know there's something going on with me. Right. Like that's a useful thing to do as a leader.

Yeah. I think that Keith's book and this particular really presentation that, that he let us in on was really both undergirded a lot by the Brene Brown and the dare to lead and the ability to be vulnerable and how that is really a strength and not a weakness. I saw a lot of synergy with that. And then also the same that Neil mentioned with the five dysfunctions of a team that a lot of leaders are already familiar with. Just need to be brought back to those basic foundations of remembering. You can't have commitment from this team or this committee or this Jedi or whatever you want to call it. You can't have commitment without those other two foundations. You have to be able to have that trust and you have to be able to have that healthy conflict and you need to decide if you're in person, those might be things that you knew how to do back in the day. But if you are in hybrid or if you are in virtual, have you figured out a way to make sure that you're still having a culture of trust even though you might not have been in the office recently? Or if you're having a virtual meeting, Are you still having the ability for healthy conflict and are you facilitating that as a leader just as much as you used to if you were 100% full time, always in person, and able to read people's body language and do things maybe a little differently?

Yeah, it's, there's a whole world of it. But you can get stuff if you have decent camera and light and that kind of thing, which is kind of an interesting thing. I don't know if you've noticed this, but like before we went live and it took a little bit longer because we had some equipment issues, you know, we got to get enough light on people's faces, get the mics adjusted, and then, Stacy, you made an adjustment even after we went live and in the middle of it, we were delayed a little bit because I had to restart my whole machine because there was some audio clipping happening on my end. There are little things to deal with as we are technical. Just as you come into a room, you turn on or off the lights, you fire up the thing, you open or close the windows, you adjust the temperature, you close or open doors, that kind of thing. There are things to deal with, whether it's virtual or the other. But I am kind of fascinated with how many people are still living in a mixed, like zoom, other teams, whatever kind of online thing, remote and in person. And yet they don't have the basics like don't get some light on your face, right? Don't put a bright window behind you and we can't see your expressions. Don't have a camera so panned back or the camera looking at the top of your forehead or the bottom of your chin or get, get your mic sorted out. Like, you know, I have a pretty expensive evolve setup here in, in my office. If you, if you're watching the video, you'll see the second camera side angle and I talk into a teleprompter. And you don't maybe have to go quite that far in terms of building it, but just basics like if there's a bright window behind you, turn around, face the other way and clean up the shot. If you, you know, if you need to close the door, move into Another room or. You know, I love the reality of Stacy dealing with the dog and the. And muting herself in and out. But then, you know, remember to come off mute 100%.

No matter how many times you let those puppies outside, they decide all of a sudden that now is the moment.

Yes.

I'm blessed in that my wife is managing our dog today, and any deliveries or things like that that might show up. But, yeah, like. Like deal with that. And I think, you know, he talks about being radically adaptable, which is where we opened and we saw our client companies that, some of which, you know, said, I don't want to do business in this kind of environment. I'm just going to wait till this Covid thing's over. And those companies have since closed or been sold, and other people came in and said, I'll find a way to deal with it. And they're operating today. And some people have really thrived by leaning into what's. So there's always money to be made in there in kind of leaning into what's happening. There's a business to be built around that. Judy, you're muted. Speaking of coming off mute.

Probably the biggest phrase of all the last two years. You're on mute.

Right? Coming off mute. And. And now she's looking for that.

I apologize. I must. I must have hit it while he's moving something around here. Now I forgot my thought. Lost thought. I'm human.

Adaptability, being adaptable in the moment.

Oh, I know what I was gonna say. Thank you. Thank you. One of the things that Keith talked about was, you know, being able to identify change.

Right?

So he always talked about, you know, looking around the corner. Right. We're always, always looking around the corner and seeing where that change is. And I remember there were three words he used. You know, he said, it's all about being predictive, proactive. Right. And progressive. And so, you know, you've got to kind of be able to, you know, if you don't look around the corner, look for the change, how can you predict what's. What's about to happen? Right? And I thought that was, you know, that, you know, regardless of what the conditions are, that's just something that should be. That isn't an ongoing skill set that everybody should look at, because that's what you're going to really, you know, create differentiation. That's how you're going to create something competitive and then, you know, build, you know, everything that you were mentioning before about how, before we went on, you know, Stacy had to do stuff and you had to, you know, adjust stuff. He used the word. I think it was a co elevation where it's just like this whole, you know, working together. Like the whole point of teams are working together to succeed and how they could do that also was his, was his whole view on, you know, resilience is that, you know, resilience really comes when we really have this peer to peer support, right? So when it's almost like all our individual team members become coaches, right? It's peer to peer coaching, if you will, to help everybody feel strong enough and really elevate, elevate everybody else to succeed, but also to help them to be really resilient. And resilience was a big part of his discussion, which I thought was not only applicable now, but certainly at any given time.

So Keith has got, the book is available now. You can go get it and he's got some online learning. You can go find that Competing in the New World of Work is the book and you can go find on Amazon or wherever. You can also go look it up online. And they had opened a video series on the subject, but maybe you could still add that or get it after the fact. Probably most things like that are useful to do. Learning is one of the things that we're passionate about, learning, coaching, helping teams grow and develop. And we teach the scaling up framework to folks. One of the things that we see again and again is the importance of doing it together as a team, right? Not just the CEO off learning in their CEO, organization, peer group, whatever, but the whole senior team or learning the tools of a framework. Which is why we've created a new program that we're launching across about 26 cities. I want to say. Neil, talk to us about the 20,000 scale up program.

Yeah, Bill, it's really exciting that following a couple of years of trialing this in London and Sydney, we're in a position this year to really finally get some momentum on the 20,000 scale up program. I think it probably more like 20 cities that we will launch within June of this year. 8th and 9th of June is where we are looking to get around. As I say, around about 20 cities. Some of them might be a week or two later, some of them might be beforehand. But the idea about it is to be a premium scaling up education program where you can bring your senior team to and likely be joined by four or five other high growth organizations and to have the whole pretty much scaling up curriculum taught to you in a senior team over the course of 12 months and the Fact that you're going to be joined by those other organizations gives you the benefit. Those peer networks or peer peer organizations that are probably going to be on a similar trajectory as you are. And we've seen certainly in London a massive benefit of those CEOs coming together on a similar journey, being able to seek out opportunities, help each other when they have got barriers to growing out their organizations. So you have this learning program and I think on the call today, I know Stacey is leading the charge in Oklahoma, you're leading the charge in San Francisco, I'm pretty much leading the charge in London. And they said we've got cities from Sydney and Melbourne across to Vancouver, I think Mexico City, Guatemala taking part in the launch. And so it's really exciting that we're now starting to make an impact not only for entrepreneurs but also for cities around the world. And we know that scale ups are the first responders. So what better way of helping a cities get back on the front foot again than having a program that's designed to help create jobs, to help create the new 100 million, 200 million organizations. So hopefully you can tell we're really excited about this right now and obviously an opportunity for listeners to think about how they can get involved as well.

Yeah. So let me just underscore a couple of things there. So this program is a one year program to teach all of the basics of scaling up in a fairly intensive way, but face to face. So in person with your whole senior team. So you and your senior team, we're talking typically teams like five to eight. I think our standard in there is six people but alongside a handful of other companies. So you're going to have some other companies. The count might vary by city. We're taking applications now for the program so you'll be doing it. So not only will you and your senior team learn and apply the scaling up tools to your business, but you'll hear how other teams are doing it. You'll have a chance to see and think about it from different angles which ought to multiply as we've seen in past programs, the value get from the program than just learning it with a coach.

100%. And we also teach organizations to have a big hairy, audacious goal and you think, well why 20,000 scale ups? So this is our big hairy audacious goal to help 150 cities scale 150 organizations over the next 15 to 20 years. So that would make a huge dent in the world. I think why we're really excited that we've now got an opportunity to create across cities scale up ecosystem to work with private equity companies, to work with YPO and EO members around the world, work with city mayors which we've done with Westminster in London. It's to make a real difference.

So the other thing to know is that we have and will continue to have a range of training and coaching programs. This is a premium kind of an opportunity and we're not accepting but a handful of companies. So most of our cities will only have five companies that are accepted into the program. So you need to go to the program and apply to BE and tell us why you think you could scale if you had a little better training and education, that kind of thing. Because we want to choose the companies that have the most potential to really take off that that will actually accept in the program. We've put it in the crawl, we'll put it in the show notes as well. It's at scalingup.com 20k-scale ups-program. Right. Is that the, the main URL to be using for that?

Neil I think it is. I just, it's got all those dashes and dashes out. I haven't got it a lot of that.

Anyway we'll put the link in there but if you, I mean even if you don't do that, go to scalingup.com and find 20,000 scale ups is one.

Of our programs offering.

You get that as well. Like you said, Stacy's got a program launching, I've got one that'll happen in San Francisco as well. So we have them all across and they'll probably come to more cities in time as we, as we work to expand the program.

BILL I'm currently talking to some folks in la so hopefully we'll, we'll move that along as well.

JUDY we need a Southern California program. So great to collaborate with some of the other coaches and see if you kick something off there. So it's not that many companies but it's a chance to get in there and then of course you can add other kinds of like coaching and other work along with it. But the other build as well is.

That to supplement the classroom learning we've teamed up with the Growth Institute as well and this is the education in between the sort of three monthly classroom education that you've got an opportunity to work not just with the senior team but actually to get education going much deeper into organizations for the Growth Institute with curated learning which more often not will chime. So if we're working on strategy we may have three or four master classes that are really in, in play when it comes to that. And it's not just the senior team that be able to benefit from this, but be able to coach out your next level of leaders and get that common language, that common level of education pervading right across your companies.

So you've got in person training in the core, all the core scaling up tools of the scaling up framework across the four decision areas, focus on each quarter. Then you've got the Growth Institute online learning complementing focus, lessons in between that you can take to those leaders and beyond. And then we also will have in cash flow story, a software tool for tracking accountability and building your business plan. And then the CEO will do, will have an option to do an additional CEO only program at Harvard where they will have a certificate around business growth.

Exactly. And that's going to be at the Harvard Tech College where I think I'm right in saying that Zuckerberg went to, maybe Gates went to as well. Whether they stayed the whole course, who knows. But this is something that I think is really, really special. And of course then as we work through every single year, we'll build out an alumni as well of CEOs who've been on the program who can then share their key learnings and give real insights. And the other thing is I think is coming together from around the world to be able to learn not just how to trade in your own country, but actually how to grow out and grow into other nations and grow that way. It could be significant.

Couldn't as well, well as we, yeah.

As I'm, as I'm talking to people in the Oklahoma area about it, what really is resonating with both organizations, right? Like even the Better Business Bureau of Central Oklahoma has kind of put themselves behind our 20,000 scale ups effort here because we want to be known in this area. If we're selected as a city by this global initiative, we want to be known as a place that it's not just great to start a business here, but it's great to grow a business here. And we're really angling from that economic development perspective because people who came before us in the pilots with Sydney and with London being able to say that the five companies that get into this cohort can make a 31% revenue increase or make almost 900 jobs come out of thin air from this amazing strategy and program that's really impactful. So those of us who got selected in our city area, we're really seeing some pretty big backers from the Mayors to city to governments who are really interested in making sure that our particular city is also seen as a great place to grow a business. That's what kind of makes the hair on my arm stand up for me is when you take that daycare audacious goal and that concept of 20,000 scale ups and that impact down to my city, my home state where I was born and raised and the fact that I could do anything as a coach that allows my home area to grow by a billion dollars. That's amazing. It's a pretty great program to be a part of.

And you sort of talk about, we always talk about this notion of 10x and helping an organization, maybe it's 10 million get out to 100 million or 50 million to get to 500 million. I had somebody who contacted us last week and was talking about why he should join the program and he said, at the moment we've just got some series A funding around about 10 million, but we're only doing 1 million in revenues. I said, might be a bit early for you. He said, Neil, we want 100x. I said, what do you mean? He said, we want to be 100 million in four years time. I said, you're kidding me. Yeah, we don't want a 10x. I never heard that 100x before. So yeah, he, he was persuading me as to why he should be on this program. Don't tell me I'm too small, Neil. I'm definitely gonna. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, that's why I think we get passionate about it. If we can actually help, you know, grow, grow organizations out to 100 million and number jobs, it's going to create the benefit in the economy. Certainly the challenging times we've got at the moment is amazing.

Well, we've. Pardon my sneezer. We've probably talked about this a bunch, but you could tell we're passionate about it. And if you think you are wanting to 10x or better, you should get your application in. Before we close this first year of the program in, in so many cities. Not the first year of the program ever, but in many cities it is. And, but let's move on to more of the human side. We've been talking about getting in person and blending and adapting. We learned from one of the other speakers at Vern's recent YPO EO Leading at Scale event, Buffett protege Tracy Britcool. That says one of the key reasons that she got, she thinks that she got her job working for Warren Buffett is that she showed up with a bushel of corn and a batch of tomatoes from her family farm. So not only was it a gift, but it was something personal. And like, you know, what do you bring to one of the richest guys in the world? Obviously, bringing something personal.

I think that's a new metric, right? Rot return on tomatoes or rob return return on baskets. It's a new number we'll have to take a look at. Yeah, her story was, you know, was great. You know, she grew up on a farm in Kansas, so, you know, they had that. Right? There's so, you know, so much about relationships or how can we connect, right? How can we connect those dots? So, you know, one of the first things that, you know, connected was here's this, like, really folksy, you know, girl with a basket of, you know, of vegetables. And again, it really connected their Midwestern point. And she really talked to him, too, about what she learned on the farm, right? So, you know, this farm, I mean, she had a mind for improving, you know, harvest yields and productivity and processes and people skills. So, like, you know, all the things that you want, you know, farming is a business, right? And sometimes people think, well, farming is not really a business. It's like, you know, it's probably one of the, you know, the largest businesses globally. I mean, I live here in Southern California. One of the biggest, you know, part of our economic power, you know, is our growing ability. So, you know, while their farm may not have been huge, right? She made some incredible, incredible advances. And it didn't hurt, you know, that she was smart enough that she got accepted into Harvard, right? So she had this, you know, great educational tools, right? So she went to Harvard. So I'm sure, you know, the tomatoes, the, you know, the, you know, improving her farm and, you know, coming from. From Harvard, you know, didn't hurt. But she. They linked and in talking, you know, all of a sudden, she quickly began to grow. And they said, you know, once you got past the connection, your Harvard connection and your farm and your basket of tomatoes, you know, you got to prove yourself when you're working with this guy. And so, you know, she really just really focused on things that are, you know, as a former CMO and cmso, you know, was their brand. She talked about just building incredible brands, master brands, and what made master brands were truly things that were very, very different, right? She really focused in on, you know, differentiation and, you know, how do I create that differentiation and what are the activities, right? Much like, you know, much like Michael Porter, right, a Harvard professor, talks about what Are those differentiating activities? And so she took some rules, kind of companies that, you know, were, you know, were the pampered chef and stuff. And they're saying, she was saying, how can I do things differently? And she brought in, you know, she talked about technology, right? And so how do you use the digital divide, right, to take older companies, right, and use technology to change everything. So, you know, she had really advanced technology, and then she talked about the value and how do you differentiate people? And she said, you know, she started using their customers as her greatest brand stewards and spokespeople, and then, you know, the greatest customers became their greatest salespeople, right? So, you know, she used some tools that other industries have used, like using the digital divide, using your greatest customers as your influencers, and some converting them into your greatest salespeople and changing your model, really looking at your brand and saying what was really very different about it and that becoming a great competitive advantage. So, you know, smart gal. And it was a great story to, you know, here kind of the folk who side behind it with a meeting of, you know, a global thought leader.

But, you know, the combination there of tools and then human touches, like getting real, connecting to something genuine. I love that side of things.

One of the things that I enjoyed about her story that day was she really talked a little bit about how she decided what she wanted to do in life very young, very early on, made a list of who she wanted to work for, what she wanted to do, right? And we're always hearing people say, like, you know, get the list. Don't just manifest the list out there, but let's make it happen. And what's unique is that I think a lot of people would hear her story and everything that Judy just provided and say, yeah, but how did she ever meet him? How did she ever get in front of him? Well, back in 2006, when she was a part of the Harvard Business School, she coordinated for her classmates a trip to go to Omaha in order to meet him. And she was able to do that because she was a part of this co founding of this organization, so Smart Women Securities. When I hear something like that, I hear the power of volunteering in the areas in which you. You want to become an ecosphere and a sphere of influence, making sure that sometimes what you're doing it might need to be in the volunteer route for a while in order for you to make the inroads that you want to have. But that opened up those initial doors for her to be able to meet him. And then later on be able to, you know, bring the, the bushels of corn and the tomatoes and everything else really started from that opportunity that she created when she co founded an organization.

I would say Stacy, spot on, right? It's the, it's plan, right? She had her plan and she worked her plan, right. And then the other thing that both Keith and and she said were, you know, it may sound, well, gee, that's you know, common sense. And you know, it's. My mom always says there's nothing common about common sense. It, a lot of it was just hard work, right? She had a plan, she worked it and she didn't stop. Right. She was persistent. And he says the same thing, hey, a lot of this stuff, folks like, you gotta work, you gotta work hard, right? Like I'm gonna give you, you know, I'm gonna give you some tools, but it's up to you to kind of do the heavy lifting. And you know, Stacy really nailed, nailed that. So thank you for sharing that with us.

Yeah, I love this story and it remind me of the old adjective givers game in life that often that what you give up front with no maybe fears of favors back, but actually having that mindset and the other thought just listening to Stacy, then it's another book by Keith Ferrari is Never Eat Alone. And if you really want to get on in life is the notion of this writing down 25 people that you're only going to make contact with in the next 12 months or whatever the time frame is that could have an absolute instrumental impact on the trajectory of travel that you want to go down. So it's a great, great coaching tool to have whoever you're working with just write down the list. Who are the key people that you've got to involve or may have lunch with or connect up with next 12 months in order to move your business, business forward.

Neil I literally did that when I was a woman in tech and was a CEO of a company. I was growing it based on the scaling up methodology. But I grew at 600% and if I'm real honest, a big chunk of that was because I made a concerted effort that for six months, breakfast, lunch and dinner was with somebody. It was a very, very big concerted networking effort in order to grow sales and brand recognition and, and the sphere of influence that I wanted to be seen in. It was a great advice and great tips. I love that you brought up that book.

You know, it's funny, it's actually like a really useful practice to take time out to go have Lunch, have breakfast, have drinks. And I know some people who do make time for it, but they make time for it like it's an aside. Like, okay, well, I'm going to have breakfast meetings, but I'm going to have, you know, like before 8:00am or that kind of thing. They have, like, hard boundaries, as if it wasn't a work activity in itself. I realized years ago that I was doing. Working every day through my lunch and eating crap food and sitting down too much in, like, whatever project I was working on and not enough with the team and the people. And so I said, wow, I could actually. A coach suggested I could improve my quality of life, my health, and my team connection if I just allocated that time. So Instead, I booked 90 minutes every day for my lunch meetings, and I started going out to lunch with people, and I just rotated who I went to lunch with. It could be an employee, it could be a client, a vendor, any number of things like that. But I had a great time, I had great lunches, and my whole outlook changed, and my connection to the people on my team developed a great deal as well.

You know, when people today use excuse, you know, well, you know, there's still the pandemic. And Covid, I'm like, right, so replace it with the zoom, right? So that, you know, at lunch kind of get together. And again, I know that I literally, like, have sent people right in their area. You know, you pick what, you know, you pick what you want. You know, let me know, I'll, you know, we've charged it. You know, they've had the food, and we've had, you know, we've had our lunches like this, talking. The same thing with breakfast meetings, the same thing with dinners as well. So even if you can't do that, Right. You can still use the digital divide. But to Stacy's point. Yeah. When you can and, you know, and what is it? What are, you know, the whole point is there's something you do want to get, you know, from that individual, some kind of knowledge or education or, you know, or connectivity to somebody else, or there's a strategy behind that. But the whole intent is you go there and this, you know, maybe the, the, the lead to our next conversation about what, you know, we're talking about. But you should be going there. What. What can I give this individual? Right. What can I give to this individual to help him or her team? Because, right. It's the proverbial pay it forward. If I, you know, if I give, I'll eventually get right. And, and and to have that plan, right? What am I here to understand that I can do to promote and grow for that. That individual? You know, and with the hope that, yeah, you know, there'll be an ask. Maybe the ask is not at that breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but that ask maybe a week later or a month later, you know, six months later. And that's how relationships are developed. And Neil and all you guys, I don't know if you ever, you know, have been asked this, but.

Right.

We. We know some of the most famous thought leaders, you know, in the world. And some of them have become personal friends, right? And people are like, how do you know these people? It's like, you know, I, you know, I heard a talk. I emailed them. I got a phone number. I know a friend, right? I sent, you know, sent him something, sent her something. And all of a sudden we started talking and texting and emailing and zooming. And now, you know, and now they're asking me questions, right? And they're asking me for phone numbers and. And, you know, and that's the way the world. That's the way the world works. But again, it's a plan. And to Stacy's point, right? I mean, there are people that I know, and I was like, hey, I know who knows this person and their colleague and friend, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna figure out a way through their help to get there. And conversely, you know, I'm going to help them get to where they want to be as a. Well, so.

Well, one of the ways that Vern reminds us to connect to people is with a thoughtful gift. And in the case of Tracy Britcool, it was a gift from her life that created the connection to his life and to his values, to Buffett. But John Rulin, who's been an author, speaker, he's been on the guest. A guest on this show before. We've talked to John Rowland a couple of times about his book and his work. Giftology is the book. But John says that too often our corporate gifts and our business gifts are about us. I'm going to give you something with my logo on it. And John says it's brilliant when we give people something that's about them. And a recent guest on the show is Jack Daly. And John once sent to Jack Daly a coffee mug that he had made where he'd really captured a lot of the things that made Jack Daly special. And Jack is emotional like me, but he was moved to tears by the thoughtfulness of that and being recognized As a human being for all of his things. Right. So something personal that connects us as part of the way to make that connection.

Connection, yeah.

Those companies that sell all of the, you know, the cups and the shirts and the notepads and the whatever, they're constantly telling you, you know, you want to buy these things because it's the leave behind. It's got your logo on it, and they're going to use it every day. But in reality, if you give somebody a gift that is so special that it's memorable, they don't need your logo to be on it. They're going to remember you and that you gave it to them. And so that's the difference. Right. Whenever you're thinking about this other mass product and we're gonna buy, you know, 5,000 of this, and it's all gonna be this logo leave behind. Sure. That might work for certain types of marketing instances, you know, but when you're trying to make a big play and a certain relationship that you're wanting to build a bit deeper, hopefully the gift you give them is memorable enough without needing the logo attached to it.

Yeah, I think there's like a 10x kind of thing because I've done subscription substantial marketing efforts with things like we're going to give everybody sunglasses at an outdoor event, you know, and we're going to put our logo on them. Now it's traveling on other people, like, oh, I want the sunglasses. And they come by our booth. And, you know, you can do things. And they do. They do actually work. But if I want to break through something, if I want to meet Warren Buffett, if I want to connect to Jack Daly, I want to do something that's either like. Like really personal and connected in a different way, not just slapping my logo on a yeti mug.

Yeah, yeah.

Think about. Right. Word are important to people. I. I know one of the things that's been effective for me is when, you know, a lot of people, you know, they don't live or don't work where they grew up, but, Right. Like, they're, you know, their siblings might do, and they miss their home. So, you know, and just getting to talking to people about some of the things that they miss about home. And quite often it's food. Right. So. Oh, my God. I miss, you know. You know, I live in the. I miss cheese from Wisconsin. I miss, you know, great. You know, I miss great, you know, the great bagels from New York. I'm from New York. I can't find that. The pizza, whatever that's what I've done. I mean, I've found, you know, just so many just food things from locally that they love. When I remember this one guy, he just. Because he grew up on the water and he's like, I just. He's like, I miss the smell. But there's a certain smell of the salt air in our. In the, in the stands and stuff. And it was from the East Coast. And so what I did was I. I mean, I couldn't take the air, right? But I took sand and I was talking about the certain type of shells and I just put it in something and I sent that. And it was the same kind of thing. He just, you know, he, you know, he cried as like, is that. He's like, oh my God. He's like, I just have that on my desk. And I, you know, and he goes. And the sand still does have some of the, you know, the smell in it. You know, sending. I've sent, you know, people who are passionate anglers, you know, fishermen, some antique, you know, fishing, you know, fishing hooks. And then of course, the other thing that I love to do is to me, there's nothing greater than like the gift of knowledge, of education, right? And in our, in our books, right? Like whether it's, you know, Verne scaling up the Rockefeller Habits, Keith Ferrari, you know, you know, God, Jim, you know, the good great, you know, any of those incredible authors and those books and you know, the Art of Possibility by the Xander. So just, you know, that gift of education. And some people say, you know, thank you. I, you know, I've read that book over three or four times. And, you know, that book changed my life or that book changed my company. So there's something. There's so many things you can do to really, really give in. You know, again, it's not about us, it's about them.

And just building on that, it's interesting that not necessarily a gift. Well, I suppose it is for many people, but just that whole gift of recognition. Now that just literally we know from. I think it was Greg Lederman wrote a book called Crave, which is actually. As humans, our greatest desire to have some sort of recognition is simply just sending someone a thank you note and just saying thank you so much. You know, whatever you did, you know, you really stepped up or I really appreciate what you did right now. I remember when I was working with Molson. Cause my CEO at the time just dropped me a thank you note for stepping up to take on a big project. And I've still got it today. You know, those little things, it doesn't take a huge amount of time, but just as a CEO, just to take two seconds to think about, you know, a random act of kindness or just taking time to, to express how grateful you are to your team members can just pay many, many times over.

Yeah, truly. You know, I'm struck by, in this conversation the human side of things. And so much of our business challenges are human. But also the human side is such an opportunity for richness and appreciation. It's definitely challenging. But that I'm curious, what are the mindfulness practices that your leaders use for themselves and their teams? Vern talked about binaural Beats and we talked about Yoga for the Mind. Most of the time, the binaural beats kind of annoy me. And then he found some new app. I couldn't find it, but I have had with our teams in the last couple quarters a lot of focus on mindfulness practices, stress reduction and kind of self care things. As the lines and practices and distinctions have gotten so blurred and are kind of reforming now, what do you guys notice?

I'm surprised to hear that, Bill, that you didn't necessarily like the Beats thing. I've been using it for quite a while. Yeah.

On just Spotify.

Yeah, I just searched on Spotify. Honestly, I wasn't using like a very specific app or anything like that. And it's probably been maybe about three years that I've been using it for.

For sleep.

Right. So I'll just find different types of Spotify channels. There's one that I really like that's a chakra healing frequencies thing by Miracle Tones. The. The Beats that Vern was talking about, there's some that are like heal your body or sleep. And for me, I just let it run the whole night while I'm sleeping. And for. I've been getting deeper sleep. Yeah, I've been getting deeper sleep and it's really just something that I kind of have on low near my pillow and I really enjoy it. And other individuals who have kind of mentioned to me, I think they've mentioned it to me more with the work from home movement that we had here over these last two years, that they're the type of person who gets more work done when the TV's on in the background. Like they just need this low level of noise in order to really focus and hone in. I think those are the kind of people like, if, if that's you and you identify with something like that, then you might like something regarding the beats and the focus and what you might be able to find on Spotify or some sort of app.

So music's a huge part of my life and day. I was cranking a whole playlist this morning before I got ready for my first meeting. Before this show, recording. And in the show, I'll play music and sound, and when I need concentrated stuff, I'll crank some music. And when I work with CEO and entrepreneurial groups, I'll use a lot of music through the day. I'll use less music when working with teams because it does seem like different kinds of people respond to music differently. So some of our operational people and accounting folks don't seem to like the presence of the music as much or it's less consistent. I notice almost always do they love music during work and thinking time in the. In the entrepreneurial groups. But. But it does seem like there's like, everybody's got a different beat. Everybody's got a different time and place when they need. And I. People are like, oh, what's your go to music? I'm like, it changes all the time. I like, sometimes I need a different vibe for different kinds of work. Right. Different music.

I'm. I'm a. I'm a nature girl. And it was interesting. We recently had a talk with a whole series of people that was really, really based on. Right on nature with, you know, Dr. Tams and other people. And, And I can't recall the last one, but she was the. The. The oceanographer and she just talked about. She gave statistics about how many children in. And I think it was in the United States, like, you know, even, you know, they said by the time they're five, they still haven't really, like, touched grass or touched sand or touched plants. Like. Right. Their feet, like, they're not outdoors. Like, they're kind of inside all the time. And she was just talking. They were all talking about the importance of what nature does. Just the fact of, like, feeling fresh air, right. Feeling the sunshine, taking your shoes off, right. And actually feeling grass underneath your feet, being able to smell dirt. And for me, that's what does it. So I, you know, and I live in beautiful Southern California. And, you know, there's a place, you know, we're surrounded by mountains here as well, and beautiful farmland is just to go out. And I really do. I mean, I love, like, I love rocks, so I love looking at rocks. I love touching different rocks. But I go to water, you know, the rocks and the shelves. The smell of the wind, for me, that just. It does it. Right? And then I know you know, and whenever, you know, I can do, when I can facilitate work with people, I try to have our setting as much possible where we can do something outside. And one of the last ones we had, it was in the Irvine area. But this building, you know, they had big open, you know, the glass windows open. So we had this constant stream of fresh air. And the grounds there were beautiful, you know, pretty evident. As soon as everybody took a break, they were so beautiful that everybody just went out. You could just tell they were just kind of out in nature and they just needed to chill. And when I can't do that, I'll use an app, like one of the calming apps. Right where I can hear the ocean, I can hear the water, I can hear the rain. And for me, that's, you know, that's what does it. But they talked about the statistics, how people really do need to be. Really do need to be outside to kind of have all their senses stimulated by what mother nature does.

Yeah. You know, I think the last 12, 24 months has certainly changed myself as a coach because I've probably not always been that in tune with where the CEOs have been working with that really are. So when you ask them, are you okay? Yeah, I'm good. But you're actually having to go to place now. Are you really okay? Because you can see that they're not okay. They're in a, you know, for whatever reason, could be really stressed or about to lose a business or marriage or whatever. So I think that's just how to adapt. I've had to really, really build up my empathy skills and deep listening skills and understand and be somebody that I suppose over time you do become someone in their trusted circle, but they can really confide in and genuinely confide and talk about, you know, maybe things that they even spoken to your partners or their wives about. So I think that then once you've established that, then you can then get to a place where you can either say, right from what you're saying, I'm not qualified to really help them in this area, but you may want to go and see GP or want to have this conversation with someone else, or you may want to find a way of getting your balance back and getting mindful or exercising or getting everything back in the kilter again. So I think the roles that we have as coaches have changed from just not just growing businesses, but being acutely aware of where people are and being able to be able to be in a place where you can serve them best.

You know, I like what you said. And I'm reminded of something I've had to coach and modify in our book and in many of our past things. We've talked about having conversation in many meetings about asking people where they're stuck. And I haven't had a lot of success with too many people using that. Mostly they'll say I got no stocks or no blockers is another one, another version of that, no blockers, no stocks. And the problem with it, in my view is that we're not then saying where are we most challenged? And then all of a sudden we've got some project or something that's in the red. And we never had earlier conversations. So I've coached people now to say where are you most challenged? And what you were saying there is interesting to me because you're asking people, no, are you really okay? And the notion that you should always have some area of struggle or challenge, something that you want to work on, puts you in a more coachable place, a place where you can be contributed to. And it's kind of good self awareness, right? Like, oh, I might not think of myself or want to think of myself as stuck or blocked anywhere, but I, but I could tell you what I find the biggest challenge right now, 100%.

And in the UK we have this old adage that you're having a stiff upper lip, which is another way of just saying, look, you know, even if I wasn't, okay, I'm not going to tell you, you know, because that's a stiff upper lip kind of perspective coming through. So you have to break that veneer down and you, you have to be. And I think most of us can see some, somebody who is struggling, you can just see it in their body language. You can see it in terms of the way that they're coming across or that, you know, they, they suddenly, their confidence is ebbed away. Look, that, that again is, is being acutely in the moment, acutely aware of where people are. Which as I said, wasn't necessarily a strength of mine until a couple of years ago. Something I have to really focus on.

You know, years ago I led a workshop in, outside of London and I'd been recruited and suggested to do this by some team in London. And I've led workshops all over the world, sometimes with interpreters, mostly in English, but you know, on a wide range of leadership and growth oriented things. So there I am, I'm a couple hours outside of London in the town of Canterbury and I'm leading a workshop and, and it's like Powerful, deep, personal work and leadership and things like that. And I'm sharing things and it's emotional and there's a big range and I get very moved and that kind of thing. And, and people just looked at me like, oh, no, we're not talking about any of this here. And it went, it went, it went poorly. You know, it wasn't objectively bad. I didn't insult them or anything, but it was uncomfortable and not great because I didn't have that. And it wasn't okay there. Especially in Canterbury at that time with that group, there was no room to like, you know, talk about feelings or thoughts or vulnerabilities at all. Certainly not in a group setting.

There's a lot of little things. And recently, this week, I'm, I'm dealing with a CEO. And, you know, I could see that he was struggling. And so, you know, we were, we were on Zoom. And I said, you know, so. And so I said, I, you know, I'm just going to ask you, I'm like, how are you? How are you feeling? Relaxed, you know, feeling right now. I'm like, your face, your body language. I said, I could tell something's wrong. And he, you know, he just said, I am, he's like, I just, you know, he's like, I just feel like, empty. He said, I just, you know, he goes, I. I just need to get out of here. I need a break. You know, And I, so I said to him, you know, just, I said, go outside, right? And I know he loves it. I said, just go outside. I said, you know, just go for a walk. I said, take it. Whatever you can. Take whatever you can afford, right? 15 minutes, 30 minutes, go out. So, and then what? We, you know, we talked about it. He was able to do that. And I think it was, you know, he took a 30 minute break and talked about it. And I said, you know, and I've said this to a lot of people too. Finish your project, right? And you know, Vern always talks about this. Don't do a project any more than, right, the 90 minutes, right? Preferably an hour, work on something for an hour. And then again, if you can go up outside, that's great. If not, wherever, you know, within your halls, just take a break, right? Take a five or ten minute break because, you know, mentally celebrate that you finished that part of the task, right? Go and recharge for five or 10 minutes and come back no matter who, you know, where you are. And I say, if you can't, if you can't do that if you can't after, you know, 60 minutes, take five or 10 minutes. I'm like, you've got way too much on your plate. And that, to me, is a good litmus test. When they say, I can't, I can't, I can't have five or 10 minutes. I'm like, then we're doing something wrong. Let's figure it out. Let's figure out what we can take off your, off your plate to give you five or 10 minutes between these hour, you know, pieces of work that you're doing and be able to take that. The other is I, you know, literally some of my clients, they've started doing some. And again, these are, you know, we talk about a lot about volunteer. There are certain people who do yoga or just, you know, they're, you know, they're more athletic and they say, hey, I do my stretches and stuff. So some people are going out with a group of, you know, whatever, 10 or 15 people. They see other people doing it, and for 15 minutes in the morning, they kind of go out as a group and they stretch, right? And sometimes we'll carry it through at lunchtime. And it's interesting, right? You know, they have other people kind of observing now and then it's like, hey, you know what? I can do that. They're very, very kind of simple things that you can bend and stretch and just get your, you know, get your body going. And again, it's not somebody that they brought in. It's just people within the company that did it. And it's been catching on. So it doesn't have to be big. It just, it's literally minute breaks that interrupt what you're doing to, you know, both mentally and physically move your body and get out of, you know, just move out of that energy, if you will.

I like to ask the CEOs kind of the beginning of when I'm starting to get to know them and we're entering that coaching relationship, I just like to ask them what do they do to decompress, right? I've been a CEO. I know what that stress level is. Like, all the pressure, the weight on your shoulders. What do you like to do to decompress? And then whatever they tell me, I just like to jot that down. And occasionally from time to time, I'll just ask them, so when was the last time that you played basketball? You told me basketball was the thing you do to decompress. When was the last time you got a chance to do that? Or I have another CEO who's skiing is their big thing, right? And if you just ask them kind of about whatever that decompression item is, then it tells them already that they haven't taken a break and that they need one and they kind of get that, get to that spot on their own sometimes without me having to go to go too, too deep into the psychology area of it.

And just, just, just the act of asking is so big and that and right. So to Stacey's point, like, right, ask. And I know with this particular individual, one of the things he last said, and I made sure, you know, you know, Friday before I said, hey, what do you know? What are you going to do this weekend, right, to take care of yourself. And ironically enough, he, he and his family, he's, you know, he's a big snowboarder too, so he loves to ski and snowboard, you know. And I write it was like, you know, be good to yourself. There's another CEO, he never takes time. And I made sure I reached out to him to be good yourself. But one of the last things he said to me and, you know, it was really one of those gut punches because I felt so bad for me, he's like, you're the only one that asked me. Like, you're, thank you so much. You're the only one that asked me. He was like, nobody else asked me how I'm doing, right? And I was like, wow, you know, what a, what a big red flag there. But that, like, that just the fact that I asked, he's like, you're the only one that asked me. So ask, ask and follow through, right? So, so important.

We know from Google's study of effective teams that like a safe psychological environment makes a difference. We know from Pat Lancini's work that trust is the foundation of effective teams. So you gotta ask and be curious. But you've also got to create the safety by sharing yourself in some way, by creating openness and trust that it is okay to talk about a place that you're struggling. I'm not going to kill you the moment I hear that. The other thing I think is really useful kind of segue for us. Adam Grant reminds us recently sharing an article, it's Friends who Break youk Heart in the article talks about the rules of friendship. And as Vern points out, they're pretty basic kinds of things. But I think one, the last one that he points out is really common, that their sixth rule is there is to share positive life developments. And our teams have meetings all the time and they go Right into issues and problems, and they focus on the red initiatives, that kind of thing. And of course, we teach the importance of opening with good news. Right. Having I talk about more cowbell, right. I even bring to some of our meetings cowbell. And I have always at hand and I tell people I even have built in like sound effects cowbell. And for the big ones, I have the silly sound effects on. On our audio panel for our zoom meetings. But like, are you, whether it's with a prop, a gong or something, and in your agendas, are you opening and focusing on some good news first? And it doesn't even necessarily just have to be business, but are you starting with, you know, we just bought a house or, you know, some other. Or my project just went to this place like, or we just hit this milestone. Are you opening with some good news of some kind in all your meetings so people could see they're making progress? It feels like such a fundamental thing, even sometimes. The good news is I'm still standing. I'm still here. Right. I didn't quit, I didn't die. That could be good news sometimes.

Bill, you're spot on. And when I do that, if they start talking about work up front, I say personal, right? We're talking about. Let's talk about we're people first. Because again, we'll. We'll get to that stuff, you know, in a minute. Let's just talk about. Let's go around the human level where, you know, where your wear your personal, personal hat. And it could. And, and it's amazing too how, you know, how often people have worked together five years or 10 years or, you know, it's generally here. Like, I didn't know that. Like, sometimes it's like, you know, I didn't know you're from so and so, you know, like even where they're born or something. But, you know, just that, you know, what it brings to, you know, brings together really, you know, it builds a strong bond. So again, I make sure that people don't start with business. And then when we do get to business, you know, you get the same framework because everybody thinks, like, it's got to be something monumental that they did that week. And it's just like it could be to your point, it's like we didn't lose any customers this week. Like, we kept, you know what I mean? We kept all our customers. Like, we didn't, you know, we didn't gain anywhere in sales. But. Right. Or I just, I, you know, I just finally got this meeting to talk to this person that I wanted to do business with, you know, for six months or a year. So we also set the ground again. It's right it, you know, and sometimes you do have great wins. But, you know, let's just start about the things that, that, you know, that you felt, you know, hey, this made me feel really good today. Or this made, you know, somebody on my team feel really good today. So. But that's how we, that's how we start.

So we have the 4D meeting and we've been talking about and we've updated our, our work on the weekly meeting in more recent times. We've always had a weekly leadership meeting, but we've added some more distinct parts to it more recently. The scaling up 4D weekly meeting, Discover. And that's where the good news comes in, right? Discover opens with good news and then we go into the metrics and the initiatives, that kind of thing, the market intelligence news about the team, that kind of thing. Then there's the discussion. That's where we get into the issues and start to pull things apart, focusing on a few things that relate to the priorities of the quarter, not just randomly chosen. And then we close out with decisions and delegation, decide, delegate. So that's the 4D meeting in there.

I think that's really important is that by default, as humans, we tend to focus on bad news and in the whole world at the moment is just bad news.

I mean, it feels like it, right?

Seriously bad news. So hence I don't try and watch the news anymore. But you kind of think that we're still, we're still here today. So you have to, you have to pay a bit of attention. But I think helping organizations recognize that, that good news in checking is absolutely vital to get the pre. I can't remember which part of the brain is sort of engaged with, you know, there's a more positive side of things, given that all it wants to do is see, see the negative and to set off in a good, good, good, good sort of vein around that. So I think just finding a way of always having that sort of good, good news is, is important and I think even more so. And this is again where people find it difficult sometimes to talk about personal areas and you have to almost make it the habit, Bill, because they just. What's it got to do work. And you actually say it's got everything to work. If we, if, if you. Things aren't working out quite so well or if you've got, you know, things challenging with your grandparents. I know it's not necessarily always good news, but actually it's about what's going on outside of work that you're able to build an unbelievable sense of camaraderie when they all understand about what's going on in each of the organizations. So it's absolutely critical, not just in the weekly meet, but the daily huddles. We do it with our team every single day. We just do that good news and check in what we're not so good at.

You raise a good point, though, that sometimes it feels like you're overwhelmed with bad news, whether it be personal or global events. And that's why I think many of our meetings also have some kind of a temperature check open. You'll see. Very commonly, we'll talk about the one word open, and that's a kind of a mindfulness practice, although most people don't realize it. If we do a one word open, and I say harried or overwhelmed or whatever, I've actually named the state that I'm currently in or where I've just been, what I've been dealing with. If it's working right, then we can soon move into bad news because I'm not suppressing it. I'm not pretending like I don't also have some bad news. I can acknowledge the bad news or the bad mood or whatever the state is, and then I can also then soon talk about the good news and where things are okay. Right. Like, you know.

And Bill, you mentioned that sometimes the CEOs have a little bit of a struggle getting the employees and the team to speak up when they have stocks or when they have a challenge. They almost wait till it's too late and they haven't hit a certain KPI. And now all of a sudden they speak up, you know, and let you know something's happening. Happened. So one of the things that I talk about with the leadership teams is watch what I'm doing as a coach when I'm here with you in this session and we have a certain agenda and we start with good news, and then we do this. And then we do this. What can you take from it and utilize yourself in your own meetings? Because, yes, it's amazing to start with good news because that starts on a positive note. And maybe if it's personal and professional, you're building that sense, psychological safety and some of those bonds. But there's another part of it. It's that you started with an icebreaker. You got them talking. It's literally like greasing the wheel of your meeting. If you don't start with it. Then all of a sudden you're asking to do the tough work and they're not ready to speak up yet. And if all you did was just ask for good news, you at least got them sharing and talking so that the rest of your meeting can be secured. Super productive.

Yeah. Getting that, that communication going. Right. Naming that thing, acknowledging what's there. Right. Not suppressing it, but then also reaching for something aspirational. There's a whole range of spaces to move through there as a team. And then Judy mentioned something that I heard connecting between Neil and Judy. Neil's talking about how it's just overwhelming right now and sometimes, whether it's world events or our business, like the bad news can be just staggering, overwhelming if you're, if you get hit with a ransomware attack or if you, you know, or if you're freaked out about nuclear risks or global instability, like whatever it is. Right. The next variant, all the kinds of things that can, can do. I think one great remedy that I use for myself and I, and I use with our CEOs and leaders all the time is an awalk. And I, you know, that's a particular term for something that I did before but didn't notice as much. But in. Just go outside. What is the awalk? Step outside, take a walk in nature. And you don't even need like a super inspiring place with giant redwoods like we have near here. You could just go examine a one foot patch of grass and be awed by something like smell the trees and the flowers and listen to the birds and the wind and you know, be engrossed to hear the movement of water. Like if you could just get yourself grounded in that, you could remind yourself that all is not lost. Right?

Open your senses up. Right?

Yeah.

Take it in. Remember, I remember after September 11th happened in the whole thing and you know, it all just seemed kind of crazy. And I would look outside and it seemed in many ways like the whole world had ended in some regards and the planes weren't flying. And I'm like, yeah, the plan. But the birds are still flying and the trees are. The sun rises and sets and you know, like give yourself some perspective.

And as a matter of fact, during that time it was very interesting because you probably heard more birds and sorrel, more critters than you ever had. Right? Because they were. Right, because there, you know, there were no planes on other things. Everything was stopped. They were able to kind of come out of their hiding places and again, people Were saying like, oh my God, it was the first time we've seen these birds in, you know, five or 10 years. And you know, you had a picture with the pollution. Right. There was so much less pollution and people were, you know, in cities were able to see, you know, mountaintops that they hadn't been able to see, you know, again in years. So you know, when something really awful happened, there was like another very, very positive side, you know, counter positive side that did happen.

Yeah, I think we can get ourselves freaked out and people are coming just like birds. People are coming back out again. We talked earlier about our 20,000 scale ups that might not be for you or you might not be accepted. We also have another in person event. We're doing May 3 to 5 in Dallas. So coming right up, May in Dallas, we're doing another scaling up summit. And it'll be a master class and summit on Scaling up with guest speakers. Vern will be leading it. I'll have a role in it. We'll have a range of other folks that will go through the world of scaling. This will be a larger program, a larger event with a whole bunch of other companies as well. So you'll have a chance to hear it and work can and come together. So we've got that, that's a, that's a big event. Pretty low cost. Then if you want something a little more intimate, a little more in depth, Vern and I are leading a boot camp in April at in Squaw Valley or Squaw Creek Resort, which is. The names are all changing there soon, so you may have heard of that. But at Versus in Lake Tahoe area in California, Northern California, we have a boot camp. That program is about full up. We only have room for maybe two more people in that. So that's the CEO boot camp. You can find all that@scalingapp.com both the Summit and the other, we have special pricing and packages and that kind of thing. Will I see all of you at the summit?

I'll be in Dallas.

And Neil, you'll be flying in. Come on, baby.

With my cowbells? Yeah, I'm bringing Swiss cattle with me. Anything that can compete with your celebration of successes, I'm gonna up you and trump you. Actually, I can't use that word, can I? You and Biden you or see you and raise you.

You can't. You just have to say it with the right third, third of the country, that's all.

Yeah, yeah, we, I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be a Fun, engaging thing. It's going to be great to see a wide range of people again. We'll have a coach meeting as well. Aside from that, hopefully we'll have lots of great updates and, and sharing. Be great to reconnect with people. I think it's be particularly fun. Vern and I have been talking about it and planning for it to be just a highly engaging kind of an event. Like to take it to a new level after, after we haven't seen each other for a while.

Very excited. Yeah.

Let's talk about wins and exits. Infinity Software exits for 25 million. Have you guys had some exits with your teams in the last. Are the things that you could share.

In the LA in the last year? Not in the last year, but the years before. I, I, I had, I had plenty. So may have another, May, may have two exits in this, the next 14 months. So, but tools that I've, you know, tools that I use are a lot of the, a lot of the scaling up tools.

Right.

Probably the most most important tools I've really used is use our, for them to really understand strategy, that was key. We kind of, most of the companies, we had to alter their business model or make some significant changes, which was difficult at first because they weren't very good strategists. They really didn't know how to read the market or as you know, Keith would say, peek around the corner. So I really taught them how to kind of look at, look at the present, but really how to peek around the corner that was on the horizon and how to be two steps ahead of it. And then the most difficult thing was really to get them to understand, to get out of their, you know, to get out of their comfort zones. And what we really need, needed to do to be different. And that meant, you know, getting rid of old assumptions, you know, busting up old processes, you know, bringing in innovation from both technology, but particularly from our processes and then bringing on the, you know, on the right people. And that was key. And then, and that everybody was building a culture of cash, that everybody had some kind of responsibility. Responsibility. Everybody affected cash in a positive, mediocre, negative way. And so they were all very, very conscious of it and that everybody knew exactly what the plan and the strategy was. And that's a big thing because usually, right, it's the executive team and the owners that know it and it's up here, but nobody else knows it. It's kind of, you know, just being told what to do, but just really getting that plan out there with clarity. So everybody understands it and everybody comes look at it and understand every day. I know what I'm doing. Why exactly it's going to get us to where we're going. And what I did today, again, either affected our goal in a positive, mediocre or negative way. So they were all very clear on what they were supposed to do and how to do it. And if they didn't, that they had room to where they knew where to go to get that support. So that was really key. And those differentiate, you know, differentiations really did their, their multiples were, were well above industry standards. And I, you know, I've been involved not only in an IPO on Wall street, but, you know, over 103 mergers and acquisitions. And that's been common to all of them. And so that's one of the things that it, you know, is wonderfully consistent.

So my clients for the last two years have mostly been buying. I did have one past client sell in 20, 2020 for a billion. And that's a great number, a great milestone kind of number. And I think they were very happy emotionally to hit that particular target. You know, it's a threshold, it's a milestone. But for the last. What's that?

So that billion dollar was, was in one of their monetary north stars, right?

Yeah, was a. What was that? And, and I, and I think that's a great one. But I have a couple working on it now. But for the last two years we, it's actually been more about raising money and doing acquisitions. So more, we've done more acquisitions with my clients and learning how to digest them. You know, multiple clients doing that. I do have a couple looking at or working on possible exits right now. But, you know, it's kind of always we're buying, we're raising, we're exiting. There's that whole world of stuff which is, you know, which is kind of growth and life of a business.

Yeah, Buy Them Build is a great book. I think it's Walker Die Ball.

Walker die Ball. Yeah, I love Walker.

Yeah. But it's, it's just, you know, I think I'm with you. There's a lot of organizations I'm working with that once you've kind of got the year done and got scaling up methodology really working through, then you know how often it is or what we're going to do next. Well, actually, what's your, what's your growth? I think, well, right now there's probably going to be lots of opportunities to acquire organization. Maybe you've got fat and happy during the last two, three years that, you know, provide good market value, so then helping them recognize that, giving them the skills to buy them build. So, yeah, plenty to go out.

Yeah. Hey, before we're getting long, in our show, what's the number one job of the leader? The Dr. Edwards Deming said the number one job leader is prediction and being able to forecast things. And, you know, we have a lot of people wondering, you know, what their job is as CEO. I've often said it's getting your team full and keeping them green, and that'll lead to great company value. But kind of inherent is that, is that predicting the future or creating the future, describing a future and helping. Helping people lead into that. What did you guys notice about that? Verne cited then an Adam Grant study on forecasting and the idea of being less wrong and predicting the future.

Yeah, I thought it had a lot of interesting things to say. Making sure that you lead with curiosity and not necessarily just conviction. Right. Sometimes we can be super convicted about something, and we haven't necessarily been curious enough to ask enough questions before we settled on what our answer might have been. But, yeah, there were several others. Don't focus on being right. Aim to be less wrong. I thought that was interesting, Right?

Yeah. There's a whole rationalist movement around being less wrong and focusing on having a clear view of what's going on in the world.

Well, I mean, to write to, you know, Stacy's point about being less, you know, aim to be less wrong and what. What was, you know, when things was. They talked about, you know, make, you know, when you make a forecast, make a list of conditions that might change your mind. Right? So go back and say, right. Like, we're, like we're, you know, we. We dig in, right. Where our convictions, it's like, wait a minute, what. What things may actually alter the way I'm thinking about. And then they, you know, they talked about, too. You know, one of the things I just, you know, talked about before this. Right. Was prediction is looking around the corner, looking at your market, see what's happening, Try to be like two, three, or steps ahead. But at the same time, you've got to also look to the past, right. To see are there any kind of precedences there. So, you know, you know, when you're driving that bus, as Jim Collins says, you do have to be looking out, but you do also have to be looking in the rim, rear view mirror, you know, in the past, and juggling and juggling all these pieces. So, and, and, you know, and One of the other things is when you do make mistakes, it's really about analyzing your failures. That was a, you know, that was another thing too. Like, okay, what did you know, what did I, what did I do wrong? But just right. And again, going to people too, who are counter to what your beliefs and your convictions are and saying, you know, what, you know, what specs of truth or opportunity might be there. And, you know, again, Keith talks about prediction, right? That was one of the key things in his, right, Prediction, proactive and being progressive. So spot on. You've got to be able to see, you know, that's. If you think about it, how many times do people in business say, hey, if I had a crystal ball, right? That's what prediction is about. That's looking around the corner, right? That's looking into the crystal ball. That's looking at what is behind, what is behind and what is in front of you. So just a really critical skill set, as I said, particularly in building strategy, probably number one.

You know, it's interesting we can get convinced of something. I remember as Omicron was rising and I was hearing from some friends in South Africa and stuff, and I thought, yeah, this is going to be a big deal. And I was upset and, but I, but I had also this view like, oh, this could be the end of it though, because, and you know, I had this scenario worked out. Not that it was going to, but it could be like if it out competes the other strains and it's makes you less sick, like that could be kind of last hurrah and we'll freak out and, and, and then the next and subsequent ones won't be as bad maybe, right, but. And I thought to myself, as I dealt with it and surrendered to masking again and things like that, as we run around, I'm like, well, but this could be, you know, and it like, I wasn't sure of it. I kind of do still think that's the more likely scenario. The same thing. True, kind of with events in politics right now, with the war in, in Ukraine, I'm like, yeah, this could be the end of Putin. I could easily see now how much damage is going to happen to people in the world before that. But I'm like, I could see this being the end of his career.

You know, just to pick up on and go back a few minutes to your question on the role of a leader. For me, I'm reminded of David Marquet and his book Turn the Ship Around. And your role is at leaders is to create more leaders. And if you can get a mindset.

Where you literally, hey, air horn for that one. The role of a leader at its best is to create more leaders.

That is awesome. Exactly that. If you, if you can leave a legacy in your organization, I think just like David did in terms of, I think from his worst performing submarine, I think the Santa Fe, you know, that no one wanted to go to, over the next two, three years, he created more captains, more leaders of submarines or ships in the U.S. navy than anyone else. And I think if you still instill that kind of belief into the CEO that your role is to create more and more great leaders who are capable of doing more of the heavy lifting. But it's an amazing legacy to leave.

Well, so let's do a round of check. Judy, any special events or things to share with us that you want to.

Shout out, email me or go to my website. I'm going to be announcing, I think a new podcast really again, talking about focusing on exiting. Right. So you know, my 103 plus, you know, acquisitions I've been involved with that. And then the other part of that is really how you build a powerful master brand that really is completely different. How do you unearth, you know, your competitive advantage, really your differentiation? I'm very excited, excited about that. Going to be bringing some really great leaders to join on that podcast. I'm very, very excited about that.

And Stacy, what do you got coming up?

I'm excited to be in Dallas when we're all together in May. So I hope that some listeners will join us with that. And then 20,000 scale ups for most of the global cities who are doing it, especially for Oklahoma City, we're going to be kicking off it's June 7th, 8th and 9th. So pretty much people have got to get in their business applications now. Right. And if they go to scalingup.com they'll find information about both of those events. But that's where I'm going to be.

Nice. And same thing. We'll be starting the same time in San Francisco. So if you're in this area or traveling to this area, go to scalingup.com get your application in and, and be a part of our initial group of small, probably only five companies. Neil. Exactly. Scale ups, right?

20,000 scales. Yes. So exactly the same date, 7th, 8th and 9th of June. That's why this is so great. Now that we're all synchronized, obviously we're going to be super competitive. So we're going to have. London is going to be the best place in the world to scale up an organization. Everybody else will want to have a bit of that in time. But actually just joking aloud, I think one of the things that we're again, really excited about is to get cities very competitive about how they want to be seen as the great, great city to start up a business, to scale up an organization. And by doing that, I think we can, we can make a big, big, big change to a lot of urban areas, a lot of cities, a lot of countries.

So, well, San Francisco, Silicon Valley has a little bit of a reputation to live up to here, so I look forward to seeing how well we do.

But you think about the industrial revolution. Where did that come come from? What else have we got to be famous for? Oh, the agricultural revolution that came from the uk. So yeah, let's, let's leave it there for a time. Being you have caught up a bit in the valley.

Is easy because June is right the sixth month, so it's and it's seventh to the ninth. So what you've got to remember is right, 6, 7, 8, 9. And remember those days, right?

All right, so May in Dallas, June with 20,000 scale ups. April with me and Vern in Lake Tahoe. But wherever it is, or right here every week, a new show with one of our authors, with some of the other coaches, with CEOs, sharing their experiences. All things to do with growing your business. Thanks again everyone for listening. Big thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of our Scaling Up Framework and the whole ecosystem that we live in. Our show is produced behind the scenes here on my screen. I can see Wanda Mitchell there in the background queuing up our things, getting our guests ready in the show out. Our show audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions and our show notes are written up by on Kadina and proofread by Tim McGowan. Thanks again everyone for listening. Keep scaling up.

Bye bye.